This is the longest I have gone without posting anything. But I have a ton going on. After Tuesday I will have more time to catch my breath and actually focus on what is going on in my life, think a thought that doesn't involve project approaches or children's literature or teaching literacy... school is consuming me right now. It will be over soon, Tuesday. Then I have a month before summer school starts.

Hang in there.... I will be back I swear.

Does that guy on the chocolate skittles commercial freak anyone else out?

Seriously he creeps me out.

I tell you what, I was a party animal last night. I went to a neighbor's pool party yesterday and I was out until.... 9 pm! Woo wee, I partied hard! hahaha! :) Well to most people that would seem pretty lame to be home by 9pm, but I stepped out of my box and did something I wouldn't normally do. So you gotta give me some credit.

I didn't go to church today because I found out some more drama about the church vs. pastor controversy (see post below). So I may need to find a different church here soon. I will be doing so searching. If anyone knows a good church in the North Houston/Humble/Kingwood/Huffman/Atascocita area, then let me know. I am pretty open to visit all kinds of churches.

Prayer Requests:
-My dad, who is out of town
-End of semester stress
-My financial situation
-My Grandpa (he has to make it until at least May 1st)
-Bobe (my brother)
-Nate, Tricia, Gwyneth
-All my law school friends who are about to graduate and start working on passing the Bar Exam

Open Letter to Houston Drivers

Dear Houston drivers,

Please remember that when you are exiting a toll booth, do not immediately move to the left lane. We EZ Taggers are coming through that lane at FULL speed, and when you cut us off it makes us angry. You are coming from a complete stop and we are going at least 65 mph. It makes us angry when we have put our brakes on because you cut us off going very slow. The whole point of us having an EZ Tag is so we don't have to slow down. If you have a deep desire to drive in the left lane, then GET AN EZ TAG!

Take that message into consideration or next time I will run into the back of you. And it will be your fault.

Thank you,
Ashley

I have been slacking on my blogging. I am drowning in school work... so anything that anyone asks me for the next couple of weeks my answer will be, "Ask me again after April 29th".

Prayer Requests:
-My Dad is going to be working out of state for the next couple of months and my Mom and I will miss him a lot. Plus keep him safe.... his trouble requires a lot of driving and roof climbing.
-Stress

Earlier I had a few things that I wanted to blog about. But now I got nothing. My brain is empty and I have no idea what I was going to say earlier. Dang it! I should have just wrote was I thinking when I was thinking it.

I have been doing homework most of the day so at least I have an excuse for why my brain is fired. Hopefully I can think of something fantastic and witty to say tomorrow!

So I went to church today with my Dad. We, as a family, have been visiting a baptist church here locally for a while now, but we are not members, just frequent visitors. I have enjoyed this church, but I am still praying about where God is leading me to make my new church home. This particular baptist church is part of one of the largest churches in the Houston area and is pretty prominent in its' reputation. I guess you could call this church "big business" which is one of the reason why I am hesitant to make it my permanent home.

But anyway, back to this Sunday's service. Church started normally, nothing seemed different. However, after the invitation (or altar call) at the end of the service, the preacher steps down from the pulpit where he is joined by his wife. He then states that this was going to be his last Sunday at the church and he was leaving to start a new church somewhere else. The congregation was shocked. Apparently, no one saw it coming.

This is not a church, like I said, that I am even a member of, but I was deeply upset by the pastor's departure. Why would he want to leave one of the biggest and best churches in Houston? I am trying to trust that he is leaving to follow God's will for his life, but I can't help but think that he is leaving just for the hope of bigger and better things. A pastor leaving a church can rock that church to its' core, and some churches never recover. I do not wish bad things on this church, and I hope they take their time and put the right man in as the new pastor of the church.

I will definitely need some prayer time to reconcile this in my head. Or this may just be a sign that God is leading me to another church or that God is leading me to stick with this church through their hard time.

Yikes, any advice?

Yesterday was the first day I didn't post anything in a long time. But I had good reason. I taught my kindergartners in the morning and then I cooked dinner for my mom. Dinner went really well and my mom was "thrilled in her soul" (yes, that is a quote from my wonderful mommy). I didn't know cooking her a dinner would make her so happy, and she kept calling me "a real person". It was like last night she realized all the sudden that I am an adult. Never mind that I am 25 years old and that whole I moved thousands of miles away for 2 years. But whatever, at least my mom knows I am a grown up now. LOL... but anyways, after dinner I got a killer migraine so I went to bed early. It was a busy day but a really good day.

Prayer Requests:

• Tricia and Nate and Family
• My grandpa had surgery today
• School stress

Praises

• My dad got home safely from his trip
• A special night with my mom

I am trying really hard not to freak out and be a stressed out monster for the next 3 weeks but it is getting harder and harder to stay calm. The end of the Spring semester always seems to come with a vengeance. I have about a million things to do and major projects that are not even close to being complete. In my heart I know they will all get done but right now I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. The best news I can think of right now is that I have about a month off before Summer school starts. So until May 1st, it is homework, projects, research, and paper writing.

Oh and only adding to my stress level, I told my mom I would cook her a "real" dinner tomorrow since my dad is out of town. Whew.... what was I thinking? I don't even know how to cook... I will have to let everyone know how it goes.

Is it a bad sign that I am already annoyed with lesson planning and I haven't started teaching yet?

Yikes... Not good.

Prayer Requests

• My dad is traveling/driving to Waco tomorrow
• My mom's stress level and her caretaker burn out
• My brother's school and health
• I still need a job
• Tricia, Nate, Gwyneth, and that whole family

Praises

• Good day with the family watching NASCAR
• Uncle Phil was on Pops duty this weekend
• Getting school work done
• Still clean house
• Left overs from my mom

Last night I was looking back through my quiet time/prayer journal that I wrote mostly in summer and fall of senior year at Baylor. There were a lot of verses from Psalms in there. I had never given much thought to Psalms before, but the verses were very emotional. The writers really let it all out which is something that I could never do. I see a study of the book of Psalms in my future.

Night ya'll :)

Shell Houston Open

I went with my Dad to the Shell Houston Open PGA golf tournament on Friday despite the nasty cold windy rainy Texas weather (not typical temperature for this time of year but fits in with the craziness that is southeast Texas weather). I had a blast, I love the golf tournament! It helps that a friend of my Dad's has an executive VIP tent so we get free close tournament parking with no need for a shuttle, A/C in the tent, private bathroom (read: no porta-pottys), free food and drinks. :-) Seriously it is a good time and I am lucky to be able to attend. I wish the weather wasn't so bad because I would have liked to stay longer. But it was seriously cold and windy. Plus we had gotten wet on the walk to the tent so we were wet and cold. And that equals sucky golf watching situation. I even drank some coffee to keep warm, and I definitely remembered why I don't drink coffee... YUCK!

But anyways, our tent was on the green of a par 3 hole #16. Awesome Awesome seats to have. I got an up close look at the golf pros as the came to putt. And let me tell you, some of those boys are PRETTY! Seriously attractive players. I am not going to lie, when I came home I googled some of their names to see how old they were and just to gawk at their pictures. After doing some researching, I might just drop out of grad school and become a PGA tour stalker. LOL, ok not really but it would be a way better idea than school!

If you live in the area, check out the tournament next year ;-)

I wasted a hour of my life tonight... Tyra Banks duped me. I don't usually watch Tyra's talk show because frankly she annoys me, but tonight the rerun that was playing on the Oxygen channel caught my attention. It was about weight and how women get caught up in the number. And being that I am on a weight loss journey myself (I weighed yesterday- 28lbs down!) I was intrigued by the topic. At the beginning of the show Tyra said that she was going to reveal her current weight that was printed on her shirt covered with a sticker. Well I fell for it and watch the whole hour of lameness just waiting to see how much the ex-supermodel weighs.... come on... you know you all would want to know too.... but anyways in the last minute of the show she says alright here I go and she rips off the sticker.... and what does the shirt say........ "Screw the Scale".... what?.... are you kidding me! While I agree with the sentiment, it makes me angry that I wasted my hour just to say that I was tricked by Tyra Banks.

So thanks Tyra for getting my hopes all up and then just making me feel stupid in the end! :)

Good Night ya'll.... Keep praying for Tricia and her NEW CF FREE LUNGS!!!

Its, 4:08am (Texas time) April 3, 2008 and Tricia is still in surgery getting her new lungs. Keep praying ya'll.

Her loving husband is still being vigilant in waiting as well as keeping all us readers posted. Check the blog address in the post below if you want to know more about:
how amazing Nate and Tricia are,
Cystic Fibrosis, lung transplant,
preemie babies,
or what it means to be a christian and trusting in God.

Dear Lord, please bring Tricia out of surgery and allow her recover with her new lungs so she can be a healthy mother for her baby. Please give peace and comfort to Nate and the family. And Lord, I pray that all the hundreds of thousands people who are following this story see you in this and if they don't know you, they will be saved by your grace after all learning from and witnessing the miracles 0f this story. In your name I pray.

Just for good measure, http://cfhusband.blogspot.com/

Pray that the new set of available lungs will work for Tricia. Pray for the donor family.

If you want to know more about what I am talking about then check out: http://cfhusband.blogspot.com/

Dear Lord, I pray for peace for both of the families involved.

Today was a long day. I got to school really early to work on a project and then had 2 classes. Yikes, I felt like I was there FOREVER... well I sort of was.

I was talking to my best friend on the way home from school tonight and we were talking about how he is about to graduate from law school. Then I started thinking about how many of my friends are about to be lawyers. I was going to be a lawyer until I was about to graduate and go off to law school and I decided that I didn't want to be a lawyer. But with my classmates impending graduation, it does make me think, how different my life would be right now if I had gone to law school. If I went I would have probably gone to NYC with Robbie and I probably would have hated every second of all that work and stress. Most of my friends were miserable for the last 3 years. I am very glad that I wasn't miserable for 3 years and I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, but it does make me sad that I wasted so much of college when I was focused on getting into law school. Everything I did was focused on that goal. I was over involved with my honors college classes, community events, sorority officer stuff, student body organizations, and pre law/honor societies. But what for.... I didn't go anyway. Sometimes I think I should have just gone to law school and then I would be weeks away from being a lawyer like everyone else I knew in college.

But I have faith that law school was not God's plan for me and He has bigger and better things in store for me. And hey, if I ever need a lawyer, I got that covered. I have connections in the Harris County DA's office, Texas Court of Appeals, and who knows where the other ones will end up! :)