Thanksgiving Countdown: Day 27

Sunday, November 27, 2011: Jessica Meyers and Kristen Novak.  God has blessed me so much in the last few years with wonderful friends, especially in college.  These two girls got me through some hard times, laughed with him, cried with me, and have continued to be blessings in my life.  Jess, thanks so much for speaking logic to my emotionalism and being willing to confront me in my ridiculousness, Kristen, thanks so much for your empathy... and for being my unofficial roommate summer 2007.  I miss watching Stargate with the two of you as well... thanks for getting me sucked into it.  I thank God for you two and I hope you know how much y'all mean to me.

Another Shameless Plug

Kiki over at I Still Hate Pickles is one of the best bloggers out there.  A bold statement, but then her posts are informative, insightful, and often hilarious... and she's my friend.  Right now she has a goal of reaching 200 followers so here is my shameless plug of the week: go check out her blog!  Really, you should follow her.  Her kiddos always give you a good laugh (as well as her daily disasters), her coupon advice brilliant, her recipes divine, and she's an excellent photographer and artist.  So go follow her!  You won't regret it.

Shameless plug ended.

Cowtown Run

This weekend, I headed out to Fort Worth for my first 10K. Around 5:30 in the morning I was up and eating a Cliff bar with little hope of running it in under an hour. For those of you who do not know, a 10K is six miles and as I normal run fairly slow (maybe a 12 minute mile or so) I figured it might take me an hour and a half. Granted, in a race I always run much faster, but I still was not hopeful. This did not depress me of course as I was more than happy to get an 'E' for effort and maybe even enthusiasm, and so I went into the race planning on doing my best and just being glad to finish. By the grace of God I finished in 56 minutes and 2 seconds, just two minutes behind a friend of mine who was running. It was very encouraging and just what I needed to revive my slowly waning running routine.

What was cool was the amount of people of the city who came out to cheer the runners on and it reminded me of a very important Christian truth. One of the reasons why we gather together as Christians, aside from the obvious joy of worshiping together, is so that we can, or at least should, encourage one another. Every time I began to feel as if I could not run much longer, we would pass crowds of cheering people, telling us that we could do it, that there was only a little more to go, and even providing gatorade and water to give us strength. It reminded me that this is what I should be doing for my brothers and sisters in Christ, cheering them on as they press on toward the goal to which God has called them heavenward (Phil 3:14). So I encourage you to encourage others, because we are not in this race alone!

"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." Hebrews 10:24-25

Girls Night!

Friday night I had the girls from my bible study come over and spend the night.  We made sushi and watched Hairspray.  This morning we made French toast again, as I had excellent success yesterday with my morning class.  Here are some pictures of the evening festivities... which are again blurry because I'm taking all pictures with my computer camera:

Making sushi with not very sticky sticky rice, salmon, cucumbers, avocado, and cream cheese.

Phoebe making a "sushi salad".  (Like I said, the sticky rice wasn't very sticky).

Mollie, Brueck, and Phoebe's arm.  Mollie had the best sushi of the night.  It actually looked like a sushi roll.