December 26, 2007

A friend emailed me this link to check out, and so I did: www.adventconspiracy.org

I love it.  The idea of making Christmas about Jesus instead of consumerism…doesn’t seem like a crazy idea to me, but a lot of people would likely get grumpy about it.  I love giving gifts, and yes, I do love getting gifts…does that make me greedy?   Maybe it doesn’t have to be a no-gift-situation.  There must be something in between.   Every year on November 1st I start getting angry…Halloween over, and then all of a sudden it’s Christmas stuff.  Go shopping, Christmas music.  Go to Walmart, Christmas decorations everywhere.  Can’t stand it.  I love giving gifts, but not the obligatory gifts – know what I mean?  Giving gifts is truly a blessing to me, so I don’t think I would do away with all of them.  Yet if I just said to my family or Greg’s family – hey, how about we do this advent conspiracy thing this year? – there would potentially be a lot of freak outs.  And I’m not sure I could see my church getting on board.  So what do we do?  It’s easy at this point to say – next year will be different – but I don’t feel super optimistic about that happening.  I would love to find a middle ground on this stuff.  If anyone out there has found the middle ground, I’d be interested in hearing about it!

Merry Christmas December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas to all of my faithful readers! This last month has been busy for me…probably for everyone…but Jackie’s brain is fried. There’s the whole Christmas thing to get ready for.  But what’s killing me is school.  I’ve been working on this exegesis paper and I’m learning that a counselling student probably shouldn’t pick this paper to do when she takes a theology class. I’m so sick of my counselling-type papers that I thought I’d try something new. I really have found that I enjoy the theology classes, and exegeting (still not sure if that’s a word) is actually really interesting to me. But I could have taken the easy road and just did a case study type paper instead. But nooooo had to try something new. So the stuff for this class is due on Jan. 7th. That’s a bad time to have a class due with Christmas all in between and everything.

Parents have been up since Friday night. I think/hope they go home tomorrow morning. That might sound like a terrible thing for me to say for those of you who live for family visiting. I love a one evening visit and then no more parents. This staying over for night after night gets a bit stressful for me. Don’t get me wrong, my parents are great. If they lived in the city we’d always be visiting with them, I’m sure of it. We have had some good times over the weekend, though, and now with Rhonda being part of the family it is even better. (Finally have a girl to hang out with besides my mom!) Jackie is just done with hosting right now…the introvert needs to recover!

Merry Christmas to you all. I hope you’re all having a great time with people you want to be with!!

Well that was weird… December 6, 2007

Weird on so many levels.  Had a conversation today with my brother’s girlfriend…oh wait fiance!  Ya, little brother is engaged as of Nov. 25.  That’s the first weird thing…not weird bad, just weird like – whoa my little brother is gettin’ married.  Second weird thing…she was wondering if I could call the church to find out about all of the wedding things.  They wanna get married in my church, which is where they apparently want to start going regularly.  Third weird thing…I was like, well, COOL but in my mind I was wondering if there’s even anyone around there to marry people anymore!  Ya, so much more weirdness, but it’s all good weird if ya know what I mean.

Grad Application December 3, 2007

Ok, I’m sitting here staring at my grad application and trying not to freak out.  Needed a good distraction…what better thing to do than blog?!  Last time I tried to graduate (last year) I had the biggest meltdown of my life, and I’ve been recovering from that for a verrrrry long time.  So now here I sit face to face with my grad application for this year.  I’ve left it WAY too long…didn’t want to face all of the crap that comes immediately after you fill out the application.  Like “what date can you come and do your oral comprehensive exam?” “when are you getting your grad picture taken?” (oh ya – got that taken last year….uuuuugh) “are you coming to the ceremony?” “here’s the list of dates that everything is due or you don’t graduate.”  Can I do it this year?  Will I graduate?  Well, if I don’t AGAIN I’m gonna feel really great about myself.  I know I will…ok, I hate saying that because that’s what I thought last year too…this is the point where I get irrational.  What if I don’t this year???  What if I can’t do it again??  I know I know, “I will.”  Freaks me out people…freaks me out.   Well, here I go…fillin’ out the application.  WOO HOO!!