santa x santa = mAgIcAl

so thomas wrote this really funny thing today...so i thought i'd share it with all of you...

joe X joe = coo coo
ellen X ellen = weird
mom X mom = stressed
dad x dad = stressed
dog X dog = chew
thomas X thomas = cool
nathan X nathan = really cool

santa X santa = mAgIcAl
frosty X frosty = Alive!
food X food = really good
paper X paper = drawing
people X people = 30 million and beyond
ellen X text = really bad

and i laughed...

oh and i put up our christmas lights today...it was grand...my neighbor came out and asked me if i was trying to compete with our other neighbor...i said no...and she said that she was thinking about putting a sign out in her yard that said, "bah humbug" cause she doesn't have any lights...haha...

and then i was cleaning up for the junior high progressive dinner that was at out house tonight and i had an armful of stuff i was taking down stairs...all of the sudden my feet flew out from under me and i fell down the stairs as gracefully as possible. thank goodness i didn't break my macbook. yay...but i think i bruised my tail bone. oh boo. :)

the struggle within

am i alone in this?
never a night where i can sleep myself till day.
i think i need a new town, to leave this all behind,
i think i need a sunrise, i'm tired of the sunset,
and so i found a state of mind
where i could be speechless.
so scared of getting older
i'm only good at being young:
just a series of blurs
like i never occurred.
oh, another social casualty
score one more for me.

this is your life are you who you want to be?

well i can disagree with myself
because sometimes i feel like me
and sometimes i feel like someone else.

but you don't know what now to do
cause the chase is all you know.

the motion keeps my heart running
cause i'm caught in suspension.

say anything, but say what you mean.
When you whisper you want this
your eyes tell the same.

i'm on the brink of something beautiful
and i want to sing about it,
but i don't know where to begin.
i'm ready to settle but not down
and not for less that what i've been promised.
i want more than just ok, more than just ok.

and i'm feelin' the same way all over again
feelin' the same way all over again
singin' the same lines all over again
no matter how much I pretend
let me know that You love me
and let that be enough.

it's a new day, oh baby it's a new day

so it's like 1am in the morning or something. usually i would be sleeping. usually i should sleep. but i'm not cause stephanie came over and we watched pride and prejudice. and it was amazing (in the most stephanie animated voice i can manage)!!!!

random thoughts in 5 min:

sometimes i wish i enjoyed school. just so that i could actually feel productive or motivated or excited about learning. but i don't. <---this is not good. oh tosh.

yes, i just said tosh. it's pretty much my new lingo. so now you know. k cool.

"i wanna soak up the sun. i wanna tell everyone to lighten up." -sheryl c.

more like soak in the rain. but seriously. please lighten up cause i can't take the darkness any longer.

i've been away for way too long. i need to go back. like now.

i know that this isn't probably making any sense to anyone, so i'm sorry.

awakening went awesome for everyone that knows what i'm talking about. please come to the next one on dec. 1st at 7pm. it's gonna be amazing! haha...

"slow down everyone, you're moving too fast. frames can't catch you when you're moving like that." -jack j.

this song was written for me...i'm sure of it.

oh love. oh life.

im gonna go to bed now. i have class at 8am. whoever you are, please remind me to NEVER take an 8am class ever again. thanks.

oh. one last thing:

tripede.

muahahahaha.

ginger

we got a puppy today! her name is ginger and she is a border collie vizsla mix. pretty much super adorable...

puzzle pieces

tonight i ate a kiwi.
and it was particularly juicy. bright green with tiny black seeds and perfectly sweet. love.

on thursday i went to the david crowder concert and he played a guitar hero guitar.
it was probably one of the coolest things i've seen in a while.

i'm sick. today i was talking to some people at church and i realized i sounded exactly like meg ryan in "you've got mail," when she's all stuffed up in her apartment and tom hanks comes up and brings her daisies...
in any case, i really would like to get better...

i would really like to be a "no" person. i say "yes" way too often...but i guess that's how God made me...

last night i had a dream. i haven't dreamed in a really long time. "and it was good."

today we shot did our "promo vidi" (as josh likes to say) for awakening. it was amazing. and nathan made me laugh so hard... =) btw, awakening is the name of our worship/prayer night that college group is starting at my church...its gonna be so rad!!

umm...school has been really hard. harder than i expected it was gonna be anyway. but i'm doing good so far thankfully.

there will soon be an addition to our family! a puppy!!! i'm so hippity hoppity! it's gonna be a border collie vizsla mix...3 weeks countdown! any suggestions for names? it's a girl...

i am thinking that i'll probably transfer up to northwest university in kirkland, wa next fall if everything works out. i'm really excited!!

and i'm thinking about going to australia in december. but we'll see what happens with that.

well, that's pretty much it as of lately...

oh. i really want to see across the universe. like really really bad. i bought the soundtrack off of itunes i love it. ahhh..but i don't have time to go see a movie. um i'm gonna make time. how about tuesday night. sweet im free. so i'm gonna go see it on tuesday night if anyone wants to come.

k. peace out.

btw.
...
...
i want ellen time!! ugh.

*this blog has nothing to do with puzzle pieces...or does it?

enough

i have so many things running through my head right now that i wish i could write down, but somehow i think the point of all those thoughts would get lost in the words...

basically i've had enough...

i've had enough of mediocrity.

i've had enough of living selfishly.

i've had enough of living without passion.

i've had enough of being stagnant.

i've had enough of being impenetrable.

i've had enough of living in fear.

i want life to be amazing. i want to wake up every day and be able to say, "i'm so excited for life!" i want to be filled with life and energy and passion. and i want those things to overflow so that others will see how awesome our God is, has been, and always will be.
and i will be filled. because i have found something worth living for. and that is Jesus Christ.

so i love fall

i'm really sorry if i offend anyone, but i'm pretty much really happy summer is over...cause i LOVE fall. it's most definitely my favorite season of all time. yessssss.

so i'm listening to collide by howie day right now. wow. this song brings back memories. way back in the day. aww i made this acoustic mix and it is the one of the greatest things ever created. i will be listening to it for the next 4 months...LOVE!!!!

k besides that random comment...it's so sweet though, the colors changes, maple leaves falling...reminds me of when i was little. and the cooler days help me remember that all my favorite holidays are coming up. well. first is my birthday...in like 10 days! and then halloween and thanksgiving and christmas and new years!! and then all my friends come back from school and i get to see them and that's awesome!

just for all of you...here's a recap of my summer.

high school ski camp
indonesia
saw carly and people up north who i love very much!
went surfing!!
decided to not play soccer at clark.
got a nannying job.
went to the beach with lauren
family camp
went camping with kylie, jordan, and ryan.
went to tom's house and went boating
collaged...
went to seattle to see renee
played tennis with brant
played my little pony memory
went to powells and bought a sweet coloring book.
went to the zoo
ate frog, calamari, and ethiopian food
fell in love with thai iced tea
had to say goodbye to all my friends that went back to school! =(
stayed the night on a sailboat with carly
decided that i want to be a teacher
emily turned 16 and now i don't ever see her...sad...
nathan turned 18 and i missed his birthday cause i was camping.
went to bali and boogy boarded.
went to a lot of coffee shops.
started playing indoor soccer again! yay! i love soccer.
and college group started up again...well now REVolutionalIVE.

books i read this summer:
praise habit by david crowder
in the meantime by rob brendle
a long way gone by ishmael beah
blue like jazz by donald miller
kite runner by khaled hosseini
pride and prejudice by jane austen
authentic faith by gary l. thomas
and stories from fairy tales by hans christian andersen.

so i start classes the 24th:
u.s. history
french
world lit
speech

yesss.

i'm excited about going out to my favorite spot. and watching life. i've decided that i want to get some stuff accomplished this fall. like play guitar. and start painting. but well see how much i'll get done.

um i guess that's about it.

besides the fact that i want to dance through the rest of my life. k sweet.

bye.

cult of americanism

"American culture is no longer created by the people...A free, authentic life is no longer possible in America today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities, and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives- sleep, eat, sit in a car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded."

Lasn likens life in what he calls America to life in a cult in which 'we have been recruited into roles and behavior patterns we did not consciously choose.' Does the child who sits in front of a television set for three to four hours a day, shops at the mall with her parents, goes to school and recites the Pledge of Allegiance, plays computer games, listens to her president encouraging everyone to go out shopping in order to defeat terrorism, wears clothes from the Gap, and plays with the toys created out of the imagination of Disney and Hollywood, ever actually choose the American way of life? Did she go through a ritual of initiation beyond getting her first Barbie? Was there a moment of conversion in her life when the American dream became her dream? No. She imbided this monoculture consumerist dream in the fast food she ate, the polluted air she breathed, and the visual culture she inhabited. And so she was converted, made into a cult member, before she ever knew what was happening. Lasn points out that 'dreams, by definition, are suppose to be unique and imaginative. Yet the bulk of the population is dreaming the same dream. It's a dream of wealth, power, fame, plenty of sex, and exciting recreational opportunities.' When a whole poplulation dreams the same dream, empire is triumphant.

Colossians Remixed 170-171.

elizabethtown

i know a lot of people who don't like this movie.
they say, "it's slow" "it has no plot"

"and who says we have to listen to 'them'?"
"they do!"

but i have to say otherwise. i really think that this movie deserves the title of incredible cinematography. the music, the scenes, the details, the lighting, everything about this movie is just so perfect.

elizabethtown is about life. day to day life.

"life and death. and death and life. right next door to each other! there's like, there's a hair between them."

so basically you should see this movie and watch it with an open mind. after i watched it, i had a deeper appreciation for the simplicity, as well as the complexity of life

moving on....

if you decide to read the following, you should take a couple moments to ponder the quotes. why else would i put them in??

"trust me. everyone is less mysterious than they think they are."

this is so true. everyone wants to be mysterious. it's like it's just a big game to try and make people interested in you. why do we do this? and besides, everyone reveals more than they want to or think they do anyway. sometimes i think that being mysterious is pointless. but at the same time, i won't lie....i sometimes try to put on the facade that i'm more mysterious than i am. but that's the fun of it, it's not really that i care if others see me as mysterious. it's basically because i just want to feel like i'm mysterious.

"no true fiasco ever began as a quest for mere adequacy."

"i've spent so much time thinking about all the answers to the problem, that i forget what the problem actually was."

"sadness is easier because its surrender. i say make time to dance alone with one hand waving free."

agreed. i say fight for joy. not happiness. joy. joy is an attitude. happiness is a feeling.

"i want you to get into the deep beautiful melancholy of everything that's happened."

i think people miss out on life when they do not think about things. of course i am not telling you to think all the time, but sometimes life requires thought.

"we are intrepid."

this quote goes out to stephanie. thank you for making me watch this movie.

"men see things in a box, and women see them in a round room."

"it takes time to be funny. it takes time to extract joy from life."

personally, i think going through hard times is good for people because it makes them realize that this statement is correct.

"i'm fine."

what kind of explaination is this?? think about it. it is probably one of the dullest answer to the queston, "how are you?"

"i was still waiting for everything to start, and now it's over."

pepper and s'mores

on saturday my aunt left for california. emie, tori, and norwood are already down there. so my aunt asked me to housesit/dogsit for them while they were gone in cali. i said yes before i knew that my family had already made plans to go the beach the same week. ugh.

anyway, i've been watching their dog, pepper, which is a black poodle. saturday and sunday night were tough cause pepper kind of got lonely and yeah....stuff happened that wasn't exactly super fun. let's just say i had a lot to clean up. but anyway, since then, i've been sleeping at their house and pepper has been sleeping with me. i don't know if i like this arrangement or not because i kind of like my space when i'm sleeping, but whatever, it keeps pepper happy.

i'm kinda bummed that my family is going to the beach without me. i mean, i could bring pepper down there with me, but that seems like a hassle cause then i've got a dog in my car for 2 hrs trying to make it's way to the front seat so it can sit in my lap while i'm driving. and then pepper would get all gross with sand and i don't want to have to clean that up. so i don't really know what i'm gonna do.

goodness...

so far this week has been pretty decent. on monday night, rachel and i went to the waterfront and sat out on the log on the beach and watched the sunset and the moon was out too, so we got to see the reflection of the moon on the water and the sunset at the same time. to say the least, it was incredible. then we went to winco and got supplies to make those cup of dirt with worm things that you have when your little..(you know, chocolate pudding with crumbled oreos, and gummy worms...) it was really delicious, but i kinda felt sick afterward, although it was a good sick. =)

then last night i played tennis with brant and his siblings as i do most every week. i played horribly (and i blame my racket). but after that, i went over and we had s'mores and just sat around the fire until it was late. and i felt sick again cause i think i ate too many marshmallows, but again, it was a good sickness.

nathan is going to the beach tomorrow, so i'll be home by myself. plus anne is at bball camp, jamie's on a fishing trip, and emie and tori are in cali. i miss them all very much and can't wait for them to come home.

gurg, and nathan and i haven't been at the beach together for a long time. and i still haven't seen him surf and i really want to. maybe i will have to go down to the beach for a day at least. ok.

oh. and my macbook and ipod should be coming either today or tomorrow. so hopefully i'll have something to occupy my time for at least a few hours. oh my word im so excited.

my indonesia meeting is on monday. yay! so i'll get to meet everyone on my team and i'm really excited about that!

the 4th of july is next week and i love that holiday. and emie and tori come back the 3rd. ahhh they've been gone for almost 3 weeks...

ski camp is coming up in 2 weeks. i hope all of you remember the july 11 is free slurpee day at 7-11. so make sure you go and get your fill of free slurpeeness. cause i'll be gone at camp. but then, it's not so bad cause i'll be with my friends, and wakeboarding, tubing, and waterskiing, and sitting out in the sun for 5 days. yesssss. and then i leave for indonesia in about 4 weeks. (july 23rd!)

ok.....hope you all have a wonderful amazing day!

dolce gelato e piu

i love summer. i took joe and thomas to the waterfront today and they rode bikes while i ran (yay for summer workouts for fall sports...). then we went to dolce gelato (yay for italian ice cream, soo good!). then we ate lunch and i went shopping. hehe yay! plus it was 82 degrees out today. ahhh i love summer.
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so i've realized that there are 4 main goals in my life.
love and trust God.
make, build, and maintain friendships/relationships with people.
be genuine.
try.
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i don't know why i have never listened to maroon 5 before, but i realized that i kinda like them way much. good stuff. anyway...
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random thought that i have yet to answer:

why do i make life more difficult than it is?

living life should be simple, right? but if you really think about life, it's kinda complicated. but then it's really not. why am i thinking when i could be living? why am i worrying when i could be trusting?
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yay for random thoughts
and yay for boredom.

otterpops and cough syrup

this conversation actually took place today:

joe: "this otterpop tastes like cough medicine."
thomas: "well, it tastes fine to me."
joe: "thomas, you like cough medicine."

then i laughed.

congradulations my friend

today nathan graduates from highschool.

sometimes it's weird to think that we are both college students now.

all i can remember is us when he used to chase me around the house and finally catch me and tickle me because i was laughing so hard i couldn't run anymore.

or when we used to play legos together. for 8 years it was just nathan and i. and since then, our relationship has stayed just as close.

i wouldn't want any other person to be my brother. he's pretty much one of the coolest guys i know.

so nathan, congradulations my
surfing.
drummer.
long boarding.
guitar playing.
flipflop wearing.
song writer.
summer loving.
blue truck driver.
lot boy. (err man)
skateboarding.
snowboarding.
sun soaker.
quick witted.
chill.
brother and best friend (and kook).
i wish you the best and hope and pray to see you succeed in the many talents that God has given you. i love you more than you know!!

home life

family is a strange thing sometimes. the best thing, but always the strangest.

sometimes family members do weird things.

last night joe kept poking his stomach. i don't know what possessed him to do this. everytime i told him to stop, he just started laughing hysterically. and i don't know why.

thomas sings all the time. in fact he is making up a song right now.
"na na bah dah dah dah hmmm. elllen...dadddy...nahtan. rahhhhh. la la la. i want to win the piston cup! i'm movig dawn wahhh! nana nina te bebo." *slaps legs for a beat* then...*mumbles some random sentence loudly but incomprehensible* "ellen come play with me" "yay i love my sister" is what i finally decipher. what a cute kid. =)

i would tell you something strange about nathan, but there's not really much to say. he just kinda reminds me of flipping a coin. there's only 2 sides and you never know which one you're gonna get.

living at home is comfortable. it's where you can be completely yourself and no one can judge you. but not many other people every get to see that unless you're really transparent and even then...

today i played memory with thomas. yup, memory. it was great besides the fact i got beat. uhhg. i need to practice more if renee and i ever want to beat brant and justin. haha. (which we will this summer)

emily came over last night and we made dinner together. it was delicious besides the fact that it got cold. and the reason it got cold? we were laughing instead of eating our food. and i wish i could tell you what we were laughing at, but unfortunately all i remember is the laughing part.

i probably burned at least 924.347 calories. excellent...

only one more day of school. then finals next week. oh joy.

a quick life story

first things first:

i write this as a testimony to what Christ can do in a persons life if they let him...

so i grew up in the church, asked Christ to come into my life at a young age, and pretty much knew all the Bible stories and everything like that.

all through high school i pretty much did everything in my own strength. i had it all together, or at least that's the front i put on, but i always knew something was missing.

my first wake up call was my junior year. i got mono, strep throat, a fever, and puking all at the same time. i was completely helpless. as an involved student and athlete, that sickness pretty much screwed everything up. but i got through it.

the summer in between my junior and senior year i went on a missions trip to south korea. it was really awesome, but i was still missing something.

senior year started out tough. my great grandfather died right before school started. two weeks later, my friend's brother died. at the beginning on december, one of my classmates died in a motorcrosse accident. january, my grandpa died from cancer. i struggled with depression, grief, and questioned my faith.

finally at the end of summer, i attended a summer camp that totally flipped my life back on the right track with the Lord. i finally realized that what i was missing was having my own faith, not my parents, my churchs, but that i needed to make my faith in Christ my own.

i began my freshman year at college with a strong desire to pursue and develop my relationship with Jesus.

so here comes the best part!

so ever since south korea, i've really wanted to go another missions trip, but nothing has really come up. back in decemeber, after praying about missions for some time, some opportunities came up, but they didn't end up working out. i guess it wasn't God's timing. so i've still been praying about it and about a month ago, i was volunteering at a youth conference on a saturday when i ran into an old soccer teammate of mine. i asked her what she was doing this summer and she said that she was going to Indonesia on a missions trip. i thought that was really cool and told her that i was really interested in missions and we kinda left it at that.

so monday night i was talking to my mom about the whole missions thing and my prayers. basically i was kinda having doubts about whether God was listening to me or not.

well, i woke up tuesday morning, checked my email, and had an email from my friend, kylee, who i had run into that weekend at the youth conference. and her email went something like this,

"hey ellen, i was thinking about how you said you were interested in missions and we still need more people on our trip. would you be interested in going to Indonesia with us?"

ahhh it was so cool how God totally answered my prayers! and i felt really bad for even doubting Him.

so i told her that i was and that i would pray about it. so i spent a week praying and seeking counsel from people about the trip.

on friday i got a phone call from her saying that they needed to know by the following thursday if i was gonna go or not (because they had to purchase airline tickets).

i really wanted confirmation from God just so that i knew that this trip was His will and not my own, so i continued to pray and wait for confirmation.

so wednesday night rolls around, and i still haven't heard any confirmation. finally, i get a call from my pastor saying that he felt like the Lord told him that i should go.

so on thursday i called the team leader and made sure everything was good to go.

saturday, i sent out 50 support letters to friends and family. i needed to raise $1800 for my trip.

as of yesterday, i am fully funded. God provided all my financial need within 3 weeks. talk about answering prayer...

i am super excited because God worked out the timing for everything and it blew me away how awesome He is!

so i'm going to Indonesia this summer with fellowship of christian athletes and we're gonna go build a sports court for a muslim school and run a basketball camp. we may also be visiting a couple orphanages and doing basically anything else that needs to be done. i'm stoked because i've always wanted to do a missions trip that was a sports ministry type of thing.

God worked everything out to the last detail. i'm so excited. it's just so cool to see that God really does answer pray, and not only that, but God knows our desires and cares about us even down to the little things.

beware of choxie

so last night emily and i were hanging out...

i went and picked her up at about 7. then we went to safeway and bought rice cakes and water.

after safeway, we went to target. and i bought choxie dark chocolate expresso truffles because they were on sale and i wanted chocolate.

so we then made a quick detour to our favorite bulk food store, winco, and picked up an arizona raspberry iced tea for me and a cream soda for emily.

we then tore into our box of expresso truffles and started to devour them. this was at about 10:30. at midnight, i ate one more of those delicious chocolates.

this is where it all went wrong.

i could not fall asleep at all. i was wide awake.

1am....still awake, online, looking at snowboards...

2am...in bed, reading my bible...

3am...get up, grab some old journals and flip through them...

*as a side note on old journals, i just have to interject that reading old diaries/journals is one of the most interesting/hysterical/pathetic things to do at 3am or anytime for that matter...

so finally 4am rolls around and i'm finally drifting off to sleep.

the moral of this blog:

do not eat dark chocolate expresso truffles late at night.

the surgical strike

so basically there is an unwritten law among my group of girls which states we always go to winco on our weekend festivities.

during this brief period of time, we usually speed walk to the cracker isle, pick out a finely crafted box of rosemary and olive oil triskets before we dash madly toward the bulk candy section, where we select sour gummy worms, m&m's, swedish fish, and for ellen's personal indulgence, a toffee and almond symphony bar.

then we saunter over to the bakery for emily to pick up a freshly baked toasted to perfection loaf of french bread, which has to be soft enough to manage when you have $3,000 of metal glued to your teeth.

after that experience, we head over to the drink section, where we pick out our personal favorites from the arizona iced tea family. as soon as we have made our selections (which is quite a lengthy process), we come to the realization that these drinks are better cold at which point we put them back and go to where the are stored chilled at the foot of the check out stand (and yes this happens every time).
after quickly grabbing our cold beverages, we push through the check out and immediately tear through the thin packaging separating us from our beloved junk food.

our ritual is only concluded by an abundance of bread crumbs being flung through the air and landing in precarious positions all over ellen's car, much to her dismay. we also always end up being so lost in animated conversation (and dance moves) that racing anne home to make sure she doesn't blow her curfew is inevitable.

you know those days?

do you have days you just want to be little again?

today was one of those days.

today i felt like i was 6.

i came home from school and since it was so hot outside (90s!!), i put on my swimsuit and washed my car.
then my brothers all came outside and we filled up water balloons and had a water balloon fight.
then we went swimming.
then i made cupcakes.
and took them to ryan for his birthday.

i know that growing up is good, but feeling little makes life great!

schnoodle your kanoodle

i have decided to use undisclosed information to conform to the idealogy of terminology.

yup.

so i, ellen, am hanging with this super totty right now and it's twee.

some people have been breaking my crayons lately, wdt? but it's sweet as, ya know? whatev.

so i, anne, am cotchin with ellen and it is sprode. and both of us fade like bleach.

right now i have an earworm that is a and b the c of d. yadayadamean?

with just us, its baby bear.

k, gras bra.

~pz~

(by ellen and anne)

ps. ellen is a broheim