steam from a cup, snow on the ground

For my birthday my parents gave me one of those lovely ipod nanos such as may be found in those delightful tv ads with the colourful dancing people!

Though its name is still pending, I think for now I may safely call him Fred. Who knows.

Anyways, he is golden-yellow and the back says "look at the stars, see how they shine for you" because my mum knows my Coldplay love. And he records video, plays movies, has a speaker and calendars and timers, and does this fancy flippy thing in the cd menu. I feel a little sentimental about my old first-gen soapbar ipod, but... Fred is so awfully fancy.

As birthday dinner my family and I had a living room picnic in front of the fire (all the furniture is moved out because of carpet cleaning) with soup and cupcakes.

And then when I got on facebook later that night, I had not one, not eleven, but a grand forty-five birthday notifications. Yeep! It was a rather grand moment.

oh yes, and

today is my birthday!

Look out for the dread ship Aleyula!

Have I mentioned before how much I love the kids I take care of?

Wes (or King Wes, or Astronaut Wes) just brought me pirate flag shaped cookies and a birthday card he made for me. It was too cute not to share... the first page is a pirate ship named "Aleyula", and the second is the castle from the bedtime story I made up for him Friday night. This castle held all the citizens of the whole wide world. And apparently it has a face.

but i did not do a crime of making a graffiti, copper!

Tomorrow is my birthday!!

Emily came up for the weekend, and today, after eating horrifically large servings of pancakes at the Original Pancake House (yummm), we got cans of spray paint and man-shirts and made a graffiti! We used a sheet of plywood... does that still count as graffiti if it's legal? Not sure.

Be ye not decieved by our faces... it was so cold! 35-40ish and windy. We had 3 pairs of socks on each and the biggest pot of tea you ever saw.

Emily accidentally spray painted my hands red. It looked weird. What was weirder, though, was later when I almost used steel wool to get it off. Dumbo.

We love how it turned out! It will hold a proud place on the walls of my future-home.

Tonight the sister spud is coming over and we're going to remodel shoes a la the chick from PS. I Love You, and watch The Blob. Scaaary! Or... maybe not so scary.

Meet my friend, Felix Cumpliano Jr.

My friend Layne and I share a birthday (1 year apart), so today at Spanish class we had a little celebration... she brought cupcakes and I brought sour patch kids candycanes ( <3 ).

Happy birthday to us! She's awesome, we've been teamed on many assignments and always have more fun with them than is called for.

A few seconds after this Megan and Layne realized that the icing was probably staining their faces, freaked out, and ran to wash it off.

Dorcas. I love Megan in the background, though. "hey heyyy camera!"

She suggested that I buy a snuggie for my birthday. Because you have to be 18 to buy one.

We've Got Something Permanent

"The more I read the papers, the less I comprehend the world and all
it's capers and how it all will end"

My birthday is coming up in a few days ... and suddenly I feel old. I'm not really that old. There's so much ahead of me, I know. But when I think about how much is behind me, I am amazed.

Think of how much can happen in a lifetime.

I remember when Friends premiered.

I remember when this was a nice phone. -->

I remember when Prince was "the artist formerly known as Prince" (dummy)

If I was a computer, I would be "retro" and I wouldn't work anymore.

When did this happen?

I was thinking about it all last night. If in the first few decades of my life things can change this much, what will the world be like when I am 30... 50... 80? Will every change be scary?

But really ... what do we have to fear? In every change I feel God, because He is unchanging. And isn't that comforting? To know that in ten years God will be the same.

Think about it. Exactly the same. We change so much every year, so can we even fully comprehend the idea of never changing?

Did you ever hear the story about the blind men and the elephant? Three blind men are given an elephant, and instructed to figure out what it is. They touch the unfamiliar shapes and because they each touch only one part of the elephant they cannot comprehend what it is.

As I think ahead, feeling my way blindly through the future, I cannot know what it is I will find there... except for God, His truth, His love, there in that unknown.

Finding Him in the dark unknown is like handing a teacup to one of the blind men - familiar, comforting. Something we know in the midst of all we do not know.

"In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may
tumble... they're only made of clay, but... oh, our Love is here to
stay."