End of something, beginning of another.

First semester of college: check!

I...
struggled
doubted
fell
hurt
cried
frowned
lost
stumbled
wandered
hated
questioned
dwindled
and...

overcame
strengthened
triumphed
smiled
opened up
laughed
won
sustained
answered
gained
listened
and grew.

sounds pretty good to me.
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my first night of Christmas Break kicked off Saturday night with an amazing worship experience and message on Immanuel ("God with us") at The Dwelling, with some wonderful, VERY missed friends... including two of my favorite people ever- Brandon Barker and Jennifer Van Der Molen. Can't get better than that! Next on the agenda was to head downtown... Mitch & Kayla picked me up, and we headed downtown to ice skate with the rest of the gang- Zach, Blake, Caely, Austin, Lindsey, and Bryan. Unfortunately... the ice skating place ran out of skate sizes larger than 5... hmmmm, not so good for us! Instead, we walked around downtown in the nice and chilly night air. Next stop- Java Joe's. Coffee. gooooooooood. A special little text message :-). Then more walking with the crew, back towards our cars. We ended up standing around the ice arena place and watching all the skaters for quite a while. We pretended to push some of them over as they skated by, and chuckled at some funny people who couldn't skate very well, or couples who looked really awkward. Then we drove back towards WDM and met Luke, Cole, and JR at the lovely Wal-Mart (a nice meeting place we've found). After walking around for a bit and buying some cookie dough to eat as we walked... we decided it was a good night to go deer mounting. Oh, what a funny time. It was a competition between two groups- two cars. My car: Cole, Austin, Luke, Blake, Chris and I. The other car: Zach, Bry, JR, Linds, and Cae. We met at Hy-vee about 45 minutes later... the total count for my car: 31. the total count for the other car: 6. HA! beat 'em! :-)

It was a nice of adventures and lots of laughter, that's for sure...

Aubs met up with us, and Cae and Linds left to make their curfews. So we all headed over to JR's domain and ended up taking a walk... for like a freaking hour!!!!!!!!! it was the longest walk of our lives... our legs started to hurt... we wanted to kill JR because he couldnt figure out how to get back to his house. oh, JR... but yes, eventually, we did arrive back at his house. Phew. Aubs and I left around 1:30 a.m., and the boys stayed to have a little sleepover at JR's. Cute.

Today was wonderful because I slept in very late. The only reason I actually got out of bed was because Samantha Carlson called and told me she was on her way over to my house! oh goodness! haha. So we talked a little with my momma as i slowly woke up, then the two of us headed to jordan creek mall for some lunch. we talked for a bit and caught up on some things, which i needed to do! i love Sam soo much, i missed talking with her about life. she's my sista. well, miss Sam had to get back to work, so we parted and I basically spent the rest of the day on the couch in our living room watching movie after movie after movie. What can I say? There were a TON of great movies playing on tv! Lord of the Rings 2... then Lord of the Rings 3... The Grinch... How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days!!! goodness gracious! good times. Tomorrow I have plans to actually be productive and contribute to society in some way. so that shall be good.

that's all i've got for now. Love. <3 :-)