Monday, August 31, 2009

Africa Meeting

Tonight we had a big dinner with all of our Africa team members & families... and oh my was that EVER a good time. What cracked me up was the parody one of the members wrote to "In The Garden" about one of our team's sponsors, DeWalt tools. They're giving us a bunch of tools to take for construction work.

So, here goes...

We'll go to Na-mi-bi-a soon,
Many pro-jects we're still not know-ing;
But the tools we'll take
Will make or break
The purpose for our go-o-ing...

ANNDDDD DEEEEE WALT'S with me,
And DEWALT'S for free
And DEWALT'S wherever we'll gooooo!
And the joy we'll share,
As we carr-yyy there,
Our DEWALT access'ries alsooooo!!

*Thank you, thank you*
We were all cracking up. He is genius.

Kathryne

Sunday, August 30, 2009

*smilesmilesmilesmile*

Ahem.
Last night I was "grounded" from the computer post-dinner, hence I did not post.
This morning, I woke up at 5:30, and started off on my BIG DAY.
And I mean HUGE.

Both services went veryveryvery well, and we all got tonnnssss of compliments, applause, etc. FUN =)

Then, around 2, we went over to the annual church picnic, which was amazing. Took walks, sang bunches, ate a lot, and played volleyball (or just pretended, in my case).

The thing most recent that made me smile was the volleyball... I am BEYOND horrible, but my (super competitive) friends who played with me just dealt. They didn't care. They let it go, for me. What a blessing =)

Kathryne

Friday, August 28, 2009

Simple Pleasures

One of my favorite things to do on non-busy days is to
-sleep the night before in the basement (aka pretty much pitch black)
-sleep in as late as I want
-after I finally wake up, just lay in bed and daydream =)

It's rawther fun; you should try it.

Kathryne

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Coincidence? maybe.

This morning we had our first student government meeting of the year. Actually, more like our second-to-last of last year, but whatever. Anyhow, when we were bouncing ideas off of each other, my guidance councilor brought up... SWING. the dance. Yeahh, so we just might be able to sponsor swing lessons for the school this year. How COOL would that be??

As a second note, I found a song I want to do with Girls' Chorus this year... as the secondary pianist, I find myself doing that occasionally =) It's called "By Our Love" by Christy Nockels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5NPUWCzsU0). It's gorgeous, and not too complicated a piano part. Of course, I haven't taken a lesson since 4th grade, and I read chord charts, so it won't be exactly the same, but whatever.

Kathryne

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Practice makes... better

Tonight my church's youth praise team (for which I sing) had practice for Sunday morning. Sunday morning, we are leading the service. All 500-600 people. EEEK!!

BUT practice was amazing, and I am still able to laugh at my squeaky high E's which happen when I'm tired.

Kathryne

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Mac beats PC.

Today I visited a college a few hours away from home... it was pretty much amazing. They have a Mac computer lab on the foreign language floor (awesome!).

What made me laugh:
These computers had little yard sale price stickers on them, to the right of the screen. However, instead of a price, these stickers said "CD" with an arrow pointing to the CD slot on the side. Now THAT is funny. My dad and I were laughing about the PC people looking for a sliding tray in a big box under the desk... uh-uh, not so my friend.

Kathryne

Monday, August 24, 2009

Learn Something New...

Today was pretty quiet.
Until the evening.
When I had my LIT meeting. sigh.
...not that it's a bad thing or anything, I mean I love Leaders-In-Training, but that was the end of the quiet.

HOWEVER. I can say that that's where I got my smiles =)
It seems like every time I get together with those kids (and by kids I mean my age, but "young at heart") I just can feed off of them and grow in my faith, get to know them, and learn something about myself. Today, I figured out a bit more of how my brain works vs how my friend Erin's does. I'm an abstract learner... she is concrete. I hated projection and loved doing sound board, but she was the complete opposite. I focus BETTER doing multiple things at once.

So, I've decided that I'm going to start taking notes backwards in school this year. It might help me focus in class better than I used to.

Kathryne

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Many Things =)

It has been toooo long since I posted last.

Swing was Friday. fun times.
Then I slept over at Anna's house
many smiles
and she gave me a cute little notebook covered in smiley faces and the word "smile" which I think I will use as my "smile journal" along with this blog.
yay =)
OH and we stayed up until 5 AM. hehe

Kathryne

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Sing, sing, sing!!

So, today, we had praise team practice for the first time in about 3 months, and it was AWESOME.
I have to say that the thing that made me (weirdly) smile was, when I was in the middle of the verse to "Open the Eyes of My Heart" and the tech girl's little brother (12 years old) was sitting in the back pew waving around an imaginary cell phone/candle/whatever. And even though I was quite busy and it's hard to sing while you laugh, I smiled BIG =)

Kathryne

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

So Materialistic. sigh.

I know it's awful, but the thing that made me smile today
was
a long
flowy
CHEAP
PURPLE
skirt.

that's right. $6 for the little beauty.
I *<3* it =")

Kathryne

Monday, August 17, 2009

¿Que es? ¿Que es? ..."estop-a!"

Today I mother's helper-ed for a lady with a kid, a toddler, a baby, and two Columbian girls who were visiting and spoke MAYBE 20 English words. including colors.

So we went to a local park/waterfall/woodsy area, and I got a kick out of trying to communicate with the twelve year old muchachas =)
...BUT, I think the thing that made me laugh (inwardly) the most, was... "estopa!" (their way of saying "stop"...or they could have been saying hemp, but I doubt that.)

Kathryne

Sunday, August 16, 2009

stupid.

smile: finally won "Flood-It"

http://labpixies.com/gadget_page.php?id=10

it's fun. addicting. and mindless. kindof. That's why I was so weirdly happy when I won.

ALSO

went shopping with Amy and had a blasssstttt trying on skirts that looked like bad upholstery =P

Kathryne

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Silly Puppy.

My dog is, I think, sometimes more OCD than I am. Really. He freaks out when there is something in our kitchen, living room, playroom, etc that should not be there. The first time was with my little sister's birthday balloon... then a watermelon... then apples... then MORE apples... then a cooler of ice cream... then, today, my Grandpa's briefcase!

I didn't catch this latest hilarity on tape, but I do have a few others in file... take 2 minutes to watch 'em.


Now every time I watch it, though, I'm reminded... where I live, there is no Graeter's =(
That's the best ice cream on earth if you haven't heard. Go for Black Raspberry Chip... mmmmm!

Kathryne

Friday, August 14, 2009

Baaackk!!

YAY.
So, my grandparents took my sister and me to a theme park a few hours from home and we stayed at a B&B for 2 nights =)
lots of smiles there.

One of the bigger smiles, came from the B&B... they had over a dozen horses, some of the CUTEST kittens I've ever seen, and 2 ALPACAS. hahaha.

Alpacas are the national animal of Peru (I think) and they are a lot like llamas. They are really funny-looking.

Kathryne

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Inconsistency

I...eh...kinda forgot to post yesterday.
Actually, I didn't forget, I was just busy... and then more busy... and by the time i found time it was technically today (read: late and past my curfew).

So, last night my little sister had a friend sleep over... a friend who happens to have the same name as me =)
I'm Kathryne Elizabeth...
she's Katherine Elisabeth =P
So I gave them "spa treatments"- washed their hair then braided them in cornrows. woohoo! (and now their hair is all curly an' pretty)

Now, I'm going to have to bid y'all farewell again, because my grandparents are coming in and we're going. somewhere. I'm not sure where, but somewhere. 'Til Friday.

Kathryne

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Eek!!

bit proud of myself...
I drove home today from the parking lot where I practice!
And I only made one wrong turn!
(of course, considering it's only 3-5 minutes driving away from home, that's still kind of sad =P )

more importantly and smile-worthy, Megan's girls' chorus did wonderfully this morning with the song "When the Saints" by Sara Groves. I played piano... managed not to mess up too many times... and nobody noticed that I left off the last chord, hehe

Kathryne

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Julia & Julie

I went to see Julia & Julie with my family and a friend (whose husband is currently in Namibia at the same children's home we will be visiting in September!) and it was pretty wonderful.
Good movie.
It would push the envelope for PG, but was well restrained for a PG-13.
There were some HILARIOUS moments... but I think the thing that made our day, or at least my dad's and mine, was the Starburst commercial. It was all these contradictions, like Scotch Koreans and supposedly the candy itself, and ended with the albino lifeguard, LOL.

and, of course, I'm still riding high from last night. It's completely ridiculous, but why fight it?

Kathryne

I Could Have Danced All Night...

how 'bout a video? (I have this song pretty much memorized but I'm not about to sing it for y'all.)




So, basically, tonight was a SWING DANCE night. I <3>

Now, to pick a "smile moment"...

well, funnily enough, it's pretty much exactly the same thing that happened that got the Optimism Initiative started. It was another swing night, sometime in March, and I was just smiling so hard when I came home I couldn't NOT journal it.

So, tonight, I was told (straight up) that I was the BEST "follower" there. Meaning I read the leader well and don't backlead. and I'm good :)
Then, later, heard 2 guys discussing me and how good I am. It made me *blush* like seriously.
and no, this is not a roundabout way to brag, I promise.
But I was reading Gary Chapman's "The Five Love Languages" earlier today, and even though "Quality Time" is my "native language" (wow, that's a lot of quotes in one sentence... more to come...), "Words of Affirmation" are definitely high on the list.

Mark Twain once said, "I could live for two months off of a good compliment." Now, I'm not THAT self-sufficient, but it sure does put me on a high for a few hours. Especially the second comment.

When someone compliments you to your face, it can be hard to tell whether they're flattering you (or flirting with you, depending on the person). But when you overhear compliments about yourself (inverted gossip, I say) there's no fake to worry about. It's a wonderful thing and I wish it on everybody.

Kathryne

(ooh! bonus! found another guy who has a "misspelled" name... Nathanael. Oh. It's not underlined in red. So maybe not technically misspelled. ANDAND he has a friend who speaks Russian ANDAND he thought I was in college.)

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Finally.

So, I procrastinate.
A lot.
I hate doing it,
And feel so much better when I don't,
But I do it anyways.

Well, to quote President Truman... "The buck stops here."
I will not blame anyone else for me not having written in my diary for over 2 weeks.
So today I sat down for about an hour (some of which was while watching TV) and caught myself up, for the most part.
   *insert smile here*

GOAL: don't do it again. (reaalll specific, I know.)

Kathryne

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

*sigh* 12-year-olds...

So, there's a 12-year-old girl who is staying with a family from my church for the summer (she's from Columbia). She knows like 10 words of English, but she is of the vibrant personality that she can communicate better than some American 12-year-olds!

Today, I found out that she got the role of the Enchantress in the play "Beauty and the Beast (Jr.)". She needed to borrow a "glitzy" dress... so, I lent her an old, floor-length, bright coral colored, very sparkly dress. Her face lit up like nothing I've ever seen when she caught a glimpse of that dress. She was... enthralled. And it was great for me to see, too =)

ANOTHER 12-year-old also made me smile today (and just happens to be my sister). She's being homeschooled this year, and she took her math placement test... which placed her in Algebra 1! Did I mention she's going into 7th grade? She has never been a math person, but this test would have her skip Pre-Algebra (like I did). It's great to have a little sister to follow in your footsteps.

Kathryne

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

РУССКАЯ?

So, um, I'm teaching myself Russian.

Yes. Russian.

As in, whole new alphabet.

But I think that's cool, so... yeah. I'm doing it the same way I learned to write English: starting with the alphabet. Right now I'm 3 letters in, but it's really more like 12 because I'm teaching myself upper-and-lower-case in print and cursive. Because nobody writes in capital print all the time (except engineers and doctors).

I figure that once I get the alphabet down I can move on to actual words. Unfortunately, I've learned that my name isn't even a valid Russian word, since there is no "long a" sound for my nickname, Katie, and no "th" sound for Kathryne. sighh. I guess I'm misspelled in English AND Russian.

Kathryne

Monday, August 3, 2009

*Apologies*

This past week has been a very bad one, and a very good one. It was very bad in that I was soooo busy ALL week, but very VERY good in that I was busy doing what I love.

This week was the week of the arts camp at my church. Being an LIT (Leader-In-Training) this was my week to be involved (read: be at church 7:45-3:30 even though the camp was 9-2) and make a difference (read: whittle 3.5 hours of video footage into a four-minute clip to be shown at church yesterday).

So I could list all the things that made me smile since I last posted, but I was working with 8-13 year olds. Just about everything that happened made me smile! One thing that actually made me start tearing up it made me smile so hard was when a little boy was interviewed as to his favorite elective, and he said "Guitar is the best because we get to sing songs about Jesus." I mean, doesn't that make a week of work just worth it?

It was also great to get to work with some of my best friends, and to see them get through and GET OVER silly dramas by the end of the week. God works, eh?

Kathryne