Addictions

Some of you may know that both J and myself are totally addicted to the tv show 24. Well, since Christmas we now have a competing addiction. Guitar Hero has got to be the best video game ever. But it's getting in the way of Jack!!! At least we bought Season 5 so we don't have to worry about late fees this time.

Gregor Christmas 2006

Merry Christmas! This is our beautiful tree I've wanted to post about for weeks now, it's the first real tree I've had in about as long as I can remember. It's huge! I had to just stick a bow up top because there was no room for a tree topper. Oh and those lights, yeah they've been on continuously since Dec 9. Yay for LED!

Most of the presents you see there were for me, from all the little kids at school. That was fun, I think I have more chocolate than I know what to do with now...

Christmas was awesome! I woke up around 7:30 and was excited to see that Jason too was awake. We got up and did stockings and gifts - I was super excited when he opened up our new playstation 2! I'd had it for a while but couldn't say anything! And he seemed to really like his other gifts. He got me the gift of shopping (at American Eagle) as well as a new sweater that I love from there. Once that was all finished and breakfast was eaten, we went out to my moms for a few more surprises. Jocelyn's gift was hilarious. She got me a whole bunch of DVDs, but she wrapped each of them individually, and in all different kinds of wrapping paper - each kind representing a different genre. Inside her card was a legend that told what type of wrapping paper went with what type of movies. All in all I think there were something like 20 DVDs... It was sweet. But the thing we received that has us most occupied was from our good pal Justin Dekker. He got us Guitar Hero 1 and 2 for playstation. We've been rocking out nonstop since Christmas. Last night we even beat the game on the Medium Setting... there's 2 more to go from there which is extremely hardcore. My hands hurt! But it's a blast. If you haven't tried it yet, you need to.

That afternoon we went over to Jason's parent's house. They gave J a new cordless drill which rocks cuz we don't have one and it's amazing how much you realize you need stuff like that when you don't have it... They gave me a huge wall mirror, it's gorgeous! I love it! Dinner was over at J's grandparent's house with their cousins that are visiting from Nelson. I was exhausted after all that excitement so we called it a night pretty early.

Anyways, I will leave you with some of my favourite Christmas pictures.

This is actually the day we put our tree up, I just thought you could get an idea of how big it is... Maybe I just think it's bigger because I'm used to a small fake tree... Oh well, it's huge to me!

Yes that's me wearing the tree skirt as a cape...

Jason looking happy that he got a toy for Christmas. My mom got us each these little tiny remote control cars that you build and then race... He was thrilled!

People who know me know that I can't cook... I think Mom's trying to get me to learn or something...

Jason wearing the box for his cordless drill on his head. And that's why I married him...

Oh and that jacket he's sporting was my gift to him, he saw it on our honeymoon and I tracked it down and found it for him. Too bad the only good picture I have with him wearing it so far is of him as a robot.

Merry Christmas!

Walk This Way, Talk This Way

Alright so last night was an adventure night and a half. Aerosmith was in town with Motley Crue. I'm not a huge rocker fan, but I would say I'm a moderate fan of some of Aerosmith's stuff. We knew there was a chance of going to the concert but nothing was set in stone (My dad grew up with the guitar player from Aerosmith) But we found out for sure at 4:00 that day that we were getting all-access passes. It was a mad rush to get there quickly, while detouring to Pitt Meadows to pick up my sister. But we made it, and went to the back entrance to meet my dad who was already there with the passes.

I'd been to a show of theirs before, but I was in grade 6... I remember Greg Moore was in their dressing room hanging out with us. And the Barenaked Ladies were in the hospitality room too, which was sweet. We had seen the show from the back area, so I expected the same this time. It turned out that there were actually only 2 tickets to the show itself. My dad said he'd hang back, and Brad Whitford (guitar player) went and got us another ticket so J, myself, and my sister could all see the show. Unfortunately the extra ticket wasn't with the other two. We ran through various scenarios but all ended up with one of us alone... and since none of us were all that comfortable sending my sister alone, or me alone into a mass of crazy drunken rockers, Jason watched the show by himself... We weren't all that far away, and his seat was also pretty sweet! He had row 16 on the floor... I feel guilty though when I talk about how close we were... As I said before, I expected tickets in the back, or up top, since this was a sold out show, and all tickets were really expensive. But the two that were included were row 4, directly beside the catwalk. Yes folks, Aerosmith used a catwalk. I should say they worked the catwalk. It was unbelievable. The show was amazing! They broke into "Boston Blues" as they called it and WOW, those guys are old but they can still rock out. The whole thing was extremely surreal.

And old they certainly were... Jason commented on the way home that Brad looked "haggard"... which is true. When you consider how long they've been doing this, and how much crap they did when they were younger, you understand the haggardness.

Anyways, I was able to get a few pics to share with you...








Steven Tyler rocking the mic. I got a giggle out of the bottom of the mic stand, it says "Yo Mama"




There's Steven Tyler rocking out with Brad...

Kind of a motion shot, but Nikki from Motley Crue came out and rocked out wth them. It was pretty sweet.. Also, check out Steven Tyler's pants... They're purple, sparkly, and they have fishnet patches on the side... Is that for ventilation?

Questions

Well, some of you might already know all this but it's on my mind so I figured I'd blog.

Yesterday I (FINALLY) went to Vespers (I am a good friend, really, I promise)... Heather had prepared a slide show where we were to take a moment (11 minutes to be exact) and pray and reflect on these questions that appeared on the screen. There were 12 in total, I won't include all of them of course, but a few that really stood out to me...

"What has been a triumph?"

Wow, I've been married almost 4 months now... and while I'm not the best wife ever, I don't cook, I'm a terrible mess-maker, I feel that these 4 months have been a triumph of "growing up". I'm learning every day, and I feel blessed to have everything that I have.

"What has felt like a failure?"

Alright, so a little while back I felt God leading me in a different direction. I didn't feel "right" I suppose at CLA, for many reasons, but I definitely felt God leading me elsewhere. I struggled with this for a long time, I had just finished school and now this wasn't where I wanted to be? One word I kept feeling and repeating over and over: Failure. I'm beginning to recognize that this isn't so much a failure as it is a leap of faith so to speak. It's hard to follow where God's leading you, especially if you don't quite understand. And as Heather said, maybe one day I'll just be a really kickass mom.

"What has been a question?"

The last month or so has been a question... What does God want for us? What does God want us to do? I've been struggling with how to write this out (I've told some of you, but it's easier to tell you when I have my happy face on in public, and much harder to write when you're all by yourself in a basement.) Basically J has been discovering that his job and what he's trained for will entail primarily desk jobs. Anyone who knows J knows he's a much more active person than that. Being a permanent "Desk Jockey", as he calls it, would drive him insane. He found this apprenticeship program through BCIT working for Mack/Volvo as a heavy duty mechanic. Everything fell into place and as it turns out, he's been officially sponsored by the dealership in Kamloops. Which, inevitably means we're moving to Kamloops. I'm so torn up about it all, it's so hard and so confusing, but if it's where God wants us, I need to have peace about it. There's so much going through my mind, I'm so overwhelmed. So many more questions pop up all the time. How are we going to do this? With J at school, that means I'm the only source of income. When are we going to move? This could be as early as the summer, or as long as a year and a bit... I hate not knowing. I'm just scared, scared of leaving my family, friends, church.... I know it's not that far, but it's far enough to feel alone. But we'll get through. As I keep repeating to myself, we'll be ok. It's just taking a lot of adjustment, even if only mentally at the moment.

Anyways, sorry about the seriousness of the post, I just had a lot on my mind and find it helpful to get things off my chest sometimes. Now I'm off to wrap some presents in beautiful wrapping paper, and that will make me happy!

Weekend of Christmas

Well my weekend was filled with Christmas... mostly of the cafe variety. Thursday and Friday we rushed off to the church and tried to make it for the first play (I was a singing server) but alas, being in Abbotsford and trying to have dinner before we leave makes for a very rushy night... I was there for all the 2nd performances. It was fun though. We were invited out afterwards on Friday but decided to call it an early night since J had a judo tourney the next day...

Saturday... I didn't really feel like going to J's tourney (they're really long and a little boring in between when he's not fighting) so I asked him to drop me off at my mom's in Pitt, and sent my love and best cheering wishes for him... Unfortunately it wasn't enough and he ended up losing both his matches... He said it was because he didn't have his cheerleader there. Probably true, since he won silver last time when I did go... Oh well, I spent the day with my mom. She made us blueberry pancakes and we watched White Christmas (Snooooww, snooowww, snooowww, snoooww!!! It won't be long before we'll all be there with snoooowww!!) love it! And then we watched One Magic Christmas - a family tradition when we're decorating. It's a fairly obscure movie, but we love it. Then I had a nap. It was a rough day. :) Of course later on was another round of Christmas Cafe! This time I missed the first performance because J's dad made us dinner and it went late. But what can you do when you're given free dinner???

On the way home that night, after dropping off our compassionate friend, we decided to go see what was up on Sumas Mountain... There were some bright lights up there so we went exploring. There are some freakin' HUGE houses up there!!! We drove right over the mountain, going into every cul-de-sac we could find to look at these amazing houses. Absolutely beautiful!! They all seemed to have names like "Foxglove Acres" and the like. We decided if we ever own anything with more than 1 acre, we need to have a nifty name like that. Jason suggested Moversansh Acres (say it out loud) I thought maybe Noisem Acres or Head Acres... I guess we'll decide later.

Sunday... We went to this church in Abbotsford where a friend from our church was performing with this theatre company she's been travelling around with for the last few months. It was an amazing performance, called "Little One", about this program in Zambia (and other countries troubled by poverty and AIDS)... It was about this little girl who loses her mother to AIDS, and these missionaries who come bringing these "Seedbags" that have a educational workbook, a bible, and a toy. The bag itself can be a backpack. It was amazing, and saddening, hearing about the realities over there. People think they can send money, food, clothes, and wonder why nothing changes. But this program is working. They went into this high school that hadn't done this program and over 70% of the kids in that school tested positive for HIV or AIDS... Later they went into this school that had gone through the "Project Seedbag" education and not a single one tested positive. It teaches kids about the gospel, about Jesus, and about making choices that build character. If you want to find out more about the program, the website is here You can adopt an entire school for $100 a month, I think it would be so awesome to have a Seeds Ministry, one fundraising event a month with a goal of just $100 to raise... Anyone else interested?

After this was another round of Christmas Cafe... The last one for the year. All in all it went really well. I wonder how long I'll have the funny feeling song in my head for??