A little less than awesome

I know this post is supposed to be filled with awesome, as promised last week, but I'm think I wont live up to those expectations.

Summer has started off quite hectically for me. I canoed 14 miles for the first time. Wonderful feeling, by the way. I also attended my cousin's graduation in Ocala. It was in a livestock pavillion...it was also only an hour long. We packed up the rest of Sapphire's stuff from her apartment while it poured down rain...that was fun...trust me. I went to "princess party" where I watch Mulan and half on the Little Mermaid, before I had to leave to get a good night's rest. And that rest was so I could take the SAT the next day. Sunday I went church...like a lot. And now it's today. And I didn't even realize it was Monday until about 10 minutes ago.

Here's a fun fact: Omar Syed signed my yearbook in the fifth grade with just the word "chicken".

I've been applying for a lot of scholarships. One is posting your favorite picture. To have the photo considered you have to be in the top 150 as voted on by the general public. If you guys want to help me out click the picture below. It's a blurry picture of one my cats. Thanks if you do. And yeah,

-Brianna

My Favorite Photo (I've Ever Taken) Brickfish

Your Love is Strong

Hello there, Blue Powerblogger here!

This past week, I went to an amazing service camp with my church called Love At Work. Here is my testimony from it. I had the opportunity to share it tonight at our stockholders' dinner.

Love At Work 2009

Testimony

This week revolved around the idea of “shalom”, which means inner and outer peace. These two components of shalom are interdependent, and I think it’s difficult for one to exist without the other. Working in Gretna over the past seven days has taught me a lot about outer peace. One of God’s greatest commandments is for us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I had previously believed that “neighbor” meant friends and family, but now I know that nearly everyone is to be considered as my neighbor. Each new person I come into contact with is a new opportunity for me to share God’s love. This week, I met some new people and increased my relationships with those I already knew. I was put into a diverse work group where I only knew one or two people well. Through working with the other eight people on my team, I was able to create new friendships and I was blessed with more opportunities to show love to them through my words and actions. Through my overall experience at Love At Work, I learned how to love despite social, economic or racial differences, I learned how to love despite differences in lifestyles and beliefs, and I discovered what it means to truly be a servant in Christ. I hope these values will stick with me for the rest of my life as I come across new people and share God’s love with them.

It was basically one of the most eye-opening experiences of the year, and I really hope that the rest of the summer holds the same standard! And listen to the song "Your Love is Strong" by Jon Foreman. I cried during it. It's beautiful.

Have a fantabulous week! Until next Sunday,

-Caroline

Another Music Rant

It looks like everyone went somewhere during the week.

What to write, what to write....
Ever have one of those blank moments when you really need something to remember or plan but it never comes? I hate those. They sneak up on you when you least expect it and knock you into a submissive state where you are left looking blankly at nothing, desperately trying to find the dregs of memories locked deep inside the banks of your slightly failing brain as you continually spiral until you are screaming for release as the blank moment drags you deeper and deeper into the abyss of forgetfulness which is as unforgiving as the intense embers and freezer-burning icicles of hell.

Wow, I had no idea where that came from. Though grammatically incorrect in some parts, I have to say that was pretty impressive for an on-the-fly improvisation.

Usually when I have nothing to write about, I resort to talking about music! What exactly do you see music as? Something that you can listen to or something that soothes you when you're mad? Something along those lines? I look at music a little differently than people.
Music is like clay. You can mold it, shape it, and form it into anything you like. I'm a song writer so this is a little more pronounced to me. Would you like to make it slow classical? Would you like to make it heavy bass rap? Or maybe screamo metal? Pretty much anything. That's what I love so much about it. It's a form of expression. It's an art. If a picture is worth 1000 words then how many words is a song worth?
..... Well I guess if you count the number of words in the lyrics.... bleh you know what I mean.
Most of all, music is harmonic. It requires the sync of all instruments together. Personally, I don't like the solos by a single instrument alone. The only instruments that could pull off a lone solo is the piano and maybe the guitar.
Take a listen to the first song that came on shuffle in my iPod.
Try to follow one instrument. Then try to follow a different one. Each has a different rhythm and different notes yet it all fits together into something that works. It doesn't quite work if it was just drums or just guitar or just the singer. Each is a broken piece of a song but once together, it brings them all together into one full fledged song. They are beautifully broken. You see what I did there? I cleverly included the song title into my post.
I am so lame. ^_^

I don't know if I gave you a glimpse of my perspective or utterly failed. I hope I didn't fail =D. So I hope everyone is back for this coming week. If not then have fun at wherever you're going!

-June

Random Shout Out: If any of you are interested in playing tennis, then you are welcome to come on Saturday. I am always there. If you want to know exactly where, Facebook me or something because I don't want to attract blog stalkers to us xD.

A Wonderful Time of the Year

It's that time of the year. I mean, I think I emailed a Killers Christmas song to a bunch of people this time last year. But besides that, it is also the time for my mom to get extremely suspicious. '~'
I hope you are enjoying your summer. It is just beginning, but so many great things could have happened so far. I have no idea. Actually, I haven't talked to most of you recently, which is kind saddening. I mean, I told Brandon two of Freed's email addresses today. That was probably the closest thing.
My brother is going to get so much tanner than he already is. Because of camp, he spends about five hours outside every weekday. His arms are definitely dark already.
Tomorrow is another standardized testing day. Oh joy. Subject tests. The good thing is that they are not supposed to be that bad. We'll see. Realistically, I will get the scores back before getting AP scores... Enough of that topic.
I am starting to be reminded about how vital that Newton invented calculus. Where would our physics formulas be without him? Thanks, man. You have made my life so much easier. I care so much about terminal velocity that I just want to hug it. Actually, I rather like it because rain drops don't hurt very much. Never mind.
I don't know what to think about.
-Kejing

Sorry For The Delay

Sorry about the delay- I was helping my mother move 1000 miles away -(twice the distance inbetween us now).

Enough said about how I feel right now, I think.

- Jonathan

This Is an Interesting Post, Trust Me

Hi. It's Ryan here today, filling in for Lacey. Please forgive me if this isn't yellow. I'm color blind.

I do not even know what to write about. I cannot blog improvisationally and I just recently got asked to do this. My mind is mush now that summer break has started. The second day isn't even over yet, yet I feel like I haven't accomplished enough. I have slept in pretty late and haven't gone to sleep before 3AM since last Monday.

I am not sure what to do with all this free time. At the moment, I do not really have anything planned except for a trip to Ohio (my first visit to the North in ten years) for a Builders for Christ project. I need to finish up my volunteer hours, but I bet many of you have to do that as well. I am going to apply for a job somewhere. Eventually. Probably.

Normally, every summer, I learn about certain subjects. Last summer, I spent days reading about The Beatles, which then translated to learning about some other bands to a lesser capacity. I learned a little bit on how to play the piano, and got "A's" in Piano class this year, thank you very much. The previous couple of summers, I spent countless days learning about history history, mainly European. This year, I am going to go in a sports history direction. Since stock car racing and baseball are undoubtably the two greatest sports ever invented, I have decided to learn everything (that I don't already know, mind you) that I can about their histories. I've got almost three months to learn about a combined 150+ years. It should be interesting.

I'm sorry I am so boring. I feel like I would've had more interesting stuff to write about last week than I do now.

One last thing. I found an awesome YouTube video today. The funniest part is at 0:36. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI

A Day Late

I'm soooooooooo sorry I forgot to get someone to post for me. I went on a canoe trip with my church and we didn't have electricity, running water, and certainly not internet.

I'll do an extra good post next week, to make up for it.

-Brianna