newness from waterdeep

Waterdeep is one of my all-time favorite bands.  They're silly, serious, melancholy, and joyful, and often they are singing about the reality of life with Jesus and how sweet and sometimes painful that can be.  The two main members these days are Don and Lori Chaffer, two musicians who eventually got married as Jesus had them headed in the same direction...and I'm always a sucker for a cute story, but I love how Jesus united them for a common purpose.  

And I so enjoy their harmonies and songwriting...tasty...

two new gems to enjoy!

joshua james rocks my socks off

Ok I haven't even watched this yet - I'm headed to bed because I'm SOOO tired - but I felt the need to share it with you ASAP because I LOVE his music...and when I say LOVE, I really mean am OBSESSED with :)

[found the embed link!]

Class of 2012

a lovely evening

highschoolers...

the Moon and Venus graced us with their presence

One of my very dear students (and me!)

El Fin

Today was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL.  AHHHHH!!!  

All day I kept shrieking with my students, with "I can't believe it's over!!!" and "I'm gonna miss you!!!" which would be followed by "We're gonna miss YOU, Miss!!!" which I find utterly adorable just because of the double "miss" (yes, I'm a nerd in all forms, including language). 

It was a wonderfully simple last week.  No stress - just hello, here's your test, this is grade, have a great summer!  So strange to spend SOOO much time with people, and then it's over so quickly.  And of course you want it to be over because, well, it's friggin exhausting...but because it's a professional relationship with a bunch of kids, I always feel this at the end of the year, and I'm beginning to understand a little more what I long for.  Closure. We try to say what we feel and do the proper goodbyes, but they're teenagers and I'm their teacher so it's AWKWARD and as we all know, teenagers aren't the greatest communicators (hahaha), so it leaves me wishing I could convey more of what's in my heart to these wonderful images of God who have so blessed my life these past 10 months (well, most of them). 

So to my lovely students, I will freaking miss you. 
This video made me cry thinking of the gift of this part of my identity that God has given me.

an annular eclipse

For those in the Western US (or Asia!), you got to catch a glimpse of the Moon sitting almost perfectly between us and the Sun.  Called the "Ring of Fire", we only saw it as a crescent sun, but it was still SO COOL!   The last solar eclipse in the US was in the early '90's ('93?), which I watched as a wee lass in Indiana. 

I set up my telescope at church, got some eclipse glasses, and Vivi took some sweet pictures.

Lavender - how i love thee

I used to hate this dang plant.  

But maybe it's the turning of the corner into adulthood why I like it now...maybe it's from living with Coleen...hmmm...???  Nonetheless, this plant has been blessing me in this, the LAST week of school!  

And who knew it had teeny, tiny flowers in the ends?  I never noticed that. 

Bridal Shower

One of my dear friends is getting married, and I co-hosted the shower this past Saturday.  We thought it might be fun to go with a "classy" theme, so wine and cheese was required...mmm...

Trader Joe's has some lovely cheeses, so we made a spread and my friend Sue said I needed to blog it. 

OK!

She's the one who taught me how to label food with cutesy cards, so thanks Sue!  Personally, the goat cheese with honey was my favorite of the day. 

It was a lovely time. 

Graduation cards

Many of students are graduating on Wednesday, so I wanted to make them cards.  Conveniently, in my Michael's aisle wanderings the other day, I found a stamp of a Mason jar - oooooooo!!!  

Here's the process of making cards and trying to figure out how to paint lightening bugs (which may have been a dumb idea, because they don't exist here).

[the beginning of mass production - or I LOVE this stamp and want to make as many cards as possible]

[trying to perfect how I want to paint the lightening bugs]

[Quotes from "Oh! The Places You'll Go!"]

[I also got a Micron brush-tipped pen, so it was a fun excuse to use it on the envelopes]

Sign

I was commissioned to make a sign for a friend's baby shower.  

Apparently it's to help people figure out where they're going to find the clubhouse (location of shower) and the pool, which I hadn't painted yet in this picture.  Rather than doing poster board tacked on, I thought it might be fun to paint it!  It proved to take much longer than I thought, but was a fun way to enjoy being outside, even in the Tucson heat.  

And I got to use some leftover paint from painting my house...don't you love the turquoise?!  I know I do :)

anticipation

Summer is coming.  

It is swelling up in the distance like the monsoon rains.

And I am SO excited to see it looming in the distance. 

The high today was around 100, which is going to start being a regular thing again, so I got Darcy a new pool.  Last summer I got her a kiddie pool, which she loved!  and then she chewed to bits once it got colder and she no longer needed it.  So I tried to circumvent such inefficiency and got her one of the black, plastic feed trough/water tanks that are used for livestock...which she almost is (?).  

Like this!

Only my backyard is a barren wasteland of dirt, with a few specks of weeds and wood (what's left of her once-doghouse).  The above photo is CLEARLY not Tucson...though I wish I could import the trees and puppies for a few days :)  But it's a good relative size to my dog.

And as of yet, she's not quite so sure of the thing yet.  She loved her pool, but she seemed rather scared to go into this - because it's bigger? black? smelled like horses? or something else? hmmm...

Anyways, all this to say playing with the dog in her new pool with the wind and the lovely evening lighting made me all the more excited for summer.  

6 DAYS.  School is OVER in 6 DAYS.  I love my students DEARLY.  I will miss seeing them 5 days a week.  But teachers NEED extended time off...and I can hardly wait for it to arrive, yet have hardly thought about it all at the same time.

Any suggestions for the summer?  What are you going to do?  Any Southern AZ ideas? 

Feliz cumpleanos a mi

Today was my 26th birthday.  It's hard to believe! And as friends were busy, I watched one of my all-time favorite movies, Jane Austen's Persuasion (thanks Gilchrist's for the bday DVD!), and practiced my calligraphy re-writing one of the most epic and beautiful fake letters ever written - Captain Wentworth's letter to Miss Anne Eliot at the end of the novel.  I didn't have a pen or brush I actually liked, but ended up using my old sumi ink (for Japanese/Chinese calligraphy painting) and brushes.  It kind of worked, but was very exhausting for my hand to control...you guys have any other ideas?  I want to write fairly big...maybe just paint?

Extra

I painted a while ago with two of my students. It was a very fun time and this was the leftover paint that I just put in my journal. Awesome texture and color right?!

Heart of the Irish Dancer

I have a student who is one of three identical triplets.  (They did a dance together at the last pep assembly - so mind blowing!)  

He and his brothers are all musical, and the brother of my student (brother = Alex) has written three pieces that the Tucson Symphony Orchestra has played (insert clapping, screaming, and immense amounts of pride here)!!!!!!! 

His latest is called "Heart of the Irish Dancer".  It was so cute as Gio (my student) was very excited to tell me about the piece - almost as excited as I was to hear it!  He said that he was helping his brother with a part of it around St. Patrick's Day, when I played a few Irish songs at school, and some of the songs we played helped them think through a part of the song.  How COOL is that!?!?!  Even just to instill a little love of Irish music, and to support the creative genius of two awesome 17-year-olds...how great is my life???  

I am so proud of both of them (even though I've only met his brother once)!

Enjoy a listen :)

So friggin awesome

Because I'm missing the Midwest...

...for some reason...the trees, the lightening bugs, the water, the smell of summer...maybe that's why. Because summer is SO CLOSE.  SO CLOSE!  So here's a few odes to my hometown...

Taken in my front yard

 Yes, this picture was taken on one of the TWO main streets in my hometown

Animales

I bought some turquoise calligraphy ink a while back and have been greatly enjoying finding many uses for it.  Upon journaling, I poured too much ink, so I used the extra to make some circles on a card.  I decided to make some critters out of the circles, thinking it would be more exciting than just circles!  You can look below to see just the card with the plain circles...

Here's a key - some are a little ambiguous: lion, chick, bunny, octopus, hedgehog, reindeer, llama, pig, whale, koala, sheep, owl, jellyfish, elephant, monkey, ostrich? or some other bird

Sheer Awesomeness

This is a video about the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland - SOOOO COOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!!!

hope

Ὁ δὲ θεὸς τῆς ἐλπίδος πληρώσαι ὑμᾶς πάσης χαρᾶς καὶ εἰρήνης ἐν τῷ πιστέυειν, εἰς τὸ περισσεύειν ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἐλπίδι ἐν δυνάμει πνεύματος ἁγίου

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." 

Romans 15:13

When I was commissioned (and ordained) a little over a year ago by our beautiful church, one of our pastors (Rod) prayed this verse over me.  I put the original Greek text, because I think Greek is such a pretty language. I love seeing the letters, so I thought I'd post it as well. 

Rod knows I have struggled to be a woman who hopes.  I am a very emotional woman (ESFP for those Meyers Briggs peeps), but was raised in a very intellectual house where emotions were highly un-valued.  God has been trying to teach me not to shut down out of being "realistic", but to continue to hope in him, his goodness, and love even through the deepest disappointments and pain.  That has been an extremely difficult path, but one I wouldn't ever trade for my old, numbed-out life.  

Today hit on many things and left me feeling very hopeless...like I had some choice in fixing all the things wrong with the world and life.  I prayed with a friend, and she helped me to see my sin in thinking I had control of any of it, instead of begging God to step in or just to cry out to him.  

Joy and peace come as we trust in him, and only by the power of the Holy Spirit can we overflow with hope...according to what's written above...  I have pondered this verse for the past year, and it always seems that God slowly peels back the layers on how to live in it.  I confess I don't live it in well or easily.  How to be a people who hope in the Lord, despite our BROKEN world? 

...I'm praying that you and I can be filled with all joy and peace as we trust in him... 

 

 

angus and julia stone

I was cruising through some youtube videos the other day and found this cover.  I always liked them for her strange voice, but you gotta love this particular song.  I'm definitely not a big fan of Grease, but this was just too awesome not to share...