Tuesday, October 31, 2006
FTP is FINALLY back up! woohoo! I'll be posting an update soon. The company hosting my site had a server go down and then they disabled FTP until things stabalized... So I've been impatiently waiting.
posted by Charity at 10/31/2006 12:28:00 PM
Monday, October 23, 2006
Saturday, October 21, 2006
I’ve been home since Tuesday and I haven’t even fully unpacked yet! I just started a couple loads of laundry while I got ready this morning. My room is a disaster! It’s been a busy week back home. I plan to spend the day doing laundry, cleaning and getting the pictures of my trip ready to upload. Tonight my friend Turtle’s band “Voting with Bullets” is playing late and I am gong to try to get out there to see him. Tomorrow we’re having a family birthday dinner for my dad. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him or my sister and her kids since I’ve been back! Weigh In - 10/21/06Well I haven't been focusing as well as I should but I am glad I've done as well as I have under the circumstances! I've lost 32 pounds! woohoo!
 My trip to North Carolina – Well you pretty much have an idea of what the typical day was like for me out there if you’ve read a few of my prior blog entries. The kids were perfect! I had absolutely NO issues and enjoyed spoiling them on Saturday before their parents came back home! It seems that the little one (Gabriel) considered me a threat once his mom got home because he threw a couple attitudes towards me and I wasn’t quite sure where they came from. But all-in-all a GREAT trip! Moving to North Carolina – That got your attention didn’t it? Well I went to North Carolina with no idea of moving there. It wasn’t until I was there a couple days and had worked with the people at my brothers company that I started to think about it. There was one girl, Crystal, who I had been working with the most on the website project. She flat out asked me to move out there and said I would be a great addition to the team. I kind of laughed it off but my mind was never able to let it go. I continued my trip not letting anyone know that I was even thinking about it. I decided to keep an open mind and keep praying for God’s guidance and confirmation of whether or not I was supposed to move. Things kept coming into my mind. Currently I have no ties to California. My life has been uprooted over the last few months and I’ve always wondered why. This would make sense. A semi-temporary move to North Carolina might be just what I was supposed to do. The thought of moving out of California scares me, but I’ve been praying about it. I still don’t know. By the end of the week I told my brother and a few people and asked them to pray for me. Shawn told me he would not put *any* pressure on me because my parents would kill him but he would love it if I moved out there. I had ran into an old classmates dad at my brothers church and as I mentioned why I was out there I also joked that people wanted me to move there. He said that some people are given options. That there isn’t just one path they can take, that they will still be in God’s will for their lives. When I was on the plane coming home I wrote in my journal of all the thoughts going through my head. One of them was, is this just a wake up call? Is it that I’m not supposed to move but just realize that I need to push myself for something better? I really have endless possibilities for what my future can be. This has caused me to reevaluate a lot of areas of my life. It’s possible that is all it was intended to do and it’s also possible I need to push myself outside of this comfort box I’ve built around myself or even d.) all of the above. So I’ve decided not to make any immediate decisions and I’m letting the flow of life determine what steps I take. I think the most impacting moment was when my mom picked me up from the airport late Monday night, I opened up about my thoughts on moving and she was calm and said that if that’s what God wanted she would not hold me back but that it would be really hard on her. I really didn’t expect that positive of a response. I had prayed and asked that God would reveal it to my parents so that I could have confirmation. The fact that my mom wasn’t completely against it shocked me. I have asked for them to keep praying about it. And I am asking my friends to keep praying for me as well. The longer I’m home the more I feel I’m settling back into my comfort box. But time will tell… Some pictures of my trip – Below are some of my favorites from my trip. My friend Ludek recommended a batch resizing program and I was quite surprised I hadn’t thought of it before! I downloaded a couple and noted a big difference in the quality of downsizing and purchased the one that I was more impressed with. I was in shock! I had been going through and resizing my images one by one! What was I thinking!?! Haha I have all the pictures resized and am organizing them in my album and will upload them tonight. My brother Brian is into the new Battlefield 2142 and he plays online and uploading will not work while he’s playing. Click on the image to enlarge
Me
 Me just outside blockbuster
 Family Pictures
Gabriel the first night I got there
 Amber before church
 Amber and Jackson in the car after church
 Gabriel waiting for Sierrah to get out of school  Sierrah and Jaylen just out of school
 Jackson playing "Cars" on the xbox
 Amber
 Jackson and Gabriel
 Jackson looking adorable
 All the kids - Sierrah, Amber, Gabriel and Jackson
 A great picture of my brother Shawn
 Shawn, Brenda and Gabriel
 Shawn
 Brenda
 Sierrah
 Brenda and the kids
 Shawn, Brenda and the kids
 Shawn, me and Brenda
 The Evelys
 Scenic Pictures
A crazy huge bee!
It was the size of my thumb down to its nuckle!  The neighborhood as I saw it at 7am walking Sierrah to school
 The trees and I liked the clouds
 Shawn and Brenda's house,
no matter how I tried to take the picture
it just didn't capture the size!
 Artistic view
 The houses in the neighborhood
 Yes, that is a cement block :)
 And have I said how much I love lines?
 Lawn ornament
 Trees
 Random Observations – As was getting ready this morning I was listening to a random selection in my iTunes and was struck by the lyrics of some of the songs, and not in a positive way. There are a lot of people out there that sing about settling for someone who doesn’t want them. It made me want to put in Alanis Morrisette or something to balance it! Haha I guess that’s a little too bitter for my taste at the moment! Ha! But I found it strange that these are songs I like and never really paid a lot of attention to what they represented. Well if you got all the way down then YAY for you! Congratulations! I know it's a lot of pictures and I have a ton more coming. But I think I'm gonna have to say goodbye for now. Labels: North Carolina, Pictures, Weigh In
posted by Charity at 10/21/2006 11:36:00 AM
Monday, October 16, 2006
I'm flying home tonight ya'all! (And yes, I actually do say ya'all at least until my visit wears off hehe) So look forward to lots of pictures of my nieces and nephews shortly! I'm waiting for Brenda to come pick me up, we're going to lunch with Shawn. Apparently there is a manhunt in the neighborhood. A guy robbed a bank around here either last night or this morning and there are policemen on every corner. My brother came home from work and told me to make sure I kept things locked up. Pretty crazy. I kind of hope to see some of the action, and of course I'll take pictures. It's been a fun trip once the project was completed. I had a lot of quality time with my nieces and nephews and I'm grateful for that. I have a lot of pictures but I feel like I don't have a lot to show for my trip. But maybe once I sit down and look through them I will be able to see more. I forgot my firewire to usb cable at home so I have to see if my brother has one so I can maybe even upload a picture or two tonight before I leave. Well I guess they are on their way... Bye for now Labels: North Carolina
posted by Charity at 10/16/2006 09:28:00 AM
Friday, October 13, 2006
It's Friday night, I just got the boys in bed after their baths. The girls are babysitting for someone for another 3 hours. What am I to do!?! I haven't had this much free time since I got to North Carolina! It's great! I am gonna pop in a movie and enjoy some "ME TIME"! Just thought I would share that. hehe Hope everyone else is doing well! Labels: North Carolina
posted by Charity at 10/13/2006 04:52:00 PM
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Well I am sitting at the dining room table in my brother’s house in North Carolina. It’s the first moment I’ve had to sit still! The last couple of days have been insanely hectic. Not only am I a single mom of four for the … The moment I sat down and wrote the above I have had at least 15 calls… Most of which I ignored because there were more pressing matters. I had a call from Brenda and Crystal. Brenda was checking in but the phone battery died, and Crystal was on my cell working with me on the final changes for the site I’m working on for Shawn. I get another call but I let it go to voicemail from my nephew Jackson’s school, turns out today was his “picture day”! Crap! I had NO CLUE. I was barely even sure if the outfit I sent him to school in matched let alone was cute enough for “picture day”! ACK! I was running upstairs to grab the other phone (because the other one was dead) so I could finish talking to Brenda and find out if I should grab another outfit for Jack and bring it to him when I got a knock on the door which was Crom. Turns out my niece Amber forgot her lunch on the counter and had been trying to call but it was one of the calls I had just let go to voicemail, so I had to drop that off. Crom was nice enough to draw out directions to get to her school. This all happened in a span of 15 minutes! No joke! And there were more calls in between but I just ignored them because like I said there were more pressing matters. Hehe So now a couple hours after I wrote the first few lines I am able to sit again. I’m impatiently waiting to download the entire site. I guess I could finish the line I was attempting to write in the beginning. Not only am I a single mom of four for the week, I am a single *working* mom of four!!! Monday I worked on the site all day down at Assemble’s office. I worked 9 ½ hours there and then an additional 3 hours back at the house. Shawn and Brenda left Tuesday morning. I woke up Tuesday to get the kids off to school and worked in between dropping off and picking up at bus stops through out different times in the day up till 9:30 that night. Now today, Wednesday, I am sooo close to being done! I desperately want to enjoy my time with my nieces and nephews but I’ve been working so hard on the site that I don’t get to just enjoy time with them, I can only spare the necessary interaction of helping get them ready for school, breakfast-lunch-dinners and getting them ready for bed. It sucks… So I am excited to finally be done with the initial launch. The rest of the project is not completed but since Shawn is speaking at a conference they want the new site up and running by the time the conference starts which is tomorrow morning. I sadly have not had many opportunities to take pictures with my new camera. I take pictures of what I can but I hope to spend some time either walking in the neighborhood or driving around with the kids. It’s been fun so far getting up and getting everyone off to school. I have been getting to bed at 11pm and waking up at 6am. I get downstairs, Sierrah and Jackson are usually already up. I make Jackson’s lunch. I usually get some help from the girls to pick out the clothes for the boys since I’m not sure who fits into what. I make Jackson’s breakfast and then go brush his teeth and fix his hair. Gabriel is up by now and I try to get him fed. Both are usually dressed by 7:05 when I walk Sierrah to her school. Amber watches the boys while I’m doing that. I get back at about 7:30 and have to make sure I have everything that Jack needs to go to school. Amber leaves at 7:40 for her bus stop and I’ve been making it out the door shortly after her with the two boys running a few strides ahead of me. Jackson and Amber’s bus’ meet in the same spot so we meet up with her. I have to buckle Jackson in his bus seat and then get back to the house by about 8:15. I have been making Gabriel come into my room so he can watch tv and I can get ready for the day. It’s been hard to start any kind of work until around 9:30. Crazy! People do this on a regular basis too! At 1:20 I need to start getting ready to make my way to pick up Sierrah from her school. Jackson’s bus comes in at 3:10. Amber makes it back to the house at about 4:30. It’s a trip getting used to the three hour time difference. I have had a lot of calls at midnight but to my friends its only 9. hehe It always takes me a moment to realize it. People are chatting with me, telling me they are running an errand and I see it’s like 10:30 at night but it ends up only being 7:30 California time. I had a routine down in California that pretty much doesn’t work out here because of the time difference, but I’m making the best of it. Well there is a ton going on and I really don’t have much more time to write. So hopefully tomorrow or something when the site is completed I’ll be able to write more and maybe even upload a couple pictures. P.S. It's 1:16pm according to my computers clock. :) Not 10:16am Labels: North Carolina
posted by Charity at 10/11/2006 10:16:00 AM
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
So I am sitting at the airport waiting for my flight to North Carolina. I decided to see what posting from my phone would be like. So far so good. I have never dealt with so much security as I have today! And I have flown quite a bit since 9/11. Anyways, I went to bed at midnight and woke up shortly before 4, I am seriously tired! Well it looks like they are starting to board. I am sure I will have time to blog in a day or so. Labels: North Carolina
posted by Charity at 10/10/2006 07:29:00 AM
Monday, October 02, 2006
What an amazing adventure today turned out to be! And I had such a wonderfully productive weekend to top it off! So let’s see… Saturday - I ran a bunch of errands and stopped off at Ludek’s to check out his completed house. He was moving some equipment from the lot to his workshop so that it would be more protected from the natural elements when he’s gone, he’s going to be out of the country for a few months. He was getting help from Sam’s dad Chuck. I, of course, brought my camera so I got practically moving pictures of the progress. Ludek was happy I was taking them and I was more then happy to have the excuse to play with my camera! But I did get teased mercilessly by Chuck. Hehe As I ran some of my errands I noticed something rather unusual, I had a lot of strangers talking to me throughout my many stops. They were pleasant conversations. When all was said and done I wondered to myself if something deeper has changed and is showing through, is it possible I am more approachable now that I’m out of my depression? I really think that must be the case. I was really happy to see this big of an example proving something really did change in me for the better. After all of my running I got home and relaxed the rest of the evening. I went and uploaded more pictures to my album. Now that I’m getting the hang of it I’m really happy with the Jalbum software and how easily I can update it. Sunday - It was interesting because my dad wasn’t at church; he and my mom are in North Carolina visiting my brother Shawn and his family (where I will be this Saturday!). My dad does quite a bit to keep the flow of the church service going smoothly. Amazingly enough we were able to pull it off without a hitch! It was quite enjoyable and I was really proud of us for being able to work through all the technical and organizational issues for a smoothly flowing service. I always have a fun job on Sundays because I’m the one that runs the PowerPoint, the words for the songs, recording the worship and service and burning a CD of the message for those that were in the Sunday school or nursery. Anyways, after church I cleaned my kitchen, dining room, living room and straightened my room. My room has been feeling confined for a while now since it was so cluttered. I am glad to feel freedom in it! I still need to clean my bathroom and vacuum my floors but I was quite pleased with how much I was able to accomplish. Flat Tire, Darth Vadar, Etc. - Now back to my adventurous day. I got to work at a fairly decent time frame considering all the construction on the 15/215 interchange. Apparently people haven’t figured out that they have a full three lanes open and they all make their way to the far right lane way too soon. I got to work, parked; I had my starbucks, grabbed my bag and went up the stairs to my work. As I walked up the stairs I noticed my moms back drivers side tire was *really* low. (I have been using my mom’s car since I took them to the airport.) After about an hour or so I wanted to see how bad it was so I went back downstairs and sure enough it was completely flat. I sigh, noting to myself how surprisingly well I am handling this debacle, go back upstairs and asked my supervisor Hector if he knew if any of the guys would be willing to help me change my tire to the spare doughnut. So he and Keith decided to help me out. It was quite a comical sight! Keith joked that he doesn’t do this kind of thing because he’s gay. And Hector admitted that he hadn’t changed a tire in quite a few years. So we fumbled through the process. First challenge, figuring out how to make the jack work! No joke! It was quite the oddity. I was the one to finally figure that out, while Hector tried to figure out how to get the hub caps off which Keith ended up mastering. This not being my car I felt of little or no help. With a few more jokes of how odd it was that it took all of us to change the tire, and a few references to Keith being gay, Hector being large and well they were nice enough to keep me out of it, we were able to get it done. Haha I was laughing pretty much the entire time. And as classic as this picture already was I look and see Keith on the ground with his plumbers butt showing. It was quite a memorable event and I really enjoyed myself! I made an appointment to get the tire repaired at America’s Tire and took a late lunch to do it. I guess with all this going on it made the day go by rather quickly and before I knew it, it was 3 pm. But oddly the next two hours crawled by! Darth Vadar - Hector’s fiancé called to have him go on the CHP incidents page to find out why the 10 freeway was backed up. Suddenly I heard Hector start cracking up because they had, NO JOKE, a reporting of a “MALE WEARING DARTH VADAR OUTFIT ON RS” on the 215!!!! I had to see it for myself. What makes this so comical is what happens next. First and foremost imagine driving down the road and see Darth Vadar walking on the roadside! It’s not Halloween yet! I mean Hector and I are laughing and refreshing the page every few seconds. It goes from Officer on the scene to “PED UNDER BRIDGE, REQINGADDTL UNIT”. So what the heck did this officer see that he needed backup!?! But even better they call like 3 units on the scene! We’re rolling! Next thing they are hoping to “SANDWICH THE PED”…. I’m giggling so bad at this point trying to imagine this going down. What? Does he have a light saber and he’s not afraid to use it!?! Hahaha Sadly it just drops after the last detail of “HAS VISUAL, IN CD ON EAST SIDE OF WASH” and so I was not able to find out what happened to this crazy character but it looks like he ran! But I took a screenshot to prove I’m not making this up! And seriously it made my day! I needed a good laugh. And it made my final hour of work go by so fast!  After work I see my mom’s lug nut/hub cap cover is missing but *not* from the tire I just got fixed. Of course! So I go back to America’s Tire just hoping it might have fallen off while they were working on it. Sadly I think it’s just an odd coincidence and the manager at America’s Tire was nice enough to hook me up with a replacement. He said he would call me with more information. Etc. - I had to drop off a cd of the pictures I took for Ludek on Saturday and was able to hang out with Doug and Sasha for a little bit. It was nice to get caught up. Sasha has been a big supporter of me getting a job at the school district and she still has her eyes open for anything promising. I was there for about an hour but then realized I should probably get on the road. I had made plans to meet my friend Ludek for dinner Friday night since I was leaving Saturday for North Carolina and he would be deploying and it was the only night our schedules meshed, at least we thought. I can’t remember how it was brought up, I think I was invited by Sasha to come over again Friday night for dinner but I told her I already was going to dinner with Ludek. She told me that I must have been lied to because she already had plans that included him that same night. Apparently Ludek double booked himself and got himself into big trouble with his sister! HAHA It was quite funny and so it looks like I’m going to be going to their house Friday night for dinner. Everyone wins, except Doug and I... TThey are making a meal with mushrooms so Doug said he'd make something different for him and I since neither of us like mushrooms. hehe As I drove I felt like I hit ever green light, everyone seemed to move out of my way or leave the lane I was in open even though every other lane was full. I rarely had to brake. The only thing that made my drive home bad was my stomach. I’m still sick and not sure what’s wrong. I feel like I need something to settle my stomach. I thought something fizzy would do the trick but it hasn’t seemed to help. I’m not quite sure what’s wrong. I hope it will pass and by tomorrow I will be fine. Well it’s about my bedtime, so that’s all for now. Goodnight.
posted by Charity at 10/02/2006 10:06:00 PM
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