My life so far...

one beautiful day in may, mothers day to be exact, a precious and stunningly beautiful baby girl was born. that was me!
May 12, 1985 i entered the world and haven't stopped since the day i was born.

my first year is filled with sleeping mostly (i slept A LOT!) and eating, a similar experience to many of my friends i hear. my mom stays us many nights with me begging God to stop my vomiting after voracious bottle session but to her dismay, i vomit up everything as soon as she burps me and she's left, literally, crying out to God in sheer sleep depravity, while my dad comes running in, takes me, and tells her to go change her baby vomit pj's.

i begin to love dolls, dresses and anything girlie. i sport an extreme mushroom cut (i'm still a little mad about that one) and the boyishness of my haircut is offset by my giant frilly dresses....a lovely dichotomy.

i play hard and sleep harder....and on hard surfaces. i fall asleep often on the cement front stairs to our house after many hours chasing my best friend in the whole wide world, sonja, back and forth between our houses which were conveniently located a mere 5 houses away from eachother.

sonja and i spent out days selling rocks, and playing house in the giant refrigerator box that my dad turned into a play house for me.

about this time my mom puts locks on the outside of my bedroom door because i am changing outfits 5 or 6 times a day. i begin to be tucked into carrot beds at night with myself in the middle and 15 dolls on either side tucked up to their chins like i am. i sing a lot.

at 4ish we move from the big city of edmonton to gibbons alberta. a dinky little town of 2000 people. to my sister and i's surprise, we have BOY who is smack dab in the middle of our ages next door named Tristan (one of 7 Tristan's in the world he tells us). we immediately go about knocking a board out from behind the tiger lillies so we don't have to walk around the front of the houses to get to eachother...this was much more convenient.

i get in trouble a lot for being impulsive (thanks ADHD!) and doing dumb things like stuffing my neighbors cat under their cement stairs in winter and packing it with snow, slitting my neighbors couch cushions with scissors, throwing rocks at cars off bridges, throwing rocks at my dad's car parts and breaking the windows, taking the christmas lights off people's trees, mooning the mail man (biiiig trouble for that one!) and putting dead gophers on the train tracks and watching them explode.

i start school and i'm super popular. i have 2 friends, both named danielle and we hang out all the time.

grade 2 and i'm the star of our class play, snow white. i desperately want conrad to be cast as the prince but kirk is and i am actually disgusted. i remember something specific about a bathtub and a tub stopper and some kind of mean thing he said to me about it but the memory is failing me right now.

Grade 4 i start at the local Christian school. my mom forgets to pack me a lunch my very first day and to add insult to injury, she crimps my out of control hair and i wear it in a side pony tail.

i become super tight with the only 4 other girls in my class, justine, jenn, sam and teresa. we all sit together and talk about boys a lot. i love a boy named nathan and will continue for many years.

i get my first boyfriend in grade 8, mark. he's in grade 7 and its scandalous because he dumped his girlfriend for me. my sister and marks sister- who are best friends, plan our wedding.

we break up and i have my first real kiss with a boy in the language arts room at school during art class. i'm horrified and grossed out and we never talk again. i am chatty in class and get placed beside the 2 exchange students from Korea who know no english. we become fast friends, hyun, myung and me, and i learn tons of korean!

grade 9. my mom homeschools me. enough said.

high school! i thrive and my friend angela and i like to call ourselves first and second popular. i am a part of the 'plastics' (for all you who've seen mean girls) but i'm nice...i promise.

i date a boy named daniel who's captain of everything sports wise for a long time. he writes me the cutest letters all the time and are really cute together but oddly matched now that i think about it.....we have a bad break up in grade 12 and so begins a string of boys coming and going....(I can't help that i'm so attractive and wonderful!;) all through highschool i had a crush on a guy named M and i would sit behind him in chem and distract him by talking the entire class. my permanent seat in bio is at the very back of the class, facing the back wall and everyone else is facing the front (once again, thank you adhd) and i also spend a lot of time sitting the hallway.

i go on 2 missions trips to mexico and love it but know that africa is for me.

i graduate high school with only good memories and good times and proceed to bible college. i meet gord the first week there and we being dating the 2nd week of school. i get really involved at school, and run for student council and win...of course!

i hate being on student council and butt heads with the president a lot. i apply to be a resident assistant (RA) and get to the final interview where i'm told that i'm too intimidating, seem like i have it all together, and girls can't relate to me. i get angry and upset and am really really hurt. a few months later i get a call saying another RA is sick, isn't coming back to school and we'd love to have you! i'm weary after what they've told me but my best friend is on student council that year so we will get to do lots of fun things together.

i hate being an RA. its a lot of work, i am soooo different than some of my girls, and i have animals in the dorm all. the. time. bethany tells me cassia is going to africa and so me and cassia get together and decide to go to africa together. i graduate and leave prov with many many many tears and awesome memories and friends i'll have for a long long time to come.

i work at an ice cream shop in the summer to save money and a month before we leave for africa God tells me not to go to kenya, but to go to uganda. i say ok and head on over to Jinja.

uganda for 3 months. awesome. beautiful. wonderful. hard. fun. love. heartbreak. new friends. i meet rachel and arielle and michelle who become some of my best friends in the whole world. we have a blast at with the kids at the orphanage and blast with our friends from town doing random things like going to body building competitions! we fall in love with musa, our shamba, and take him under our wing....(my dad loves musa like his own son and does wonderful things for him)

i go home break up with Gord and am home for a month before i can't stand it anymore. i slip into depression and isolate myself and cry and cry and cry for the things i'm not a part of and for the babies i've left. rach air and i decide to head on back over to UG and 6 months later i'm there with my bestie, bethany.

have the time of my life, once again, and meet the most beautiful ugandans... david, jp, ronnie, RAOUL, melody, nina, ruth, mama, papa, florence etc....me and beth have a tough time at the orphanage and decide that we'd be better used with our church and get super involved with JInja Deliverance Church and The Youth Together ministries. we join the TYT choir and travel around uganda with our friends singing at weddings and concerts and its hilarious and wonderful! i learn to fast and to pray and to listen for God's leading. i learn to lean on him and to pray pray pray.

jan 30, 08, i head home. i work and am miserable. i have a great friend C who listens to me all the time and sits there and its my sounding board. i yell at him with my anger for the world, and he helps me deal with all my psycho emotions and panic attacks and is faithfully praying for me. i begin to learn how to control my tongue and i work on keeping some things for myself instead of yelling at people (which i think is a good thing...agree?)

september 08 i move to peterborough and start classes at trent university. i live with the most wonderful roommates, meet the most wonderful friends, attend the most wonderful churches, volunteer at the most wonderful youth center, and have the most wonderful time....all the time...and i'm sooo looking forward to the next years of my life, knowing that Christ's hand is all over it, i dont have to worry about a thing (not even africa, or my babies, which is a new concept to this worrier) and that in all i do, i'm going to work at it as if working for God and not for man.

thats my life in a nutshell.

that being said....i have some pathophysiology to read!