beautiful clouds

I took more pictures tonight. the sun setting and the clouds were just perfect.

Goodmorning everyone! I just wanted to show off some pictures i took this moring after class.

head lights

Tonight I realized that I don't drive in the dark very often up here in Marquette. I was driving home from Wal-mart and Target and there is a stretch of road where there are no street lights. So crazy. It's so dark. Don't take for granted your street lamps!!!!

So cute

Of course going home meant seeing the little peanut. We missed her 1st birthday, and i'm not used to going more than a week with out seeing her....so it was good to see baby girl. I missed her so much. She's so big. She looks like a little toddler. Walking around and talking incoherently.

Thanks for sharing Amber and Steve. You guys are doing a great job with her. We love you.

back in the up

well jason and i left way later than we wanted to head back up to the UP. But we ended up making it home in 6 1/2 hours. There was no one on the roads. And the ipod was out of juice so i scanned for radio stations the whole drive....so much fun.

The picture above is on US 77 going North. There was no one on the road and the head lights looked so cool on the construction cones.

anniversary party in the mud

This last weekend jason and I were able to come home. One of the big reason's to come home was the celebration of Grandpa and Grandma TerBeek's 59th anniversary. Congratulations!

The celebration took place under the gazebo. And i mean UNDER. The rain hadn't decided what it wanted to do all day.....that is until right before everyone was supposed to come over on hay rides. And it poured, there was mud everywhere, good thing we all did our hair. :) Everyone had a blast though. After eating, the rain stopped and gave us enough time to get in a couple of hayrides and for the little ones to get nice and muddy. Thanks for planning it mom.

I think there's enough people on this hayride.
Grandma, Kristina, and Brenda Sue

All the kinds on the pinic benches

Andrea walking in the pouring rain.

grades

time to brag a little! My sociology class is one of my worst classes. It is very hard to sit through. But...we took a test last week, and i got a 92. Which I thoght was pretty good. But compared to the rest of the class....that is REALLY good. there are 125 people in the class and I am in the top 4. Crazy. Above are the statistics of the tests results....not very good if you ask me. Ok bragging is done!

winter is coming

Snow was in the air last night. I could smell it. There were no actually snowflakes, but it's coming...and sooner than i think.

I woke up late this morning for my test. (don't worry i made it there on time) but my point is that the tree in front of our apartment is turning colors. As I rushed out the door, the sun was shining just right on the tree. I so wished that there wasn't a test to take. I wanted to go take pictures. The leaves are turning a little bit at a time, before long the colors will in full swing. And then the snow can come.

Happy Birthday Ross!!!

Happy Birthday Bobbie Rose!!!

Ross I know yours was yesterday, but I forgot to write it on here. I still love you though! Love me.

sunday

we TRIED to go to church today.
there is a ministry on campus called His House and as far as i could tell they held sunday services on campus.
we got up and went to the room where it was supposed to be. but...there was no one there. but we tried. so we have done homework-watched football-homework-football-eat-internet.
i did fold some laundry. did some dishes. cleaned the toilet.
i know some one is really jealous of us right now.
here's to hoping you all had more exciting sunday's!

neighbors

creek, creek, creek, clomp, clomp,thump, thump, clomp, creek, clomp. repeat.

this is getting really old.

i just want to make sure i am clear about the post below. i am glad we moved here, and i know this is where we are supposed to be. jason and i are very happy.

courage

sometime this week my dad wrote me an email and at the end of the email he asked a simple question: "how is switching into student mode going?" i think the answer i gave him was a little more than he was looking for. let me share.

being a student is just okay. all of my classes are huge, and believe it or not sometimes i wish i were living in the dorms. obviously that isn't an option but it's so much easier to make friends in the dorms. i think i would miss jason too much though. :) so what i'm trying to say is that it's lonley up here right now. there are many times a week that i wish that i could just come home.

is it really nescessary to know how many electrons are in a atom to be a nurse? do i really need to go through 4 more years of this?

sometimes i think that it would have been easier if we would have stayed home and gone to CC or grand valley and kept a full time job.

but i really do know that if we didn't move and didn't take this leap, we would still be in GR doing the same things, and not moving forward.

i think that in everyone's lives it's a constant struggle to balance what is easier and what is good and what will reap the most benifits in the end. i feel that the biggest payoffs usually come from doing things that aren't always so "easy." and when you do something that is a little scary and not so secure, that is when you get the biggest rewards.

so when i think about wanting to be home or wanting to have friends, i think about how great it will be in the end to have a career that will benifit not only me, but my patients, and my kids, and the rest of my family. all of the good things in life come with a little risk and take a lot of courage.

so do something that takes courage today. do something scary. even if it's a little thing. they don't always have to be big acts of courage, but just think of the rewards. put a smile on your face and maybe some one else will get one too.

what were they thinking?

i was going to enlighten all of you with deep thoughts but this needs to be addressed first.

these boys are jumping off a cliff into lake superior today. i was just taking pictures and i saw them jumping and had to take pictures of the craziness that goes on in the up. the temperature of lake superior today was around 40 degrees. and the temperature in the air was in the 60's. I was cold with a thin sweat shirt on. their jaws were blue. stupid, stupid boys.

i'm employed!!

The laws of my brain are at work in full force....let me explain.

I've been waiting to hear back from an interview i had at a call center/answering service last week. I really wanted this job because it not only pays more than most of the jobs in marquette, but i think that i would really like this job and it would challenge me. (i hate boring jobs) And this morning when i woke up i still hadn't heard from them. I had an interview at Target at 9:00(would you like to put this on your target visa) (gag me) and i kept trying to make up excuses to reschedule or really... just not go. But the way my brain works is that if i didn't go to the target interview i wouldn't get the call center job. and if i did go to the target interview i would get the other job. so long story short. i sat through the dumbest questions you ever have to answer in an interview at target. and when my class got out at 2:30 i had a voice mail saying that i got the job. (the one i wanted)

It's at a place called Range Telecommunications. They have many different kinds of clients, but the majority of them are funeral homes. the call center takes off hour calls and passes the messages along to the right people. they also monitor alarms at schools and banks and houses and temperature monitors in vacation homes in the winter (so pipes don't freeze in the -40 degree temps here) taxi services...etc.

So that is how my brain works in a nut shell, more to come on that later. I have some insights on doing the things that scare us the most, but in the end give us the greatest rewards. tune in.

thank you! thank you! thank you!

i am doing something for the first time in our apartment. i am watching a clear tv with more than 2 channels, and i am on the internet. i know that internet and cable are somewhat of a luxury, but also necessary evils. It will be nice to do research on the internet, check emails for class and of course be able to watch tv channels other than fuzz. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You know who you are. we love you

thoughts to ponder

1.) when cutting up jalepenios, always wear gloves.
if you don't you will spend a lot of time whining about how much your eye hurts because even though its been hours since you touched the peppers you have touched your eve for the third time and it still makes your eye or lip or whatever else you touched burn like crazy.

2.) when watching football on tv it's way more fun to watch when you can actually see what's going on. rabbit ears are a joke in marquette.

3) when frying fish, make sure your apartment is well ventalated. or else your place will look like ours. oh and forget getting that fried food resturant smell out of everything you own.

I just thought that everyone should be aware of these things. i hope you take them to heart and always heed by these rules.















This is not a pretty picture of sunlight streaming through a window, it is vegtable oil smoke. you could see the smoke billowing out the windows in front of the fans. someday we'll use a little common sense.

raindrops are fall'n on my head

I did not take this picture, but it was definitly raining this hard today. Very very fallish. I had to use my $5 wal-mart special umbrella today. you know I can't ruin the pig tails! Hopefully today i'll find out if i got the job i interviewed for yesterday. i'll tell you all about it if i get it.

Everything else is good, I have my first test next week, so I'll be studying all weekend. Woo hoo! I can't wait! Have good weekends.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!

I hope you have a great day!

I love you!

(I can't believe you're 46!)

Labor Day Weekend

this weekend went by way to fast. mom and dad kept jason and i company this weekend all the way up in marquette. it was so nice to see a familiar face, to have other people to hang out with, to sit around a campfire and to spend so quality time with my parents. their campsite was only about 5 minutes from us on bikes so we hung out at the campsite a lot. we tooled around on our bikes. we went down town on the bike path that runs along the lake shore the whole way. i gave my parents a lesson about the differences between blues, jazz and folk music as we sat outside the blues festival and ate some pizza on a picnic table. we went swimming in lake superior, mom found a GREAT hotel...the Landmark Inn, she just can't wait to come back up and stay there. it has good atmosphere...you know how that is!!! :) it was a great weekend and we were sad to see them leave. i know they like marquette a lot more now that they've seen it with out snow and they didn't have any wrestling meets to go to. thanks for coming mom and dad, we love you.

the pictures below are ones that mom took. there are many more on my flickr website.

the sunsent on friday night from presque isle park

the DOME, it is set up for the football game we had saturday night.

(which by the way we won in OT) go NMU

mom and dad doing self portraits

me and dad at presque isle park

watching the sunset

Happy Birthday Emily Elizabeth!!

I love you baby girl. I miss you like crazy. Be good for your mom today. I love you.

Aunt Stacey

to all my adoring fans

I know you are all wondering what my tables turned out like...well here are some pictures. For those of you who don't know I sanded these tables down (along with my kitchen table and all 4 chairs) i then painted them black and then my dad put boards in the middle of the tables so i could tile. Linda helped us find the green tiles. (Thank you so much) No one sells green tiles. Once we got sort of settled in our apartment I had to tile the tables and this is what they turned out like...much better that plain wood and glass. Thanks Dad for letting me paint up your barn, my apartment thanks you.