this is long but you should read to the end...there is kind of something important in it

I know, I know - it's been two billion years since I posted. you wouldn't believe how busy I've been. let's just say there are like two weeks left of school, 2 big papers, a final presentation and a choir concert, two major piano recitals, a weekend of worship, and a grad party yet to go. oh, and a camping trip (talk about LAME TIMING). but there is actually a lot of stuff going on you should probably know about. and if I can get it to work, I'll put up some of my senior pics too. :D

so I'm on worship this weekend. we had band practice last night and it was SO MUCH FUN!!!! we totally changed the set Roger had put together (it was just way too slow and....old). he wanted to do I Sing the Mighty Power of God so painfully slow, so we decided to do it at double time and have electric guitar and keyboard play the melody through together. It's going to be AMAZING. :P lots of piano stuff this weekend which is kind of cool but kind of frightening too, as I haven't really practiced at all. but last night went really well and I'm getting pretty good at coming up with stuff on the fly, so that's nice.

I'm practicing piano about two hours a day currently....I'm close to ready for the recital (although I should have been completely ready a week ago). half of my music is done and ready. then there are like two songs that are really close. the thing freaking me out is that Rhapsody isn't ready yet. it's close, but not nearly as close as I'd like it to be. but *sigh* two hours a day is making a dent. I'm trying to stay both calm and optimistic.....and get lots done at the same time.

school goes on. my group is just about ready for our history project. I have a draft due next week for my 10-page English research paper - we have no instructions on this yet, but at least I have a slightly broad topic picked and a teensy bit of research done. it's just....so much writing. :/


alright. the biggest most explosive news (and you're probably all going to freak out on me here - please don't) is that my friend Mitchell is moving in with us and renting our guest room.

*pauses while everyone freaks out*

Ok. Yes, he is a boy; no we are not and never have even had the slightest intentions of dating, or had any feelings for each other besides friendship. And he is good at communication and we talk about our relationship quite a lot - we are on the same page. Yes, we have only known him for about three months, but, well.....God works in interesting ways. No, we are not crazy.

The basic situation is this: he's been renting a room from his mom and stepdad for the last year or so, so that he can be more independent (his mom is kind of controlling). The home situation isn't bad per se, but it's not really good either - he's had kind of a rough family life growing up and has never really had close relationships the way my family does.

Most of you know, we met at school last quarter and pretty much were instantly friends. We emailed quite a bit and then started hanging out fairly often as well. He and my parents hit it off right away as well, and my mom basically decided she was unofficially adopting him - so she's kind of become his surrogate mom, and he and I are much more like brother/sister than anything else. (Plus my dad is cool with the whole situation, and any of you who know my dad should be put at ease by that.) Anyway with my mom's surgery and everything surrounding it, he's become even closer to all of us, and we consider him to be part of the family now. He and my mom started hanging out a lot during the day (which has been great, since my mom would have been alone a lot during her recovery otherwise) and he practically lives at my house nowadays.

And we all came to realize that we really liked him practically living here. There are lots of other details and factors that go into it (and he has been thinking about moving out of his parent's house for a long time now), but the other day my mom was like "hey, what if Mitchell rented a room from us and moved in here?" and we had several family discussions, and decided that it was a really good idea. And so he also thought about it for awhile, and today we decided that he should move it.

So tomorrow he is moving in. :)



And.....that's basically it. But I thought I should explain it all and let you guys know what's going on. I guess most people will kind of figure it out eventually, but I didn't want it to just come up during conversation sometime and then have everybody mad that I didn't tell them. :P If you have any questions or concerns or would like to tell me how crazy my family is, we can talk.

I think the only other thing is my mom's surgery, which was incredibly successful!!! Mom is doing great; she gets tired easily but other than that is recovering swimmingly. Tammy (her recipient) has been doing fantastically since they put the kidney in. All the doctors and nurses have been just floored by how amazing of a match this is. Tammy's husband said last week that it seems obvious that God made this kidney 40 years ago just for Tammy. So praise God for all this wonderful news!

Alrighty. it's getting late-ish and I have a bunch of homework to get to. Goodnight peoples!