I’m so blessed; I’m so bummed

Let’s start out with the blessing first. Actually let’s start out with the pre-blessing blessings. Recently I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with my good friends Emily and Whitney quite frequently. They are a couple of godly young women who are really seeking God’s will for their lives. Whitney will be going to New Tribes Bible School in the fall, and Emily is still finding where the Lord will place her. During our hanging out we have gone to church, Summer Challenges, played soccer, ultimate frisbee, volleyball, talked about our lives, talked about boys, ate taco bell, watched A Walk to Remember and Pride and Prejudice and I’ve spent the night at Emily’s house twice, during which I also got to chat with her mom who is pretty rockin’ awesome. These friends have been a great blessing to me, and after staying overnight last night, they blessed me again. The plan this morning was to have Emily take me home, while she and Whitney volunteered at Grove Sports Week… sort of a VBS. Well, Em’s mother had the idea of me just tagging along with them and helping out wherever I could at sports week, so I did. It was great! I’m actually going to be going into Early Childhood Education, and while I wasn’t teaching these kids, it provided me an opportunity to interact with part of the age group that I might be teaching. Early Childhood Education covers ages pre-school to 3rd grade. Today, I was working with 3-4 year olds. I loved it. It was great getting to know some of their different personalities and see them become more comfortable with one another and with me. When you have a large group of children this age, however, you find you run out of hands. Every other child wants to hold your hand or wants you to play with them and it’s hard to appease everyone, but you do the best you can and enjoy the time you have with each child. It was great! I was really blessed! I have pictures on my facebook if you would like to see them. If you want to add me, let me know, and I’ll shoot you an e-mail.

Now for the bummedness. My family has been planning a weekend together. My brother (who’s been in Iraq since last year, i think) has been home for about a month and he was going to take leave to come up to Michigan and visit. He informed my mom earlier today, that his leave was taken away. That means I will not get to see my oldest brother who I’ve not seen since last summer or my niece and nephew who are his offspring. *sigh* at least my family from Wisconsin will still be coming. I still feel blessed even though not everyone will be here this weekend.