At the Entrance of the City Gates...

This is Halifrak - aka Hallie!

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Xander: _ _ R _ _ HT! _ _ _ E _ _ E / E _ _ E' _ / _ _ _ _ / _ _ / _ _ / _ H _ _ _ _ _ TE _ / _ _ _ _ _ E _ _.
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I'm turning 26 tomorrow and for the first time ever I'm not going to be with people who are near and dear to me.

I've got lots of birthday plans - don't fret - but no family, no Lisa, no Teri, no Rachel, no Noell, no my boys... How very odd it is. I'll have been in Staunton for almost 6 months (I arrived on Aug 13) and I'm not entirely sure what I think about that either. I love it here but I miss terribly all the people who are not here. Which is why everyone's going to come live near me - got it?

It probably doesn't help that with my various health issues, I'm feeling genuinely old for the first time. Doesn't this mean I should feel genuinely wiser for the first time too?
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What can I say, my brother loves his dinner... good dinner it was too - while the meat eaters had Beef Wellington, Beth and I had broccoli and sweet potatoes and sweet onions, mixed with mozzarella and garlic and herb aloutte cheese, all stuffed in one very tasty puffy pastry. Plus Beth made killer friend okra. We would have had twice baked potatoes but the potatoes we bought disappeared... seriously, all 9 of them - poof!







What a crazy cool bunch, eh? This was taken right after church Christmas Eve - and yes, I am wearing a teacher sweater... my nana gave it to me - plus it has cats on it and the kids at the family service loved it!









Nyembe (Neli's sister), Ted, and I went sledding (using the tops of plastic tubs as sleds) down the giant hill at Mary Baldwin. The snow had pretty much been glazed over with ice so we went down FAST. This is a pic I took of Ted as he went zooming by me (I had to jump out of the way to avoid being smushed!)








Here are my parents Christmas Night... yes, my dad is a dork.
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Here she is, all cute and fluffy!















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Well, the ordination rocked. Went off without a hitch. Service lasted a little over an hour and a half... Only cried twice. I posted a few pics over on my blog for church. But here are a couple more - just for my girls (and anyone else who happens to read this!)


This is me at my messy desk. As I'm typing this, I'm turned around to the other side, facing the wall. That's my normal position.

Here's me standing outside the church - with the sign that has my name! - right before the ordination service. The stole I'm wearing my parents had commissioned for me. It's quilted and gorgeous.

This is my house (and no, I don't live in the whole thing. I have the main floor - so the door that the rounded stairs lead to, that's my front door. The room on the left of the door is my living room and the room on the right is my bedroom. Check out the revamy.blogspot.com site for a pic of my kitchen.

Other exciting news - yesterday I got my cat. Her name is Anyanka, but you can call her Anya for short! And sadly, I'm slightly allergic to her (though no where near as bad as I was with Ollie). I'm hoping I'll adjust (I had a similar reaction when I moved to my parents' house over the summer and within a couple weeks had gotten over it). I'll have to find a camera (these pics were from my grandparents) and take pictures. This morning she crawled over half way up the 9 1/2 ft Christmas tree before I caught her - yes, I have a Christmas tree already up... it's fake and takes a lot of work so I put it up yesterday while my parents were still in town.

That's the news from Lake Woebegone!

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Well apparently blogger likes me again and will let me post.

So this has been an amazing reduce-the-stress-in-amy's-life week. I finally made myself check my credit report - something I've been avoiding because somewhere I truly believed that if you don't look at it, it can't hurt you. Now, of course, this means that any accounts (I was thinking medical) I didn't know about that were issuey would only get more issuey. Well, I checked it. And everything's fine. In fact, at least from what I can tell, I've got perfect credit. Not a blemish in sight. My body was like jello when I found that out. Weird the things you stress about and don't even realize when you're an adult.

Also, and much more importantly, I passed presbytery with flying colors. I did a great job if I do say so myself preaching (lots of folks thought so too - comments like "that was the best sermon from a candidate I've heard in 20 years" were actually said) and no one harassed me during the Q&A, something which was really surprising. Every candidate for the past upteen times has gotten a "litmus" test kind of question, but I didn't. Why? Beats me but you better believe there are no complaints.

So life is pretty darn good here in the Valley. I'm trying to finish my ordination service and get ready for the fam to come in. It's gorgeous here today. In the high 40s with a small breeze that makes everything just smell so crisp and clean. The leaves are getting even more colorful - my mother may have made a deal with the devil after all because I think they might wait to be in their full glory till she gets here.

Only issue I'm dealing with at the moment - no date for Friday night. On Friday I'm going to a pastors' appreciation dinner held by The Gideons International: A Christian Business and Professional Men's Association. I'm anticipating an interesting evening and am signed up for me plus one, but I don't have a plus one to bring. Wish you were here Noell... then I could introduce you to everyone as my wife! Hee... That or I had a male friend here I could bring and then everyone would, of course, assume he was the pastor until we corrected them... Yes, I like to shock people on occasion. It's the little things in life, you know.
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I discovered something called Radio Buffy yesterday. It's an online "radio" station that plays songs from Buffy episodes - including, of course, Once More With Feeling. Yesterday I also heard Giles singing Behind Blue Eyes... yum!

So you ever think about not celebrating a birthday? Just to try it, I mean.

YAY Teri!
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