my day off...

the cutest statue EVER!!!!!

me and grandma :)

my part of the bedroom--i cleaned it and thought everyone should see... :)

grandpa and me!! :)

i bought new sunglasses!!!! yay me! :) (taylor, if you're reading this, this pic is for you! :)

today was a wonderful day! i got to spend it with my grandparents who drove over to see me all the way from yuma, arizona! YAY!!! so we went to seaport village and ate at anthony's...this cute seafood resaurant by the water, overlooking the harbor...it was gorgeous!!! then we walked around for a little bit, i bought some sunglasses, and then we went to paradise yogurt--praise the Lord! :) after that, we got lost for a while, literally :), and then found target. after i did some shopping, they brought me back home...it was such a fun time seeing family again! it made me really miss the familiarity that you can only have with your family members--it is just this complete feeling of "aahhh...i'm home." i really am starting to miss that...and i can't wait til christmas break!!! :) but until then, i am enjoying my time here, and i loved having a day off!!! i just finished writing my homework essay for this week--yay!--and now i have tomorrow off, too!!! my roomies and i are all going to go get pedicures (we have man-feet from walking barefoot all the time) and then we are just going to hang out and relax!!! i LOVE days off!!!! :)

so, i just wanted to really fast write out what i put in my essay that i just wrote. my verses this week are all on the topic of "love" and after reading 1 corinthians 13:3-7, 13 these were my thoughts...

"if i give all i possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, i gain nothing. love is patient. love is kind. it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. it always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. and now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. but the greatest of these is love."

in addition to those verses, i really like the beginning of verse eight because it says "love never fails." i always think of a walk to remember when i read these verses, and it encourages me. life may get really hard, but love remains. i may be super lonely, but God's love never fails. my future may seem unsure, but love perseveres and can carry me through; Christ's love gives me hope. Christ is love, and so he, himself, is my hope. His love is always with me...thank God i am never alone. :)

"but i trust in your unfailing love, my heart rejoices in your salvation. i will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me." --Psalm 13:5-6

a very good day...

Chloe and me (i ended up borrowing a costume for free, so i was a 20's gal :)

me and melissa (she was a princess... :)

robby (he was House from the medical tv show) and brindy (she was from india) :)

como (he was tiny tim) and jake (he was a sailor captain man) :)

stevie was a baby! :)

all of our costumes were free cuz we were so tired and stressed (and poor :) that we didn't care anymore...so we mooched off of other people, our own closets, and the church's costumes from the drama department... :)

praise the Lord!!! family fun night is OVER!!!!!!!!!! basically, this last week was a real test for me. boot camp week was hard, but fun. this week was just plain tiring and a lot of hard work. but i really do think that it was worth it. friday night, seeing all the little kids in their costumes, playing games with their parents and eating candy, i knew that we got to help make that happen. instead of celebrating halloween out partying, there were youth students hanging out at a church carnival. instead of going door-to-door trick or treating, little kids got to get lots of candy in a safe environment with games and food and STOMP! i had a blast that night!

thursday, on the other hand, was the hardest day of my LIFE since coming to master's! i won't really go into it cuz it's all complaining pointlessly, but i was in a very bad mood and God had to do a heart and attitude check in me. i realized that even though we do a lot of stuff that seems either pointless or doesn't make sense, that's kind of how life works... i have to realize that it is all about my attitude in a situation. i read somewhere that God doesn't want us put through hard things, but he really cares about our attitudes in those situations. our actions are what other people see and the image of God they will receive. christians represent Christ...and i might be the only example of Jesus that some people see...so i need to have a Christ-like attitude and respond to hardships with joy/contentedness (if that's a word :) and love towards others. yeah, it's hard, and sometimes it just plain stinks... but it's okay. :) God is here and he understands...

i wrote some lyrics to a song the other day during our personal prayer time--they're words coming from God's perspective...

when you're weary-- I am Rest

I am Living Water--drink deeply now

i have never forsaken you, my love

run to Me and I will meet you there,

I will hold you

I want more for you

come and dwell in Me

I will break your chains

I will set you free

I want you, desperately

I want you--

come be free.

there's more to the song, but i liked that part the best...i just know that God's teaching me how desperately he loves me, despite my flaws and in spite of my circumstances. i hope that encourages somebody... :) i love you all!!!!

~kaylee

a really long all-nighter...

good morning everyone! so, it is about 6:15 AM here, and i just got home for the night/morning/day... um... we had a very busy night. we are trying to get all prepared for family fun night which is this friday, and so we had to build all these booths (actually the boys had to do that...) but the girls had to make sure all of the games were assembled and none of the pieces were missing--we also had to touch-up paint, run errands for missing pieces, etc. on top of that, we had to finish learning and then perfect our stomp routine...and we finally got it!!! of course, it took until 5:30 this morning....but praise the Lord, it is finally completed. we have practice again today, and i'm hoping it doesn't run quite as late, if you know what i mean... :) anyways, i'm not planning on going to bed because we have morning prayer at 9, and i need to shower cuz i do not smell fresh after such a long night of activity... :) and sometimes when you sleep for just an hour or two, you're even more tired!! so i'm gonna shower and then make some pancakes for my roommates...and LOTS of coffee. we are gonna need that today... :)

a weekend in mammoth...

a smiley picture for mommy again!!! :) i was very wind-blown in the backseat...

one of our rest stops on the way home... they may have good jerky, but they had the nastiest bathroom i've ever seen in my life! my shoes stuck to the floor and everything... ew.

me making feet people when i should have been doing my joyce meyers homework... :)

pretzel art! i was entertaining myself on the ride home... :)

again, me entertaining myself on the ride home... :)

me trying to concentrate on my joyce meyers book homework...

the beautiful mountains!


the ugly drive to get to the beautiful mountains! the white van is pedro--the master's boys' transportation...

me, melissa, and kim ready for the drive! those are our "game faces." :)

this is from a while ago, but melissa and me looking for halloween costumes :)

this weekend we were out of town again--but this time it was more like a vacation for us hard-working master's students. :) we drove 7ish hours to mammoth, this very beautiful and mountainous part of california, so that we could train for snowjam/skidazzle. those are two big "shows" that winter sports companies put on every november, and we get to help one of those companies, and then he gives master's commission lots of money! :) good deal...

so anyways, he wanted us to have some sort of idea as to what we would be doing when we work these shows, so he paid for us to drive there, let us stay in his mansion of a house, and then took time out of his busy schedule to teach us---he is a very nice man!!!! no huge events or anything happened this weekend, but my favorite part overall would have to have been the hot-tub on the roof of his house... that was pretty fun! :) us girls always got first dibs on it, and so we would soak for a while and just enjoy the stars above us. i've never seen stars as beautiful as the ones you could see in mammoth.

today was spent just driving home--we ate at in n out and they have the most amazing strawberry milkshakes in the entire world!!!!! and then i've been doing laundry and cleaning my room for the rest of the afternoon. tonight we have STOMP practice and the building of our booths for family fun night...it's going to be a late night! actually, every night this week is going to be really late... stomp practice every night because we perform for the first time on halloween night! oh dear.... please pray that we are ready by then! :)

lots of pics and a birthday party :)

j.p. and como with noise maker, blow-y things :)

jake's idea of a birthday party: a nap and a noise-maker :)

jeb's (jeremiah's) surprise party

neat-o noise makers :)

poor jeremiah...

robby, jeremiah, matt neff

accountability group time! me, matt neff, and jake... melissa and stevie were in the front seats in the car :)

i edited this one and was quite pleased with myself...and i know that it bugs you, mom, that i make faces... :)

so this one of stevie and me is for you, marmie! i'm smiling...see??? :)

hey! i'm smiling in this one, too!!!! :) :)

and this was just random...but one of the cutest cards i've ever seen in my life!!! i HAD to take a picture of it... :)

i love posting pictures!!! they are the most fun part of having a blog! then i feel like everybody who's reading this (or who gets bored trying to read this) has something interesting to look at... yay for pictures!!!! :)

so, this morning, we had off-campus prayer...and it was amazing!! stevie, melissa, and i went to the bay and i sat on some rocks under a tree overlooking the water-- pretty pretty!!! :) then we ladies had our Oprah Moments with jessica, and we talked about Eve. not about how she screwed up, but instead about how God actually intended for women to be... i love oprah moments!! i feel so close to these girls---i love them! so then, after lunch, everybody (guys and girls) got together at the church and threw a "surprise" birthday party for jeremiah... and i say "surprise" because he guessed what was happening and stevie was having a really, REALLY hard time being sneaky. subtlety isn't one of her strong points... :) but it was way fun and we all had some cake and blew those obnoxious noise makers... good times. :) matt neff and robby wouldn't leave jeremiah alone--they just kept blowing the noise makers in his ears, and they threatened that they would make perfect alarms tomorrow morning. i'm sure glad i'm not going to be around when those things go off in the wee hours of the morning!!!! :) i'll be sleeping soundly in the wonderful, peaceful, and quiet girls' apartment!!!! :) :)

tomorrow we have the morning off, and then we are doing Monster Mash at the elementary school that we volunteer at...it's their little halloween thing... then i have to get all packed because we are going to mammoth this weekend! it's more in the mountains, like six hours away, and we are going to be training for ski-dazzle...this thing that we sell ski stuff at. but i guess they really don't have to teach us that much, so we more get to go and relax, or at least have a sort-of vacation---yay for road trips!!! :) um...that's all! goodnight! :) :)

late night painting... :)

a fun night of painting...

above: matt neff being silly

below: robby actually doing what we were supposed to be doing... painting boards, not ourselves. :)

above: como being african american--and (bonus!) he's actually wearing a one-sie...with little connected foot things and the full body zipper and everything

below: jake, matt neff, j.p. and como being "manly men"... silly boys. :)

me and melissa losing our sanity at STOMP practice! :)

a day of rest...

today was actually the slowest day i've had in what feels like forever!!! i guess i don't really have that much to blog, but i really don't have anything else to do at the moment! :)
last night we had stomp practice, and it is actually starting to come together--yay for God and miracles!!! so in the middle of practice, stevie pulls melissa and me aside and says, "we need to go outside for a minute. sorry to interrupt practice, but it is important." melissa and i were like, okay... so as we're walking i was the one behind the other girls, when they both turn around, look over my shoulder, and start screaming and running the other direction. now, common sense would say turn around and look at what they are screaming at, but of course i started screaming right when they did. then i turned around. and behind me was a very tall, creepy man walking towards us in a janitor's suit and a freaky halloween mask! and i discovered something about myself last night. when i am afraid, i become paralyzed. i kept on screaming, alright, but i just ducked my head and threw my arms over myself and froze in place.... pretty pitiful. you know the really pathetic people in horror movies that you can predict won't survive past the first five scenes cuz they're pansies... yeah. that's what it reminded me of. not good!!! but very funny! it ended up being Monte, one of our groupies. he's not in master's, but he follows us everywhere--and he has a very cruel sense of humor. and of course robby was in on it... he camcorded the whole thing. :)
well, there's my story for the day. just thought everyone would enjoy knowing i almost had the pee scared out of me last night. thanks a lot, monte!