wow

It's hard to believe it's been this long since I've blogged. Life has just been that crazy the last two weeks. I am so tired that I'm forcing my eyes to stay open, rather then closing them while I type. And...it's only 7 pm. I'm getting old. But, I'm fighting sleepiness because when Natalie goes to sleep tonight, Chris and I are playing our new Nintendo Wii. Our search finally ended yesterday at a K-Mart in Neptune Beach. We found the WII that we've looked all over Jacksonville for since Christmas. We immediately brought our treasure home and have wanted to play it all day today. Hopefully we can soon.

In other news, a group of women from our church and me took a group of girls to Revolve last weekend. We had so much fun. Revolve is sponsored by Women of Faith, but is designed for teen girls. To be honest, I think I liked it more then Women of Faith. We have endless stories, but my personal favorite is when we were leaving the arena Friday night. All of us where laughing and talking and giggling like us girls do when it's late and we're tired. We were walking down the street to the parking garage when Liza freezes. By the look on her face, I was pretty sure some guy was in front of her with a gun. The deep panic in my stomach sunk in as I looked up. She was staring at our bank of amercia parking garage...the doors to the garage were shut. The following thoughts went through my head in the next five seconds...Okay, okay, okay, why would they tell us to park there on the info if it closes??? Okay, okay, okay, how much will it cost to get all of us back to the hotel in taxis? Okay, Sabrina works for bank of america in Jax, maybe she can call someone...okay, okay, okay, Liza is walking by herself, I need to catch her.
The other adults stayed with the girls, I caught up with Liza. A man told her we just had to go through the lobby. We did and were able to get to our cars no problem. Now for the guns. The nice police officer gave us the directions and told us to keep our doors locked and windows up. As the car in front of us stopped at the red light in the ghetto, my car full of girls started screaming. There were several guys on the corner gathered together. There were several guys on the other corner gathered together. There was the nice looking prostitute on the street. My girls freaked. The guys started walking towards our car. The decibal level increased. Nicole, our awesome driver began screaming, "do not make eye contact...do not make eye contact...turn green light, no eye contact." I called the car in front of us, I heard their driver, Liza saying, "girls do not make eye contact." Emily and I hearing each other's vehicles through the phone did what any chaperone would do in such a dangerous situation...I laughed until I cried. I knew the guys were not going to touch a vehicle full of screaming girls. We were close enough that I'm sure they were laughing at us too. The light turned green and we drove to the other side of town to our safe hotel. My girls all accused me of being brave...I didn't confess to them that I tend to laugh when I get nervous or scared. We'll just let them think brave, until they read this that is. All in all it was a great weekend. One of the main speakers, Chad Eastman, did an amazing job explaining to the girls about identity. He posed one question to them and it has been a springboard for a lot of discussion this week. I'll leave you with the question,

"Girls, if you are at a party and a guy walks into the room, would he see you as a treasure or a target?"

Some pics of the weekend