biting my tongue is harder than i thought....

day two of secrets. tomorrow is the big day, i cant wait to find out who my secret angel is. today i got a little basket with candy, a verse and a candy cane. and i also got a present from jessica, thanx jess, it was a hand crafted amazing picture frame so intricate and ...yeah. so i'm trying to bite my tongue and wait for tomorrow.

its a secret (day one)

day one of secret angels. my gift was so cute i got this adorable little bear, holding a tube of lip-gloss. the best part i must say was the letter that came with it:

Sierra,
i was sent by an angel, of whom you do not know
i walked here from Ohio, how deep is the snow!
my paws are frostbitten and my little ears cold
but i must spread the news of the good, young, and old
i talked to Maggie, Izzy, and 'the boys'
they want you to know that they are so full of joy!
they are having so much fun there and cant wait until the day
when you come up to see them, be ready to play!
the thing i am holding (lip gloss) is their kisses they sent
i put them in this tube so i could give them as a present
the tube was overflowing so i had to leave some behind
but here is what i did collect enjoy this special kind.

isnt that great? i cant wait for tomorrow's gift.

photoshop of the week...

4 A.M.

well my dear cousins are in ohio right now. it was really really hard to let them go.
yesterday we spent the whole day with them, decorating the tree at my grandmothers house and playing plenty of wii :). the saddest part i must say was at the end of it all we said our last few words to them. i cried.
i couldnt make myself say anything though. i didnt know how to say what i felt and i didnt want my cousins to feel like this situation was a bad thing. i want them to see it as another adventure, and they do.
well, it isnt all that bad. i will be able to see them alot, like next saturday and sunday! i cant wait.

splatter

my dad got new brushes for photoshop, this is me having fun.

electricity

i dare you to move, i dare you. we breath in life and breath out death we breath in death and breath out life, we were meant to live, like today never happened. i dare you to move i dare you.

last night was amazing. it was my first concert and guess who i saw. relient k ( my favorite band) switchfoot (a name i don't get) and Ruth ( a new band I've never heard of). it was so amazing.

relient k is most definitely better on stage than on their Cd's, they completely expressed their words and made it so fun to sing with them.

were in the palm of a hand making a fist it would be best for one of us to speak up but we prefer to pretend it does not exist

~relient k

switchfoot was cooler than i thought they would be. i don't normally listen to them. yeah. well they were still good.

we were meant to live for so much more have we lost ourselves? we were meant to live for so much more have we lost ourselves? we were meant to live we were meant to live.

~switchfoot

RRRRuth was awesome too, and for their first appearance here they weren't that bad. uh i don't know any of the words to their songs so...sorry Ruth.

the day of complete and utter awesomeness

wow to day was so much fun.
it was a half day and as you all know Jessica, Caleb, and i all stay after school. so that meant that we had to stay for an extra four hours. well we did what came naturally to us in these kind of situations. acted random. it was awesome, even if Caleb thought we were crazy (which i cant blame him, we are).
the best part of the whole day was when Mr. Wilson, our principal had asked Caleb to go with him to fill up a van with gas. well it took them longer than we thought and me and Jessica began to have our suspicions.
" i know exactly what happened, Mr. Wilson is actually a child stealer and kidnapped Caleb!"
so we made a whole video on how we had heard scary noises and how Mr. Wilson had stolen Caleb and how we were scared out of our minds. you have to see that video.
so that was our day of complete and utter awesomeness.....completely and utterly.

the rake

i walked into their house Friday. it was empty and i couldn't help but to cry. our childhood was in that house. our adventures. i walked into Maggie's room and only little painted fairies smiled at me on the pink walls.
it was a sad day.
our outreach day was successful though, and i think we got everything out of my aunt and uncles house. we moved boxes and raked for a good majority of the day. but our hard work didn't go unnoticed. my uncle had ran out to the store and gotten every kind of candy you can think of. ever heard of caramel Reese's peanut butter cups? me neither, but that day i had one. all day Jessica and i spent as much time as we could with my cousins. we ate together in our secret hiding spot, we took as many pictures as we could, and what would a day with the cousins be like without hysterical laughing. it was great.
everyone loved that day.

sweet and sour

tomorrow is the cds outreach day. a.k.a. rake leaves until your arms fall off. i cant complain though, last year was fun and the people we raked for were nice. but this year there is a twist.
as you know my aunt and uncle and their family are moving to Ohio ~sob~. well Mr. Wilson decided to help them move their stuff into the moving cars. i know it would be such a blessing to my aunt and uncle if we could get this done for them.
any who, i am excited about tomorrow not only because it is a casual day (which we hardly ever get) but that there is another opportunity to spread the gospel through leaf raking.

its me again lord

have you ever felt like you were going through a dry time with the lord? its a terrible feeling. i feel so far from God and i am not as excited in Him as i used to be. i need help, plain and simple help.
i decided to try to read my devotions ( i had broke my habit of doing this) and i didn't succeed. i found myself making excuses as to why i didn't need to do them or i had something more important to do. every time i went to do my devotions i would convince myself that i would do them some other time. it just kept getting pushed off.
i went to my mom about this and even my pastor but i still didn't feel any different. i would cry during certain songs in worship, but afterwards i would go out the church doors and not even think twice about what we sang. i remember going through a very rough time in my life (last year actually) and i realized during that time that i needed someone stronger than myself to help me through my trial. i got saved through that whole situation and after that i felt to in love with the lord, so ready to do anything he asked of me. a few years went by and my "need" for the lord had seemed unnecessary to me. it felt like i grew farther and farther from him.
i need help lord, plain and simple help.

i guess its safe to say your never coming back and i understand why you wouldn't want to i guess its up to me to find a way to get to you and i cant see you getting used to living in the midst of your perfection and I'm so lost how can you trust somewhere the sun is always shining and theres just one last thing that i have say as we reflect on the mess of all of this I've made it was cowardice that made me push you away i was so afraid cause you were so much better than me

Relient k

friends

is there a reason? does there have to be? its love you see. don't be blinded when light screams. passion is together. here you see us in the light, surrounded by darkness we fight. but don't forget what the war is for, what we fight for. its love the song the reason to scream, the reason to tell someone what we have seen what we have heard what we know. this passion that pours out is a fire that pours out. you feel the warmth rage over you. mercy falls over you. the world is a wall, don't fall. don't forget what He showed you, what you had. alive..we live..as one..one under grace.

after school?....

My dad works at our church office until five every day. our school is right next to the church office so guess where my brother and i go to sit for an extra two hours after school every day, yup his office. Boring boring boring boring (Jessica can attest to this) Its not as bad as it seems though. There are other people (Jess and Caleb and of course the annoying Matthew) who crusade with me through the boring two hours after a six to eight hour day of school (in short we are exhausted). any who we do the most random things that no normal teenager would dare to do in fear of a ruined reputation. such as:
1 climb trees to the very top and scream " i am not UN-normal "
2 run around a building playing a combination of hide and seek, break the rules, and run away tag (oh excuse me what the boys have forced us to call "man hunt")
3 try to figure out how to play amazing grace with a piano and drums.
4 and say something extremely random at least once.
well as you can see we have had quite some time to make up this list...which i guess is pretty pathetic considering its been a year already and we haven't been able to think of anything else. at least we're active....very active.

Ohio....

i don't understand, i guess i am not the one that needs to. i have spent my whole life with them, playing with them watching them do the weirdest things and the funniest things. i guess god knew i would feel this way about my cousins leaving, of course he did. Ohio isn't too far away, and i will be able to see them every summer. thats a wonderful thing. god hasn't just been taking away of course, i have received a much greater thing that completely out weighs the bad. i will never forget them, what is greater than that right now? i will always remember how close we were, how we always did everything together. the reason for their leaving? that is another blessing. my uncle and his family are being sent to bless a church in Ohio, my uncle will be the senior pastor.
we will stay just as close, Ohio isn't that far away.

cousin post

these next two posts are by my two cousins.

caleb
if we are in bed and you are with josh you eill never fall asleep in hours its either josh throwing stuffed animals at izzy or me but thn i convince him to listen to me but it is still cool to hav a twin brother, josh.
maggie
i like to play with my big cousins. and i like to play with brothers. i like to play doggies with my younger cousins.

gain

on Monday the CDS went to GAIN, which some of you may know as Carelift. It was really amazing seeing how just by sending a teddy bear or some boring school supplies can change a child's life. that's not even the half of it, GAIN is a christian organization so whenever they meet someone they take every chance they get to share the gospel with them. its a real eyeopener when you see children in foreign countries dying and suffering.
when we got there all we saw was a huge warehouse with what seemed like the word GAIN taped to the front of it, but when we got inside our perspective on the place was completely changed. there were so many people willing to help from making gospel bracelets to folding and packaging clothes there was not one frown in the place. but what really moved me was the slide show they showed us. on the first slide there was a group of little girls all hugging their teddy bears tightly and that was when i realized that they weren't any different, until they spoke a different language, they were all just like i was as a child. and as i saw those same girls in tears as they held their gospel bracelets i cried.
how wonderful god is that even in our most terrible times he loves us.

lighter still

there is this poem contest and i was going to enter it with this poem.

life is dying fading twirling vanishing with the sea
loving mercy overwhelming surpasses my humble plea
the worlds passions failing
to the cross i'm nailing these treacherous iniquities
passion searing overwhelming
hold me in the wind thats sailing
over terrors and trite ailings that seem to follow me
simple action loves reaction
takes its toll on hearts of stone
savior father hear my plea
i give mylife to you alone