Friends

The other day laura, meg, dani, and i went to the daily grind just for fun. We took a bunch of pictures to blog, and I never got around to blogging them till now...so here you go, mom! :) miss you! (get your computer fixed soon!!!)

Alyssa's Birthday Party

Mr. Gaugler reserved the Daily Grind for his niece, Alyssa, for her 18th birthday, and invited a bunch of people to come. He made his famous cake, etc... We all had a good time, and sang "Happy Birthday" to Alyssa the Mr. Gaugler way. Before we cleared out of the Grind, we played a few rounds of Mafia. I hope you had a happy day, Alyssa, and have fun being 18! :)

Sister Date

After getting into the grind of school, Jenn and I took an evening to catch up at the Daily Grind (do u like my pun? heehee!). We had a lot to catch up on and were there from 7 till the Grind closed at 10, then got in the car and parked at the dorm and talked till curfew, and I'm sure if we'd have thought of it, we could have called each other then and talked till lights out. I'm so thankful that Jordan and Jenn are up here - I don't know what I'd do without being able to drop in and say hi or calling and saying, "wanna meet at the grind?" They are always such an encouragement to me! (and to my friends!). Thanks guys - and Jenn, we need to go on another "date" pretty soon - it's already been weeks ago since we went! Love you!

Kampus Kids

After the Opening session the first week of school, we had our first "Kampus Kids" night of the semester. Of course it's a required event as is almost everything up at Northland (heehee), but as Jordan said in his invitational email to the "family" that "The reason that it is required is because some families simply don't have as much fun as we do, and the 'kids' would rather spend the evening away from 'home.' However, this is not the case with our family!" We always have a good time together. Jordan got an x-box last semester, so our first kampus kids night we watched the guys play Halo. They did a good job and pretty much crushed the other campus family they were playing who were linked across the hall in another apartment. We had another kampus kids night on the 5th - which also happens to be Jenny's birthday - and another night of halo had been planned. BUT! Our "mother" jennifer and "aunt" rachel planned for the girls an evening in Iron Mountain at a Mary Kay party and then shopping afterwards. When we got back the guys surrendered their controls long enough for us to play a round (unbeknownst to the guys across the hall) while they made blueberry shakes. We held our own enough for the opponents not to believe we were the ones they were playing against, but after awhile they beat us pretty bad, and then they believed. Haha! It was a good time - and like always, we ended up staying till curfew - probably the only kampus family that does that :)

Norway Fair

Our first official day here at school August 1st, Jenn and Jordan took us to the Norway Fair just like they did last year. Mr. and Mrs. Swenson were still here this time, so they came along. But the sad part was that we had to say good bye to them AT the fair! They only stayed for the Demolition Derby. It was a pretty good one - and lots of people were there from our extension church including Dr. Lamansky and his boys, Philip and Drew. Afterwards we walked around to see the booths set up and to pick out what looked like the scariest ride. It was called the bullet and was SOO scary! It swung back and forth like a pendulum and got higher and higher, and then would finally go all the way around and plunge to the ground and then go around again! It really made you want to just get off, but then when it was over, you almost wanted to go again for the excitement (except the line was too long). When we got off we each discovered we still had four tickets to "spend" - so we went on another ride - the spider (or whatever it's called here), which is a little more layed back. So we got a good picture of Jenn and Jordan before it started. It's a whirly twirly ride. Jordan didn't think it was that exciting of a ride, but we girls had a great time! Hee, hee! Thanks for the fun night, you guys! Can't wait till next year!! ;)

More Rodeofest Pictures

Here are some more pictures from Rodeofest. Meg got a picture with some of the girls she was able to hang out with. And we had fun seeing some of the girls from our extension church in Norway. Emily got her face painted and even caught one of the bad guys! Good job, Emily! :)

Rodeo Fest

Saturday, September 29th, was Rodeofest. We did the rise and shine at 7:30 on a Saturday morning, but it was so worth it! Laura looked the best western of the three of us, but she had come to college prepared with a cowboy hat already - because she's already a hick - JUST KIDDING! heehee! By the time I made it to walmart, all the other Rodeofest people had bought all the Cowboy hats and yellow bandanas that had been there. O well. I guess my neck is too short anyways to cover the rest of it up with a bandana. Then I would just look like a head and shoulders! Ahahahaha! Anyways, Meg was a counselor for the day, so she went around to booths with kids, and also helped Laura run the basketball booth -- that's right -- Laura did basketball!! :) Hee, hee! But I hear her booth was very popular. We all were pretty beat by the end of the day, because they chased basketballs from 8 to 4 and I chased frogs all day from 8 to 4. (not real frogs). I got to run my booth with Jenna Kutz. We had a great time together. We had cute plastic little bug-eyed frogs , a launch table, a mallet, and tin can buckets. The idea of the game was to set a frog on the wooden launching contraption and the kids would hit the launcher with their "medium strength" (heehee!) to try to land it in one of the cans and then they could have candy and a punch in their card. But even if they didn't make it, they still got candy. There was a booth in the middle of the upstairs that was always busy and fun to watch. Kids would put on burger king crowns and then try to hit eachother's crown off with noodles. Emily Whitt came up and I got a picture of her playing. Bob Roberts was the speaker, and the Witness team did the special music. The Lord gave us beautiful weather between the rain the night before and the rain right after. The kids really had a good time, and a lot of them made decisions for the Lord:

Decisions that were recorded:
Anger - 3
Assurance - 5
Authority - 11
Devotions - 2
Friends - 1
Other - 2
Salvation - 4
Worldliness - 1

Praise the Lord for how He works! Please keep these kids that made decisions at Rodeofest -- and all the kids that came to Rodeofest in your prayers, that God would continue to do a work in their lives.

Bowling

Same weekend as "Main Street Pizza" weekend,

we girls went bowling. None of us did extremely well, but we all had a lot of fun! My goal was to break 100 because in the many times I've gone bowling in my life, I've never broken 100, I've only reached 99. We all did our best, but when our best wasn't working, we tried to find unique ways to bowl to make it fun. I think Tara came up with the best moves. ;) Needless to say, I did not break 100. :) After bowling we all stopped at Storhiem's for a treat. About 1/2 way through our order we started to put 2 and 2 together that they had been in the process of closing when we walked in -- we wondered why we had the whole place to ourselves! Heehee! So we apologized, and just ate our treats on the way home while singing to "Beauty and the Beast." Thanks for all the fun, girls! :)

(clockwise starting at 12 o'clock) Nikki, Megan, Corri, me, Kathleen, Laura, Danielle, Amy, Tara, and Hannah.

Main Street Pizza

Friday night a bunch of us sophomore girls escaped campus and headed for the attractions of Iron Mt., MI. Our first stop was Main Street Pizza, a popular hang out for Northland students, which is why almost everyone else there when we first got there was a Northland person. The pizza there is good. Pizza isn't really a favorite of mine, but Main Street Pizza is probably right up there with Pizza Hut, and would be even better if it had the stuffed crust. :) Anyways, we girls had some good times talking and laughing - a few of the things girls do best (like shopping, which is why we made a stop at Walmart when we were through eating) :) We're going into our 4th week of school now, but it's been busy, so it was good just to have some time to catch up with each other and have fun together!

Slessor Night Cont...

The Freshmen have to jump in the Northland lake water. The girls were very cooperative and jumped in of their own accord. (only one got carried down and thrown in - she was a second semester freshmen and managed to drag one of the society officers in with her) I felt bad for them all though because the water had to have been really really cold and since it was evening, i was already cold and couldn't imagine how cold they must have been! Poor Vanessa was so cold she was shaking all over and had to walk all the way back to the far away trailers. The walk back to campus is kind of spooky - the girls like to hide in the trees and jump out and scare each other. So far I've made it through without getting scared (besides when I made the trip during camp), but I have done some scaring myself -- right Jenelle? Heehee! :)

Slessor Society Night

Thursday morning, the 14th, during chapel, each of the societies gave their presentations to convince the freshmen which society was the best to join during society rush which was to follow. There were of course the usual funny presentations by Cary and Carmichael, the dramatic presentation of Dreisbach, and the redeeming presention of the Judson society, presentations by Champlin, and Spurgeon, and then the traditional presentations of Slessor and Brainerd. And like the tradition of our presentation, our evening "welcome to slessor" activity has remained traditional. At 6, the slessor girls meet out at the beach front to have a good time together and welcome the freshmen. We start out with fresh fried bread topped with honey or chocolate and powdered sugar. It's very yummy - before "Slessor" I'd never had it (Jenelle got a picture of me cleaning the very last of it off my plate very well. heehee)!

Then we chose our KEYS partners. Jenelle and I were KEYS partners last year, and got to be again this year! We always have good times together. As KEYS partners we get together once a week to pray with each other and encourage each other. We also sit by each other in chapel every day - it is not mandatory to sit with KEYS partners this year, but we like to. :)

As soon as everyone has chosen their KEYS partners we play our traditional games - they are actually very wierd games, and not favorites of mine, but everyone gets to know each other really fast, for sure. We usually have a bonfire and sing and give testimonies, but for some reason this year, we didn't. We always meet our brother society, Brainerd, outside the coffee shop, though to sing and stuff, so I guess it's okay. :) I'm going to finish blogging the night, but this post will no longer load pictures...

Julie's Room

Haha! I just found this picture on my camera when i was uploading my pictures onto my computer. Evidently Julie took a picture of her room while she was packing for school. This is only a small section of it - the rest was very similar, and we had to carry it all down and fit it into the van. Yet, I think this was her best packing job ever. Good job, Julie! Hee,hee! I, on the other hand did not take a picture of my room while i was packing, so there is no evidence of the chaos of my packing job. I didn't start packing for this semester until 10:30 the night before I left - so i was up till 4. But it was worth it cause I got to spend quality time with mom and good friends on my last day home. I must have packed the car in my sleep cause I hardly remember the process. It just seems like we got here and somehow everything fell into place. Now we're almost done with our 3rd week already. I have some catching up to do on my blog, so here goes....

Happy Birthday, Sara!

This is quite late, but now that I'm back on blogger, I want to be sure to say Happy Birthday to Sara Marie Andrews! Charise hosted a "surprise" birthday party for her at the beginning of August when we were all still together. It was a fun time. She made a delicious cake, and then we played games, talked and laughed, and watched "Pride and Prejudice" - a perfect movie for a girl's night. Sara's actual birthday is August 30th and she turned 18 years old - officially an adult! This picture is from her graduation open house this spring. It's fun being your friend - you know how to make me laugh! Have a great fall and I'll see you at Christmas! Keep in touch! Miss you, girl!

We're Back...

Well, I just wrote a nice long post - and then I just deleted it. oops! Oh well - I always make my posts too long anyways. But I'm back here at Northland. Mom brought me up, and before she left we were able to spend some fun times together with Jenn and Jordan. If you read this email before tomorrow - please pray for her because she will be traveling in to the night, and was already very tired when she left. I'm all moved in to my new room, and have good roommates - for which I am very thankful. And Laura's in my room again! (for which I am most thankful!) But she won't get here till tomorrow. Dani is already here and she's right across the hall from us! But we are sad the Meg is down on first floor. Laura and Megan get here tomorrow, and then everything starts up! I don't know when I'll be on to blog again, but stay tuned! :)

Summer Blog

Well, I've been told to post about my new summer blog, or else no one can find it. So look under my links, and click on My Summer Spot - it's my temporary summer blog switch that will just have written updates because it's practically impossible to blog photos and such on this blog on our home computer...dial up...1998 computer...Granada, MN (j/k!)...Anyways, if you don't go there, hope you all have a fabulous summer, and I'll be back on this blog in the fall! (For the past two days, blogger has not been working for me to make the font and set up fun - I tried posting this yesterday, but just thought it was our computer and decided to wait for the library - guess not) Oh well, I'll check on it once in a while, and as soon as it lets me, I'll make this post funner looking like the others) ;)