A Horizon High School Play, A Little Sister, and A Crazy Last 2 Months November 21, 2008

So I know that at this point no one will actually read this because it has been so long since I have blogged, but I figure what the hey lets give this blogging thing a try again and see if I can actually be consistent this time.

It is because of my little sister’s play that I feel the need to blog again. Elise is a senior at Horizon High School and last night and tonight (go if you don’t have any plans) they are doing the play “A Christmas Carol”. See up to this point I have sorta forgotten that the Holidays are coming soon. It is so easy to get wrapped up in life that you just let it roll on by and never really take the time to refelect on what has actually happened. Leave it to Mr. Scruge through is “bah humbugs” to show you how important it is to take a little time to look at what has happened in your life and realize that sometimes you just need to say thanks for the blessings you have… especially when Thanksgiving is less than a week away. Here are a few things I have reflected on in the past few months:

• Trip to the orphanage “Home of Refuge” in Yuma, Venezuela. What an amazing trip. These kids been through more than I could ever imagine, yet the whole time I was there I could feel God working. Joy is the best way to describe this place. A joy that can only come from the Lord. Even with the passing of their beloved caretaker Nancy this past month, Rosa (Tony her husband runs the orphanage as well as another on in Hondorous) reminded us of our Fathers great love and the way he provides what we need. It is hard not to realize how blessed you truly are after visiting a place like the Home of Refuge. A part of my heart wil always be with the kids there. Please continue to pray for them when you think of it.
• Working at Starbucks. In a wierd way I am very thankful for my time at Starbucks. I was able to develop some pretty cool relationships and got a lot of free coffee. : ) Coming back from Venezuela and returning to Starbucks was a very tough transition for me, but God used it to show me how to fully rely on him and trust in his plans instead of my own and God’s plans were so much better than mine!
• GOALS, Inc. I have started a new job working at GOALS, Inc. We work with at-risk youth in the school discrict. I am specfically working as a program lead for the after school component with the 4th and 5th graders. They are incredible kids. For the first time in my life I love to go to work everyday. I work with a great staff and we all have the same goal to just be there for these kids when so many other people haven’t been. I think that I am coming to GOALS, Inc. at a time when God is going to launch them somewhere cool and I am so excited to be apart of that!
• I met a boy and a pretty amazing boy at that. Enough said there, those of you who have met him know he is pretty cool. I am excited what will happen here too! : )

Bottom line is when I graduated in May I had this idea of what my life would look like. Boy was I wrong, but I am so glad I was. Many of us probably know Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future”. and I have seen this verse play out in my life time and time again, but sometimes I forget to keep reading past verse 11 to verse 12 which I think is sometimes even more encouraging than verse 11. It says, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen”. I think that is amazing! God not only has amazing plans for our lives that our so beyound our understanding, but he also says that we can call on him and he will listen. So sometimes we miss what God is doing, but he never leaves our side. Sometimes we totally get what God is doing and he still has never left our side. Anytime good or bad, we can call on our Lord and he will listen to our what we have to say. I am thankful for that! I am thankful for the way God has worked in my life! Don’t forget what God is doing in your life even if you may not fully understand it because God knows and he wants you to call on him because he is always listening!

Finally a Day Off– They Never Go as You Plan January 21, 2008

So today is MLK Jr. Day which is very exciting to me because not only is it a day to remember an amazing figure of our history, but it also means I do not have school or work. I have been looking forward to this day because  it meant that I could finally sleep in. Last night as I went to bed I was thrilled I did not have to set an alarm of any kind and could just sleep.  I visioned myself pretty much wasting most the morning catching some z’s. What a wonderful day!

Well, it is about 8:30am right now and I am wide awake. I know you’re thinking 8:30 isn’t too early and I would agree with that, but I have been awake since about 7:00am. No matter how much I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to fall back to sleep I couldn’t do it. I know that I am tired, I went to bed well after midnight last night, but it doesn’t matter, I cannot fall back to sleep. I hate it. There was a time when I could sleep to noon with no problem. Now I can barely make myself sleep past 7:00am, it just really isn’t fair. I suppose 7am is sorta like sleeping in because when I work early I get up around 3:30am, but still it just doesn’t cut it for me. I mean come on the sun as only been about for about an hour at 7:00am,  it seems like I should get to sleep at least 2 hours past the time the sun gets up.

So I guess it is official… I really am a morning person. Some of you may think this is a good thing, but I not so much. I have always been somewhat impressed with  my lazy, sleeping in habits. But they cease to exist now. If I am not in bed by 9pm at the latest I am incredibly tired and I can’t sleep past 7 the next morning. Can you say grandma? But the sad thing is even my grandma can party late into the night with the best of them and sleep in the next day. What is the deal? I guess, just call me grandma Robbin, I’ll go out and buy some more sweaters to make it official.

Parking delima and Cracker Barrel is Selfish August 31, 2007

Okay, so if I haven’t established already I am a student down at Metro State College. I should be done in May with a communication degree! Woo Hoo! I think the thing that frustrates me most about being a student at metro is paying for parking. I mean come on, I pay enough to go to school there, don’t you think you could cut students a break and give us free parking. In fact this year they raised all the parking prices. There is one lot that is $1.75, but only has about 25 spaces in it so it fills up pretty fast and the cheapest after that is $3. I think that is a little ridiculous. I have class 4 times a week so I am going to at least spend about $12 a week on parking. That is about $50 a month. To me it feels like a wast of money.

 My solution to not wanting to pay is riding the bus. I really actually enjoy the bus ride and it so nice to sit back and let the bus drive deal with the traffic as I read my text book or listen to my i-pod. However, lately riding the bus hasn’t been as easy as it once was. I catch the 120x at the park-n-ride on 120th & Huron. This semester my classes are later in the day so by the time I get to the parking lot all the parking spaces are full. There was a time when you could park along the curb, but they have put up fire lane signs so you are no longer aloud to park there. The solution to this was to park in the Cracker Barrel parking lot that is next to the RTD parking lot. Well apparently Cracker Barrel does not like that because they too have put up no RTD parking signs.

I do understand the reasoning for the signs and it really was never that big of deal until last Wed. I needed to catch the 10:43 bus to make it down to campus for my 11:30 class. I arrived to the park-n-ride parking lot at 10:20 knowing that I would have to drive around to find a spot. I drove around the whole parking lot and there was not one single spot open. Frustrated and a little flustered because my bus had arrived and it was almost 10:43 I zoomed over to the Cracker Barrel parking lot to see if there might be somewhere to park. I decided to risk it and park along the curb next to the Craker Barrel parking lot (I know that isn’t bright thinking now, I wanted free parking so bad I risked getting a $50 ticket instead of paying $3 to park down town) Well as I was leaving my car, Cracker Barrel Manager comes out and says, “Excuse me”

“Yes”, I said.

“Are you going to take the bus”?

“Yes”.

“Well then I’m sorry, but you can’t park there”.

“okay I said sorry about that, I will move my car”.

Of course by this time I had missed the bus and only had a little over a half hour to get to my class and I had to drive down to campus. On my way I realized that I didn’t have any cash therefore no money for parking. I pulled over to the side of the road and emptied out all of my change from my car, trunk, purse, and back pack. Miraculously I did find $3 worth of change, but $.75 of it was in pennies. The parking attended wasn’t too thrilled with all the change she had to count.

I write all of this to tell you that I am a little frustrated with the seflishness of Cracker Barrel. See they have a very big parking lot and lets face it, are they really going to have that many people come to eat? No. They can spare a few spaces for the overflow of the RTD parking lot. I mean come on work with us students here. We are trying to better ourselves, so we can better the world and you won’t even let us use a parking space?

I know that I may sound a little ridiculous in this rant, but the fact of the matter is paying for parking is annoying, but sometimes you just have to deal with it. I have decided to deal with it by sharing this with all of you, but in the end sometimes I still have to suck it up and pay. Life is just tough sometimes. But hey at least when I need to I can usually afford to pay to park my car and I have a car to park. See it is when I realize things like that, that this rant really seems silly. But it does feel good to get it all out there sometimes. : )