Thanksgiving

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever"-Ps 107:1

This has been another exorbitant year. I spent the majority of my time in San Antonio and I am thankful for the time I had there. I'm thankful for the opportunity to share a home with my best friend and thankful for all of the new faces I met and new friendships that were made. I am thankful for my family's health and for my own and for surviving the H1N1 flu virus. For a while I thought I wasn't going to make it. I am thankful for my family and for the favorable circumstances that allowed me to have lived close to my brother, his wife, and my beautiful niece for the majority of this year. I am thankful for healing and for another year of moving forward; pressing on toward the goal. I am thankful for friends and loved ones that have encouraged me, prayed for me, spent time with me, laughed with me, thought of me, and loved me. I am thankful for my dog Kona, my car that is finally back up and running (thanks to my big brother!), having a roof over my head, and a job that provides; a God that provides. I am thankful for all of those that our paths have crossed and made my life the richer, like Misti for her ceaseless friendship and advice, the Metcalf's for their sincere love and friendship, Shaye Miller who was my first role model, all of my hookers, the Hot Bod Pod,old co-workers, new friends, old friends, my brothers and their wives, my amazing and very large family, and most of all for the unfailing love of our Heavenly Father.
May you be blessed today and always!-L

Happy Birthday Zinnia Pearl!

Zinnia Pearl is not so little anymore. She's a big one year old! We had her birthday party this weekend and she was so adorable opening presents and smiling with her sweet little three toothed grin. She's walking all over the place and even saying a few words too. She did such a great job opening presents and loved her pretty pink birthday cake.





Her very first Build-a-bear from Aunt Linzie



New ride from Grandma Bunny







Cake time!!



Yum Yum!


Clean up time

Zinnia Pearl is almost 1

Turning 1 next month...



Where did the time go?

McGuyver to the Rescue!

My job has its busy moments. It has its junctures of impulse and adrenaline, but most days are calm and quiet with only the simple action of assisting someone who has locked their selves out of the room. I am very grateful for those days. The days I don't have to respond to a fire alarm or a student who is unconscious. Today I responded to a very unusual call. The complainant advised that there were baby ducks in the fountain and unable to get out. Sure enough, when I got to the fountain there were 12 baby ducks all swimming around in the fountain. The cement step leading out of the fountain was about 6 inches from the top water and the poor little ducklings were unable to get out. Now, I am no animal buff, but growing up we had several animals that abandoned their young after having had human contact. I decided the best thing to do was to make some sort of ramp for the ducks to walk up. I searched around campus and finally found a 2x4 that was long enough to reach the water and the first step of cement and it worked! The ducks got the hang of it instantly and helped one another waddle up the ramp and onto dry land! Who knew ducks could be so smart? Unfortunately three little ducklings didn't pay attention to their brothers and sisters and didn't use the ramp to escape. Instead they swam around the fountain darting under water and swimming until they had no breath left. I found a shovel and took off my shoes and socks and climbed in the "recycled water" fountain to scoop the ducks out and place them on dry land. I like to think that they're all safe and sound now and that all of the little ducklings found their Mom and are nestled safely under her wing tonight. They sure were cute little things. As for me, I'll add duck rescuing to my resume tonight.

1/2 Marathon

I took the plunge! A few weeks ago two of my good friends and I were discussing training for a 1/2 marathon. They completed their registration earlier this week and today I did the deed too. It's official. I am running in the 2009 San Antonio Rock'n Roll 1/2 Marathon.
The race is in November and the vigorous training starts now! I spent the day gearing up with some new running shorts and tennis shoes for extra motivation. Say an extra prayer for me this week. I'm sure training this week will have me pretty sore!

My Mimi

Today marks one year of the death of my grandmother Clawson. Some called her Betty, Mom, and Betty Blue, I called her Mimi. She battled many illnesses in her life time and fought a vicious battle of cancer in her later years.
Today I'll share one of my most treasured memories with my Mimi.
I must have been in the 4th or 5th grade. It was the first year my family made what has since become a yearly trip down the Rio Grande River. I was much to young at the time to make the 83 mile paddle, so during spring break I stayed with my Mimi and Grandy in Austin, Texas. At the time Mimi worked for the Texas School for the Deaf and during my week long stay I would tag along with her and "help" her in her office. I spent the days playing on the playground outside, tagging along with the custodian Joyce, who was deaf, or helped Mimi do "important" stuff in her office. She would give me a few quarters to get a snack out of the vending machine across her office and she'd also pack fun lunches for the two of us too. They spoiled me good by taking me to eat Chinese food (which at the time was my favorite!) and also my very first trip to Taco Cabana. Yum! I remember the two of them telling me how the food used to come down in a little shoot in the drive through. Is that true or am I making stuff up now? During the week we stayed at their house in town where I remember climbing into bed every morning between my Mimi and Grandy to watch cartoons. This was SUPER special as I did not have cable tv growing up, not to mention climbing in between the two of them. On Saturday morning we woke up early and went garage sale shopping. One of my Mimi (and Grandy's) favorite Saturday morning activities. Mimi loved going to garage sales and in true Mimi fashion would pick up most everything to inspect. Some days we would be going to garage sales well into the afternoon. She loved jewelry and anything with butterflies on it.
After the garage sale festivities we headed out to their weekend house in La Grange, Texas. They had a farm house on a few acres with a fabulous pond and lots of land to run and play on. After dinner one night Mimi got her mandolin and Grandy his guitar and entertained me with a few songs. My favorite was Skip to my Lu, which was very special to me as my Mimi always called me LuLu or Lu. In fact, for a few years growing up I thought that they had written that song just for me. I later found out while singing the song in school that unfortunately it was a very popular song that most of the world knew. On Sunday we went fishing in the pond. While Grandy was off searching for a big fat yellow grasshopper to put on my lure I was impatiently walking along the bridge over the pond dragging my bare hook in the water. I remember walking back and forth singing to myself (which I did often) and all of the sudden felt a little tug on my line. I quickly stopped singing and tugged back to reel in a small little perch. Who needs grasshoppers?
Unfortunately the week came to a close and my family picked me up after their week long excursion down the Rio Grande River, but my memories of that week will forever be printed on my heart. A weekend well spent with Mimi and Grandy.




"Till we meet, till we meet
Till we meet at Jesus' feet
Till we meet, till we meet
God be with you till we meet again"

Chuckle Chuckle

This March marks the 6th month I've been in San Antonio. Time sure does fly when you're.... working a lot!! It has been a fun ride so far. For the most part I like our little apartment, it's close to work, and I don't want to slit my wrists going to work everyday. (yet)I've met some great friends here too. It's been fun to meet new faces and get to know people from all parts of the world.
One of my favorite people I've collected here so far is Erica. She also works at Trinity and so far we've had many great memories. My roommate was out of town this weekend for Spring Break, so I asked Erica if she would like to go to church with me this morning. Now neither of us have found a church home yet and have been playing the church hopping game for a while. We both decided it'd be fun to try a new place that neither of us had been to. Thanks to google we found a baptist church up the road that seemed to have an active young adults program.
Erica, who grew up Catholic, was a little anxious about attending bible class. I assured her it would be fun and a prime opportunity for us both to make some new friends. Upon arriving at this colossal house of God, we managed to find the Information desk to ask directions to the young adults class. The red cheeked Santa Claus looking man with the lanyard around his neck holding his name tag in place cheerfully agreed to escort us to our class. There was a couple following this jubilant fellow as well. Over the river and through the woods we finally arrived at our class room and awkwardly took our seat as all of the eyes began to sink into my skin from the faithful attendees of this class. The chairs were positioned in a semicircle and we immediately began tossing our names across the room and greeting one another. One of the ladies brought me a visitors card to fill out along with a pen. I put my name in the proper blank and then realized something. There was another blank for "Spouse". I quickly looked around the arch of chairs only to notice guy, girl, guy, girl, wedding band, wedding band, wedding band....oh NO!!!!!!
I looked at Erica and she immediately realized the same thing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bulletin board. I turned to make out the title of the bulletin and it read "Couple's Class". I wanted to run out of the class room. Erica even asked if we could just grab our things and run. My face grew red like that stupid Santa Claus man that brought us here. What was he thinking?! Maybe he drank too much eggnog before service. We decided we'd ask for another card and clarify that we were NOT together.
It turns out that the discussion in the class itself was very enjoyable, apart from it being completely mortifying. We were invited to join them the following Sunday and it became apparent to me how willing they were to accept anyone. That is to say that my friend Erica and I were infact "together"--which we WEREN'T. I guess it was just refreshing to see Christians loving like Christ loved, if that makes sense. Needless to say, Erica and I bolted the first chance we could trying not to make eye contact with anyone...unless it was that silly red faced man and then I might have a few things to say with my fist. Oh, okay maybe I'm all talk!

Skipper and the Hog

I woke up early one day last week to a text message my oldest brother in New Mexico had sent me. It read "Dad hit a hog on his motorcycle last night. He's out of the hospital now and okay. Just broke some ribs and is skinned up". I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and read it again. My Dad? I thought to myself. My Dad doesn't have a motorcycle.

I immediately called my Dad to verify this information. He answered and I could tell in his voice that it was indeed true. He told me in his shaky voice how it had happened as best he could with being dosed up on pain killers and having suffered a concussion. He explained that he was driving back from Sidney and hit the hog. It was dark and knowing my Dad I'm sure he was having a hard time seeing. He was not wearing a helmet, which I made sure he would now and forever more.
Every part of me wanted to jump in the car and drive up to see him. My Dad is one tough dude, and I was afraid he was trying to put on a brave face for his little girl. With my new job I was unable to just jump in the car and go, but thankfully was able to get a picture of Dad so that my heart could rest easy...somewhat at least. The first picture I recieved was of him in the hospital before they cleaned him up from all of the road rash and it's a hard picture to look at, so I'm posting the after shot.
Keep Daddy in your prayers. He ended up breaking 4 ribs and has severe damage to his ankle and knee. Not to mention multiple deep gashes and lots of road rash.



Only in Texas would this happen AND you'd go back to take a picture of it.

Mace in ya face

It truly was the worst feeling ever. I had no idea that a person had feeling on the backside of their eyeballs. It was 45 minutes of excruciating pain. It felt like someone had dumped a pound of sand in my eyeball, stabbed them with 10,000 knives, and then set them on fire all at the same time. All the while I was trying to squeeze my butt cheeks together to prevent another ring of fire and taking deep breathes of extremely spicy air so that I would not vomit my McDonald's chicken nuggets I had eaten for lunch.

As part of taking on this new job I had to be sprayed with OC Spray. OC Spray is the law enforcement issued form of pepper spray. Oleoresin Capsicum is a chemical compound that irritates the eyes to cause tears, pain, and temporary blindness.The active ingredient in OC Spray is capsaicin, which is a chemical derived from the fruit of plants in the Capsicum genus, including chilis.

They first lined me up outside with my hands stretched away from my body, eyes shut tight, and mouth closed. I was sprayed from less than 3 feet away with a bright orange colored stream right to the eyes. I then had to open my eyes and let the chemical sink into my eyes for a few seconds. It took less than a second for me to feel the pain. I was then allowed to begin flushing my eyes with water and immediately dunked my head into an awaiting tub of water. It took me almost 30 minutes of splashing water in my eyes non-stop as fast as I could before I could stop without feeling like I would vomit or die. I remember even contemplating ways that I might could make myself pass out so that I could escape the pain. It took several hours to regain full vision and even when I went to bed that night it felt like I still had huge rocks in my eyes. Every time I blinked I could feel little pockets of burning gunk in the deep crevasses of my eye balls.
I don't recommend this to anyone. It was truly the worst pain I could have imagined and I was definitely not prepared for how bad it actually was.
Thanks to Lee I was able to get a few shots of this horrendous experience.

Officer Bessent

From waitressing to ice cream truck driving, cutting flowers to serving coffee, I am here to tell you I am now a Patrol Officer!
As many of you know I am in terrible debt from a semester unpaid at Abilene Christian University. They are holding my transcript until the amount is paid in full and as a result, I am unable to attend any University and receive financial aid. Don't worry, folks. I found the loop hole!!
I found that if you are an employee of a University classes are free! So, I looked online to see what jobs Trinity University had to offer. At the time they only had one job posted, and that was for a clerical position in the Security department. I quickly applied and had an interview later that week. Unfortunately, I did not get the job and continued to work my waitressing job. A few weeks later I got a phone call from Trinity's Security Department telling me that they had another position available that they felt I was "more qualified for". I quickly agreed to meet for a second interview and made an appointment later that afternoon. In the interview they told me of the new opening which was for a Patrol Officer position. How in the world was I more qualified for that?!! After discussing the pay and the benefits I took the job and am now a Patrol Officer!
I'm going on week 4 of training. It's been crazy so far. I never would have thought I'd find myself in the place I am today. Life is funny. I wear a badge and a duty belt loaded with cool weapons to work.