I'm just really annoyed right now that I can't change the font or post a title for some weird reason.


So...pictures...=) Argh! Now I can't do it. Stupid thing. Maybe later.

So the three topics we learned about. Dr. M did the Kingdom of God, Dr. K did the life of Joseph, and Sid did the book of Hebrews. Dr. M's talks went way over my head by the end, but they were good at the beginning. Dr. K I understood as far as content goes, but a few times I did feel he was stretching biblical applications. And Sid was easy to understand, just a little...dry at times. So over all, I enjoyed Dr. K's the best.

The details I promised goes as follows. On Sunday, Bethany, Michelle, and I walked into town, which is about 1 mile from Shallowbrook and bought chocolate milk and visited a creepy antique store. It was very hot and sweaty. On Tuesday (I think) Linda drove Bethany and I back into town so we could visit the thrift store where they were having a 50% off sale on all Aeropostale stuff. So I got a shirt for $5 there and that was nice. On Wednesday night we had a wild and crazy keep away game in the shallow end of the pool. Guys against girls except for Michael and Jonathan who helped us out. It was pretty much just a game of get the ball, get mobbed, toss it wildly to the nearest person on your team. It was fun though. Earlier that night I was pretty burnt out from all the people around me so I sat by the pool and read my book and then went inside and played the piano for a little bit before going back out and getting pushed in the pool in my clothes. So I played the W&C game in my clothes, which was kind of annoying because I was wearing cotton shorts and every time I jumped out of the water, they would practically fall off, so I couldn't move around very exuberantly. I was too lazy to go upstairs and change; besides, I didn't have a towel and Max had to go get me one later anyway. How nice of him.

On Friday afternoon Steph, Meaghan, Josie, and I left Shallowbrook and went to Josie's house where we all crashed for an hour and half or so before we went to get on the bus to go to Altoona. Then came the 5 hour bus ride which was pretty uneventful aside from the animal crackers being thrown at me randomly. We got to the Ramada Inn where the Altoona conference was at about 8:30 or so and then we went to get something to eat even though no one was really that hungry and we were all exhausted. Then we went "home" and went to bed. The people in our hotel room were Josie, Bethany, and myself. That was it. Josie was "in charge" because she's the oldest by two weeks. There were no adults or chaperones near us because we're mature and responsible enough not to need them. (And I'm serious about this). The next day I was half asleep through all the meetings and lunchtime was very awkward. It pretty much consisted of this conversation:

"Abby, you and Davy should get married. *Insert anyone's name here*, don't you think Davy and Abby would make a cute couple?"

(This is Tonn saying this next part) "Wow, Abby, I've never noticed your eyes before. They're...piercing! I feel like you can read my mind! Augh!!...(five minutes later during a completely different conversation) Your eyes are so blue! They're...they're...PIERCING! I feel like you're looking into my soul!...(another 5 min) Stephanie, you have blue eyes too, but not like Abby's. Abby's are...(can you guess what he'll say?) Piercing! (good job)"

Very very very awkward.

So then on Sunday night we took the bus to a gym about half and hour away and played volleyball while some of the men played basketball and people swam and I ran around the track inside for a little bit. It was fun.


Later that night in Davy, Max, Andrew, and Drew's room, Liz, Jen, and Alley and I watched Batman Begins with Davy, Max, Andrew, and Michael. I only watched an hour and a half before I fizzled out. I was the mother though. Someone had to keep those kids under control. I scolded them for throwing food at each other (and me) and for fighting with each other ("Andrew, stop yelling at your sister!" Alley isn't really his sister). They thought it was amusing until I started drowning out the movie too much while telling them to behave. Then the barrage of food started. Actually, it was only about three animal crackers, but Max had been throwing things at me all week and it was starting to get a little annoying.


Then Sunday we took another 5 hour bus ride back to where we started, this one being a little more interesting because everyone was more tired. Tonn and I researched baptism in our Bibles and came up with interesting scriptures to promote issues of sprinkling, immersion, and infant baptism. If you want to know what we came up with, let me know. I don't know what to think about it now.

Liz, Davy, Stephanie and I then went back to Josie's house where we were spending the night and worked out arrangements to go to Bloomington to hang out with the rest of the people who were staying at Josie's cousins' house. We ended up with Stephanie driving Josie's older brother Caleb's 5-seater car to young Dr. M's house to pick up his daughter Paige to take her with us. Their house is really nice. Really really nice. Think multimillion dollar home out here. Yeah. So they let Stephanie drive their Yukon Denali, Ted's only caution being as he handed her the key, "Don't go over 90". It was a really nice car, not suprising after their house. Oh, the house has an indoor pool with it's own kitchen (which is nicer then our house's kitchen) and two bathrooms and a nice grill/BBQ thing. Wow.

So we drove to Bloomington, had pizza that was almost in Normal (we took a picture with the city limit sign for Normal) and then walked to ice cream in the ghetto part of town. Then we went back to the Cousins' house and played a couple games and then tried to go home. Mrs. Cousin pointed us onto the wrong freeway so we went half an hour in the wrong direction. So it ended up taking us an hour and a half to go what is usually a half hour drive. We dropped Paige off and squeezed back into Caleb's car (we added Drew) and drove the 5 mins back to Josie's house at 1:30 in the morning about. Then we slept, got up, ate, left, got delayed in Denver, and finally got into ONT at 11 at night.

Phew.

It was a lot of fun and I'll try to put pics up later. Sorry about the ridiculously long post.