TEAM USA!!!!!!

I'm sure you have all heard or seen by now the AMAZING US match against Algeria in the World Cup. I was lucky enough to catch a fair share of it because I was at the gym early and got to watch some of it (interspersed with Wimbledon of course). But it was also boring for me so I stayed with Wimbledon and got to watch one of my favorite players, Andy Roddick, WIN his match and advance to the next round!! That was actually really cool and I'm super glad I got to see him play :)


After his second round match with Frenchman Micheal Llodra

But the World Cup match was still 0-0 and not terribly exciting for me (not the biggest futbol fan...) so I left the gym, showered and went to Cafe 84 which is right across from the gym on campus to do my Quiet Time there. Well, they had the game on and there was only about 7 minutes left so I decided to watch it because, hey, it's Team USA. There were about 10 people there watching the game, one of whom was wearing a Landon Donovan jersey and was about to burst with every good or bad play we did. But you know what happened next. During injury time (which I found out what it was later) Landon Donovan scored the winning goal in the 92nd minute!!!



GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say I was screaming and clapping and everyone else was too and it was way fun to be able to watch it with some fans who were genuinely interested too!!

Basically Donovan is a stud and I may or may not name my first born son (or daughter) after him.....



and here are some amazing futbol fans from South Africa - I love the kid in the pic below, I can only hope that if God grants me children, they too will dress like crazy people for USA and USC :)





AND not only was the World Cup match awesome and amazing (first time we finished first in our group since 1930!!) but Wimbledon was going crAAAzy too!! In the first round on Tuesday a couple of unknowns, John Isner from the US and Nicolas Mahut from France played. I only hoped Isner would win because he is American. Well, win he did, but not in any fashion that anyone would have guessed. Their epic match went five sets, with the fifth set lasting 8 hours and 11 minutes, for a grand total of ELEVEN HOURS AND FIVE MINUTES!!! Longest match in tennis history - longer than all the time it took Serena Williams to advance through SIX ROUNDS last year!! It started Tuesday, then had to break because was getting too dark to play. They resumed play again on Wednesday, only to have to stop early again due to darkness. They finally finished on Thursday, with Isner pulling out the win and now everyone from here to China knows who he is! The final score was 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-6 (3), 70-68 - probably a score not likely ever to be seen again!


Isner is also a tiny 6'9'' so it was a long way for him to fall to the ground in happiness :)


Isner obviously happy to be done with the match, while Monsieur Mahut does not look happy at all...can't really blame the guy, he was prolly about to fall over

Sadly his talent was not to take him through the 2nd round because he lost today in straight sets to Thiemo de Bakker of the Netherlands. Well, that is understandable seeing as how his arm prolly should have fallen off during his match! He was behind schedule too because the match took so stinkin' long so instead of a 2 day reprieve he got less than 24 hours. He took an ice bath, massaged his arm and struggled to eat some pasta just to rejuvenate himself. Andy Roddick even brought him and his coach takeout Tuesday or Wednesday night - gotta love that guy :)

Hope you're having a great Friday and remember to root for Team USA as we play Ghana tomorrow at 11:30am!!!

Law and Order: SVU

Ok, so again it's been a long time since I've updated this, and I'm sorry, my schedule is going bonkers this summer. And I shan't speak about the USC sanctions, not yet at least. I talked about them a lot all this past weekend (not my choice, but the fact that I keep up with USC news makes people think I'm the expert to go to, which I kind of am...) and I explained again and again what the sanctions were and why we got them. I'm a little over-talked out about it. The only thing I'll say about it comes from the immortal words of Celine Dion - my heart will fight on.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering why I chose the title of "SVU" for this post, and if you weren't wondering before, well, by now you probably are b/c I just said it. Well, I finally watched an episode of "SVU" last night, the first time I've seen a new episode in a long time because we just hooked up our converter box recently so I went all last year and this year with no new "SVU" episodes. Frightening, I know, but somehow I got through it.

Although it got me thinking. Perhaps I like the show too much. Why would I ask this you might wonder? Well, about a month-ish ago a friend of mine went on a blind date. Naturally it was exciting and she told me when she'd probably get back to her place and I expected that I'd receive a text letting me know how it all went. She said she'd be done by 10pm. Well, 10pm came and went. As did 10:15...10:25...by 10:30 I was freaked out of my mind. I wanted to call her and make sure she was okay, because hey, you never know about guys you just met, they could be homicidal killers. But I didn't know if that would annoy her (or her possible strangler) so I thought about texting her to see if she was okay, but then again, how would I know it was she who texted me back? If she was indeed in danger of being killed, how easy would it be for the guy to calmly take her phone as she is tied up and simply text me back saying she's fine and would be back later?? Yes, this seriously went through my mind. After talking to my brother and another friend about my predicament, I resolved to text her and if she didn't respond, or let me know she was back then I'd call her again after 11pm. Well, thankfully I texted her and she texted me right back, and I knew it was her because of her style of texting - WHEW!!! bullet was dodged *there*.

But weirdly enough, when I told my siblings this, they all said that I watch "SVU" way, way, WAY too much if that was my thought process. I still say that I was just being a concerned citizen, looking out for the needs of others, and thinking through possible scenarios. What do you think?


In honor of the World Cup, here is Landon Donovan's ESPN commercial - gosh I love these things!!

Oops again...

Okay, I'm sorry, these days are going by faster than I would like!! Last night was our first summer Christian Challenge meeting and it was a small group with some staff and students going over the Sovereignty of God, and I think it went really well!! The rest of the schedule for the summer is as follows:

June 10: Prayer - the importance of it, the significance of what Jesus taught about it, patience with it

June 17: Service - Of all the kinds of people Jesus could have come to earth and He chose to come as a servant, and how important that is for each one of us

June 24: fun night

July 1: Worth of the Individual - Jesus talking to the woman at the well when in those days it was not cool for men to talk to women, esp. alone, the lepers that society shunned but Jesus loved, tax collectors, prostitutes, Jesus gave them all His time, didn't reject them or get freaked out at non-believers, also the disciples themselves, how they were "nobodies" to the world (fishermen, not the intellectual Pharisees) but He chose them anyways

July 8: Selection - how Jesus was continually looking for the One in the Many to invest His life in, multitudes (hundreds) --> several (70) --> 12 disciples --> 3 (John, James and Peter) --> 1 (John)

July 15: Called to live an upside-down way of life - how becoming like Jesus means the things you value are opposite of what the world/culture says to value and live for

July 22: Expect resistance - Jesus did not receive a welcoming parade in His hometown, He came to make war, not peace, and if you're truly going to follow Him, you can expect some people to not be over the moon about it

July 29: fun night

whew!! It should be a great summer so I'll let you know how it's going!

Hope you have a GREAT Friday and rest of your weekend!

I heart ESPN commercials, and this one is one of my favs :)

Oops, I blame the summer time...

So I am so sorry I have not written in a while, I blame summer and the absence of my normal schedule, but really the blame lies with me :) I just need to make a schedule and stick to it. I've actually slept in almost every day till about 8am or sometimes even later - wow. I don't know what time "sleeping in" is for you, but anything past 8am is like "woah now..." so that's been alternately nice, just to relax and sleep in, but also annoying because then my whole day seems to be a bit off and not as productive as I would like. As I said, I just need to go to bed earlier (not 1am...) and wake up earlier!

This past weekend was really fun, with things I was doing every day! Friday afternoon and evening I went to Costa Mesa to drop off some things for my boss because he is at Project Impact (that summer discipleship training program I've been blessed to do twice!). So I hung out there for a bit because I love that place (they're staying at Vanguard University) and I have SO MANY memories from there from 2 years ago when I was staff there :) I can't go over there without a gigantic smile on my face, just all the memories and people I fell in love with over there, just loverly...... :) here's a few pics for a flashback!


This is when we went to Little Ethiopia for a world prayer night, and the food was DELICIOUS!!


on our tour of Hollywood, and we were at a lookout point for the Hollywood sign, and this is a pic of everyone who wore sunglasses that day - oh yeah...


This was 4th of July, and while I was practicing my skateboarding skillz, they got hold of my camera and took OVER FIFTY pictures...all like this...it was pretty hilarious going through it later though!!

So that was Friday afternoon, and the students had not arrived yet, that came on Saturday, but it was all the leaders and about half of them are from USC! So then I left them and ventured over to Main Street in Huntington Beach to look at Huntington Surf & Sport and Jack's Surfboards because they were having a mondo sale and I just had to check it out, no really, I did! My mission was to find a long wetsuit and find out what size I am, which I DID so that was tres exciting!! Now all I need is to find one :)


This one could work...


...or I could get this one and really be subtle as I'm out on those waves :)

Then Saturday I wen to a Bachelorette party for one of my best friends from high school, Katelin, and it was a crAAAzy party let me tell you! We ate, made wedding dresses out of toilet paper, made Katelin stuff jumbo marsh mellows into her face if she got a question about her fiance wrong, and the other stuff we did, well, I can't really disclose that...it was fun though! I was a dork and forgot to bring my camera so I think Katelin is putting pictures up on her blog tomorrow and I'll snag some :)

Then Sunday was a great time at church and then over to Playa Del Rey to hang with my sister Heidi, brother Mark and some other friends of ours. It was good food and good company, so all in all delicious times!!

Whew! I think that was everything, oh, except for yesterday, when I had a mini-bbq with two friends of mine because one of them is house-sitting for mutual friends of ours, and I don't think he likes being alone all the time, so we had ribs and steak and garlic bread and bbq flavored chips and corn (well, they had corn, I hate the stuff) and I think that was all, oh, and watermelon too :) So it was a fun night!!

Hope your weekends were great and somewhat relaxing and tomorrow I'll let you know the schedule I came up with for summer Christian Challenge, so stay tuned :)



and here is the funny of the day: