Hey all!!! Well I am still alive and kicking. I hope that every one is doing well and I miss all of you heaps!

Camp is going well and I have stayed really busy. It has rained almost every day since I have been here but it is fun anyway! I am going on a trip at the beginning of next week. We are going whale watching which will be lots of fun. We are going to Portsmouth... don't ask me where that is! I am going with the 12 year olds which promises lots of drama!!!

Sorry this is so short but I don't have much time to post. I love everybody and miss y'all.

Lately

Wow...so much has happened since I last posted! The internet at camp is down so this is the first time I have been able to a computer.

D.C. was amazing!!! We went and saw all of the monuments and the Holocaust museum. We had such a blast. The first day we searched everywhere for a Starbucks all day and couldn't find one that was open. When we were on our way down the escalator to the Metro, I saw one out of the corner of my eye and turned around and ran back up to reach the ever coveted destination. I made it safely to the top but, unfortunately, Brekken did not fair as well. She tripped on the last three steps and fell! I laughed so hard I almost fell over. All that trouble and the Starbucks had been closed for hours.

We got to camp Tuesday evening. I got my cabin... the 15 year olds... and we have had sooo much fun!!! They are crazy and loud and A-mazing! I have had a lot of fun but I have missed all of y'all very much! If you have time please e-mail me your address so that I can write you (nataliessutton@yahoo.com)!

Please keep me in your prayers!

Weekend Troubles

We made it to D.C. in one piece (including the luggage carrier)!

On Thursday I left for Madison where I was supposed to stay the night and then head on to Brekken's house on Friday. I didn't get all of my stuff done in Washington so after I completed everything that I had to do in Athens I went to Madison to see Mel. That night she decided to come back with me to Washington to help me get my stuff done and to hang out!

When we got to Washington we went to Huddle House to grab some coffee. I new that I had not yet gotten the luggage carrier or finished up with a few other things. When we sat down I realized that my debit card was still in the Huddle House safe where it had been for a week! How could I have forgotten? Anyway... they can't open the safe at night due to security issues so they asked me to come back the next day. I was just excited that I had remembered and not gone off to camp without my card!!! Soon after that I realized that I had also forgotten to get Morgan's car parts which I was supposed to do the weekend before. Then I realized that I had also forgotten to get the tennis racket that I will be teaching with all summer from the Griggs. Ahhh!!!

So my short list of To Do items turned into a long list and it is a good thing that I went back to Washington and remembered all of that stuff! The next morning, Friday, I completed my list successfully and headed out of Washington for the second time.

We left this morning at 6:20AM for Washington D.C. and we got here at 4:00PM. Brekken's family asked us if we wanted to go to a baseball game with them but we opted out because we are all so tired!!!

To bed early for us tonight so we will be ready to go downtown tomorrow. I am told that the Spy Museum is the "dorky" place to go so I know I will have a blast!!!

Leaving

Tomorrow morning I will be leaving Washington at 9:30am. It is 12:24am right now and I have not packed my car, cleaned Grandma's house or tied down the luggage holder on top of my car.

The luggage holder thingy (not quite sure what it is called) is hanging in the barn right now. I am still not sure how I am going to get it down by myself but I am sure that I will figure it out! I also have to figure out how to get it securely strapped to the top of my car so that it will stay there until I can get to New Hampshire.

Wow... I can just see it now... we are driving along in the middle of Virginia when clothes and shoes go flying off the the top of my car! We stare on in a horror stricken state, not knowing what to do, as half of the much needed necessities for the summer are sprawled across the highway. Coming soon in a future blog!!!

Well I am going to go now to get some of these things done (hopefully). Please keep me in your prayers because I definitely need them!

Alone

When you are all alone you realize the importance of the people you care about!!! I take my friends and family for granted most of the time. God has placed people in my life that I would not change for the world! On the other hand, I think that God puts us in positions where we are alone to not only make us appreciate loved ones, but also to make us rely on Him completely!

When I don't have people around I don't have the option of finding someone to confide in...I go straight to God. I think that it is God's way of reminding us that we should always seek Him first and that He places people in our lives so that He can speak through them. When we start relying on actual people instead of what God has for us through them...that is where we go wrong.

Being a people person myself, this is very hard for me sometimes. The enemy just wants to swoop in and make me feel deserted! Sometimes I let him and that is wrong. I pray that I allow God to make me a stronger person in this area.

SCUBA cont...

This weekend was the last weekend to complete or dive certification! We started on Saturday with two dives and some quizzes. At the beginning of the day I set a goal to make our dive instructor (Mr. Man) laugh out loud 15 times. Now I took this task upon myself with the utmost seriousness. I had set a goal and I was going to make it!

Needless to say, at the end of the second dive I made him laugh for the fifteenth time. As I screamed, did a jig in the water, and threw myself backwards with sheer joy... he told me I was crazy but definitely continued laughing. After I calmed down (10 minutes later) I explained to him why I was so elated. He laughed some more... boy am I good!!!

Somewhere, though out the day on Saturday I managed to bust a blood vessel in my eyelid. When I asked Mr. Man about it today, he told me he had never heard of such a thing happening while diving but it was kinda crazy. The only thing that I could think of was that I must have done it while trying to equalize my ears. I have been pinching as much as possible and then just blowing really hard, hoping to make my ears pop. There was a consistent screaming in both ears every attempt that I made and it hurt. So naturally I assume that the blood vessel has something to do with that. My eyelid is now a pretty shade of purple and I have a lump that you can feel underneath the skin which used to be a blood vessel and is now two little pieces of useless tubing floating around just beneath the skin.

We finished up our last two dives today with success!!! We had a blast and mom and I are now certified divers!

I will definitely miss Mr. Man... he was a great instructor and is an awesome man. He also photographs weddings so I told him that if I ever get married I will definitely give him a call. Mr. Tyler said that Mr. Man might be dead by then but I am choosing to ignore that remark!!!

SCUBA

Last weekend was amazing!!! I have wanted to get certified to dive for almost seven years and I am now in the process of doing so. Last Saturday was the first time that I breathed under water and it was rugged!

We started the class by doing a lot of classwork. We had to listen to lessons and then get tested on them to make sure that we understand important things like not to die while diving! That afternoon we went to Doug's pool to have our first water session. Of course, I am setting up my gear and feeling totally cool when something goes wrong...it's inevitable!

I went to open my tank so that I could breathe the air so perfectly contained inside when I realized that there was no air in my tank at all. I yelled "Mr. Man!!!" (thats what I call the dive instructor) and he came over to help out. He was horrified that my tank had no air and apologized profusely. No big deal though... we just went in two groups and I used Morgan's tank when it came time. The first day went really well though and we were on our way to getting certified!!!

The only major problem that I have is that I can't equalize my ears...big problem in diving. The reason is that I can't pinch my nose because of the nose ring. I am trying to figure out a way to plug my nostrils through my mask from the bottom without actually pinching...it's not working very well!!!

The next day, Sunday, was our second day of water exercises! I had air this time!!! It was really hot outside so Morgs and I went ahead and jumped into the water. Mr. Man promptly told us that students aren't allowed in the water before him...he let us stay! Then he told us that we needed to swim the length of the pool 5 times so that he could see that we could swim well. As Morgs took off, I looked at Mr. Man and accused him of telling us to swim so that we would burn some energy and calm down (apparently we were a little hyper). Mr. Man slowly smiled and the busted out laughing as he told me I was a "smart one!"

Morgs and I then made up our own series of hand signals. Every time I went under the water I would end up smiling and letting a torrent of water come rushing into my mask. Smile and clear, smile and clear, smile and clear...etc. So we made up hand signals in the hopes that we could trick our brains into making our hands smile and laugh for us!

The diving session went great except that toward the end I was shaking violently from being so cold and Mr. Man cut the session a little short because I was chattering so hard and turning blue. It took me awhile to warm back up!

At the end Mr. Man told Morgs and I that he usually splits friends up concerning dive partners but we were just way too entertaining!!!

My Travels

So I have not told y'all about trip from Texas to Georgia with the Tampa extension. I will start from the beginning.

Mom and I pulled out around 9 am on Thursday morning expecting to be in Georgia at 10 pm the same night. We moved on our way fairly quickly and were excited to be on our way. Two hours later, mom was driving as we feel a shudder and a slight bang coming fron the trailer that we were pulling. We were in the far left lane when the trailer tire blew so mom went careening across three lanes of traffic to end up on the right shoulder. Great way to start off the trip!

We got out all of the equipment to change a tire and settled down to our task hoping that it would go smoothly and quickly. No such luck! Neither mom nor I could even budge a single lug nut. What to do? We called Jimmy. As dad and Jimmy were trying to figure out what to do mom and I took another shot at the lug nuts. We found that if I pulled and she pushed that we could do it together. We were on our way to success. Then my jack would only lift the trailer a little because my car sits lower than the trailer does. We pulled off the old tire and tried to put the new one on. It went on just fine but the lug nut holes (don't know what they are called) did not line up with the tire because the trailer wasn't lifted high enough. First I tried standing on the opposite side of the trailer to lift it...it did not work! Then mom went to stand on the opposite side and the outcome was the same. Next we tried lifting the same side of the trailer but because we both couldnt lift at the same time and neither of us could do it by ourselves we were facing the horrible face of defeat.

Mom decided that we should unhook the trailer to get a little more lift by setting down the front of the trailer. We couldnt find a knife to cut the zip tie off of the latch. As we were about to go insane, a nice man in a big truck walked around the corner of my car and scared me so bad I almost...well I will spare you the details!!! He asked if we needed any help and I very quickly in a crisp voice said yes. It was almost a reflex action instead of a grateful oh yes thank you so much! I was just so unnerved by his quick appearance that I didnt have time to think. Within 10 minutes the tire was on and we were on our way.

We decided to go ahead and stop to have the other tire put on because they were the same age and condition and we did not want to go through that again. By this time we were already over an hour behind. Then one of the straps holding the hovercraft down snapped so we had to stop and buy a new one.

We were fianlly on the road again, hoping that nothing else would go wrong. Thirty minutes down the road we hit a HUGE storm. The rain was coming down so hard I could not even see the car in front of me unless he hit the brakes. We pulled over underneath a bridge because mom thought that the hover had slipped to one side. Mom was wearing jeans and I was wearing boxers so it was logical that I go and check because I would dry quicker. By the time I got back into the car, even with the overhang, I was soaked through and through. The hover was stable enough to move on. We went to pull onto the road again when a man in a truck, without his lights on so we couldnt see him, almost killed us as we tried to get on the highway.

On we went on our travel through Oz when we had to stop a little later to lift the hover back into its designated spot on the trailer. We decided not to stop for dinner and to keep driving because it was so late. Mom hit another terrible storm in Atlanta and then we were home, safe and sound...at 3:45AM on Friday!!!!!!!!!!
At around 10 on Thursday night, Morgan called me and asked me if I wanted to ride the final leg of the hovercrafts trip with Doug down to Tampa, Florida. Sure, why not!!!

So when we got here at 3:45 I took a shower, read a newspaper and was off again with the hover and Doug on an 8 hour drive to Tampa. Mind you, I did not sleep at all that night or all the day while Doug and I drove. The trip down was, thankfully, uneventful! As we got closer, the inevitable meeting with the Russian who bought the hover was approaching. We discussed the man thoroughly and I had even decided what he looked like. We met him a few blocks from his shop to follow him in. It looked just like a chop shop from the movies I swear!!!
The man started to try to unload the hover when Doug very calmy said "hey buddy...I am going to need to see the money first!" Good idea!!! We unloaded and it was actually very uneventful as well. On the way there we had decided that we were going to find a beach and go swimming even if it meant that we had to stay in disgusting, salty water for the rest of the day. First, we stooped to eat though. I went into Ruby Tuesdays in yet another pair of boxers and a t-shirt (basically my pajamas) and ate dinner! The closest beach was 30 minutes in the wrong direction...we skipped the swimming.

Doug drove a thousand miles per hour the whole way so naturally we had to have a police scare. The cop pulled out to follow us but, we had to get gas anyway, we pulled off fully expecting him to follow and went to the nearest gas station. The cop continued on and pulled somebody else over...sigh of relief!!!!
We got back at 12:00am and I promptly went to sleep. By the time we got back, both of us had a sore throat because we had talked from 6am to 12am. Did I mention the he is hysterical so we did a lot of laughing as well!!!

Well that concludes the traveling horrors and later I will let you know about the SCUBA adventures!!!

Misconceptions

Pertaining to one of my previous posts I am going to address some misconceptions from all of the people that posted comments! I posted about the implications that dating can have on one's life and how we should learn from the Christian adults around us on the subject. I never said that dating was wrong!!!!!!!!! I said that dating AROUND and sexual interaction is not portrayed in the Bible as God's plan for our lives.

Yes, they did sell their children so to speak. I did not advocate courting at all or even address not dating at all! What I said was that dating everyone that you could find before you are serious about settling down and listening to God's plan for your life should not happen. We always say "but if I don't date how will I find my spouse?" The truth, when we say that we are saying that God is not big enough to tell us when the right man or woman comes along. Instead we take it into our own hands and try to run our lives instead of allowing God to use us in the way that He desires.

I have never said that I would not date. My parents have never said that I can't date. Even so, my sisters made a personal choice to court. The implication of courting is completely off from what it really is or can be. The main ideal in courting is to put God at the center of the relationship. My sisters chose not to put themselves in a position where something physical could happen. This is not saying that we tied them up and kept them at opposites of the room at all times! They just didn't go places for long periods of time alone. We all have emotions and I am sure that everyone has done something that they wouldnt have done normally because of high emotions.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

Mom and I are leaving in 2.5 seconds but I thought that I would post something really fast since I have been neglecting this lately! We have a 15 hour drive ahead of us! Mom just came in and said lets go so I will post for real later.