Hi, everybody who still hangs on to the hope of me writing again. It's been a really long time...and a lot has happened. Sometime I should write a post to tell of my wondrous adventures in the past...7...months. Wow that's embarrassing. But today I wanted to tell you about something I've been thinking about.

I was reading through the Psalms recently. I was moving through the passages that king David wrote. And I noticed a pattern. Maybe I wouldn't have paid attention to it if I hadn't been experiencing the same pattern in myself for the past few years. As the chapters went on, I saw David either praising God for wonderful deeds or for just being God (which is praiseworthy as well), or David was crying out to God, needing help, and holding on to the hope that God is coming...because He has in the past.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that every believer in Christ has experienced this very pattern. God is not someone to constantly bring us through hard times, but He also likes to purify us and make us more beautiful.

I'm not saying God is predictable.

God is not a mere machine that controls us, his mere robots.

But I do know that God brings us through difficult times. He wouldn't be a loving and perfect father if He didn't. That doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt, though. I understand this...I go through it first hand every day. But finding the pattern in Psalms encouraged me. (Not by saying: "Hey, look, I'm just as good as king David." Or "I'm going through things too, but I don't write down my troubles so that they sound all poetic and then put them in a book"-please don't misunderstand my meaning.) Going through the Psalms, I saw David as a joyful king...and I saw him as an admittedly broken king. But in king David's hard times, he ended with trusting in God and offering up the praises that God so desires and deserves. And in one of the next Psalms, David was praising God for delivering him.

I want to encourage you. Though the times might be hard-keep trusting God. You are moving toward the time of easy praise. And while you are waiting, praise God still. He always deserves it.

And if you are going through a time when God is blessing you (in an obvious way)-praise Him for that too.

Jocelyn

The phone call that changed my life forever...

This story begins about a few days ago. My mom and our friends mom (the same friends from my post: how to clean your child) left to go to a conference in New Mexico. Leaving us for an even longer period of time with all of our little siblings.

(Before I continue, let me point out that the best stories from my blog always come when my family is gone.)

The conference was for homeschooling, the highlights being in the speakers. One of the key ones had taught a class that my sister had watched. The other was- *horror music*- MY MATH TEACHER! some people may not know this about me, but I hate math. (No, that's not enough) I HATE MATH!!! No... I REALLY REALLY REALLY HATE MMAAAAATTTTTHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
ah...that's better. I have hated math almost as long as I've taken it. And when I heard that my math teacher (The very one I watch in my videos) was going to be talking to my mom-I was terrified. Trigenomitry is the only way to go!! teach it to your kids! If they aren't learning it by junior high they are failing! And you too! It is the parent's job! But I soon regained my composure and simply asked my mom to give my math teacher a very grown up and sophisticated message.

"Hey, Mom? When you see my math teacher, shoot him in the eye. Thanks."

Yeah. It would've been awesome.

For some reason, though, my mom didn't give him the message-instead...well, I'll just record my exact feelings.

I was doing my hair up in the bathroom when Catey (my sister) came in.
"Mom wants to talk to you." She said, holding out the phone.
Ok. This was really frightening. When your mom is out of state, and she calls-asking for you...I'm in trouble...big trouble...what did I do? "Did mom sound angry?"
Catey just shrugged, so I got up my courage and answered the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Joss?"
"Yeah...?"
"Hold on just a second......."....................
"...............HI Jocelyn!"
This probably wouldn't have seemed weird except for the fact that my mom had been repeating himself. But it wasn't my mom's voice. It was a man's.

"Ummmm...hi?"

"How are you?"

"Good, how are you..?"

"I'm good. Do you know who I am?"


"Noooo..."


"Well, let me sing this song for you-"

and at that moment, I knew who he was. I probably would've figured it out sooner if Catey and my friend hadn't been sticking their heads in my face, trying how to figure out who was talking to me. but I did figure it out...THE MYSTERY MAN WAS MY MATH TEACHER! I said that I knew him right as he started singing the 3 times tables.

I think I talked to him for about ten minutes, but all I could think about was what I was going to do to my mom when she got home to make her pay for what she'd done. BUT there was one important thing that I remember. the thing that changed my life forever! truly amazing! Something that makes me not hate my math teacher's guts!

He asked me where I was in math and I told him, then he asked me what lesson I was on and I didn't tell him, I just said I'd been having trouble with it and I was slightly behind. He said there wasn't any grade requirement for those books because everyone moves at their own pace; "Besides, what are you- seventeen?"

And there it was. I am a lot younger than seventeen. Not like a couple of months, not like just a year...but one big hunk of time! I'm ahead!!! I'm ahead!!! I told him to tell my mom that I was ahead and he said she was listening! Thanks to my math teacher I can take Algebra 1 slowly. Yay!

so maybe I don't want to shoot my math teacher in the eye anymore-but I'm just glad I don't have to do so much math!!!
Now if only my worldview teacher had been there too...

How to clean your child

Before I tell you the meaning of the title, let me first explain what happened before hand.
I have some friends who like to stay at my house pretty regularly. There are five kids and a mom. The kids are all around our ages; the oldest is close to my age, the second oldest is close to my younger sister's age, and the two youngest are around my brother's ages. We'd been enjoying the nice weather we'd been having lately and were letting the young kids play outside. This left us free to do pretty much whatever we wanted. So we enjoyed our free time...We should have known better. I remember coming down the stairs and hearing the moms giggling. I could also hear water running from the hose faucet on the side of our house...that was our first bad sign.

The moms mentioned that they told the kids to stop playing with the water and yelled it out into my yard again. I was puzzled at first at why the kids would be wanting water...that is, until I saw them. I was so shocked at the little people's appearance that I went outside onto our deck to get a better look. But my eyes hadn't deceived me. All of the kids (I'm not exaggerating) were covered from head to toe in mud. They had it in their hair, on their clothes, and caked on their hands and feet.

I asked the kids what they were doing. My little brother's answer didn't comfort me. "We can't use the water so we're melting snow to make more water. " They needed the water to make either a little waterfall in the backyard or to make the biggest mud hole I'd ever seen in my yard. (I can't remember which).

Then the moms had to go run out and do something out of the house for a really long time, leaving us older people with the kids...great.

This brings me to the title. Needless to say, we put off cleaning the kids for as long as we could. We fed them outside, watched them outside, and we even...let them use the bathroom in our yard...

Assuming the kids started their playing early in the morning they played for almost the whole day. But then the time came when the kids got tired of being outside.
Instantly, the wheels began turning in my mind. I'd worked or been in enough VBS's and co-ops that I knew a lot about stations and how to work a lot of people with less workers. Considering there were three of us "workers" and four little kids who were covered with mud from head to toe (but considering how dirty they were, I'll ad about a million children to the four) I thought I would need to call on that knowledge.

I announced that we would need three stations. One person would strip the kids at the door and carry them upstairs.

Another would stuff them in the shower and wash them up.

And the last person's job was to dry and clean the kids. (they also have to calm the sometimes screaming children by telling them that the shower's like a water park.)

When our parents got home, the kids were playing safely on the deck and we were all drying off in and outside the house. We behaved like champions as we told the moms what we had accomplished. The looked more confused than impressed.

So if you ever have a bunch of mud-children when your parents are gone (or maybe you are the parents and your older children have run away screaming)...ummm...well that works...but you probably wont need that information anytime soon...

Oh well. It may be useless knowledge but it was still a funny story-right?

Additional Ideas for Olympic Events...

Before you read this, you may want to read the posts of my darling mother and sister.
The issue that has recently been floating around my house is the issue of...too many events? or confusion over too many events?...whatever. You get the idea. My sister and Mother have already come up with some brand new and fresh ideas on new events. Here are some of my top three new Olympic sports...

#1: Cross Country ski jumping...
where you jump off the ramp as far as you can and shoot a rifle at the ground to prolong your flight.
When you land, you go up another ramp and fly on that one while shooting the rifle. Do this for ten miles. (The Wright brothers would have loved this...)

#2: Moose Fighting...With a Bull...
where you ride a bull (believe me, it's safer than the moose) trying to detain the bull moose with figure skating skates. Dazzling it with your hip-shakin' moves is not allowed.

#3: Bobsledding-capture-the-flag-curling with skis...
You begin on the super duper teeny weeny slalom and steel the gold medal from one of the athletes. When you've finished that, go to the bobsled mountain (I can't remember the name, so I'll call it the Matterhorn.) and with your team of two, go down the mountain. Depending on how you did on the ski place, and how fast you can be on the bobsled, you could be way ahead of the angry gold medalist, or you might have to use your curling stick. When anyone gets too close, you can hit them with the stick (creating importance for the person in the back). The people behind you will scream threats like "You're not invited to my birthday party!"

So these are my top 3 ideas...what are yours?

Quebec, Land of the Canoeing Devil

Here begins my account of this year's winter Olympics. I was going to write about each event individually, but with the Olympics going on every day...it's a little hard to keep up. so here is my account of all of the main events that have been happening this past week.
Let's start with the opening ceremony...

This year, at the Olympics opening ceremony, the commentators said that the only difference between this ceremony and the one in Beijing would be that the parade of nations would come before the rest of the show. They said that it would be better than usual, when the people would normally be lined up in a parking lot, this way they could sit back and enjoy the whole performance...I disagree. [stupid commercials]
There was nothing enjoyable in the performance. I would rather be outside, lined up in a parking lot in snow and sleet and fiery hail instead of watching that show. It was one of those awful times in life where you sit back after doing something and realize you've just wasted hours of your life. [extra stupid commercials]
I don't see that there was anything "breathtaking" or "spectacular" or "amazing" about that performance. Unless a drunk man's dream of gansta-Scottish people wearing ripped up kilts is amazing... Maybe they meant Spectacular in context of the Christmas decoration gone bad polar-bear-god. I don't think it was that great, though it would've taken someone with at least as much acting talent as Julie Andrews to pretend to be afraid of it.
Wonderful. Breathtaking. Just great...
[extra stupid-er commercials]
Maybe, if all the commentators represent what people really think, I'm the only one who doesn't like the performance because I'm extremely concrete. Or maybe I'm the only one who'd get nightmares from watching a canoeing devil compete with it's shadow on playing the fiddle...or maybe he was a werewolf, you decide. [Joss goes to bed really confused after the torch lighting goes bad]
3 words I would use to describe the opening ceremony: weird, abstract, Purple polka dotted ponies (Hey, in that ceremony, that wouldn't have been too out of place!)
FAQ's of the opening ceremony: what's going on? is that supposed to be the devil? I think I'm missing something...what's going on with the...why is that...who is...what's going on???

Then, after a couple of days, my favorite part of the Olympics comes. Pair figure skating. They showed the first couple of skaters and then made us watch some boring event before getting to see the rest...maybe it was skiing. (is it just me or does the news channel treat us like I used to treat my dog when I was training her : "Sit! Stay! drops treat in front of nose. Leave it! Down...) just making us go through a bunch of stuff before we actually see what we want to see. But finally we get to see the pairs out on the ice...then I found out that we weren't watching pair figure skating...we were watching a new sport called "pair figure falling where your partner drops you and you try not to cut his neck as you fall on the ice." I can hardly remember a single routine where they didn't fall. And don't even get me started on how the judges never rank the team that you like first.
After pff (abbreviated from new sport title), we went to men's figure...skating! (They didn't fall quite so much. ) But I would rather have watched every single one of them fall instead of watching them...shake their hips? And wear a corset??!!!! I'm not going into detail right now, but you can check my mom's blog for detail on everything I'm writing about.

And finally, speed skating. That's where real men skate! It's kind of like a mix between figure skating and hockey. figure skating :they're on the ice and wearing skates. Hockey: they actually have mini fights on the ice! The pushing and shoving in those races got me screaming almost as loud as when Yevegeni Plushenko licked his hands while shaking his hips and flirting with the judges.

Well, that has me caught about up in all the interesting events that have happened so far...the next time interesting things come up, I'll be able to go over them a little more in depth.

There once was a girl...

Let me tell you the story of a happy little girl. She was an artist, a musician and a speaker. She was the queen of the world and was pretty much amazing. In the drear times of day, she would ask herself questions. The thought provoking questions that everyone asks themselves every once in a while. Questions like: Who am I? What is the purpose for my life? Why is there so much evil in the world if God is a good God? Where are all of my socks?

You know, the normal stuff.

Then the news hit her. Her mom and sister wanted to go away to North Carolina. Forever. Well, not really forever, but it might as well have been. They were going away for a whole week. At this point, it was only sure that her sister was going, but this girl (Who was selfless and amazing) did the amazingly selfless thing and offered to stay home with her younger sister and two younger brothers so that her mom could go too.

The girl took things pretty well...before her mom and sister left. After that, she tried to look at the whole thing as a learning experience.

She learned that those so-called "Thought provoking questions" could be answered easily. Who am I? Cinderella. What is the purpose of my life? To be a slave...and stay alive. Why is there so much evil in the world if God is a good God? That wasn't the point. It didn't matter if God was good...it mattered if the people were.

She made up new unanswerable questions. Why did it matter who you were if you couldn't even take a shower before lunch? Why did I agree to this? How could I let the boys watch so many movies already? How can the boys think I have patience for this? WHERE ARE MY SOCKS?

finally, this girl got to get on her dad's computer and wrote down her memoirs. So she died in agony. the end.

Just kidding! The end was in the style of a fairy tale. No comment on the beginning and middle...

I just want to say that I miss my Mom and sister. I also want to thank the people who are helping me!
Besides, this gives me practice for when my sister moves out...*Joss...I mean the girl-breaks into hysterics* and the jocelberry patch is never written in again.
Jocelyn