A rubber ball, three friends and spring break... what?

It was past midnight, and my friend Faith grabs a soccer size rubber ball and rolls it to me. So I rolled it back to her. This continued for a little bit, and then we included Brandon (not me) and Rachel. Not wanting to break anything, we decide to go outside, well Faith did and we followed! I never thought that I would have so much fun with a kids rubber ball, three friends, and wet grass! It was one of those things where you had to have been there. We had a ball! No pun intended. I think we played for a good half-an-hour, and we had to stop because if we wouldn't have, surely one of us would have laughed our self to death. One of the best parts is when people would drive by, they would slow down to see what was going on... it was probably an interesting sight; four grown people bouncing a rubber ball between each other laughing hysterically. We were trying to hit the ball to each other without letting it hit the grown, and we did some crazy things to keep this from happening. Eventually we would keep it going even if it bounced, but once it stopped bouncing, we had to start all over. Wow, it was crazy fun! The best things in life are those that don't cost anything... and when they're with family and friends. What a way to start spring break!

My First White Christmas in Washington!

Well, this post is a little late, but I thought that I would share it with you anyway.

Christmas was a little different this year, for a couple of reasons. For one, we actually didn't even have Christmas on Christmas... nope, we had it on the 22nd. It was the only day that my brother and sister in-law could make it up for the holidays... so we had it that night. It was interesting and non-traditional, but full of love just the same. The other reason was one that I never expected... and it was one of the best Christmas presents of all! SNOW!! And that isn't even the best part... IT SNOWED ON CHRISTMAS DAY!!! (Which you probably already knew because you read my title and the big words didn't surprise you at all... oh well). My dad actually woke me and my little brother up by opening the window that morning to snow. I think that was one of the best wake up calls ever! The funny part about the whole thing was this was my first white Christmas in Wahsington and we weren't even haveing Christmas on Christmas day that year :-). But it was really cool just the same!

Only God knows...

So I am sitting here at my desk in my dorm room in the grand State of Mississippi and I ask myself, well more like God, why am I here? Not sitting at the desk of course, but why Jackson? Why Belhaven? Why did God bring me to this college?
Yeah, I know... a lot of questions to ponder, a lot to think about, but this is what is always on my mind. I have made some pretty amazing friends here and have had some great experiences so far... could that be the reason? I have gone on some great trips, and seen parts of the USA that I thought I would never see... could that be the reason? I have learned a lot about myself and feel that I have grown closer to God... hmmm, maybe that is the reason... or maybe all of them are the reason, or reasons for that matter.
I do know though, that I could not have come this far without my Lord and Savior. I don't know how or even why He puts up with me, but I am glad that He does. For what ever reason He brought me here, I am glad that He did... for reasons, well, I am not quite sure yet!

Well, here is a couple of more day by days of Disney World... the remaining days might be a bulk story... we were there for 12 days for goodness sakes. But will see...

Day Four

All right, we had visited Magical Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Epcot, what more could there be? MGM Studios of course!
It was another beautiful day in Orlando, Florida and we were soaking it in… the sun screen that is. And we used it everyday too. We all hopped in our trusty rented van and were on our way to the last park in the Disney World Kingdom.
When we got there, the place was packed just like all the other places, but there seemed to be a lot more people towards the middle of the park when we got there. That’s because there was a show going on and not just any show, but High School Musical, one of Disney Channels original movies… wow, I have watched that channel too much. Anyway, we watched that for a little bit, and then went to another show, Beauty and the Beast! This was a fun show to watch. It was pretty much the entire story in 20 min. or so, and it was fun. After this we went to our first ride… The Tower Of Terror!
I think this was one of my favorite rides because it is nothing like you think it is. I remember seeing it advertised and I thought it just brought you up and dropped ya. But that is not all that it does! IT ALSO Dr…. ahh, I don’t want to spoil it for you. All I can say is it was a lot of fun!
Another ride that I like that we went on was Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. Boy, that was a fun ride. There is a part in it that is so unexpected and I have the face to prove it... check out the picture. It was an awesome ride! Star Wars was fun too, but nothing unexpected or surprising, probably because it is the same in Disney Land, but it was still worth going on. We also went to the Indiana Jones show, yeah that’s right, you heard me correctly, SHOW. I was hoping for the ride, but they didn’t have it, just the show. But it was good and worth seeing.
Well, it was getting late and we were all pretty tired so we called it a night. Day Four completed.

Day Three

Eocot, a place I remember my dad telling me about since I was fourteen, when my parents took us kids to Disneyland. I remember him telling me how you can pretty much visit other countries, and there only blocks apart. So I had high expectations when I went, and they were pretty much met. They had all these different countries all over and to visit them all, and we did, we took this big loop that went around this huge man made lake, at least I think it was man made, and we visited Canada (wow I know, Canada), Japan, England, Mexico, Germany, China, and many others! I think the best part about it is they had a restaurant in each place, and we tried a couple of them. When we went to France, one I didn’t mention, I had a Chocolate Éclair… that is French for Chocolate … Éclair, and it was amazing. So if you think about it… I had a chocolate chocolate! We also had some Mexican food, which wasn’t that different from any Mexican Restaurant that I have been to, and my dad and I had Bratwurst and Sauerkraut from Germany, which was the high light of the day because it was awesome! And the cool thing about all these places, is the people that worked there spoke the language, and barley any English, but enough.
OK, the countries were cool, but they had some rides that were pretty cool also. Actually, the most intense ride that I went on was in this very park… and that ride was Mission Space. Holy cow, I am telling you, wow, no really… dang. It was basically a simulated space ride that takes you to mars. It was crazy, and I got to be the pilot. Me, Brian, Britton, and our dad went on the intense ride, while my mom and Melissa took the wimpy ride, less intense that is ;-). It was just cool. There were a couple of other rides, but nothing like Mission Space.
And that was day three in Orlando… yeah I know, only day three!

I just realized that I never finsihed my Disney World stories... ah... man... lame. But I will, but it will probably be a quck jump through instead of going day by day. So if your wondering why it shows two days and then... nothing, it is because I am lazy... yeah, that about sums it up. They will be posted... someday :-).

Wynken, Blyken and Nod... oh and Pooh and friends!

So I am sitting in the computer lab when I get this phone call... I look to see who it is and it is a phone number I do not recognize. Usually, I don't like to answer calls whose number I do no recognize... but this time, I did. And to my delight, it was my friends Kaelen Z. I say Kaelen Z because I am not 100% sure on how to spell her last name... come to think of it, I am not 100% sure on how to spell her first name... hmmm, well if you are reading this Kaelen and I have spelled your name wrong... I am sorry. Anyway, Kaelen starts to tell me that she is at Faith's house, another good friend, and they are reading a poem with my name in it and I should come to read my part. A little confused, I proceed with this question,

"What?"

Laughing on the other side, Kaelen realizes that I had no idea what she was talking about and starts the conversation all over whith,

"Hi, how are you doing?"

Which of course made me laugh and others in the background of Kaelen. To make this phone conversation short, they were reading poems and came across a name given to me by Faith, which is another story, and wanted me to read the part because they didn't feel right reading it as me... did that make any sense?

Well, I checked a couple of things on facebook and I was on my way to Faith's house. When I arrived at the house, Brandon (the other Brandon hence the nick name by Faith), Scott, whome I have given the name Ttocs (Scott spelled backwards... another story), Rachel, Kaelen ( the phone person), and of course Faith... because it is her house. These are all good friends that are part of the Theatre department, and we have a lot of fun together... at least I think so :-).

They handed me a book after I had a butterfinger offered by Faith, I like butterfingers, and I found out why they needed me. It was a story, I think, about three fishermen... Wynken, Blyken, and Nod. My nick name my Faith happens to be Nod and this poem is not the reason she gave me the nick name nor how she came up with it, that is another story. Anyway, Ttocs (playing Wynken), Brandon (playing Blyken), and me (playing Nod) began to read the poem... and you know what, it was a lot of fun! We actually stayed there quite a while and read other poems, some even in a Scottish accent :-). And we even read stories of Winnie the Pooh! Who would have thought that reading these stories with friends would be so exciting... and yes, we made them exciting!

After reading many poems and Pooh stories, we all got together and prayed! That was such a joy. It is great that friends can get together and have a great and silly time and then praise God for giving us that ability. If you guys are reading this, thanks for sharing that day with me... it is a day that will be a memory!

(In the pictures are from left to right: Top- Faith, Rachel and Scott. Bottom- Brandon, Kaelen, Faith, Rachel and Scott.)

Day Two

If I were to choose my favorite park out of the Disney World parks, it would have to be the Animal Kingdom. This happens to be the largest out of all the parks, twice as big as Epcot, which is huge in itself. I guess the reason why I liked this park so much was because of all the wild life, really cool shows, and of course, really cool rides!
Right of the bat, we went to the “new ride” in the Animal Kingdom that was just finished not too long ago. It was called Mount Everest. It was an awesome roller coaster ride! You went forward and backwards into dark tunnels in the mountain. And in the mountain was a scary surprise… It was a Yeti! It was awesome.
After going on the Mount Everest ride like 3 or 4 times, we went on a Safari! No, really, they have a live safari… it was awesome! I don’t know how close it was to a real safari, probably not close at all, but it was pretty cool to see all those animals pretty up close and personal. One thing that I remember about the safari was this elephant taking a bath in the water hole that we went by. The safari driver said that he had been doing this for quite a while and had never seen that happen. It was pretty cool.
This day was a bummer for my older brother Brian because like me this was his favorite park, but un-like me, he forgot his SD card for his camera, so he couldn’t take pics. Well, it was kind of my fault because I left it in my laptop when I was getting his pic. Oops. But it all turned out ok, they went back and got some more pics, good ones too.
I mentioned that this park had cool shows, and the two that we saw were really cool. They had a Lion King show, which was amazing, and they also had finding Nemo the musical… it was awesome! The Lion King was not only performed in a unique way, but it also had some pretty amazing singing talent involved. And the acrobats in the show were crazy… made me want to join. In the Nemo play, the singing was also spectacular, but the way they performed was in a puppet like style which was a lot of fun to watch. I think I could even see it again.
Well, there was a lot of things at this park, but that was pretty much the high lights… but this was only day two!

Day one in Orlando

The day had finally come. We all hopped in the van after eating breakfast and were off to a place of wonder and excitement. Well, excitement yes, but wonder… not really. We all new what we were wondering, and that was how much fun we were going to have! We were off to Disney World!
Our first stop out of the many Disney World parks had the most magic out of them all… not because there were magicians or Tinker Bell was real, but because it was in fact called, Magic Kingdom! As we were getting closer, we could feel our excitement building, especially when Melissa, my sister in-law, screamed, “We’re here! We’re actually here!”
After parking getting through security and a fun monorail ride, we were in the park, and we weren’t sure where to start. We quickly checked the map and started walking, and just after a few steps into the park, we saw a familiar sight… familiar in pictures that is…. It was Cinderella’s Castle. It was awesome! After a few dozen pics, we were off again. Our first ride that we encountered was Pirates of the Caribbean, which wasn’t as great as I thought it was going to be. I was really looking forward to this ride too, because it was shut down when I went to Disneyland some years ago. But according to Dad, Mom, Britton and Melissa, it was a lot shorter then it used to be. So it wasn’t as glamorous as I thought it would be.
The day went on and we went on many more rides, such as Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, and we even caught the 3 o’ clock parade. The first day was definitely an exciting one, and a really good first day in Disney World, but the second day was better!

The Trip that Actually Happened

Well, it looks like it actually happened. Our family, the Holman’s, actually got to go on our family trip to Orlando, Florida. I thought something was going to happen, because last time we had this trip planned, 9/11 happened 6 days before we were supposed to leave. So I figured something would happen… but nothing did. And I was excited about that. I am glad that this trip became a reality. So I thought that I would give everyone some high lights on how our trip went and some good pictures!

The beginning

We all woke up around 6 in the morning on Thursday the 8th of March, 2007. All pretty sleepy because of the lack of sleep from excitement, our ride pulls up right on schedule. Denise Long, our driver, took us to the Portland airport where my mom and dad and little brother and I met up with Brian and Melissa, my brother and sister in-law. Britton, my little brother, relaxed and surfed the web on my laptop while Brian and I took pics and the others waited for our plane to arrive. After a 2 hour plane ride to New Mexico where we switched planes, 4 hours later, we arrived in Orlando, Florida!
Orlando was an interesting place. Or maybe it was just Florida. Not only do we have to go through two toll booths to get on the freeway from the airport, but the drivers there were crazy! Even crazier than Oregonions… no offense Brian and Melissa. But it was nice and warm, that was for sure.
After getting off the plane, we got our van that we had pre-rented and were out of there. We were all starving but wanted to find our place before we went out and ate. When we finally found our place, we weren’t disappointed at all. We had rented a four bedroom home for really cheap and wasn’t sure what to expect, but to our surprise, it was awesome. Four nice rooms with 3 ½ bathrooms, this house came fully loaded with everything you needed. It was a blessing. After getting everything un-packed, we hopped into the van and went to Denny’s where we all thanked the Lord for bringing us there safely and for the food and chowed down!