Let notice here be served, that I, Amy Parkhurst, am finally taking my Christmas vacation and will be MIA from the internet for two glorious weeks! I will visit my doctors and see my family. I will clean up my attic and finally put away my Christmas tree. I will plan my porch veggie garden, attempt to clean up my computer files, and after I've been a good girl and done all the things I need to do, I will play hours of video games to make up for what I haven't been doing the last 3 months! *cheers*

Unless the weather forbids, I will have to go into work for one late evening to teach the kids how to do in vitro fertilzation of the fish, but that's unavoidable due to the schedule of the semester and in reality no tech can get off scott free for 2 weeks without some sort of compromise. -_-

As for what I've been doing up to this point, besides working, I had an excellent visit with Karin and Jessie 2 weeks ago! We had a lot of fun mall trolling and all of us ended up with at least one purchase, shoes in my case. We were debating about having a cheesecake at Cheesecake Factory, but at some point we decided to take pity on Adrian who was watching the girls at home alone for the first time and brought some home instead. He did very well for his first time, I think. And Jessie sounds like she's ready to push for some non-kid personal time herself, so I feel free to kidnap her more often now. I've been laying off until she herself was ready for it. The weekend ended up being so successful that we girls are looking to plan another one sometime soon, maybe up closer to Karin's place this time. Anyone know what's fun to do between Bowie and Phillie?

Last weekend the Cornerstone Worship Choir gave its first "performance" for One Night and the Sunday morning services. I'm rather enjoying this! We had practice for 3 hours on Saturday and then sang the actual service for 1.5, which barely left me with a voice for Sunday morning but it was worth it. I did, however, use up most of my honey drinking cups of tea trying to sooth the vocal cords. I need to sing a LOT more in the car between One Nights, I think. Like PT said, things are just starting out and we'll probably be working the kinks out for months, but the feeling of singing harmony with a group of good singers to just create this fullness of sound, it's unparalleled! And definately one of my favorite parts of worship. We'll be starting work on the actual Easter production soon, so with Life Pathways classes starting up this week I am going to be seriously busy. ^_^

As I'm writing this update, I'm currently hanging out on a couch at my brother's place. He's still asleep at the moment, but he really worked hard this week so I'm not going to bother him. I had dinner over at his girlfriend's place last night and wouldn't you know it, she and I both like hanging candlebra on our walls! I really like her taste in interior decorating, it feels fashionable but comfy. I'm afraid I put a large dent in the jigsaw puzzle the two of them are working on, I hope they don't mind. I'm just really good at that sort of thing. ^_^; She'll be coming over today to watch West Virginia play basketball, which will be fun. I always like watching sports with people who enjoy it. I'll go to church with them tomorrow morning (Tim's back on Worship Team, which is awesome!) and then Tim will have theology class at 3pm so I'll drive back up to Bowie to make the Underground Superbowl Party at 5:30. I don't know who I'm going to root for, though I'd root against the Steelers just because Adrian is so avid in his support for them.

And that's it for now! I'll write about the saga of the Astyanax Meeting next time, I don't want to worry about it on vacation.