Life, lately :)

Here's some pictures from the last few weeks.

Youth group has been pretty fun lately. Nick (our youth pastor since May of this year) has been planning a lot of fun things and we've been growing in numbers quite a bit. One week we had arm wrestling tournaments and my friend just so happened to have her camera. In this picture is myself, Sam (a new girl who has started coming in the last few weeks) and Nick, demonstrating the proper 'arm wrestling technique' 

This would be me losing :)

And that's all the youth pictures I have as of now :) 

Kiaran was at our house about 2 weeks ago, and as always whenever a niece or nephew is around, eventually they end up in my room. Our time generally consists of being silly and taking pictures (normally both at once :)

We did manage to take one somewhat normal picture. What a cutie :)

That's it for pictures. I need to get back in the habit of documenting things on camera. Anyways, this week has been pretty eventful. On Tuesday I registered for online college classes for next semester. I'll be doing the classes through Williston State College. I'm taking 12 credits - Intro to Psychology, World Civilization, Music Appreciation, and Intro to Computesr. All of them besides Music Appreciation are required subjects and should be (hopefully) somewhat easy. I'm really excited to start up school again, but the *college* part just feels too weird; I feel way too young to be doing all this! I also got my acceptance letter from North Central University this week, along with 2 scholarships (a Christian Leadership one and the Deans Tuition scholarship) I felt kind of indifferent about that one, but it was still cool to get a real college acceptance letter, but once again, I FEEL TOO YOUNG! This year is definitely the quickest year of my life. I'm guessing this is how it'll be from now on..? Scary thought but I'm very excited for the future! God has been showing me so much and all worry and fear (for the future) is for the most part gone. YES! I'm just excited to see what happens :)

Youth Convention!

Youth convention was this past Thursday through Saturday. It was my 5th year going. It's a statewide Assembly of God youth convention for 7th-12th graders. 27 people went from my church. It was very fun and I'm exhausted! We left Thursday morning and drove 6 hours. We had vehicle seating assignments which I thought would be really annoying but actually was the best thing that could've happened. The convention part itself wasn't as good as usual. The speaker was very good, though, and we had some intense altar calls and good worship. Other then that, it wasn't how it usually is. I wasn't looking forward to it much to begin with because it was my first year without my best friends there with me. It ended up being a very good experience, making new friends with people from my youth group and getting closer to ones I was already buddies with. I had my own room of 3 other girls, Hailey, Tara, and Amber, so I was kind of a counselor :) In our vehicle, it was myself, and 3 other girls Emily, Hailey, and Mary(who was very quiet and didn't socialize much with us)  and 3 boys, Alex, Kyle and Michael. We were basically best buddies by the time it was all over. It was a great experience and I'm really sad it's over! Here's some pictures. 

Hailey, Jessica, and I :)

Once again.

Emily, Jess, Hailey, and myself at the church in Fargo after one of the services.

The girls of our vehicle. Myself, Emily, and Hailey. They're both 14. I was the only older girl there, but thankfully got along with everyone, especially these 2 girls.

Us 3 again. We didn't take many pictures at all. We took this at the church after we'd gotten home.

Here's our vehicle. We named ourselves the kkahmels because of our initials. (Kyle, Karmen, Alex, Hailey, Michael, Emily, and Lindsey, she was driving) from left to right it's Kyle, Alex, Michael, Hailey, Emily, and Myself.

One of my closest friends Missy came home from college this past week for fall break. We have a tradition of taking pictures in leaves with our buddy Michael -the guy in all the pics- so we were going to recreate that while she was home. We were giving this girl Emily a ride home so she tagged along. 

Life as an official high school *graduate*

Finally, after months of seemingly everything getting messed up and waiting for my last school subjects to get sent to me, I finished my very last test on October 2nd. I needed a half credit to be done (which most people thought I was, in May) so I decided to take Sociology. It feels wonderful to actually be DONE! There isn't much else to say but here's a few pictures of how I've been spending (or wasting?) my time since.

Ruby and I have a little too much fun with the Photo Booth app on Mac's.

Hmmm...

Can you tell we're related? (Her expression is so funny!)

As you can see, my friend Marcy and I get a little photo booth crazy too. (Apparently graduating high school doesn't change the nerd in me...)

She is my only close friend that does come home pretty often. She goes to school 3 hours away in Bismarck, so coming home Friday, leaving Sunday, is pretty easy.

 I got a little bored one day and randomly decided I wanted full on bangs again.  I whipped out a scissors and this is the result :)

This could be big

I'm not quite sure how to jump into this story, but I guess I'll start where it started :) So Tuesday afternoon I was just messing around on Facebook, wasting time mostly. I clicked on the 'Group' section, for no real reason, and saw (it shows groups your friends have joined) called 'Soul Edge for Girls'  

Back in November, this ministry team of 4 young guys, ages 18-21 - two from England, and 2 from Canada - came to do an assembly at the high school and also our youth group service. They really impacted our school and youth group as well. They were apart of this ministry called Soul Edge, which was almost a kind of discipleship training school. They would take a group of boys for 5 months, and they'd study different parts of the bible, have different focus topics every week, and things along that order. They go to Kenya for 3 months, and continue the 'bible studies' while doing ministry type work down there. Then they go to this christian conference in England (Watford England to be exact! :) that they are associated with. They stay there for 2 weeks then head to Canada (Saskatchewan) where the 2 boys I met (they're the founders) live. You stay in an old schoolhouse type building, and continue studying the bible and also help out with different things at their church. They also have a focus on physical challenges, along with the spiritual and mental, so they do different outdoor sports every week, such as mountain climbing, kayaking, camping, ect. It's kind of hard to explain all it is about, but they do have a website. www.souledge.ca  Anyways, back to facebook :) so I saw that, and was momentarily shocked, because I remember always wishing they would have a girls version. Anyways, I wrote to one of the leaders, and I guess this girl saw what I wrote, so she added me, and here she is the leader of the girl version. I figured you probably have to be 18 since you deal with a lot of foreign stuff, so I wrote and asked her, and she said that no, it's for girls aged 17-21, she wrote a lot and seemed like a really nice person. Did I mention she's from England? haha. Most the girls that go are. Considering I've been fascinated by England/British people since I was 6 or so, that only entices me more. Anyways, the course runs from January 8th-June 1st. It costs about 8k, which includes everything, including all the foreign flights, so that considered, it's  really not that expensive. I'm not really sure what to do. I had just finally surrendered everything to God, I was done trying to figure out what in the world I was supposed to do. Then this comes up, and I don't think I can handle trying to figure out if I'm supposed to or not. It's just so weird cause these last 6 months or so, even though I did want to go to college, I remember thinking, praying, and writing down (journal to prove it) that more than anything, I wished I could just be shipped off to another country, just do missions type work. Yet at the same time, I did want the school type experience, the fellowship and the learning. This is both combined :) I've always been incredibly drawn towards missions. As well as other countries. Ever since I could read I would pour over encyclopedias and childcraft books, reading whatever possible about foreign places. One of the weirdest things, that I was telling mom about last night, was that earlier this year (2-17-08) I made a list a life goals, and one of them was 'Climb a mountain in a foreign country' now, sure I've hiked, and even repelled off a cliff, but I've never even climbed a mountain in the U.S. so why I wrote that down, I don't know. The craziest part is, I was reading what the site said out loud to mom, and the biggest physical thing they do while in Kenya, is climb Mt. Kenya. Coincidence? maybe. Needless to say that threw me off a bit. This all seems a little unreal. My heart feels excited and amazed, yet at the same time I'm absolutely terrified. Terrified that after all these months of complete desperation as I'm trying to figure out what to do with my life, what God wanted, all the while everyone around me seems to have it together, that after all of that, I could, in fact, have actually found something. It's a bit overwhelming. 

anyways, any comments/suggestions/thoughts?

Like aunt, like niece

Photo Booth fun with Bailey.

Bittersweet Birthday

My birthday was pretty cool, but I had to say goodbye to one of my best friends' Courtney. She was the last one of my friends to leave for college.

Courtney took me out on a picnic, but it was raining so we went to the civic center. I was a little self conscious at first, scared people would come in, but it was fun.

Note my ugly fever blister. haha. 

Our last picture together :(

One cool thing though, my work got me a cake, with.. a panda! Even they know of my obsession:) I didn't get a picture of it till after it was half eaten. I turned a little crazy and was forbidding everyone from eating the panda part. It said 'Happy Birthday Karmen' but all you can see is Karmen.

California - San Diego Zoo/LA/The end :(

The one thing I knew I wanted to do months before we even went to California, was to see a real panda at the San Diego Zoo. Panda's are only in 3 or 4 zoos in the US, and San Diego is one of them. I almost forfeited the opportunity; it was kind of tricky to plan everything to get there. Thankfully, the Saturday(?) before we left, we went :) I took pictures of a lot of different animals but I only feel like posting the pandas. 

It was pacing around and around then all the sudden sat up all alert. It was so funny.

Mia got the best picture, this one, on her cell phone.

The next day we went to Los Angeles. It was an interesting drive and even more interesting there. We went to Hollywood Boulevard first. It seemed extra busy, people all over the place. There were people dressed up as certain characters (Spiderman, Tigger, Transformers, the Little Mermaid, Spongebob, Michael Jackson, and a lot more) This guy was dressed up as this terrifying..something. I was literally scared, really scared, as silly as it sounds. He was supposed to be a 'demon' apparently. I was so worked up over getting away from all the fakes that I didn't take too many pictures.

Mann's Chinese Theatre

Inside the Kodak Theatre. It was really cool and fun to look around.

Look familiar?

We drove to most of the known places, such as Rodeo drive, which, as only a North Dakotan could, I thought was pronounced rodeO, as in cowboys and horses. Hmm.  

All together we saw or went to 4 different beaches. Corona Del Bar, Laguna Beach, Venice Beach, and Santa Monica, below. It was my favorite of all the beaches. A very cool vibe and awesome view!

Santa Monica Pier.

and that concludes my California pictures! I didn't take any on the way home. We had a good trip back though. We flew Jet Blue from Long Beach to Salt Lake city, then rented a car and drove the rest of the way. I highly recommend Jet Blue airlines. Not everyone can say they watched cable tv from 30,000 feet in the air, but I can :) OverallI had a wonderful time and still miss it. I don't think I fully appreciated everything at the time. I adopted the Californian laid back attitude and didn't realize how truly amazing and awesome the things I got to experience were. I was also really surprised at how un-stereotypical it was, at least not in Irvine and Orange. My friends asked me "Is everyone tall, tan, and blonde?" and really, no, they weren't. Of course, I did see a lot of fancy people, but not to the extent that you tend to expect from what you hear about CA. Mia and I would walk places in Irvine, and I (who tends to be kind of paranoid in bigger cities) never felt scared or anything of that sort. Also, the weather, which I expected to be so hot at all times, was so much nicer than ND summers. It was never unbearably hot and it would cool down quite a bit at night. Did I mention the frozen yogurt? Well, they have it ALLLL over the place down there. So many different kinds and flavors, it's amazing. Ice cream is a thing of the past. Anyways, that basically sums up everything!

California - Corona Del Mar/Balboa Island/Laguna Beach

The day after the concert (or maybe 2 days after?) me, mom, Mia, Sheree, and Charles decided to go to Corona Del Mar to watch the sunset. It was a pretty spur of the moment decision but I was excited!

Beautiful isnt it?

I couldn't figure out why this sign said "Newport Beach" yet we were at Corona Del Mar. ??

We then decided to take a ferry to Balboa Island. It was only minutes long but pretty cool. The island was really neat. We ate some really good pizza and explored. Mia and I wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, so mom paid and off we went!

I haven't been on one is years and was freaking out a bit. It was a really little one but was going pretty fast.

A few days later Sheree and Charles took Mia and myself to Laguna beach. It was really pretty and fun to be at such a known place. Mia and I were in our clothes but we waded in the water. The waves had something else in mind though and we were completely overtaken and in the water we went! We rode waves (or they rode us) for quite a while. It was really fun, although pretty scary at times. Some were really, really powerful.

Here's myself on Laguna Beach(before the waves took us captive) This is the only picture of me(besides the ferris wheel ones) taken in the whole 2 weeks we were there. Oh well.