In Word

Have any of you bloggers ever caught yourself thinking that life is just too busy to blog?  I have.  Sometimes, life just plain gets in the way.

Then I stop.  And laugh.  And realize how ridiculous that is.

What would a blog be without a life behind it, anyway?

Snowfall in Texas?  Major news story.

All that to say, my life is keeping me rather busy lately.  Hayden and Ruth have been with us for more than three weeks now—isn’t that amazing?  It’s hard to get into a routine, but we’re managing somehow.  Hayden has settled in to pretty much everything except eating.  Apparently he likes McDonalds, but not much else.  Ruth is popular wherever she goes, and not surprisingly—that child continues to astound me with her adorableness.

Speech and debate is much the same as usual.  Still fun, still busy, still amazing.  In less than two weeks, we head to New Mexico for our last qualifier of the year.  I’m looking forward to a fabulous tournament…not to mention a pretty epically long car trip.

It’s cold and white.  What is this stuff?

Next week, my sister has her first photography gig shooting a wedding out of town.  I get to be the backup photographer.  That means I get to spend the next few days learning the ins and outs of my borrowed Canon 30d.

There’s also this thing called school work, but we won’t talk about that.

What can I say?  Life is in the way.  But I’m cool with that.

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A speech and debate tournament is like a magnifying glass.  When you put hundreds of people together for three stressful days, everything tends to show up clearer than it would otherwise—that means the bad things right along with the good things.  For now, though, I want to focus on the good things.

There are so many good things!

For me, tournaments are tiring on the outside, but incredibly rejuvenating on the inside.  Through this magnifying glass, all of God’s blessings, big and small, show up in all sorts of different ways.  Maybe that’s through awards, or maybe it’s through a conversation in the hall, or meeting new people, or learning to trust him all the more.  Whatever it is, it’s truly amazing.  And being with other people who see and are thankful for those blessings is even more amazing.

My first thought about the National Open last week is that it was a tournament filled with ups and downs.  Really, though, it was a tournament filled with ups, and smaller ups.  In competition, it’s easy to look at what God has blessed you with, and then compare it with someone else’s blessing—but why do we have to look at it as something relative?

If you had told me before the tournament that I would compete in speech finals for Persuasive, I would have been overjoyed.  That was just too far beyond my expectations.  But when it happens, and I go into the round to give my speech for those five judges, my standards suddenly get a little higher.  Instead of realizing how amazingly blessed I am just to be there, it gets a whole lot easier to worry about the outcome.

Human reasoning tells me to be just a little disappointed at getting third place—one rank below what would have qualified me directly to Nationals.

Reality says that I have been given more than I could ever possibly deserve.  And that is amazing.

On a less personal note, ARC has done it again and completely blown me away with its awesomeness.  So much talent, and so many blessings!  Thank you, God!

(Pictures courtesy of Toni)

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Tonight, our family grew a little bit bigger, a little bit louder, and a whole lot cuter.  It might be a brief change, or it might stick around for awhile—but however long it lasts, I’m going to enjoy it.

We started working on our foster care license last fall, but didn’t get everything done till this past week.  And just today, we got a call that two little kids needed a home: Hayden, a toddler, and Ruth, a baby (no, those aren’t their actual names, but they’ll work for the purposes of this blog).

Hayden and Ruth came home with us this evening.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this.  Little Hayden had a hard time at first—I can only imagine how confusing all this would be for a child.  He didn’t say much at the beginning, but by the time we got to the house, he had opened up a little.  As of this writing, he is thoroughly enjoying all the attention (and is completely enamored with our dog).

Ruth is the [almost] perfect baby.  She’s all smiles and giggles, and, of course, doesn’t really care what’s going on as long as it involves interesting toys and room to crawl around.  She found a best buddy tonight: a stuffed teddy bear almost as big as she is.  They hit it off right away.

I am beyond thrilled to have these kids be part of our family, for however long they get to stay.  What an incredible chance to show love to two children who have never experienced it!

…of course, I’m enjoying it, too.

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Weakness and strength—strange that two opposites should be so unavoidably wrapped up in a person’s life.  Over the past year, I’ve realized more and more just how weak I really am.  But at the same time, it’s only when I realize my weakness…that I see His strength.

This was written last year.  I’m not a poet, or a song writer, or anything close, but I guess this is more in the style of song lyrics than anything else:

Broken
An empty body, useless hands
Weakened
No one sees me; I’m alone
My sightless eyes are open
But I can’t see where to go
I am frail
I am nothing without you.

If you’re my rock and you’re my fortress,
All the world sits at your feet
If you can free the lonely captive
Set the raging waves at peace
Then help me to be nothing
Make me small so you may grow
Give me the weakness to be strong.

I feel you
Your power shines in my defeat
I wonder
Have you shown yourself to the weak?
When I lose myself in arrogance
Your face becomes obscured
So I wait
And I see you through the pain.

Forgotten
They pass you by, don’t see you there
Troubled
They’ll try harder, pretend they don’t care
Still they don’t understand the beauty
The paradox of God
At their weakest
There is one who will make them strong.

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Thought this blog was dead?  Mostly, but not beyond resuscitation.  Those of you who comprise the handful of daily visitors…whoever you are, you rock.

This past week was a milestone in the world of speech and debate, with our first ever qualifying tournament of 2010.  It was spectacular.  Need I say more? (And, yes.  For those of you wondering as to my excuse for blatant bloggy abandonment, speech and debate is the best one I’ve got.)

Pictures courtesy of Toni:

Posing with the 2010 January Warmup apologetics champion, who also happens to be a lovely friend of mine.

More lovely friends! (Josie, this one’s for you.)

Funny guys (who also happen to be really awesome debaters).

Hannah celebrated her 18th birthday at the tournament.  Pictured are two pretty awesome gals.

Flowing outrounds.  Go ARC!

Slightly hyper?

More fantastic debaters!

Waiting on the awards ceremony, and getting just a tad bit crazy on Mountain Dew.  Or maybe that was just me.

ARC at the end of a very awesome tournament.  Congratulations, all of you!

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Two years running, this blog has celebrated the New Year by remembering the old one—that is, remembering a few of the quotes and conversations that made me laugh so hard that I wrote them down.  So without further ado, I give you the 2009 Quotables:

“I was tempted with the same tempt as you.” ~Anna

“If God made me a superhero…” ~Patti

“I’m obsessed with facial hair.” ~Brian

“Beth is a corrupt guard.  She’s eaten everything.” ~Alex B.

“I shun the bush.” ~Avery

“We’re just acting guy-ly.” ~Paul

“I don’t have a very good mind.” ~Patti

“I look like a fruit.” ~Brian

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created evil…” ~Hope

“Do something epic.” ~Jonathan

“There are too many boys here.” ~Elizabeth

“As musicians, we are trained to intimidate.” ~Mrs. Fletcher

“I don’t want to get married, because I’d be shy.  I’ll hang out with you till I die.” ~Patti

Jonathan: “I think the reason we don’t get stuff done is because we don’t know what to do.”
Me: “Yeah…”
Jonathan: “You really should see The Last Samurai.”
Me: “I have a different theory for why we don’t get stuff done: someone has a 10-second attention span.”
Jonathan: “I’m glad you see the need to change.”

“You’re the best mom on earth.  You too, Daddy.” ~Michael

“I believe Beth.  Teenagers don’t lie!” ~Patti

“Oh my goodness.  You are a deeply strange child.” ~Gabrielle

“Do you think he got grown-up-napped?” ~Patti

Happy New Year, everyone!

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Then, of course, there are those times in life where you almost have too much happiness to handle it all.  I’m sorry I’ve neglected this blog for the past couple weeks—maybe it’s because we’ve just been enjoying ourselves way too much.  A few pictures from Hope’s visit:

(Photography credit goes to Toni.)

Aside from having lots of fun, there’s been loads of things going on around here.  Debate tournaments, Christmas concerts, parties, and more…but it’s a great time of year.  And who knows—if I stop having fun long enough to think about this blog, you might see a few posts about all the excitement.

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Wow.  How did that number get so big?  Apparently November is slipping by as fast as the rest of the year.

Yesterday, I wrote a little bit for the first time in…seven or eight days.  Yes, I’ve done it again and saved all the work for the last week and a half.  I don’t know why I can’t just be normal and write a little every day like everyone else.

Current word count is 22,079.  About 4,000 from the past 24 hours.

The story itself is absolutely laughable.  I don’t think I have enough plot to believably fill the 50,000 words, so it’s become almost a character study—getting into the brains of multiple characters, playing around with dialogue, and realizing that the main character I intended to write about is by far the most boring one in the story.  Bummer.

I guess that’s NaNoWriMo for you.

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On Saturday, ARC journeyed to New Braunfels for the first round robin of the year.  It almost goes without saying that we enjoyed ourselves, hung out with lots of cool people, and had abnormal amounts of fun talking about the environment.  I mean…what else would we do?  (LD people, you don’t have to answer that question.)

Happy debaters—and a happy debate coach!

Former partners, turned LDers.

These guys…well, they had lots of fun.  Maybe more fun than should be humanly possible.

Danielle and Christina, two loverly ladies.

It’s just kinda fun to scare people with the Maisano/Morgan name.  (The initial fear doesn’t usually last long, but oh well.)

Afterward, we went out for dinner and checked out ballots.  Fun stuff.

So, it was a good day.  Full of friends and debates and candy and pizza and all sorts of awesome things.  What could be better?

(For those of you wondering about NaNoWriMo…no, I’m not giving up just yet.  Yes, the word count widget on the right is accurate.  It’s so much more fun to make an epic comeback in the last week…right?)

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Word Count:  15,056.

Yes!  I wrote 56 words over the past three days!

But I also went to the lake with wonderful friends, had a fun orchestra practice, worked on essays for school, and edited and (almost) memorized a speech for competition on Saturday.  It’s been a good week.

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