One rainy night my friend and I met up at a local mall so we could carpool to a film festival which was an hour away. She offered to drive so I was going to leave my car parked in the lot. As she pulled her car up I was on a phone call and I hopped out of my car and into hers. The film festival was pretty good but I had a nagging feeling the whole time that I had forgotten something. Four hours later as we were driving back I was digging through my purse to find my keys...to no avail of course.
“Oh, no! I must have left my keys in my car!” I told her.
As we pulled into the parking lot and approached my car it was evident that the head lights had been left on as well.
“Oh great, not only did I leave my keys in the car but I left my lights on too!”
As we pulled closer I realized that for some reason the car appeared to be running. As it turned out not only had I left my keys in the car, but I left them in the ignition...with the lights on... and the car running...and the windshield wipers wiping...the car radio blaring...and the heat on full blast.
“Man!” my friend said, “that must have been one interesting phone call.”
I later tried to convince myself that I must have simply left the keys in the car and some punk teenagers from the mall had turned everything on in the car as a practical joke.

[As if that was somehow better.]

Or maybe they thought about taking it for a joy ride and then realized that it was definitely a set up since no one would ever be that foolish.
I guess they never met me!

I must admit it can be pretty hard sometimes to be single around the holidays. I mean who wants to go alone to a christmas party? (especially when you've promised for 3 years in a row to bring a date next year, to no avail :)
Next month will be my 29th birthday (its Jan 22nd for those who would like to send presents) and my twenties have been a really great time. But this birthday will begin the countdown; yes the dreaded countdown where every day pushes me closer to 30. Scary stuff. And as I consider the possibility of entering my thirties alone [I mean 'thirty, flirty, and thriving] I have to count my blessings, which are many, and realize that sometimes being single is pretty darn good.
So here is my list--- the top 25 perks of being single:
You can sleep in whenever you want (and there’s no one to wake you up in the middle of the night tossing & turning either)
Your money is your own (so no arguments about finances)
You can buy the food you want and watch the tv shows you want
There’s no one’s dirty underwear to pick up off the bathroom floor
There’s nobody expecting you to make meals for them everyday
You have the covers all to yourself
You can be friends with whoever you want (guys & girls) without having to explain yourself
You only have one set of relatives to deal with
The toilet seat is always left down
Your free time is yours to spend however you want to relax
There’s no one to tell you you’re a bad driver
You don’t have to listen to snoring or farting all night :)
You can eat ice cream straight from the carton and no one cares
You can pick up and travel whenever you want (or move even)
You can invest more time and energy in friends
You don’t have to worry what your mother-in-law thinks of you (because you don’t have one :)
You can become more aware of who you are and what your dreams are
You can devote more time to God
There’s no one to help put you on an emotional roller coaster
You have the freedom to be spontaneous
You can shop however long you want without hearing “Are we done yet?”
You can read an entire book without being interrupted
You don’t have to share the toothpaste with anyone
You don’t have to check with anyone before you RSVP
You can stay in the bath or shower however long you want!

See, isn't it amazing??
That being said, if you know any eligible bachelors feel free to give them my number :)

Allow me to share some random Christmas videos with you to get you in the Holiday Spirit!

No matter how hard I try there are always certain follies I just keep repeating...such as getting myself locked out of places that I need to be in. Like my house. Or my office. Or my car.
You’d think I’d learn from my mistakes. But nooooo!
A little while ago I got locked out of my office late at night with all my keys, purse, and cell phone locked inside. Thankfully I remembered our main office has a box of spare keys in it. So I managed to get in there and got the box. It turned out there were nearly 200 keys in it, of course. I hoped maybe I’d get lucky so I started with the big important-looking key chains. After what felt an hour later I finished checking each key...it turned out my office key wasn’t even in there. (Any thief trying to break in with these spares would have given up a long time ago). But being the wise person I am I know that patience is a virtue so I went through them all again to see if maybe I had missed it somehow.
Yeah, I hadn’t.
One of my old cars used to have a beeper with an alarm on it (just in case anybody was foolish enough to try to steal an old station wagon!) Before you started the car you always had to disarm it by pressing the ‘unlock’ symbol. One day on an out of state trip I was stopping to get gas and I thought “Hey, today I’ll be wise and hit the unlock button ahead of time so I can just get in the car and drive away when I’m done.” So I hit the button and got out of the car to pump gas. When I was finished I went to get back in the car and as I lifted the handle the car alarm started wailing. Apparently instead of ‘unlock’, I had hit ‘lock’...whoops! An honest mistake, right?
Except that I didn’t look so honest with a parking lot full of people staring at me while I tried to break into a car with the alarm wailing. It was getting louder by the second..."DEE, doo. DEE, doo... Now I’m a fire engine! Wah ooh Wah ooh. Now I’m an ambulance!" WEE ah WEE ah. Now I'm a police car. [You get the idea].
I threw my entire body over the car as if that would some how muffle the sound.
It didn’t.
When am I going to learn that doing the ‘wise’ thing keeps getting me into trouble?

Anyone who knows me knows I love to dance.
It's been a secret joy of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was in kindergarten I used to get in trouble all the time for randomly getting up from my desk to twirl and dance in the corner. I guess I was just in my own little world! (Not much has changed) Tonight I broke out one of the bag piping cds I got in Scotland and starting dancing a Celtic jig all around the kitchen. Then of course I had to dust off the old tap shoes and have a go at it. I realize this is not normal behavior, but when ya gotta dance you gotta dance!
One time I signed up for a hip hop dance class at a local college. I was nervous because I figured it would be mostly teenagers and I would just be the old fogey in the class who was a wannabe hip hop dancer. The class was scheduled to meet in the basement of a local church near the college...I showed up on the first day of class and walked down the stairs. When I got to the bottom there was a group of elderly women, probably in their eighties, sitting in the room. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry...I must be mistaken. I thought this was the hip hop class!"
[I figured I had accidentally wandered into a needlepoint class instead].
"Oh, no, honey...you gotta it right. We're here to shake our moneymakers."
"Uh, excuse me?"
As it turned out I was the youngest in the class by about fourty years. It was more like Hip Replacement than Hip Hop, the dances were so painfully slow I think by the end of the 2 months I had only learned one move (which I've since forgotten of course).
A couple years ago I took an adult tap dance class that was a full year (again, I dont remember any of it, but it was fun). I convinced my friend Nicole to take the class with me and she reluctantly joined. Pretty much the whole year we spent working on this one number that we were to perform at the recital in June. I had no problem learning the steps, it was so repetitive. But the day of the dress rehearsal came and my friend was so nervous.
"I just know I'm going to mess it all up!", she said.
She was sick to her stomach to perform in front of everybody.
To make it worse we had these embarrassing recital costumes we had to wear and looked quite silly to say the least. Not to mention my parents were out in the audience video taping like I was back in preschool.
The next day at the recital when it was our turn to perform I tapped confidently on stage to do my solo and promptly forgot all of the dance moves, messing everyone up behind me and officially ruining the dance the dance we had worked on all year.
I couldn't believe it. I had it all down so well. As I exited the stage, someone said..."Well, at least Elaina was the only one who messed up!"
I left the recital teary-eyed, vowing to never dance in public again.
If only that were true :)
Yesterday at the Christmas Concert practice at church this woman came up to me and said, "You have GOT to be on stage somewhere. You are such a good dancer". I'm not sure how she came to this conclusion since I was just directing the kids choir. But I guess my love for dancing must shine through. Like the song "I hope you dance", much of life is just being willing to get up there and make a fool of yourself. In the end we're all fools whether we dance or not...so we might as well dance!

Man, its already Friday again! I wanted to take the opportunity today to share some fun and cute kid videos. I'm sure you've already seen some or all of them, but if you haven't maybe they'll bring some laughs your way. Enjoy this wonderful November weekend!

One of my favorite things in the whole wide world is baking. Someday my dream is to open a European-style pastry shop called 'Holy Crepe'. I think it could be amazing! Anyways, if you know me at all you know that I will usually show up places with some sort of baked good. But the fact that I bake so much means that I make LOTS of mistakes. Usually just silly things...like forgetting something's in the oven and burning it or dropping it down the stairs when leaving the house or turning the oven much higher than recommended so that it will cook 'quicker'. Often my lack of patience will result in some silly stuff. Like the infamous time I made my friend Shauna a baby shower cake...It took me all day and I was up past midnight making it so that it would be ready for the baby shower. I decided to do the 'wise thing' and leave it in my car so that it would be all ready to go when I delivered in the morning. Except that it was the middle of the summer and I forgot that heat is not always the best thing for pastry products. (See exhibit A)

After

Just this past Saturday I went to a birthday party and made 50 cupcakes for the party. Unfortunately since it was a birthday party there was lots of other cake there (go figure...cake, at a birthday party?) Anyways, there were lots of left over cupcakes that I had to bring home. I had them on a platter and just tossed it in the back seat of my car. Again, not the wisest choice, but I didn't put a ton of thought into it. At the first red light I hit the brakes and of course the platter went sliding, cupcakes went flying, and I ended up with a car that looked like a bakery had thrown up. When I pulled over I was so annoyed with myself...perfectly good cupcakes! I figured, hey...five second rule, right? (As I dug chocolate frosting and red velvet cake out of the carpet fibers and picked up sprinkles one by one). Not so sure that the five second rule applies when there is hair and frosting involved. Yuck!
So, I decided to do the wise thing and put each cupcake directly back into the cupcake tins so they wouldn't slide around on the platter and then placed the tins onto the backseat. Aren't I smart? I continued driving home, thinking how silly I was for dumping the cupcakes when all of a sudden the car in front of me stopped short and everything in my car went flying again...including, you guessed it, the cupcakes. More frosting, more sprinkles...no more five second rule. What's the saying...'Fool me twice, shame on me?' Now I sound like George W.

You would think based on that experience I would travel less with baked goods. That didn't stop me today when I made a trifle to bring to work. I was trying to hold it on the front seat with one hand while driving with the other. I looked over to see whip cream all over the car seat. I brought it into the church and as I walked by the mirror I noticed I also had whip cream all over my sleeves, scarf, and coat. Will I ever learn?

My parents are pretty much the best in the world. Of course I would never tell them that, I wouldn’t want it to go to their heads. They have always done what parents should: protect, provide, prepare, and more than anything...pray! That’s really all parents can do. Oh, and cross their fingers for good luck. They were always there for me in any situation I got myself into...even as a child I would find myself in all kinds of mishaps!
One time I remember my parents took my sister and I to our favorite amusement park (Whalom Park). My father loved to video tape us going around the carousel and narrate on the video like we were at the race track and you just never knew which horse was going to win. But my all time favorite attraction was the super slides...you know the ones! You climb stairs for what seems like miles and then you get to go down a wavy slope on sack, screaming with your hands in the air. One day I was standing at the rail towards the bottom of the slides watching my sister come down. When she was finished my parents called me to leave so I turned to go but realized I couldn’t move. One of my knobby little knees had gotten stuck in the wooden rail I had poked it through while I was waiting. My parents tried to pry it loose but that thing wasn’t budging. They tried to slide it up....slide it down....slide it back and forth. After what seemed like an eternity they got someone from the park who tried to grease it out [to no avail]. I thought I was going to be stuck there for life...I started to cry so they brought a clown over and a man with a saw. As they were trying to saw me out the clown dropped his big colored pants to make me laugh. I remember my mom commenting to dad, “Well, now... I don’t think that’s very appropriate!” Eventually they did get me out; otherwise I would probably still be there to this day...they would have had to build me a little shelter and bring me meals. People would pay money to come see me and parents would use me as an example to their children of what not to do with their knees.
All that to say, my parents didn't always have it easy...as a two year old I ran off and got lost at the Boston aquarium. A few years later I got lost at Plymouth Plantation. When I went shopping with my mom I loved to hide inside the clothing racks and playing hide and seek (even though she never knew we were playing). Pretty much the only way they knew I wouldn't run off is if I was on my dad's shoulders. My favorite phrase as a little girl was 'Carry me, daddy!' I remember when we went to Disney World he told me that after that trip he would carry me no more...I was getting too big. (Which was true, I was almost six years old :)
I guess no matter how old I get, I will always be their little girl. Love you mom & dad!

I have always been really afraid of spiders(who isn’t, right?) Some people think it is a learned behavior but my parents can testify that as young as 1 year old I could spot a spider across the room on the wall. One of my first phrases was “Boosha Boosha BUG!”

I must say, I’ve had a lot of not-so-great experiences with our little arachnid friends. When I was in fifth grade I woke up with a swollen eye and my ceiling covered with hundreds of spiderlings ballooning around. Apparently mama spider had given birth in the night in my room and hatched a wonderful little army of baby spiders whom she had to protect from the Great Monster sleeping in the bed (yours truly). Hence the eye swollen shut with the spider bite. That is enough to traumatize a kid for life!

Another night when I was in high school I had a bad dream about spiders (you know... the Arachnophobia kind). I woke up that morning and within the first hour of my day encountered 3 spiders descending from the ceiling swinging into my face, all in different places. Weird! I’m like Little Miss Muffet or something.

One time in college I was driving down the road with my friend in the passenger seat. I felt something brush against my leg and as I looked down I saw a big spider crawling between my legs on the seat headed straight inside my shorts. Instead of pulling to the side of the road (which would have been the wise thing to do), I decided to hit the gas as hard as I could and start swerving all over the road. In my simple mind I thought the sheer force of driving 80 miles an hour in crazy patterns would throw the spider from the seat and save the day (maybe I should have taken physics). Instead all it did was make my friend start screaming at the top of her lungs (she could not see said spider and thought I had lost my mind). I, too, started screaming because she was screaming and also because I had a spider crawling in my shorts! [If you ever happen to be in this situation I do not recommend this as a reasonable reaction.]
I’m pretty sure in the end it turned out to be a black fuzzy.

But just recently for the first time in my life I have found a cute spider. He lives behind the key pad of our home alarm system in the basement. Every day on my way out I see him sitting there and as soon as he hears me beeping the buttons he scurries behind the box like he’s been found out. And every day I come home and he’s back in his spot and we repeat the charade and I pretend not to see him because he’s my little fuzzy friend. It’s kind of a little game we have going. Well, sadly tonight I came home and my spider buddy was not there. They say the average life expectancy of a house spider is 3 years. Maybe he didn’t make it that long; or maybe he just took up residence somewhere else. I hope he’s happy where ever he is.
As long as it’s not my bedroom...
then he’d be a dead spider.

Is it really already Friday? This week has really flown by.
Time just has a way of getting away from you... doesn’t it? If you’re not careful the days and months and years just pass you by and you wake up one day and you wonder what you did with it all. Lately I’ve been much more aware of time speeding up. I remember when I was five I was told we were going to Disney World in three weeks. It might as well have been an eternity; I didn’t think those 3 weeks would ever end! Time is just perceived differently as a child. These days I hear parents relating time to their kids according to TV...
"You need to go to your room for one full Spongebob”.
“We’re leaving in half of a Nemo”.
“You have less than a Blues Clues before this room needs to be picked up!”
Kinda sad, huh? But, hey, it’s a time perception that kids can relate to.
If I had to break down my 28 years--I’ve spent approximately 3 years of my life eating, 10 years sleeping, 2 years waiting in line or in the car, 8 years of education/working, 3 years recreation/exercise, and 2 years in the bathroom/getting ready. Kinda crazy!
I am determined to not let life just be a passing blur. Several people have commented to me as of late that it seems like I’m going through a mid-life crisis. They are joking with me because I guess it not exactly ‘typical Elaina’ to be backpacking across Europe, jumping out of planes, rock climbing, kayaking, hiking...etc. But in the last few months I have had some unique opportunities and I have just been trying to take in as much of life as I can.

My next exciting adventure is coming up in a couple weeks when I will be headed to Scotland! My friend Lydia has become good pals with the lead bag-piper of a band called the ‘Red Hot Chili Pipers’ (you can’t make this stuff up). He invited her to come to Scotland for a visit and she asked if I would come along for the ride. How could I pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hang with an international bagpiping rock star (not to mention a free place to stay, free transportation, and tour guide? :) So my awesome boss granted me some unpaid vacation days and we leave in a couple weeks. I am so excited!
Remember, life is short...live it up!

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”. John 10:10

Christians should be the happiest people in the world. First of all, our eternal destination is enough to wake up with a smile on our faces. And going to church, it's pretty easy to find stuff to laugh about. It's not that hard if you look, you can find some of the most 'interesting' people there. They should give you enough material to laugh the rest of your life. Some people make me laugh because they are slightly super-spiritual (if you know what I mean). You might ask them ,
"Hey, are you hungry...you wanna grab a bite to eat?"
You hear: "Oh, sister, you know Jesus is the bread of life. He's the only food I ever need!"
So, that's a 'no' then?
..."Hey, hows your week going?"
"Oh, let me tell ya...God's still on the throne! That's all I know!"
Yesterday at church I saw the funniest comedy act in the row in front of me...I could hardly contain myself. It was two older women, probably in their eighties or nineties, apparently one of them was almost completely deaf. The speaker asked the lady a question and she didn't answer, she just stared at him. He turned to her sister (who also was hard of hearing)...
"Does she speak any English?", he said.
"She doesn't hear all that well", the lady yelled.
She turned to her sister and shouted in her ear "The man is talking to you, Phyllis! I told him you don't hear so well!"
"Whaaat?"
"I SAID you don't hear very well!"
She turned to the preacher and said,"This is my sister...she gets on my nerves."
"Ask her if she wants more of the Holy Spirit", the preacher said.
"DO YOU WANT MORE HOLY SPIRIT, PHYLLIS?"
"Whaaat?"
It went on like that for a while and I about died laughing.
Also on Sunday the kids I was teaching were making me laugh with all their incorrect answers:
I said, 'Can someone tell me one of the fruits of the spirit?'
"Orange?"
'What? No.'
"Pear?"
'No!'
"Ooh, ooh, I know! Pineapple!"
'No, guys, it's not actual fruit. You know this.'
"Liberty?"
'No.'
"The Pursuit of Happiness?"
'No.'
"Self-Centeredness?"
'No, kinda the wrong direction...you got the self part right though'.. (looking for self-control).
"Ooh, ooh, self-destruction?"
Oh, I give up.
I also love it that Christians can be the corniest people in the world. (Don't get me wrong, I can be pretty corny myself!) In case you don't believe me, I will leave you with a prime example (Hopefully it brings a smile to your face :)

People are always commenting on my memory...they think I remember everything. The truth is I have a very strange, selective memory. Oh sure, I can remember the birthdays of all my fellow classmates in fourth grade; I can remember the songs and lines to every play I was in as a child; I can remember what I ordered at the Olive Garden 10 years ago. But try to get me to remember to change the oil in my car or where I parked at the mall. Now that’s embarrassing! “Oh, what was it again? D4? Or was it B4? Maybe E4.”
So I find myself asking some poor old guy walking by...
”Excuse me sir, can you tell me where my car is?”
That’s a great way to make friends.
Just last week I was on an intense phone call with a friend as I walked into the mall...I did my shopping and was getting ready to leave when I realized I had no idea where I had even entered the mall. I was so distracted on the phone call that I had not the faintest clue as to what door or level I had parked at. I had to retrace my steps through the entire mall based on cursory glances inside stores and advertising signs. It was like being a detective with absolutely no clues to go on. That was a good time!
I also have the very keen knack of forgetting where I put things. I know almost everybody does, but I am definitely too young to be losing my memory this often. I’ve lost my keys, my wallet, my camera, my cell phone, my check book... you name it. Yesterday I walked out of Staples and forgot my purse on the checkout counter...the poor cashier had to chase me down. Last week it was the credit card I left at Chili’s. It scares me. Who knows...someday someone from Walmart may call and say, “Hello Miss? Yes, hi...you seem to have forgotten your children here. You can pick them up at the customer service desk.”
Darn it, I knew I forgot something.

//har⋅vest [hahr-vist]-noun: 1. the season when ripened crops are gathered 2. the result or consequence of any act, process, or event

Harvest time, by its very nature, is a chance to celebrate all the hard work we do and the results that God brings from that hard work. Last night I got a chance to see the fruit of my labor in ,ironically, a Harvest Party. Being a children's pastor the job is mainly planting seeds that may not evidence for years to come. It can be a thankless job. Sometimes I wonder...is it worth it? It is so easy to get discouraged...like last night when 30 out of the 50 volunteers who signed up didn't show; or when you're working til midnight several nights in a row. But then the moment comes when you get a chance to lead hundreds of kids in the sinner's prayer and you see these smiling faces looking up at you who may have just heard for the first time that God loves them and you know...yes, in fact, it is worth it all.