wow, life is crazy right now. my job keeps me entirely too busy. we are now in the middle of an internal investigation in our department, due to some not-so-wise choices made by some of the previous employees here. that has made for a stressful last six months, and counting. on top of that, we have four kids signed up to play ball this season. not sure how we are going to make that one happen yet. hunter plays at a different field across town, and we just found out that cicily, our oldest, will most likely be on a traveling team. yikes! good news is, they allowed us to put our youngest two on the same team. So, we will only have to come up with one more person to help us get one of the kids to a game, instead of two. ugh!

i just returned from a spontaneous trip to chicago this weekend. i have a friend who heard of a competition going on, much like american idol, but all christian music. i had never heard of it, which isn't surprising b/c honestly, i listen to very few christian artists. they all just sound the same to me. ( i have recently found some new, modern artists, though, so i am increasing my listening log in this genre.) anyway, my friend offered on Wednesday of last week to pay all my expenses to go audition for this, if i would leave on thursday to be there in time. how could i pass up a free trip to chicago??!!

it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out that i was in the wrong competition for me. as i looked around, i kept waiting for more "color deficient" people to walk through the door, but alas, it was me and about 7 other white people. hmmm! then i found out that BET was sponsoring the competition. yep! wrong competition. i went ahead and auditioned just for the fun of it. the look that i received from the five people in the audition room was quite funny. it was as if their eyes were asking me "do you know where you are?". hehe.

anyway, it was a great experience. i met some great people. it was quite interesting too. in the holding room, where we were waiting to audition, people started singing from their hearts until the whole room erupted in free worship. i sat with my video camera in hand, with tears rolling down my face. i was in absolute awe of what was happening in that room. i kept thinking that surely, this must be what heaven will be like. all different people, with different likes/dislikes, but with one voice and one heart, worshipping the one God. it was beautiful.

the night of the auditions, my mom and i went to see Wicked on stage. it was so awesome. Expensive, but awesome! and well worth the ticket price. we had to get a cab to get us back to our parking garage (where we had to pay $40 for all day parking!!!!), b/c we didn't know where we were, and walking anymore was not an option since my pinkie toe was now bleeding through my shoe. yeah, it hurt! that was the first time i rode in a cab, and if it wasn't for my mom talking to the cab driver and making friends, i think it would have been a scary experience. good ol' mom.

i had to be at work on monday morning, so mom and drove all night sunday. i got in bed at nearly 3. i was so tired at work the next day, but glad i didn't miss the opportunity to go.

that's all for today.