What's Your Answer Wednesday: A Few Memories

I'm excited to be starting off my new meme today! You can read more entries or find out how to participate and post your own by going here.

I wanted to do kind of a "Sarah through the ages" sort of post...but then realized I don't have pictures for my younger years---Mom does. I'll have to get some from her and do a "younger years" one later on.

Here is a classic look from 1990! This was my very first perm! I got it at Spoiled Rotten in Hermiston, Oregon and it took over 3 hours! I wanted to be just like my school friend, Carrie Maxwell, who always had her hair permed. The earrings I'm wearing were a gift from the stylist since I had to wait so long for the perm to set. Notice the crazy bangs and the lovely emblem on my shirt pocket.

Another year, another perm. Here I am in 7th grade with my newest do! This time they used even more solution and had me wait even longer! I had some super thick hair, I guess. Anyway, I got to start at a brand new school with all new people. They affectionately nicknamed me "Mop Head". I even got a mop from a "friend" for Christmas. Guess it does sorta look like a mop... Here I am playing C-Team volleyball. One reason why I was stuck on C-Team was the fact that I couldn't even get the hitting position right. Check out that funky open-forearm pose.

So now we'll fast forward to my Senior Year and my high school sweetheart, Jamie. Well, I guess he was only like the half-way through the end of the last year of high school sweetheart...but he's the one I started my "new life" with...and he's been my husband for 12 years now! I remember being so humiliated with this picture because it shows just a sliver of my tummy...and I felt SO Fat. Ugh...if only I could be so fat again!

This black and white was one of my Senior pictures and probably my favorite. I was posing in front of the college I had been accepted at, Eastern Oregon University. I felt so "Love Story"-ish that day. Well, except for the fact that there was no Ryan O'Neal and I wasn't dying...but, you know...the college thing. Ok...












Here's Jamie and I on graduation day. Our class was right around 200 people and it was no coincidence that we got to walk together. It was the result of me sneaking back quite a few rows after the teachers had so painstakingly lined us up by height. I'm sorry, but I wasn't about to let my fiance walk someone else down the graduation aisle! Yes, that is a National Honor Society collar you see on my gown! No, I did not earn it.

My SAT scores in English were perfect (yes, they really were perfect) but my math scores placed me at fourth grade level. However, since my SAT scores were perfect in English, and English was my major, AND my Advanced Placement English teacher was also head of the National Honor Society...well, you know, some strings were pulled there. I also got away with skipping a couple of PE credits and a Science credit. I still have nightmares. I'm not kidding...maybe we need to do a meme on bad dreams sometime. Moving on...

I have to include this picture with friends...otherwise, you'll all think I just hung out with Jamie all the time. It's probably hard for my three and a half current friends to believe that I ever had a large group of friends or enjoyed being the center of attention. But yeah, I was social once. Upon a time. Anyway, this is Renae, Sally, Angela and me. We were all in Swing Choir together and have lots of great memories of trips for competitions, etc. This picture was taken the night of my graduation. Renae graduated that year also. Angela was a junior and Sally was a freshman.

Here's me in a different school setting. Notice I'm considerably older than my classmates. I taught kindergarten for two years at a Christian school...this was year one.









Don't I look so "teacher-ish"?? The kids here are Daniel, Logan, Deanna, and Britni. They're all driving now.














So here's my most recent school experience...I now homeschool my own kids. Here are Lynzie, Elisha, Michael, Selah and Cainan posing with their toilet-paper-Revolutionary-War people. I did not come up with this idea...they saved tp rolls for a really long time so they could make these! That's LaFayette there in the white.

I hope you enjoyed these silly pictures from my school days. Please link up and join us for What's Your Answer Wednesday!

What's Your Answer Wednesday: School Days

I am so excited to introduce my new Wednesday meme, "What's Your Answer Wednesday". I hope you will enjoy playing along and will pass it along to all your blogging friends who might like to play too!

Because it's back to school time, I'm going with a school theme for a couple weeks. Here's this week's question: What is one (or what are some) of your memories from your time in school? This can be any time from preschool through college. Please be as thorough or as brief as you'd like. You can write an entire post or just answer the question on an existing post and link it up. If you'd like to get the question early in a weekly reminder, please let me know and I'll put you on the list!
Usually, I will add my answer to the end of the post but tonight I'll just link it up like the rest of you so I can test out and make sure I've got it working right! Please comment after linking and use my button on your post so others can come visit too!

<center><a href="http://www.bloggingwhilewaiting.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="Blogging While Waiting" src="http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu43/okiesrockwell/buttonowlcopycopy.jpg" /></a></center>

Ace of Base is Stalking Me!!!

AAGGHHH!!!! Get it out of my head!!

We've all had times when we've had a song stuck on repeat in our minds for hours, days, weeks...

For almost two weeks now, Ace of Base's The Sign has been looping over and over again in my head. I've heard it three times now in less than two weeks. First, on the way to Walmart. A few days later it was on the way home from Walmart. Just about an hour ago, a car drove by and had it blaring. This song came out in 1993 when I was a freshman in high school--why is it still around??

Relationships can be that way too. There are a couple people in my life that just seem to keep popping up--even though our lives have taken different directions. One specific example comes to mind: my cousin Amber. Our lives have just seemed to parallel one another, even though there's nothing we consciously did to make this happen.

We first met at church in 1993 (there's that "magical" year again!) when my Dad was dating her aunt Theresa. After they were married, Amber and I began spending a lot of time together and soon became best friends. The funny thing about Amber and I was that, though we weren't cousins in the DNA sense, we looked so much alike that people assumed we were actually sisters. Neither of us really look like anyone else in our families. (I would like to add that I think it is very unfair that she got to stay cute and slender after having children while I got to blow up like a walrus).

Since I was a year ahead of her in school, we did start to drift apart after I graduated and got married. Soon though, she was married too and we both began to start our families. By this time, we hardly saw each other at all and had different circles of friends and activities. Still, we somehow managed to time 5 pregnancies within weeks of each other, give some of our children similar names, and end up moving away from our hometown to the same new town an hour and a half away. In addition to that, we ended up at the same church and she got a job working for the same company as my husband, in the same department as my step-dad. There are many more memories and "little things" that remind us of each other---(in fact Amber, you're even part of my Ace of Base memories...remember Jayme and her CD collection? :)

I've jokingly said things like, "jeez, why can't I get rid of her?" (Just in case you read this, Amber, I wish we still lived close and I miss you!!! :) But seriously, what's up?

Do you have people like that in your life too? How about a certain painting that you see often in different settings and has special meaning to you? A scripture verse? For a long time, I'd see Jeremiah 29:11 ("For I know the plans I have for you....") EVERYWHERE! Guess God knew I needed to get that in my head!

I'm at the point now where I can see that God just might be doing something here. I think some relationships are woven together with our own lives on purpose. It will be interesting someday to sit on a porch swing with elderly Amber and look back at all the times God brought us back around to each other. I wonder if we'll be able to see his plan then?

I just hope that, in the meantime, he'll change the CD for me!