our tennessee trip

Early this month my grandmas announced a shocking yet wonderful plan -- they were going to take eight of us, without my parents, to a huge hotel with an indoor waterpark in Tennessee. We all had a marvelous time and we survived.

We arrived Tuesday afternoon and since nobody goes on vacation (expect other home schoolers and retired people) in the middle of the week in January we had the hotel, water park, restaurants, and smoky mountains all to ourselves. Basically.

                                                 (excuse the bad picture quality. my camera takes awful pictures inside) 

We played in the waterpark for hours on end. The little kids stuck to the wave pool and the water play ground, while we older ones dared each other to go down the largest slide. We finally got Heidi to go down it, but she was so scared she never tried it again. But the rest of us loved every moment of it. Except for when I about broke my neck and got whiplash, anyways, that's a different story.

My personal favorite part was driving to the top of the mountains and gazing out at the scenery. Even if it was freezing, the site was breathtaking. I felt so much more in awe of God and His creation then.

I have the most good looking family on earth. Just try arguing with me. While on top of the mountain, we realized that we had locked the keys inside of the van. Yikes. Of course, knowing grandmas, there was a bit of fretting going on until Max announced that dad had kept a spare key over one of the tires. (You might've mentioned that a bit sooner, Max.) We all drove down gratefully thanking God He allowed us to arrive safely at the hotel. You just can't take everything for granted.

(it's anna's birthday. wish her a happy one, will you?)

Do you like going on trips? Ever been to Tennessee?

giveaway // $20 gift card to amazon

THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED. 

I promised all my readers that I would host a giveaway soon and the time has come. I was too lazy (okay, I just don't want to spend five hundred hours on the computer) to ask anyone to sponsor the giveaway with a prize, instead I'm giving away an amazon gift card. Now, if you're a reader and a music lover like me, you're probably jumping up and down in excitement. Hopefully.  

I'll quit my talking then and get on to the rules, since I know that's what you want. 

1. For those of you who have never entered a giveaway, there will only be one winner. I will choose the winner randomly out of all the entries. I'll explain how you can enter in just a minute. 
2. This giveaway is open internationally. 
3. Winner will be drawn February 25th and will be announced later that week. I will contact the winner by leaving a comment on their blog (if you don't have a blog leave your email or some other way for me to contact you). If the winner does not respond in one week, I will choose another. 

Is that clear? Alright. To enter, you can do one or all of the below choices, but for each entry, please leave a comment on this post. The comments are basically your entries for the giveaway, since I'm choosing a random comment number (using random.org) from this post. 

ways to enter:

• Let me know in a comment how God is working in your life and/or let me know if there are any changes you'd like to see to magnificent obsession. 
• Follow this blog via google friend connect through my sidebar. 
• Like the blog page on facebook through my sidebar. 
• Mention this giveaway or my blog on your blog. 
• Put the blog button (below) on your blog sidebar. 

<center><a href="http://www.ismikendra.org/"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NDCJ5xfmsGg/TyIaZxzv6EI/AAAAAAAAD7Q/GPk9CWGRHWk/s1600/BUTTON.png"/></a></center>

This is a thank you to all my readers, I'm so thankful for everyone of you who cares about me and leaves encouraging little notes on my posts. I really do wish I could give you all something, but instead I think I'll just leave a comment on all of your blogs (two hundred and three comments, I can do that).

Love in Christ, Kendra (the little blogger who is not so little anymore thanks to all of you and Jesus who allowed this to happen).

laughter

 all pictures via pinterest 

"A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries the bones." PROVERBS 17:22

"Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, 'The Lord has done great things for them.'” PSALM 126:2

good enough

"Well, God couldn't really love me anyway, because I've messed up too many times."


"God couldn't love me, because I forgot to spend time with Him this morning. I feel like such a jerk. I'll never be able to serve God if I can't even remember to read the Bible everyday."

I struggle with these thoughts. I think that what I do is what makes God love me.

What we do doesn't effect God's choices. We have no power over God. No matter what we do, God will always love us. He may not always be proud of us and sometimes we may make Him angry, but He will always love us. 

So these thoughts, these lies I believe that I have to be good enough to deserve God's love must disappear. I can never be good enough on my own, no matter how hard I try. It is only through Christ that I can be saved, only through Him anyone can be saved.

Sure, we can spend time with Jesus and read the Bible. It makes God smile, it brings us closer to Him, it refreshes us. But it's not what saves us. I can never be good enough on my own. I am good enough, but only because Christ is in me. 

What do you struggle with?

a normal day

It's funny how other human lives seem so interesting. I wonder what each person does everyday, what time they get up at, what time they go to bed, what they eat, how much school they do. I decided to take pictures of today's events and write about them, so others can see and when I'm older I can go back to see what I did.

I get up at six to read Bible and spend time with my best friend, then (honestly) I fall back to sleep. I love waking up when the sunlight is streaming through the windows, not when it's pitch black and there's rain falling. But I still manage to become the early bird of the family.

 I get breakfast on the table, which was apple bread I had made earlier. Everyone comes pouring downstairs asking each other how they sleep and telling weird dreams. We all have weird dreams, so it's like a tradition to tell them at the breakfast table.

Next we do chores. Since we have a family of ten, we have more work, but when everyone pitches in it goes quicker.

I read to Nehemiah and Henry (who are the cutest kiddos on earth) while the others finish up the morning jobs.

 I do history and literature, they're probably my favorite school subjects.

Next I do the dreaded: Algebra. I hurry to get it done, but before long the hour is up and mom is calling me out to the car. I have a chiropractor appointment, my neck has been hurting.

It's cloudy outside and there's a slow dreary rain falling as we drive. We make the best of it by talking about our trip to Tennessee while we sing along with the radio.

At the chiropractor everything goes well, except it turns out I had some whiplash in my neck from riding one of the slides at a waterpark on our trip. I fell sore on the way home, but it isn't anything too serious.

When we come home I eat some leftover baked potato, then I read and play with Nehemiah. After putting Nehemiah down for his nap, I start school again.

Geography, science, consumers math, and art fill up my time for a few hours until I jump up and decide to run with dad.

The run is refreshing, it's warm outside and the weather has cleared up. When I return home Anna is baking apple crumble, the other kids and mom have left for the YMCA, and Nehemiah is dumping the monopoly game out everywhere. 

I pour all of the monopoly cash and cards into the box and pull Nehemiah into the living room, where we host our own "concert" and dance with each other. 

(Yep, we listen to Christmas music in January. We're awesome.)

Mom and the others soon return and my parents decide that they're going out for a 'date' and I stay home to watch the kids. We eat dinner then watch Stuart Little 2, after putting the extremely tired Henry and Nehemiah to bed. 

When dad and mom return we pull out the monopoly game, only to find the pieces are scattered and we must sort them all out again. 

 I get ready for bed, make some tea and pull out a book. 

After a few chapters I get out my laptop, answer a few emails, then write this post. 

What does your day look like? What is you favorite time of the day? 

love, 

    Kendra

ps: I wrote this post yesterday, so it's really yesterdays' events.