The Top Ten of Thanksgiving 2010

10. Only setting my alarm clock once while I was home !

9. Watching episodes of One Tree Hill with Liana and then falling asleep in her bed :)

8. Getting paid to do Liana's laundry

7. New hair color (Liana dyed my hair for me and ran out of dye in the middle of the process)

6. Celebrating Dad's 57th birthday...dinner and a movie

5. The typical McCann family stories that are too inappropriate for the Internet

4. NO HOMEWORK

3. Some fabulous girl talk with Mommy and Liana

2. Catching up with old friends (mainly Steven Paul Cable, Sarah and Kristina)

1. A WONDERFUL Thanksgiving Day with my whole family...and having Grammy there with us!What an absolute blessing

3 weeks until Christmas Break. 6 days @ Willard. 6 Days @ Whitworth. 3 weeks at home. Then off to AFRICA....

My car back in Spokane...Ebay and I successfully dug it out of about a foot of snow!

Last November at the Cornerhouse :( The day of our Thanksgiving meal :))))

Sunday morning and snow is coming down. Perfect excuse for a Peppermint Mocha :) 2-5 today at Starbucks you can buy one holiday drink and get a second free. Ebay and I will be going there soon!

Life has been busy but wonderful! Ebay and I joined a new lifegroup at Church and have enjoyed meeting new people. We also went to LifeCenter's college night (ages 18-24) on Thursday. We ran into Michael who was doing the sermon and he was really excited to see us. Saturday we had some of our West Central friends over for wine and a movie. Let's just say, with all our best friends being away we have been forced to step out of our comfort zones and meet new people. It has been a great experience though and we are looking forward to building new relationships!

Today, LifeCenter began a new series called, "It's all about God". Joe discussed how we live most of our lives focused on ourselves. In reality, life is not about us (me), it is about God. He broke it down into three simple points: Creation is all about God (this is God's world), History is all about God (this is God's story) and I am all about God (I am not my own, I belong to God). Lastly, I love this point: we are TWICE God's because he first created us and secondly, he bought us. This is all just a reminder that everything we do, we should do it for God's glory.

I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday wherever they are and whoever you are with. Enjoy the snow, sunshine, rain... and know that I miss you all. I am so thankful for each one of you and the amazing work that each one of you are doing.

xoxo

Analisa

Surprise!!!

After a long week of school and craziness I hopped in my car Friday at 12:01 right after class and headed home to Tumwater. Jackie leaves on Tuesday for Australia and I will not see her Thanksgiving or Christmas break so I wanted to spend some time with her before she left! I took this opportunity to not tell my family I was coming and surprise them! Friday night I walked into the house and my mom and to call my dad into the room to assure her that it was really me and she wasn't seeing things. Once my mom believed it was me and my dad asked the predicted questions about the pass, we hugged! Liana was off at some dance so when I texted her and told her I was standing in the kitchen she was shocked! Oh I love surprises:)))

Saturday morning Jackie and I met at our Starbucks and snagged the comfy chairs of course. We ran some errands (Fred Meyer's and Great Clips) and then had El Sarape for lunch. Afterwards, mom and I went to Goodwill for some shopping and then to grammy and grampys! My grandma was super surprised and it was great to see her! Mom and I visited Liana at Safeway who was getting canned food donations for the food bank! When she was all finished we stopped and visited my aunt and uncle for awhile, played nerf guns with Timothy and then had McDonalds for dinner :) Finally, we rented the vulgar but hilarious movie, Get Him to the Greek and had a sleepover with Jackie.

The trip was short but sweet and well worth it! I feel rejuvenated for my last week and a half before Thanksgiving and I look forward to be coming home soon again!

DiStRaCtIoNs

It is Saturday night and I am sitting at the Service Station working away on homework (surprise, surprise). I am thinking about all the things that distract me from doing homework so I decided to make a list:
1. My blog
2. Reading everyone else's blog
3. Texting
4. Phone calls
5. Food
6. People watching
7. Pandora
8. Checking my Whitworth e-mail
9. Facebook
10. America's Next Top Model, Survivor and the Amazing Race
11. Attempts at napping
12. other homework
13. Talking to people at the Service Station
14.....and the 45 minute phone conversation I just had with my mom!



HERE WE GOOOOOO HOMEWORK!
Ebay and I have grand plans for the night: Clean R apartment while drinking margaritas!

It's November?

The last week of October whizzed by as I was busy carving pumpkins, making holiday treats, attempting to work those treats off by exercising every day, working on endless piles of homework and BEING SICK! Since I made it through all senior year without getting sick once, it seems I am making up for it this year (already sick twice in 2 months). No worries, after 10 days I finally made it to the health center to get some antibiotics...should be good in no time!

Needless to say, life is going at a crazy pace. Halloween came and went just like my pumpkin I carved (already rotten :( ). Ebay, Joanna and I had a fun Halloween evening and went as two kitties and a hippie! We branched out and attended an actual Halloween party which was fun only because we ran into Bobby Hughes and friends:) Halloween itself was pretty low key...I almost wore my kitty ears to workout, but forgot. Don't worry though, Ebay and I wore them to church Sunday evening which definitely got us some Halloween Candy :) Sadly, we had no tricker-treaters at R apartment, which was fine since we took shots of NyQuil and got in bed by 9!

So, October is gone, November is here! Today is another Princess Day celebration (about 3 and 1/2 years). We will celebrate by Didiers of course...and peppermint mochas compliments of Claire (THANKS!). Hopefully now that I am on meds, I will start getting better. Ebay and I are starting a lifegroup tomorrow through lifecenter...it is for SINGLES post-college 22-32...hmmmm should be good :)

Great thing I learned @ church: The church is not a rest home for saints, it is a rescue place for sinners! AMEN! Joe also said, "Let's get it right and say, I am just a turd trying to follow Jesus".

Also, I am going to give up sweets until Christmas (except on Tuesdays so I can have dids)
Love you and miss you.
Analisa

Rockford, WA Population: 500 (our Friday night)

So Josh is our friend who volunteers with us at West Central and he was celebrating his 22nd birthday on Friday. Ebay and I decided to take part in the celebration along with many other West Central volunteers and friends. Little did we know that we would be heading to Rockford, WA for a wondrous evening at the Harvest Moon bar...

Located 45 minutes from Spokane, Rockford has one street light, two bars and lots and lots of tractors. We walked into Frednecks bar and even with our plaid shirts, cowboy hats and boots we were called "city slickers". Not feeling the vibe, we headed down the street to Harvest Moon where we felt more welcomed :)

Analisa and Ebay dancing to: Larger than Life By: Backstreet Boys

Before you knew it, the 10 of us were on the dance floor doing the hoedown and dancin country style. Marty, the dj allowed us to request any song we wanted. Let's just say we had quite the variety: MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, 50 Cent, Technine, Backstreet Boys (yes, Ebay and I performed our dance), Lady Gaga, ACDC...the list goes on. We danced from about 8:30 to midnight, had the country bar on it's feet and got some locals to join us on the dance floor. I even believe the girls made it on top of the bar when the song "Single Ladies" came on. This night turned into much more than we could have ever expected from a town like Rockford. Long lasting memories were made as well as 15 embarrassing videos recorded :)

The Sunday Night West Central Dinner Crew :) These people are AMAZING!

Saturday was amazing as well! Had a wonderful phone convo with mommy, went to a yoga class, carved pumpkins, made lots of yummy treats, watched Hocus Pocus and ate Burger King :) LifeCenter was great on Sunday and we talked about the famous question: If God is so good then why is the world so bad? I got some great perspective on this topic! Sunday afternoon was relaxing and then Sunday evening the West Central crew stayed in and made SUSHI :)

LOVE YOU ALL! Have a great week!

Westboro Baptist Church Demo

Today Whitworth and the Spokane community came together in unity in response to a demonstration put on by the Westboro Baptist church. The WBC is a church group located in Topeka, Kansas that has very radical beliefs. To voice their beliefs, they travel all around the country demonstrating and holding signs. According to WBC, they came to Whitworth because, "the college students spend more time pursuing their drunken sins than their academic success. Their professors happily teach them the lie that "it is OK to be gay" and its just fine to flip off God and mock his servants". We know this is very scewed and far from the truth. While it is disturbing and frustrating to hear this, Whitworth responded in such a way that demonstrated love and peace.

Whitworth students united by wearing the color red to represent love. A "Love Walk" took place around the football field as a fundraiser, prayer went on in the chapel all day and signs were made to show that God loves everyone.

While WBC held up disturbing signs, Whitworth faculty and students held a sign saying "LOVE" and stood silently behind the protesters.

This was a bitter-sweet even. In one aspect it was a great thing to be able to show our love for these people and hopefully let them know that God loves them and EVERYONE. However, it is sad to see such awful messages represented on the signs and that people actually believe them to be true. Hopefully this only brings the Whitworth community closer in embracing everyone for who they are; a son or daughter of Christ.