Where in The World is Michele Davis?

Not in blog land, that's for sure...

I must admit to you all, when I blog I spend way to much time doing it. (Either because I'm a secret perfectionist, or because I'm a people pleaser,,, or more likely, both combined) I'm not someone who can just whip out lots of posts. I generally read it over and change it couple times before I post. Any who, I haven't been able to take that much time to blog lately, not because I have some big exciting life, or anything like that. Mostly because I'm a senior in high school and trying to focus on school and all that fun stuff (except it's not fun)... so blogging hasn't been on the top of my list... I do apologize to you for my horrible blogging habits... that is, if anyone still actually checks my blog.... Anyone, anyone???


Enough of my excuses.....


Let me see if I can update you on my life these past couple of months....

• SCHOOL, SCHOOL, SCHOOL....

Not fun, but it has to be done. (I'm made a rhyme :))

• Braces, braces, braces....

Yep, I got braces. Needless to say (see picture) it has not been the most fun experience...

• Sick, sick, sick.

I have basically been sick for the past two or three months... it started out as a sinus infection and according to my doctor turned into bronchitis. (great...) I've always gotten sick around this time of year, but I've never been sick for this long... and it's been pretty exhausting... I keep thinking I'm starting to get better, so I'm not sure when I actually will be... but I can smell today, (I haven't been able to for a while,) so maybe that's a good sign!

• Birthdays, Birthdays, Birthdays!

Well, in my blogging absence you all have missed two of my three brother's birthdays- Aaron's 15th B-day in October and Evan's 12th B-day in November. And Michael's 20th(<--WOAH) is just a few weeks away... yes, the holiday season in the Davis house could also be reffered to as the season of birthday boys...

• Christmas, Christmas,CHRISTMAS!

Well, if you can't already tell from my blog's make-over, I LOVE Christmas! And Decorating for Christmas! And Christmas music! and Everything about Christmas! I'll hopefully do a post with pictures of our decorations soon. I even have my own little tree, (with little purple ornaments :D) in my room. =) I may even throw caution to the wind and put a christmas-themed poll up!





Pictures, Pictures, PICTURES!!!!









I have taken lots of pictures in my blogging absence. I am becoming more and more obsessed with photography! And with Michael having just added photoshop to our computer, there's probably no end to my photography obsession in sight.... I'm even considering it for a career! Of course, I need a better camera before I can think about that seriously.... And in case anyone out there buys their blogging buddies $600+ presents I would like a Cannon Rebel xsi. ;-)



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Well, I think that's about all I can think of at the moment. I know I say this EVERY time, but I'll try and be a little better about blogging... I do already have some things to blog about, (I have some good pictures from decorating for Christmas, to post.) And with Christmas on it's way, I'm just in a bloggy kind of mood. =)


Oh, and check out my awesome Christmas playlist, while you're here! It's got quite a variety of styles and songs and you'd practically have to be scrooge (you know, "bah hum bug") to not enjoy at least one! =)


Sincerely your forever unfaithful blogger,

Michele

I HATE HURRICANES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry I haven't blogged lately, but I had to blog about something real quick, just for venting purposes... I just had to go and Google search photos of Galveston after Ike. I unfortunately saw something I never ever wanted to see, but now I have. I mentioned in one of my post about Galveston about our favorite gift shop "Murdoch's". It has a special place in my heart, and I have some of the coolest seashell hangy things from there... anyway I stumbled across a photo, and as soon as I saw it, I started thinking that it looked a lot like what Murdoch's looks like except totally demolished! >:( At first it looked too high off the ground, or something about it looked not quite like I remember, (although it was awfully hard to tell much about it.) But after consulting with my mother and looking back at our pictures from our last trip, we came to the conclusion that it was in fact Murdoch's. Now, I'm sure none of you reading really care about this, but I practically burst into tears when I realized what I was looking at. I probably sound ridiculous, but I needed to vent. Anyway I thought I would share some photos of the store I loved so much....

Murdoch's, being it's normal charming self. Birds perching atop and all.

A view from a little further away.

I also took the picture of Aaron at Murdoch's.

Michael, taking some pics off the pretty veranda.

Some of the lovely seashell hangy things.... where did it all go?? I'm sooo sad. :(

Alright here's the picture...

Can I just say I HATE HURICANES!!! >:(

Yeah, I cried. I'm practically crying right now just looking at it.

And this is the Flagship Hotel... It's one you may have seen in coverage from after the storm because it has a big chunk missing off the front of it now... It's also next to Murdoch's. If you look close in the picture above this one you can see it in the background... This is a pic my mom took off the veranda.

***added this***
I found this video of Geraldo Rivera reporting right in front of Murdoch's about 9 hours before the storm even hit. It's pretty easy to imagine how bad it must have been during the storm if it looked like this way before...





We love you, Murdoch's!


Did I mention I hate hurricanes?? Because I do. A LOT.

Youth Camp!

I have realized something about myself, I cannot write short blogs.... So, good luck. :)

My churches youth camp is something I look forward to every summer. It's always a wonderful experience and it's never exactly the same. This year was no exception. I was asked to be a student leader in a family group with Mr. Robert Adams, which was very interesting and a whole lot of fun! He did a lot of the talking, but I was glad he did since it was my first time being a student leader. All in all it was a really great experience and I hope I can do it again next year!

The theme for camp this year was "Everything", which at first I thought might be a little overwhelming of a theme, but it ended up being one of my favorite themes ever.There were different things we talked about everyday to go along with the theme, things like "God can make everything clean" and "everything belongs to God", but I think a really big thing that our family group focused on was God being sovereign over everything. It's really an amazing thing that we as Christians can know that God knows all of our steps before we take them and He has a purpose for every single one of them (good and bad) a greater purpose than we could ever imagine. There were also a lot of kids in our family group that struggled with idea of why God would let bad things happen, especially to good people. (to which I wanted to respond "haven't any of you read Angie Smith's blog??? They, of course, would have probably thought I was crazy, so I kept that thought to myself) There was even a girl who, when Mr. Adams was talking about a family he knew who had a baby that had a bunch of medical issues and could possibly die, asked why God would even let that baby have all those problems... (WOW.) Sometimes there isn't a answer that people are going to like. I can't say I have gone through something that devastating, so it's hard for me to just go "it's all a part of His plan" even though I know that everything is. I haven't lost a child (or had one, don't worry) or even a very close family member and I know that when it's a baby who has hardly gotten to experience life it seems even more wrong. Then you see those people that have gone through it, and come out glorifying the Lord in their testimony and somehow you can say "You ARE sovereign over everything." because you know that despite the pain there are people that use that pain to bring people to the Lord. I probably sound like a rambling maniac, because I could never express what I'm trying to say as beautifully as someone like Angie Smith, but that one little question that this girl asked made me hurt sooo bad. I could see her struggle and I wanted her to see truth in these painful situations, but you can't always just give them the answer you know as the truth and make them believe it.

Because of that, one more thing I got out of camp was the ability to really apply what I've always known as the truth to life. I've grown up in church my whole life and I've never really questioned what I was taught. But to see people really struggling with what they believed in my family group and getting to apply what I know is the truth to their questions and doubts they had is a cool experience. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, while I've never really questioned it myself, being able to validate what I know to other people who aren't sure about it just makes my faith that much stronger. Just to be able to step back and look at everything and be like "wow God you really know what your doing" and knowing how real He is, is just a really cool thing. And I didn't even realize it till a little while after camp was over. Some of my friends and I had some similar experiences being student leaders. We weren't exactly sure what we got out of it at first other than seeing other kids in our family groups grow closer to God (which is great don't get me wrong), but I've realized now that's a big way I grew at camp. I didn't necessarily doubt what I believed, but I definitely feel stronger and more confident in it now.

Anyway, who wants to see some pictures??? well, let's get to it!!

Kristen and Me - on the way to camp!

Katie and me - the first night of camp.

DODGEBALL TIME!!!

Well, every night at camp we have some sort of fun activity called "night life" and this is the second year we've had a hard core dodgeball tournament! It's a lot of fun! Not that my friends and I played or anything. We just cheered on the teams and took pictures. :)

Here's a few with a view from the bleachers. Yes those are cages...

Action shot!

First place team!

Kristen, Jenn, me and Katie - taking pictures. :)

Again, but silly faces =)

Michael's not in the youth group anymore, but he came with our media guy to help film at camp. I took this when he was INSIDE the cages filming!



Another night life activity we had was um..... hip hop lessons... yes, you read right hip hop lessons... I'm not even going to try and explain the next 2 photos, other than saying it's a bunch of white kids trying to be cool....


yeah....


There was a bed in our cabin that had been um "cursed" so we decided to fix it. :)


Family group.

Family group being goofy.

Well, that's all I have for you from camp. My next post will probably be about choir tour and then I'll probably be almost caught up on big stuff from the summer!

P.S. I just read Angie Smith's most recent blog after writing this and I just had to put a link to it just in case one of you doesn't know who I'm talking about and hasn't already read it. She ironically talked some about knowing God has a purpose for everything even the hard things, but with a lot more experience in the matter and written a whole lot more beautifully than I could ever dream of writing. Anyways, even if it didn't have a whole lot to do with what I wrote it's still something you should definitely read! Anyway check it out here.


P.P.S.(<-- or whatever its' supposed to be) I just recently made an art/photography/craft blog! It's just for fun there's not a lot on it yet, but if you want to you can check it out here. You can also find it in my list of blogs on the right.

The End. For Now.

Galveston- the last two days...

Well, I can assure you the last two days of Galveston are far less exciting than the previous ones, but I do have to finish blogging the trip. So let's get to it!

Our third and final full day in Galveston was pretty slow, because if you remember me saying, we had all gotten some pretty serious sunburns from our day before on the beach. So a lot of this day we chilled in the hotel playing cards and such, which was fun, but not as fun as the beach of course.

Anyway, we did go out that afternoon to do some souvenir shopping and take some pictures...

We went down by the beach first to take some pictures first (and when I say take some pictures, I mean my mom took pictures of us kids. We weren't exactly thrilled about it, but it's not really like we could say no, she did give birth to us after all)

So here are a couple of the pictures we took out on the beach...

after the beach we headed over to our favorite shop in Galveston Murdochs!

Before we shopped for souvenirs, we took a couple pictures out on the deck right off Murdochs, that over looks ocean.

Me and Michael.

I had this picture in my first post about Galveston, and it's probably my favorite picture of the whole trip.

OK, Mom one more.

Aaron holding some colorful sea shells. He loved playing with the big bins of sea shells, they have at Murdochs.

That was about it for our last night in Galveston. Sorry wasn't more exciting, but believe me with the sunburns we had, nobody wanted it to be exciting.


Now for the trip back... I went ahead and put these 2 days in the same post, because I knew they would be shorter, and I'm trying to whip out my summer stuff as fast as I can. :)

Leaving Galveston. :(

Aaron with his new turtle. (wearing his goggles) :)

One more before we go...

Well, that's all I have for ya, from Galveston. Our drive back was pretty uneventful, so no stories there. But have no fear, because I still have lots to blog about from the summer!