Amy J. Bennett

SYTYCD Week 3

June 25, 2008 by Amy 3 Comments

Kherington Payne and Twitch – Not my favorite of theirs by any stretch but I thought Kherington did well enough.
Courtney Galiano and Gev Manoukian – Courtney was sexy during this routine. Wow.
Comfort Fedoke and Chris Jarosz – Not a fan of that at all.
Jessica King and William Wingfield -Well, you know me and Disco. I just can never ever get into a Disco routine no matter who dances. In fact, I would love someone to point me to a clip of someone doing that well.
Kourtni Lind and Matt Dorame I thought this was excellent. Loved it.
Chelsea Traille and Thayne Jasperson – I fastforwarded. Not good.
Chelsie Hightower and Mark Kanemura -I love this song and the choreography they put to it was so interesting. I loved it and you know, I’m really starting to love Mark. He’s so unique and seems to put a lot of thought into his characters. I love that.
Katee Shean and Joshua Allen – Wow, wow, wow. Did you see those hips on Joshua? Where did they come from. And that kick at the beginning of the routine? That was hot. I loved this.

I’d say top 2 were Chelsia/Mark and Katee/Joshua.

Who goes? Chelsea and Thayne

Third Day’s new album Revelation is out July 29th (11 days after I turn 30…wahhh). You can hear the full thing online right now @ www.essentialrecords.com/thirdday. Also, here’s a sneak preview video trailer on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJZgC_K5AYc I listened through it this afternoon and it’s a very classic Third Day sound. I particularly liked Call My Name, Revelation and Born Again.

Youth Camp 2008 Pictures

June 25, 2008 by Amy 5 Comments

First, if you checked my tweets at twitter at all while I was gone, you’d know I thought that the Wake Forest campus was beautiful. Let me show you a few pictures..

The first thing we saw was the Wait Chapel

This is inside Wait Chapel where we had all our services. Each side was lined with 5 or 6 of these big windows that let in the morning and evening light perfectly.

Flowers were everywhere and gorgeous

Here are a pair of buildings at night. Not sure what they’re used for but they’re attached to some dorms.

Now the next pictures are a lot of ME but I assure you we took over 600 pictures and the minority are of me but I don’t want to go plastering people’s pictures on my blog so you’re stuck with just me 🙂

The kids teased me because yes, I did end up on my phone a lot.

I actually did participate though…here’s on one of the rec days. I’m the one climbing on top

Here I am actually running playing ultimate frisbee..I’m on the far left in the full running pose. That building behind us holds the cafeteria.

See all those kids rolling on the ground? That’s our STOP, DROP AND ROLL deal we had all week. It really was hilarious.

And here, let me show you where I got dumped on on Water Day.

First, I run. And they chase me.

And then they catch me while everyone looks on

While I say Nooooo!

And they dump not one…

….but two buckets of water on me.

SCORE!!!!

I’m officially drenched

Somehow I keep the glass on though

They love me anyway…

…but still can’t get enough…I get picked to get sprayed with a water gun in the next game.

By the end, I had fallen off my stool, still drenched and I think trying to hide in the grass. It didn’t work did it?

I’m ok though! Still smiling!

Pizza that night makes it all better.

And there you have it. Amy at Youth Camp 2008.

Another Missed Appointment

June 25, 2008 by Amy 4 Comments

ONCE AGAIN I missed an appointment for the girls. This time it was Emma’s second tooth filling at the dentist. And now we have to wait over a month until she gets another appointment. Just hold your L-shaped hand to your forehead and call me a Loser. I don’t know why I can’t get these appointment things down. I’ve started putting everything in my iPhone calendar and adding reminders. Apparently I didn’t put one on this one. I started printing out the calendar and taping it on cabinets. That lasted one month and then the kids lost my tape. If anyone is successful at doing the calendar organizing thing..HOW DO YOU DO IT??

Far Side

June 24, 2008 by Amy 9 Comments

I’m wearing this t-shirt right now. Just because I’m classy like that. Actually, it fits me to a tee (no pun intended and I actually mean the graphic, not the t-shirt). Scott’s convinced the more intelligent you are, the less common sense you have. Or maybe it’s just us. Anyway, Lexi walks up to me just now, points at it and says, “He has a big butt, Mommy.” Yes, honey, actually he does.

And yes, we try to use the word hiney or bottom. Apparently we need to work some more on that.

Summer Helper

June 24, 2008 by Amy Leave a Comment

Today is the first day for L to be here for about 4 hours to play with the girls. If you don’t recall, she’s the middle school daughter of a lady that works for my mom. She spent a few weeks with us last summer. This year (well, today) is going quite well. All 3 of them are (obviously) a year older and no one is guessing what Lexi is saying since she’s talking better, they have no problems going to her for help, their activities aren’t quite so messy, etc. It’s working out quite well. It’s been nice not to have to get up every 5 minutes to help the girls do something. Not saying I don’t like helping my kids…just saying it’s easier to actually do work.

VBS Week

June 23, 2008 by Amy 1 Comment

Today kicked off VBS Week at church. Makes for two busy weeks for me. This year should be pretty easy going though since basically all I’m doing is leading the kids around to the right room. No teaching this year. Woot woot.

Emma felt like a magnet to me when we first got there. She freaked out with so many people. I finally had to leave her with her teacher and class and she cried. They had to bring her to me and then promise to make butterflies or something. She was fine though once she got to her room and seems excited to go back. That’s the part that scares me about school for her. It’s going to be a room full of strangers and she could freak. out. I guess I should start praying it goes well.

Anyway, this week is basically going to be work and VBS. I did manage to wake up extra early this morning and get the day started before the girls woke up. It made everything else go so much better. Tomorrow I have L, the middle school girl from last summer, coming over to play with the girls so that should be helpful.

Other than that, I can’t imagine much of anything exciting happen this week.

Youth Camp Recap

June 22, 2008 by Amy 4 Comments

I’ve been putting this post off the entire week and weekend because I knew it could get really long if I let it. In fact, I’m going to skip the pictures for this one just so I can get this much posted.

I have yet to pick a word which can sum up the week. Most of the youth say “awesome” or “amazing” but I just can not use words like that. In all honesty, last week was HARD. The past two years we had our old youth pastor and his wife and I get along quite well. We were roomies for one year and for both years, hung out with one another quite a bit. This year, I was the only female chaperone. It made it lonely and stressful at times. Don’t get me wrong, we had awesome and amazing moments but as a whole, I’m not sure.

See, I don’t like confrontation. And when something arose this week, all signs pointed to me as the responsible adult. I had to listen to the complaint, decide how to handle it and then actually handle it. Yeah, I had to be an actual “youth leader” this week.

And it wasn’t easy.

There was the

“naked girls in the bathroom” complaint,

“your youth was throwing up in our bathroom and stole our trash can” complaint,

“your kids need to throw their cups and plates away” complaint,

“don’t push around the chairs because you might break the legs” complaint,

“that girl is mouthing things to our boys” complaint,

“her shorts are too short” complaint,

“they’re being too loud and i’m the bus driver and need my beauty sleep” complaint.

Plus add in acting as a alarm clock in the morning, the buzz-kill at lights-out time at night and the one and only female counselor for all 15 or so girls, well, I was a frazzled mess.

I think it was Monday night I just cried into my pillow wondering why in the world I had left my family and spent a ton of money to make up for my time off to come do this.

Of course it’s clear that God changed lives while we were there and there needed to be some female chaperone there. But I really think it wasn’t just the kids that grew. I learned how to accept complaints and deal with them, how to gently correct someone, how to get things done that needed done. I really think I grew a little more backbone this week.

So that’s all about me.

As for the week, it was normal camp stuff…breakfast, morning service, bible study, lunch, rec time, dinner and evening service. My favorite times were on Thursday afternoon. The first was during our water day. The kids basically rotated through 8 games that had to do with water. Everyone got soaked. They decided to steal my camera and dump two buckets of water on me. Then I was the target of water guns in the next game. I was dripping by the time we left but that was definitely the best time I’d had all week. Seems sort of backwards right? After that we all went and played a game of ultimate frisbee and that was so much fun! I’ve never played before and we were all in such a good mood and everyone was playing together and I really think it was a bonding moment for all of us.

Thursday evening Todd Agnew stayed up on stage singing so long Dave Edwards didn’t even get to speak. We all just worshiped God for like 2 hours. It was an amazing time.

We did have some drama though. We had one girl who was hyperventilating at service after crying so hard and had to be taken to the hospital. We also had four girls who ended up with the stomach virus. That was fun. I was woken up at 6:15 one morning and had to go down 3 flights of stairs just to listen to someone puke a few times all while trying to decide whether to call her mom or WHAT to do with her. I’m telling you, this adult thing SUCKS (sorry, Mom, it just does).

One funny thing though was our “STOP, DROP AND ROLL” moments. Somehow it got started at camp and a leader would call out really loudly stop, drop and roll and the ENTIRE youth group would drop to the ground and then roll over a time or two. It made for some HILARIOUS moments when there was a large crowd. I think other youth groups either that we were crazy or a little jealous we had something cool to do. A couple other kids in other groups started doing it with us. It was kind of funny. I think the majority just thought we were a tad immature and maybe we all are!

I’ll try to get some pictures up soon because the ones from water day are just great. Thankfully the girl who took my camera actually took some pictures.

In closing I can say I’m glad I went. The speaker and Todd Agnew were really good (although he did spend the entire time only singing like 3 songs). I saw people make decisions for Christ. I even saw a leader completely step up and come out of their shell through the week. I grew as a person and got to experience God move like I hadn’t in awhile. And to me, that’s worth it.