Chocolate and Chapstick

A wise man once said, "Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're gonna get." This year I have gotten the good chocolate. You know the kind that has caramel? But I have also received the bad chocolate, the ones with coconut in it! But let me assure you, the good totally outweighs the bad!

Just a little overview of the past year...

Last spring I played on the Ozark Christian College baseball team. I think our final record came to 8-22 or something like that. It wasn't the prettiest season, but i learned a lot. Regrettably I let some pride issues get in the way in the middle of the season, and I flipped out on my coach. Now I have always respected authority figures in my life, but ignorantly I decided to ignore my usual ways and began arguing with my coach in the dugout before our game. That was easily one of the times in my life that I have never been more embarrassed/ashamed of myself. After a few minutes of trying to justify my actions to myself, I quickly apologized for my insolence and disrespect. Bad Chocolate.

In may, our baseball team went to the national tournament as the #8 seed (we were the last seed because we received an "at-large" bid. Basically, we got really lucky and we were invited to the tournament). In our three games we played, I had never seen our team come together and play as well as we did that week. First off, we were beating the #1 team in the nation 4-1 in the 4th inning, but ended up losing. Then we won our next game by a large margin, and I was lucky enough to be able to pitch that game! Sadly our season came to an end when we lost to the #2 seed in extra innings by one run! It was an awesome experience that I will never forget. Good Chocolate.

About 2 weeks after school got out, I headed down to Derby, Kansas for my summer internship. (Here is the blog post that explains more in depth about a GREAT my summer was at First Christian in Derby...http://butonaseriousnote.blogspot.com/2009/08/shamoos-splash.html). In short, I met soo many great people...too many to name in this post. I will always be thankful for the leadership and guidance I received from Nick Pannone, the youth minister. Also, all the youth sponsors and students that I met and were able to hangout with this summer are AMAZING people. My summer in Derby would not have been the same without them. Good Chocolate.

This past semester was a good semester. I noticed something different about myself this last semester. I will be honest, usually I start to get kind of crabby as the semester wears on. Most of the time it takes about 10 weeks until I start turning into Mr. Hyde <----reference to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! But this year, I didn't turn into mr. crabby until the end of the semester if at all. And I think this is due to the fact of my friends! Every Monday, a few of my closest friends and I go bowling. I know it sounds a bit lame, but these times were really relaxing and I found myself looking forward to Monday nights. I awesome friends that I will miss dearly when I graduate (if you haven't noticed...I talk about graduating a lot :( I'm going to miss everyone so much!) But I will always cherish my weekly bowling outings at the 4th Street Bowling Alley. Good Chocolate.

These four memories from the past year are just 4 overwhelmingly impressionable occurrences, but they do not over shadow everything thing else that happened to me. I'm grateful for all the new friendships I made and many experiences I had in 2009. One quick thought that in no way ties to my post...Have you ever noticed that you never reach the end of your chapstick? I'm almost positive that I have had the same Burt's Bees chapstick since October...it just won't end! Or you wash your chapstick in the wash because you left it in your jeans. Or, the unthinkable, your dog finds it and eats it. At least I can sleep at night better knowing Bonnie won't be going around with chapped lips.

Well here is to a year full of Good Chocolate and Dogs without chapped lips! Bring it 2010!