A couple of things that make me happy

1. My father, outreach minister at Edgemere Church of Christ, was asked to speak at Sacred Heart Catholic Church's annual World AIDS Observance Day Service on Wed night on behalf of the Circle of Hope. This wonderful organization offers hope and support to those living with the disease who are so often discriminated against. I will never forget being so moved by Ryan White's biography when I was a girl. His speech was about examples in history where people faced discrimination because of race, religion, orientation etc. and how ignorance leads people to have this hate for those who are different than them. If more and more people were educated about AIDS, maybe people wouldn't be so afraid of people who are living with this disease. I was moved to tears by my father's beautiful speech on how we must always have compassionate hearts. That is exactly how my father raised us. Always to have open hearts and open minds.

The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone, but that life is not worth living without it.- Harvey Milk

2. My sweet Lauren's happiest birthday surprise - She's ENGAGED! :) Congratulations to Lauren and her Leevi :) Thanks to Leevi who planned the perfect proposal that included her sister Mehle and her closest girlfriends. I'm SO glad I got to be a part of such a beautiful & special moment! :) Just a couple weeks ago as Lauren was helping Micaela with her viel we kept saying how we couldn't wait until it was Lo's big day :) Sweet Lo - you were such a big help at both Micaela's and my own wedding day, I can't wait to return the favour! Cheers xoxo

3. At the gym they held a contest for the month of November. At the beginning of the month everyone got a star to put their name on. For every group class you attended you got to put a star sticker on your star. The top five people with the most stars at the end of the month won a prize. And guess who won?!?!?!
Yep, yours truly! I don't know why their sign says Holiday Giveaway because it was not a giveaway, I had to work really hard to win that contest! :) I feel very proud to think I attended the most classes. I love that the gym does fun things like this to motivate you esp. during the holidays when you're prone to get off track. It's such a basic rewards idea with the stickers, like the things teachers do for their elementary students :) But it worked sooo good because you wanted to work hard for that star :) And it kept you accountable - actually seeing how many stars you had up there made you see your progress. I even made Micaela and my brother's girlfriend go work out with me at the Turkey Buster the day after Thanksgiving and Micaela's WEDDING DAY just so I could get 4 more stars for two hours at the gym. I'm SO excited I won a 30 min massage and three months of free membership! I booked my massage for Dec. 18th and I cannot wait. It's been WAY too long since I've had one.

4. My little sister Madeline's fiancee Matt is an aspiring filmmaker. Him and his brothers are going to be the next Coehn Brothers. A couple year ago they made their own version of Batman called "Batman: Dark Tomorrow." They rented out one of the local theatres for a world premiere and had such a great turn out they had to do another showing. It was SO awesome to see the community support for local, independent filmmakers! Well I'm proud to say they've done it again!

If you are like me, then your childhood consisted of this show:

I love Zack Morris forever!!! :) I think you'd have to be a hardcore fan of the show like I am (I remember EVERY episode I sware!) to remember a certain character that was on one episode, Mr. Belding's hip younger brother Rod -

Do you remember Rod Belding who was supposed to take the class on a white water rafting trip? Matt and his brothers wrote and directed a short 22 minute film on this character. What's so neat is that it started out as just a joke and grew from there. They actually contacted the actor who played Rod and the actor who played Mr. Belding and after a series of emails etc. both agreed to act in their feature film :) So the crew flew out to California and filmed! How cool is that?!? :) And so it was so awesome to see all their hard work in last night's world premiere of "Saved By the Belding."
You can see the trailer here. They held it at my alma mater and had two showings. The price of admission was a toy or donation for Toys for Tots. How sweet is that? :) They ended up filling two big boxes of toys and over $500. Here's a pic I took before showtime:

I'm SO proud of Matt and his talent. I admire that he pursues his passion wholeheartedly! Remember the name Matt Hamilton - he's going to be famous one day I'm telling you :) To see a story they did on him on our local news go here. I'm so happy to have him as part of our family! He makes our little sister Maddie SO happy :)

5. The Cowboys win over the Colts in OT!!!

Talk about a nail biter of a game!!!! WOWZA! :) My mom and I were at the edge of our seats and screaming in happiness when they made the field goal for the win! We KNEW our boys could do it :) I love how into football my mom is - it's just so darling!

6. A clean house. I FINALLY had a chance to clean today, REALLY clean and I am so happy for it!

Just a couple of things that have been going on in my world :) I hope you had an amazing weekend!