"Stop dreaming. Start living. Life is about courage and jumping into the unknown."

Last Spring was filled with Saturday morning and Friday night bible studies with the 8th grade girls. In all of those conversations and hours filled with laughter KCraig and I fell in love with this group of girls. Now that they're in HS they can come to Campaigners every Monday so we stopped having bible studies just with them. But recently we threw around the idea of starting up again because so many of them are often busy with sports or homework during the week.

This morning we went back to the Coffee Spoon where KCraig, Jamie Z and I were joined by Bailee, Whitney, McKenzie, Kara, Julia and Caroline. It's a different mix of girls from what we had last year, the dynamics are always shifting and changing it seems, but our time together is always well spent. Today we jumped into the first chapter of the New Testament in the Story and talked about Jesus' birth, the Magi and Jesus owning his faith at age 12. I love when we talk about scripture and we talk about our own lives. Checking in on how things are going, challenging and encouraging one another. Life is better together.

Julia and I got to go on some adventures this afternoon. We drove to Geurin HS for their Christmas ExtravaGala to see Hannah and Riley at their Jesse G booth. Julia and I found a couple fun Christmas presents for people amid all of the booths. We discovered we both love strawberry milkshakes when we went to Chik Fil A for lunch. Then we went to the Dollar Tree to fill boxes for kids in other countries for Operation Christmas Child. Julia was SO excited to be able to do this project that would impact the life of someone so far away. I love her compassionate heart.

We met up with our friends Brooke, Molly, Maddy, Caroline, Olivia, Hannah and Kaelyn at the movies to watch Catching Fire. We've all been anxiously waiting to see the next installment of the Hunger Games trilogy and had heard great reviews in the last couple days.

It was soooooooo good. Goodness. I love this story. I cried multiple times, I cheered, I gasped. Once again they did a phenomenal job of translating the novel to the big screen. Whether or not you've read the books you've got to make time to see this.

After running around all day, all I wanted to do tonight was to lay low at home. I worked on crafts, did laundry, talked with a good friend, watched TV and enjoyed not really having to do anything. A couple thoughts from the world of Pinterest...