Always waiting...

This has been on my mind a lot lately, as I have seen so many of my friends and family get what they ask for. Have you ever wondered when it's going to be your turn? Things in my life seem to have that reoccurring theme as of late. When is it going to by my turn to get what I want or need? I want to know what to do with my life, I want a good job, I want a family, I want to be completely happy with myself and who I am, I want to dream, I want to achieve those dreams, I want to be successful, I want to figure out what success means to me...

I've seen so many people get the things that I want, and yet, I'm still waiting. I've prayed, I've talked to people, I've worked towards some of these things, but I'm still waiting. I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. I'm still at the starting line and can't get my legs to move.

This makes me sad, but not depressed. I'm okay, but I want more with my life. I want to mean something and accomplish something. When is it going to be my turn?

I'm really not a selfish person. In fact, I think of myself as pretty self-less person. I'm almost always looking out for other people and understanding their decisions and positions. But this one thing in my life... it's okay to be a little selfish, isn't it? Is it wrong to want this for my life when I've been provided for in the important areas of my life (food, shelter, etc)?

When is it going to be my turn?

Text of Nate's speeches from graduation

Invocation:

Let us raise our hearts and minds 

to the Wisdom 

that is beyond all knowledge, 

to the Ultimate Goodness 

that surpasses all our goodwill.

We gather today for ceremony and ritual,

for the most solemn celebration of the academy.

 

Here we will

remember our purpose as an institution of learning, 

recall our ideals, 

and rededicate ourselves to the pursuit

of all that is true, good, and beautiful.

May the Spirit of Wisdom and God

remind us of our grand vision, 

which is nothing less than the transformation of the world 

through the formation and education 

of those who study here. 

Today we rejoice in the successful preparation 

of another class of graduates for this task, 

and we honor them for their accomplishment. 

May the same Spirit of Wisdom and Goodness 

be with us today 

as we repeat the centuries-old rituals of commencement.

Benediction:

We now beseech the Goodness at the heart of existence, 

the Ultimate Reality who is finally nameless, 

for a blessing for these our graduates - 

a benediction , a good word spoken of them, and for them.

May a desire to Learn 

be ever enkindled in their hearts, 

and may they be humbled when they think 

they have plumbed the depths of reality.

 

May a desire to Search 

for truth, goodness, and beauty 

lead them down the exquisitely winding ways of the road less traveled, 

to drink from the streams of righteousness, peace, and justice, 

and never be quenched.

 

May a desire to Serve 

cause them to unblock their ears 

and allow the cries of the poor and the vulnerable 

to pierce them to the heart, 

and impel them to give of themselves for the sake of others -  

to live simply so that others may simply live.

May the poisonous dualism of black and white, 

good and evil, us and them,

be purged from their hearts, 

even as they are comforted 

with the security needed to accept the complexity 

May the energies of the universe that course through their veins now, 

be not quashed by the quotidien routines of life after college.

 

May they be buoyed up by the vast ocean of beneficence, 

which surrounds them today and always, 

but which, like water to the fish, is seldom noticed. 

 

May each one of them 

know in the depths of their hearts 

that he or she is worthy of benediction - 

worthy of these good words spoken to them 

in love

Graduation 2009

Nate was honored today by doing the Invocation and Benediction and Fredonia State's graduation cermonies. In his first year as campus minister here, I am so proud of him and his accomplishments. I've posted videos of his speeches so you all can enjoy them. Text to come in the next post since you can't understand what he is saying all the time. All text copyrighted by Nathan Kropp, 2009 and cannot be re-written, reproduced, re-used or re-broadcast without the written consent of the Nathan P. Kropp family.

This was the best picture I could get of Nate during the ceremony. I could only see him during his talks since I was on the opposite side from where he was sitting. But there he is. :)

Initiation

Last night was a mass that celebrated the sacraments of initiation for all the college students in the diocese of Buffalo. Nate had 3 students receiving sacraments. One student was baptized, one received her First Eucharist and Confirmation and one was confirmed. You should have seen these girls. I noticed it most in the girl who was baptized, but all three of them were amazing. They were on cloud nine. They were so excited to be fully received. One girl described a sort of energy that was alive in her. I'm looking forward to mass on Sunday to hear their testimonies and hear more about their experiences. Being with all the students receiving sacraments last night was just inspiring. Twenty-six students in the diocese have chosen on their own to confirm their faith by receiving the sacraments. Makes me think, what can I do to confirm MY faith if I've already made all my sacraments? Something I need to seriously think about...

Happy Spring!

The first half of April has been so busy and I've got the pictures to prove it. Okay, some of this is from the end of March, but the majority of this will be from April. So far in April, I've hosted girls' night, where we made Ukrainian Easter eggs and went to a Grease sing-a-long at the Opera House; the Triduum and Easter just passed us. We hosted dinner at the Newman Center for students who didn't go home for the weekend. We had only a few people, but it was a really nice dinner. April also brought us a freak snow storm.

The girls' night was fun. We started out making the Easter eggs, then ran to the Opera House to see Grease. Not that we've never seen it before, but it's a classic! They had a nice pre-show where they had some trivia and taught people how to hand-jive. I got up on stage and did the hand-jive against some guy, competing for the best hand-jive. The crowd determined that we tied, but my girls said that he didn't know what he was doing. I got a free movie ticket out of it and it was fun. :) We had to come back to my house afterwards and finish our eggs. Here's a picture of the finished products. All of the eggs started out as plain white, except for one. The dark green one started out as a really light brown egg. I didn't have enough white eggs for everyone to do two, so my second one was a brown one. I think it turned out pretty awesome despite that.

The next week brought the freak snowstorm. I know family and friends in Ohio experienced it as well. It was a bummer of a storm. We didn't get much snow, not nearly as much as forecasted, but the storm did prevent my sister and her kids from visiting for the day. They had never been here and I was looking forward to them visiting. They even started to come, but 15 minutes into the trip, they had seen 2 accidents and were experiencing white-out conditions, so they turned around. I know they were looking forward to visiting too, but I know they'll try to come again, probably over the summer. Here's a picture from that storm.

Back at the end of March, some friends took us to a basilica in south Buffalo. It was Our Lady of Victory. The church was built by Fr. Baker, who ran a pretty famous orphanage at that location. I've heard from lots of people that many families would threaten to drop their kids of at Fr. Baker's if they were being bad. Tim Russert also refers to this in his book "Big Russ and Me", which I am reading right now. The basilica was absolutely beautiful! We took some pictures of it, but plan on taking people there if they visit us and we're looking for something somewhat indoor to do. Here are a few pictures.

The end of March/beginning of April brought the beginning signs of spring! We have crocuses galore around here, all kinds of shades of purple and even some yellow. There's even a blue flower that I'm not familiar with. Here are some beautiful pictures of them.

I almost forgot! At the end of March, I spent a random weekend at my parents' house when my sister and her kids were there. My parents' also watched my other sister's kids for the evening as well. Here are some pictures of my nieces and nephews. They're all so cute!

I've captured Tyler and threatened to take him home with me.

Mommy and Gretchen laughing together.

Grandma and Gretchen.

Grandpa and Samantha.

Gretchen wondering what's going on...

Tyler the ham and Gretchen the model?

I LOVE this picture, can you get any cuter?

Mommy and Tyler time

This is the only picture Mikey would let me take of him, but I didn't want to exclude him from my post. Can you believe he's 10 already!

I always think I have nothing to write about in my posts, but as you can see this one is so long that I guess I was way overdue for a post. I am seriously going to try to post more often. Happy Easter and happy spring, Everyone!

Niagara Falls

Happy Belated Valentines' Day!! Nate and I went to Niagara Falls for Valentines' Day last weekend. We were advised to stay till it got dark so that we can see when they light up the falls at night. We decided to span both daytime and night. I'll post some pictures, but first a video of the falls and the river to show the snow and ice. It's 3 videos spliced together, so if it jumps a little, that's why.
We got to the falls around 4:30 and hung out for a while. We walked around a bit and decided go get some food while we wait for it to get dark. Do you know that we couldn't find a single, decent looking restaurant open in the entire area? We were on the American side, and it was probably 6:00 when we were looking for food. We even drove around the town looking and everything was closed. We gave up and went back to the falls. It was just getting dark enough for them to turn on the lights. We saw them turn it on and thought, "oh wow. That's it?" So while we were talking for about 20 minutes, the lights started to turn colors! That was pretty cool. We saw a lot of colors. We saw red, orange, green, blue, and purple. The lights stayed on each color for probably 10 minutes. In the meantime, there was a couple next to us who were really giggly and a little annoying. They were behind Nate, so I kept peeking over at them. One time when I peeked, the guy was down on one knee proposing! No wonder they were so giddy and happy. I waited a few minutes till the kissing stopped and the initial shock wore off. Then I went over to congratulate them and ask if they had a camera so I could take their picture. I was going to offer to take their picture and email it to them if they didn't have one, but the girl did. I've never seen anyone (besides Nate) propose before! I was getting a little teary-eyed myself. Here are some pictures of the falls. I won't post all the colors, but I'll post some. :) 

This picture is obviously taken in the daytime, so you can see what you're looking at in the next couple pictures. You're looking at the American Falls here and way in the background are the Horseshoe Falls.

The first night time picture, before the colors started. The humpy stuff you see in the water, underneath the falls is ice and snow. I think it's from the mist and some of the water freezing and falling from the top of the falls.

Orange... this is actually the second color we saw. I like it better than the red.

Green, obviously.

Purple! We were actually leaving when this one came on and had to turn around to go see it. We couldn't leave without a picture of the purple one!

On another exciting note, Nate and I found out that we have another niece on the way! It's the first girl on Nate's side of the family. Do you think she'll be spoiled??? Congratulations to Tim and Becky!

Christmas 2008

I'm adding on to the beginning of my post to say that I'm semi-embarrassed about how this post turned out. It's all about Pugsly. I guess I have a better understanding of how proud parents are when they post about their kids and all the new things they've done. Oh, well. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

I don't have much to report since my last post, except that I had a great Christmas and New Years' holiday. Nate and I were gone for almost 2 weeks traveling around Ohio visiting one family member or another. Poor Pugsly, he got shuffled around from house to house and probably didn't know if he was coming or going. I think I enjoyed the holidays though. He seemed to recognize some family members and he got to meet a lot more. He stayed at my sister's house with me when I visited for a few days. My nephew, Tyler, just adored him. He called him "the best dog that he has" or something like that. Note, Tyler has no dogs. Pugsly took a liking to Tyler's little chair though and made himself quite comfortable after Tyler went to bed. 

I think my sister really liked having Pugsly there too. We all went to the Toledo Zoo one night (but not Pugsly so he wouldn't get eaten by a tiger) to see the holiday lights. That was fun, I enjoyed that. My sister and I went shopping, which is sort of a ritual for us, that's always great. :)

Pugsly got his first taste of a fenced in yard at Nate's sister's house. Wow, he loved to be free! He wouldn't run around outside if we weren't out there. I tried letting him out one time to go take care of business, but he just sat on the porch, looking in the window. I guess he would get used to it if we had a fence. He was so good when we were there, except that he was curious about Elliott's toys. He and Elliott seemed to really like each other though. 

Since being back, Pugsly has been great. He seems to be happy to be back and have his basket again. Though, it never seemed to phase him that we weren't at our house except when we left him alone at someone's house in his crate. Then he went nuts when we got home. I think he thought we'd left him for good. It's funny, he makes these cute little squeaking sounds when we come back. It sounds like he's crying, but his tail wags and he's so excited to see us. Another time that he makes noises is when he's out for a walk and smells or sees another dog. I don't know what he wants because he's afraid of the dogs that were at the rescue with him, but I guess he wants some companionship or something. This is a type of whining noise that's louder

 and sometimes really deep and guttural.  I managed to get a little video of this the other day. His actions aren't as exciting as his sound, so make sure your volume is turned up. Notice the wagging tail too.

Today, I had him tied him up outside while I was shoveling snow to get out of the garage. He's not used to being tied up, usually we just walk him since it's been cold since we got him. But I tied him up and he ran around trying to go where ever he wanted to. It took him about 10 minutes to realize that he was tied up and couldn't go as far as he wanted to. But I did capture a few good pictures of him in classic Pugsly pose and a video of him tromping through a snow drift. 

Notice how all the pictures above he has his leg up? That's pretty standard for Pugsly. If he's standing still, he has one of his front paws up. It's not always the same one, but it's so adorable! I tried to get a picture of it here, but sometimes he'll dig in the snow with his nose and when he comes out, his face is covered in snow. I could only get it when his nose had snow on it, but you can see how cute it is.

I posted a video a while ago of him hopping through the snow, but this one is a close-up. He always reminds me of a rabbit. Again, he's so adorable.

Enough about Pugsly... :) Nate attended a conference this week for campus ministers and even gave a talk. It went really well, according to his standards, so I'm proud of him for that. While he was gone, I realized that I could never live on my own. I did absolutely nothing. I cooked dinner for myself and went to the grocery store, but that's about it. Well, I did get enough energy to shower every day, but for the most part, none of the housework got done, even though I made out a schedule for myself. I did take Pugsly out, but that was out of necessity. :) It's probably because I've never lived by myself, but in a way, I'm glad that I never had to.

Let's see what other news?  Congratulations to my college friends L and P  on the birth of their 3rd baby! All of you in Portland, have fun with the snow if it's still around. I heard you had about 17 inches of snow on the ground at one point. So rare for Portland, but I bet it was kinda fun. :)