Dear Diary

I just got back from Daphne, Alabama. I've decided that I'm gonna live either there or in Fairhope when I'm old. It's absolutely divine down there! Monk and Patsy (my dad's parents) live down there in a beautiful house that's right by the bay. Their neighborhood has a pier and it takes less than a min to walk down to it. I wake up every morning around 8 for breakfast when I'm down there and that's about the only place I'll voluntarily wake up that early. We always sit around the table and talk for about two hours even after we've all finished eating. I take a nap about every day down there too cause there's no where we need to be and I have all the time in the world which for some sounds terrible but for me its heavenly.
Since I haven't updated in about three bajillion years I need to do some serious updating. Firstly, I've been accepted to (and accepted the acceptance to) North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, Ga! I'm super excited about going there next year and seeing where God takes me from there! I had my senior pictures done and finally picked one as exhibited to the side here:
My dear friend Kelly has come back from Covenant for good which is happy/sad. Its happy cause I love having him around and it'll be the last semester the Crisummass's will be together but its sad cause he really loves it up there and loved going to school there. Annie is moving to Mississippi in the Summer and they finally sold their house so now they're living in an apartment up in Roswell. I've already spent tons of time over there and in the summer I'm going with her to Mississippi for two weeks. PIM is having its 20th Anniversary in April and we've started rehearsal for that. I'm in 10 dances and I had the biggest trouble trying to learn all of them this summer at Workshop. School is also starting back up which is depressing as all get out. I'll be taking Anatomy at Chatt Tech this semester and I couldn't be more un excited about a class. I'm terrified I'll fail the class... Which brings me to my next topic: My word of the year is peace.
"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:7
This year is going to be full of change, from my best friend moving to me going off to college. I have been full of fear and uncertainty for this coming year. Thus forth I have picked the word "Peace" to be my word of the year and it is my prayer that God will fill me with HIS peace thru this time of craziness.

Love,
Carolyn

P.S. Happy New Year from the Crisummass's!

Dear Diary

I've decided to take this time to explain my family, the Crisummass's, to y'all. It all started out with Kelly (aka Caleb) and my best friend Annie and I hanging out together all the time. We started doing this wonderful thing where me and Kelly would cook dinner and Annie would watch cartoons and bake cupcakes for dessert. We were like a little family so we decided to make it official by giving us a name. We combined all of our last names and came up with Crisummass! Since then we've added members to our wonderful little family. Annie's now married to Charles and they have Katie. I also have Marie and Katelyn as my other daughters and they both have daughters, Knight and Shannon respectively. Kelly has twin sisters, Beth and Hannah, and I have one sister, Kirstin who's daughter is Charissa. We of course had to have family pictures after building this magnificent fam fam so we all wore our white shirts and blue jeans and met at East Cobb Park to take pictures of the awesomeness.

Hannah wasn't able to join us and Charissa wasn't added until a few days later (though she was our photographer for which we are so very grateful!) but other than that this is our beautiful, magnificent and wonderful family! I love these people so much and I really do think of them as my family in so many ways. Kelly, Annie and I will always be the original and we still like to have "Family Time" as much as possible complete with Kelly and I cooking and Annie doing whatever she does. Its a beautiful thing really :)

Dear Diary

So far I've failed miserably at blogging... I'm sure I'll get better but for now y'all will just have to bear (not like a teddy bear kind of bear) with me. Life right now is kinda crazy cause the Crisler household has been having car struggles and we have just recently gotten them kinda figured out. I officially have a car (Again! That's a long and touchy story still right now so we'll not get into that...) but we still have to get the brakes redone on it cause they're super "squishy" feeling so it takes like 10 mins to come to an actual stop. And my sister finally was able to find a car as well and my brother Blake was finally able to get a car as well. We've had many a car problem recently. They seem to run in the fam fam... As of right now the Crisler family now owns four blue cars, one white car and one red car. We're very patriotic here. 

 On Tuesday night I got to Skype with my friend Erin (she's the one in the middle of the pic) and it was awesome! I became friends with her this summer while working at a MS camp called the Edge which changed my life. The crazy thing is that we didn't really become friends until AFTER we went back home! How inconvenient. What's even more inconvenient is that she lives in Illinois which is like 7 hours away. How rude of life to separate us so. Luckily life gave us Skype so we can keep in touch that way. Skype dates with Erin are quickly becoming one of my favorite things :)

On a COMPLETELY different note! I made a Bucket List for my life. I originally wrote it down in my diary/continuous letter to my friend Kelly (he's a guy and is super awesome and goes to Covenant College and we both aren't very good writers so it works out for us to be pen pals quite well) but have decided to translate it to blog form as well. Its in no particular order and there's no time limit for it and some of the things on it I can't possible do till I'm old but here goes! 

Carolyn's Bucket List

1. Live in Europe for a time

2. Open a restaurant in an old house

3. Live IN a city

4. Learn Ballroom

5. Paint a masterpiece (or just something really awesome)

6. Go backpacking for a week or more

7. Visit Colorado agian

8. Adopt a child/teenager

9. Read through the Bible

10. Live in/own an old southern style house

11. Do something that scares me (this one is open till I find something that won't kill me)

12. Live on a mountain

13. Get a pick-up truck 

14. Learn to crochet again or knit (I can't be a proper old lady w/o being able to do one of these)

15. Have a family 

16. Watch a sunrise (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to convince myself to wake up to watch one)

17. Drive a really fast car

18. Become a flight attendant 

19. Try something I think I'll hate and love it instead

20. Dance at the Fox Theatre

21. Learn how to play an instrument 

I'm sure this will change and grow as I get old but for now this is it. 

Sincerely,

Carolyn J Crisler 

P.S. I love list in case you couldn't tell.

Dear Diary

I like to start off with honesty so be forwarned: I'm a horrible writer.
Now that we have that out of the way I can begin my blogging adventure! Firstly, I feel like this is an awkward blind date. Which if we're real (which we always try to be), then that's exactly what this is, just in the friend date kinda way.

Top 5 Things You Should Know About Me:
1. I love Jesus. A lot.
2. I love me friends (like most people do)
3. I pretty much live off french fries and Coke
4. The Crisummass's are my family (Kelly, Annie and Me originally but as you can see from the pic it has grown tremendously. But fear not! I'll explain more about them later)
5. Ballet and painting/crafts are two of my favorite activies

One thing I will be using this blog for is to share Bible verses that God's been using in my life. Currently I'm learning a lot about being gentle and what that means for someone with such a coke-lovin-smack-talkin-curly-headed-babe (Credit to Annie Blass for that one) personality as me. So my verse of the week/for the time being is Philippians 4:5, "Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near." I love that it seems to just throw in the "The Lord is near." I haven't quite decided/deciphered what that means but I love it. Its such a great reminder that God IS near. I guess it probably is just that. A reminder. I need those a lot.

I've decided through writing this seemingly randomly put together first post (which is exactly what it is) that this blog is going to be primarily a place for me to sort out my thoughts. So my dear (currently non existent) readers, if you can't follow what I'm saying and you feel quite lost its okay cause I don't expect y'all to follow my lunatical rantings. :)