it runs in the family...

many years ago, i remember sitting at our dining room table with my grandfather, my dad's dad, on thanksgiving day. i was in fourth grade and learning to draw. art class was my favorite class back then... well, it always was a favorite of mine...

at the time i was at north falmouth elementary school, in fourth grade. my beloved art teacher, mrs. moran, asked me to paint a picture on the wall. i worked hard creating a drawing i could project onto the wall and to this day it is still on the wall... some day i'll take a picture of it, for keepsake purposes. it is a painting of pippi longstocking, tommy, annika and their adventures in the south seas...

one of my favorite child hood characters was...
pippi longstocking

since those days, i dabbled in art.

back to thanksgiving day... i was having a hard time drawing someone sitting. how can you possibly draw someone's legs showing they are sitting? well, my grandfather patiently sat with me; he drew on a napkin showing me how to draw someone sitting. i treasure that memory... i remember finding a scrap piece of orange construction paper and drawing family sitting on the couch in the next room over while my grandfather gave me tips.

so maybe art runs in the family?

my grandfather was able to create wonderful drawings, among other things...

my uncle tim builds gorgeous, beautiful furniture from hand. he creates designs on paper and then forms the wood into phenomenal furniture. in fact, he practically furnished my parents' house. (pictures on that later)

my uncle larry built us a fabulous swingset when we were younger. it was without a doubt the best swingset on the block. we had monkey bars, swings, two floors, a fireman's pole, a rope to climb up or down and a super fast slide. we could swing soooo high on those swings and the swing set would never rock. it was solid. the best thing about swingsets when you're a kid is to be able to swing soooo high - like the big swings at the playground. we had those in our backyard! he then built us a fun go-cart. it didn't have a motor, although he could have easily installed one... it had a brake and a steering wheel. it looked like a little red race car.

my uncle ray is the "artist". he can paint beautiful pictures. when we were little, he would paint us pictures. now, he dabbles in photography, computer generated art and continues with the painting...

i could go on about my dad's other five siblings and their artistic talent, because they all dabble in the "art" in some form or the other.

now, my brothers and i grew up encouraged to do what we love...

but this post is not about me, it's about two of my brothers - pete and phil. they are a senior and freshman at wheaton college in illinois.

they are both talented and have done photography, web design, videography, etc.
in fact, phil, designed my company's website: www.mmisi.com after his senior year of high school. mind you, he's been using a computer since he was 2 and that's no joke.
we had a computer in our family room and 2 year old phil would sit at the computer and play learning games and figure out how the computer worked. i thought i was young using a computer at age 8, but he was the first of the 4 of us to use a computer since he was able to use the keyboard and move a mouse by himself...

this semester at wheaton, pete and phil collaborated on a timelapse video. they took thousands of pictures and put them together in a video...
check out the video and let me know what you think.

(note: watch it at 720p if your computer is skipping, the video was created in high definition)

Wheaton College Time Lapse Video

i am a proud big sister, and slightly jealous of their talent...

this is my recent photo creation that i'm proud of... and pete helped me photoshop it! (a little)

(photo: Sara Giguere - Kiteboarder at Chappoquoit Beach - Sunset)

not quite as exciting as a timelapse video, but i'll be proud of my picture for now... there's always room to improve...

do you make time for doing what you love????
whether it's your job or a hobby?

The Unlikely Disciple

I just finished reading my first book of the year. It's a thought-provoking book by Kevin Roose.
In April 2009 I went to a youth leader event at Grace Chapel in Lexington, MA. The speaker of the day was Mark Helsel. Our group of youth leaders from Calvary ended up sitting on the steps of Grace Chapel eating lunch with Mark during the lunch break. Our conversation was about church, college, rules, etc and he started talking about The Unlikely Disciple, a book he started reading. After our conversation, the book was on my "to read" list. It wasn't until recently that I was able to get a hold of the book to read it for myself.

It's the first book of the year and it's already on my favorite books list. It was a quick read and roughly 350 pages. Kevin writes in a style that is easy for most people to understand.

Kevin hadn't graduated college and he already wrote a fabulous book... quite the achievement if you ask me.

After finishing the book, I started to think about my own life. What do I REALLY believe? Why do I believe what I do? Is it because of how I was raised? Did I choose for myself what I believe? What would life have been for me if I hadn't been raised in a Christian home? Would I even be a Christian? Do I approach Christianity the same way a "typical" Christian College grad would?

Maybe I should give a little background...

My parents became Christians during their college years and I grew up in an evangelical Christian home. We attended Sunday School and church every week. My parents were quite involved in church; as I got older my involvement in church increased. I wasn't one to attend youth group regularly, but I enjoyed helping out in the nursery, children's church and teaching Sunday School to younger kids.

As I looked into WHERE I would attend college, my three choices were UMass Amherst Isenberg School of Management in Massachusetts, American University in Washington DC, and Gordon College in Massachusetts, north of Boston. As the deadline neared, I decided to go to UMass. The day the deposit was due, I decided, no, I need to attend Gordon College.

I graduated from Gordon College, which is considered a "liberal" Christian college by Liberty's standards.

• There are coed dorms - not coed floors though
• There is both a democrat AND a republican club.
• The professors lecture AND then press us to THINK for ourselves 'WHY do we believe what we believe'.
• Gordon is a dry campus, but you're not expelled for drinking off-campus.
• Gordon does NOT limit male-female contact to hand-holding; although if you spend the night with someone of the opposite sex on campus AND are found out you will get in trouble.
• They have mission's trips, but nothing like the mission's trip described in The Unlikely Disciple
  

Where was I? Oh yes, the book. It was a thought-provoking read and I highly recommend the book to anyone who would like to dig a little deeper into what they believe or who would like to know what it's like to spend a semester at a strict evangelical college.

Of course, as I wrote above, there were many questions I asked myself, but I will review those in a later post.

Read the book.