Tea for Tuesday.

Life events so far this week: 

> Easter, which was a wonderful break spent with my family 

> I enjoyed a really good run today (even though it was so much colder than I thought 46 degrees would feel like)

> A paper for one of my classes today cancelled

> A quiz for last night's class cancelled

>AND I had an entire class cancelled for today (different from the classes the paper or the quiz were due in!)

Tea Time

So all in all, I am blessed to start this week leading up to finding out where my internship will be (this Sunday, woah.) on a pretty good foot! Which means I even get to blog today, extra bonus! With the end of my last college semester only a little more than a month away, I have been working on cleaning out some of my stuff in preparation for packing/moving out (and in an attempt to not have so much to pack come May, because I REALLY dread that task!).

Today, this ongoing venture involved discovering that I have TONS of tea I need to work on drinking. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I get really excited about new tea flavors and forget I have other tea I should drink up first before buying more

2. My section of kitchen cabinets is not overly organized and sometimes I genuinely lose boxes of tea amongst my other dry goods, which does not my out of sight, out of mind mentality!

Now I realize that tea is not for everyone - I get that. However, tea is a fairly awesome drink that does come with added benefits to your health both long-term (possible cancer prevention) and short-term (possible healthier looking skin). Also, drinking hot tea can add some relaxation to any day (at least it does for me). Lots of people  have written on the benefits of tea & the tea vs. coffee debate, so today I offer you my 3 favorite sets of information about this lovely beverage:

1. Fun tea vs. coffee info graphic!
2. The Truth about the Health Benefits of Tea
3. My favorites: (all 0 calories, 0 sugar)

Lipton Caffeine Free Herbal Peppermint Tea, Bigelow Chamomile Mint Herbal Tea Caffeine Free,  Twinings of London French Vanilla Chai, Bigelow Plantation Mint Tea, Salada Decaffeinated Green Tea Citrus Flavored, Salada Red Antioxidants Tea Strawberry-Orange Flavored

And, I'm back!

Whew. It's always amazing to me how quickly life can take over. As I look back on the last several weeks of mine I have been all over the place literally and figuratively. I will catch up from Easter to now and share how my eating has been in my next post.

For Easter this year I was blessed to spend the weekend with Adam and his family in Indiana - the Easter bunny even caught wind of my eating preferences and my basket was filled with dried fruit & nuts (and Vera Bradley!). Our Easter morning service was beautiful and Adam's grandparents surprised everyone by deciding to drive up from Alabama last minute to join us in celebrating the miracle of Easter!

After Easter break ended the remaining two weeks at school became almost a blur. Papers, projects, finals, meetings, work...a typical end of the semester list for any college student. On top of normal school stuff, Adam and I and two other friends from school - Ryan & Hannah - were involved in planning a 1 day community service event in the Chicago area that would be taking place May 7th (the day after our semester ended).We also were asked to be co-coordinators for a ministry program at our school this upcoming year and needed to begin immediate planning for that, mainly focusing on getting leaders applied & interviewed before we all left for the semester. Needless to say it was a very busy end of a semester but God continues to bless my life in new ways every day through all of the amazing opportunities he places in it!

Adam and I succeeded in interviewing all of our leader applicants (we did anywhere between 5-10 interviews a day for a week) and are incredibly excited to see how God will shape our ministry in the upcoming year.

The 1 day service event we were involved with was also a fantastic day and great way to end a semester. We helped plan 1ByYouth Chicago which saw over 600 youth spend the day in a Chicago neighborhood serving the residents through cleaning, picking up garbage, painting, and small home repair projects. For tons of pictures of the day go here.

With the completion of 1ByYouth and the semester being officially over  that meant next stop was Maryland to spend time with my family! After a brief stop at Adam's house in Indiana to drop off his school stuff, we road tripped back to my house. It is always amazing to me how much taller all of my brothers always are every time I see them! Our visit was cut a day short when we had the opportunity to go down to parts of Alabama where the recent tornadoes hit and help with disaster relief.

We packed up and headed to Indiana on Sunday and were on our way down to Gardendale, Alabama by 5am on Tuesday morning. As soon as I get the pictures uploaded to my laptop - look for a post on this as well - it was unbelievable the damage and devastation down there - but alongside of that it was also amazing how many stories we were told of God's power and love in the midst of the destruction.

I am now back up at Adam's house for a few days - as we both work to pack and finish up last minute things before flying out to our jobs for the summer on Monday.

So here we are, I will be posting shortly about how healthy eating has been through all of this and my recent trip down to Alabama!

“One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure” -William Feather