Masters publication

Hi everyone!

I am so excited right now because I literally just found out that my masters thesis was accepted for publication!! That means that in a few months I will officially be a published author- and a first author at that!

So, in case you're wondering, the title of my article will be "Perceived history of anaphylaxis and parental overprotection, autonomy, anxiety, and depression in food allergic young adults" and it will be published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings. Not to toot my own horn (ok, maybe to toot it a little bit), but this is a really big deal in my field. It's rare that a masters thesis is published, so my advisor is incredibly excited for me as well!

Just wanted to share my joy!

Pittsburgh Pics

Here are a few pictures from this past weekend.
It was awesome to see and hang with everyone.
Donna, Carl, Julie and Kevin, we all missed you.
I will be sending out discs with all the rest of my pics.

Here are some of the texts from the ball game. I don't know if any of these were sent from us, but if they were,

I love you too!!!

Thanks for all the fun and laughs.

Especially the circle!!!

Round 3: Feature A Quote

Thanks to all of your support I have made it to Round 3 (the "Feature A Quote" Challenge). I chose to use the Helen Keller quote, "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart." I put this project together in a hotel room and shot this photo in a bathroom. The best light in a Hampton Inn is apparently in the bathroom!

Anyhow, this round they have put all of the cards together on one page (as opposed to two pages as in previous rounds) so it is best to link the entire page. They also added instructions on the top of the page in case that helps anyone. My card is the second one from the top. The gallery can be seen here.

The voting page can be reached by clicking here.

Thanks again for all of your support. I know this project took me away from family time for a little while this weekend so I wanted to make sure you all know how much I appreciate the understanding and support. It was a lot of fun to see everyone this weekend. We missed you, Beckers!

Until next time...

Pittsburgh, etc.

Here wa are at the start of our day at Kennywood, (This is after Steve took us for an exciting ride in the parking lot-I'll let him explain.) Then after riding the first roller coaster of the day (Thunderbolt) I saw this guy.

On another note-congrats to Liz-she's in the final 10!

Round 2: Monochromatic

Hey Gang! The second round of Gallery Idol has begun. You are all probably sick of this whole thing by now, but I appreciate that you are sticking with me. Here are a couple of photos of my card:





If you want to know all the hairy details about the card you can go here.

To see all of the entries click here.

To vote click here. Remember: MY screen name is CreativeCritter and my project is called "Look Up To." Voting ends at 12:00 noon MST on Thursday. You can vote once per computer per round, so please click carefully. Thank you again for the support!

REACH

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in reporting about REACH. It's been a busy week since we returned (Kevin's driving permit, Kevin's new job, Mom being sick all week).
It was a fantastic week in Cuyahoga Falls! Our group of 18 people from Zion joined over 450 youth and adults at Woodridge High and Middle Schools to work on 44 houses in Cuyahoga Falls and Akron. It was amazing to watch all of these people come together each day, so excited and eager to go to work each morning at 8 a.m. There was lots of painting, some roofing, building of decks and porches, straightening a leaning garage (that was on Julie's worksite), and much, much more. There was also much praise and worship for God who made this whole week possible.
One amazing story - at one of the houses, the neighbor (homeowner) had not been able to open her front door for years. And if she had, she could not have walked off of her porch because there were no steps. Also, her garage door was broken and would not close, so people were stealing from her. In one week, the workcampers repaired and closed the garage door, fixed her front door and built a new porch with steps and a railing!
Here are a few pictures of us in Ohio. If you want to see more (3000+) go to www.reachwc.org and look at all of the work. Soon we will send you a listing of the picture numbers for the four of us, plus the other campers from our church.

Where's the lowdown on REACH?

Just wondering, Beckers, when you're gonna post something about your trip. How about some pics?

Liz Made it to the Next Round!

EVERYONE!

I'm just leaving work so I checked the website and Liz made it through to the top 15! I don't even know if SHE knows as of this moment because she went to visit her Mom, Henry and Grandpa in Hicksville for the weekend. Thank you all for getting out the vote and all your hard work!

She'll get another topic today, submit a card by Monday morning, and we'll send out the next link on Monday or Tuesday!

Rounding out the July birthdays

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Erin!

Pittsburgh

Just a reminder that we are staying at the Hampton Inn, 3000 Mosside Blvd., Monroeville, PA 15146-2726, telephone: 412-380-4000. Mapquest offers good directions to the hotel, both off of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and for those heading east from Columbus, Ohio.

The baseball game on Sunday features the Pirates and the San Diego Padres; the Padres, as you know, have a farm team in Fort Wayne. The game is at 1:35 and we have seats 3-10 in rows T and U in Section 121. You can visit the Pirates website for more information about the stadium and our seat location. For those interested in photography the stadium offers great views also the river into downtown Pittsburgh.

Kennywood is on tap for Friday and Sean and Liz were researching festivities/activities for Saturday.

Looking forward to seeing everyone next week.

I GOT MY PERMIT ( YEEEEEE HAAAWWWWWWWWWWW)

HEY EVERYONE THIS IS KEVIN THE NEW DRIVER OF BECKER FAMILY

TODAY JULY 15 2008 I WENT FOR MY DRVIERS PERMIT AND I GOT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Birfday

Ok, so as you all know I turned 18 this past Friday. On my birthday I went to work and got off at the normal Friday time, 11:00 am, and then went home. I ate a quick lunch, called my friend Shay over, and when he arrived we went to the Ro Fo and got cigars. In celebration, no its not going to become a habit, we each smoked a cigar. We then chilled and jammed on guitar/bass in the afternoon. At 6:30 mom, dad, linda, kim, coco, nick, and myself went to Olive Garden where we ate dinner. Afterwards back at home I opened presents and ate cake. Simple, yet satisfying, birthday.

And They're Off!

The new round has officially started. Instead of voting at the actual website they are directing people to a third party survey website. They did it this way last year and things went far more smoothly. My card is here.

The cards this round are all pretty cool though, so I'd suggest looking at them if you have time.

The voting website is here.

It is all listed by creator and card title. My screen name is CreativeCritter. They fixed it so it really is just one vote per customer/per computer, per round. Somehow the website locks your computer out until the next round is posted. Voting for this round ends at 2pm EST on Thursday afternoon. They will release the next round of contestants on Friday sometime.

Once again, I'd really appreciate your support. This contest may have started out a little rough, but it is a big deal and I'd love to continue. Thanks so very, very much!

TV update

The TV arrived and was installed as scheduled on Thurs. Am looking forward to watching Design Star and Foodnetwork Star here on it shortly! Thanks for all the advice (Steve) and concerns.................

And Then There Were Scallops

And by that I mean the pretty little scoopy edges, not the edible mollusk. The first round of Gallery Idol is being scrapped and we are moving on to a new theme (you can all stop voting on the patriotic card-I really appreciate that BTW). This one is scallops. I shall be in my room cutting semi-circles out of everything in case anyone needs me.

Did someone delete my post?

4th July birthday

HAPPY 18th BIRTHDAY, Ian!

July Birthdays continue

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Sean:-)

The Voting Debacle

I made and submitted my card for the Top 20 Round of voting for Paper Crafts Magazine's Gallery Idol Contest. The editors decided they wanted to unveil a whole new website along with the Top 20 cards. Needless to say, that kind of undertaking caused some problems in the contest proceedings. The reveal date was postponed 3 times and now the log-in and voting systems are all wackadoo. They may start over and pretend like this round never happened. They may not.

In the event that they don't, I'd like to give everyone the info to vote. I have no intention of getting voted off because I never shared the pertinent information. You can go here to vote. My screen name is CreativeCritter. To vote you simply have to click on the "Love It" button. At this point I have no idea how they are counting the votes. I don't think you can vote for one card more than once using the same computer. That said, some of the contestants have voted multiple times from their computers (a few of us were emailing back and forth today trying to figure out what was going on). In an effort to stay honest, I didn't go hog wild and vote 100 times. Some people did, but that is a whole different issue. Right now I look like I'm at the bottom of the heap, but part of that (I hope) is because I haven't been out begging for votes yet today. There's always time.

Here are a couple of photos of my card. It's pretty simple, but sometimes you don't need a whole lot of ruffles and glitter...know what I mean?



Here's a close up so you can see some of the detail. The word "grateful" is made of felt.



Thanks everybody. I'd really like to get through this round. I'll let you know what happens.

July birthday - #2

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Nick!

TV

Those of you who have been concerned that Randi and I have been sharing a TV since April will be happy to hear that next Thursday (yes Sean on your birthday!) Best Buy will be delivering and installing a 37" Samsung 1080p HDTV.

PA FARM SHOW 2008

Ok well Linda got we thinking about me and my buddies on the merry go round so i figured i would put up a video of me and my buddies josh,and Wes at the PA FARM SHOW 2008 yea this is stupid but it i was fun and there was nothing better to do

hope everyone likes

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=25790887

Compliments from the East Coast

It seems that Northstar makes quite the impression! A friend of mine was in Columbus this past weekend visiting friends and arrived at a meeting today raving about Northstar. :)

On A Roll

Paper Crafts Magazine is the biggest papercrafting magazine in the industry.  Last year they started a contest called the Gallery Idol.  It is pretty much their spin on American Idol for crafty people.

The process goes like this: open calls for 4 weeks; the editors choose their Top 20; the Top 20 are announced and are given a theme that they have to use to create a card for the next round; the Top 20 post their cards to the Paper Crafts online gallery and there follows 5 days of voting; the Monday after the voting ends the Top 15 are announced; it goes like this for 3 more rounds.  Eventually a winner is chosen based on the votes of the "viewers."  The final prize package is something like $3,200 worth of product and acceptance of magazine submissions.

After 774 total entries, last night was the reveal of the Top 20.  I made it (CreativeCritter is my screen name)!  I submitted 4 cards and the one that they chose was my final card (the butterfly one, submitted 12 minutes before the deadline).  The theme for these cards is "Patriotic."  So...I immediately went shopping and now have more red, white, and blue starry goodness than I ever thought I would need.  My next round has to be posted by 9:00 am MST on Monday morning.  I'll be spending most of my weekend panicking and second-guessing every design decision I make, but that's all part of the process.  For your visual enjoyment, here are the cards I submitted to the "open auditions."

Cork Appletree

Hello, Friend Birdhouse

The Sweetest Flower

Friends Always Butterflies

By the way, I hope you all plan to sign up and vote.  Just kiddin'... sorta.

Kevin's Birthday and Baseball Game

Okay, so I know that this post is a little bit overdue, but for Kevin's birthday we went to a baseball game with Aunt Robin, Uncle Bob, Ali, Ian, and Kevin's girlfriend Kayla to celebrate. Here are a few pictures from the night:




Mom and Dad














Here's Kevin and Kayla, his girlfriend














Here's the actual baseball game
(the Barnstormers won by the way)








And here are some of fireworks that they had after the game.

Creation 2008

Hi guys!
Okay, so I just got back from a week at Creation, which for those of you who don't know is a week-long Christian music concert on a giant farm in PA. It was an amazing week, and I saw about 20 different bands perform throughout the week. Here's some pictures of a few of them:




This is Flyleaf, sorry if the pictures are a little bit blurry.











Here's one of the members of Hawk Nelson on a video screen, because the actual stage was a little too far away to get clear pictures.










The lead singer from Kutless, again on the video screen and kind of dark.










Because this year was the 30th anniversary for Creation, Amy Grant was a special guest performer because she had been there for the 1st festival in 1979.










And this is the last performer that we were there to see the full show for on Saturday night, Jeremy Camp. Toby Mac finished out the concert, but our group didn't stay for all of his performance.

All in all, it was an amazing week for me, plus I got to experience camping in the rain for the first time! I had a great time, and all the advice was very much appreciated Aunt Robin!

Happy Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Liz:-)