Ice Cream & Cake!

At first this was annoying to me, but then I realized that this is pretty much what's going on on the inside when I eat ice cream & cake. :) Watch it at least twice. You should laugh too.

Summer 2009: Top Ten in Pictures

There are so many intangible things I learned and experienced this summer but those are hard to describe/illustrate. Here are my top ten tangible experiences in pictures. After trying unsuccessfully to rate them, I decided to just put them in geographic order.

1. "The Wives"

Liv, Linda, Laurie & Regina.
The wives of the faculty & camp director are some of my dearest friends. This is from one of our "girls nights".

2. America Girl Place--Chicago

I've never seen so many dolls or doll friendly activities! It was like doll Disneyworld! My friend Alysia & I went to see the doll hair salon, cafe, art studio, store & more! Everything there came in human size & doll size--crazy, but so cool! And I can't figure out how to turn this picture, sorry!

3. Eat.Shop.Chicago.

My friend Laurie got a book called Eat.Shop.Chicago. & so we took the train into Chicago to eat & shop! We ate a delicious lunch at a fancy little place called Blackbird, got some yummy pastries & coffee at a local place (can't remember the name) and shopped some way overpriced boutiques. I only came away with (aside from a full tummy) these awesomely huge sunglasses! The only pictures we took were on the train home--a funny montage including the one above.

4. Buying a house while driving through Chicago traffic.

I didn't take this picture, it was taken by one of the other vehicles driving through the same traffic. It was on this day & in this traffic that the house buying adventure began!

5. Niagara Falls

The girl staff.

In line for the boat--we got these sweet ponchos!

Cara & I on the "Maid of the Mist" approaching Niagara Falls. It was awesome--totally worth the price of the ticket!

6. York Beach, Maine

The super crowded York beach.

Cara & I got some "wicked good" ice cream!

The Hubble Lighthouse--this picture doesn't do it justice--it was beautiful!

7. Lobster in Massachusetts

The "wives" & I had a delicious lobster dinner at Liv's parents house in Massachusetts. The whole process--buying, attempting to race them across the floor (they were mostly dead & didn't really race), steaming & eating them (every little bit of them) was awesome!

8. New York City

We took the staff to see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway!

9. Lancaster, PA

My friend Aubree lives near Lancaster & so came to spend a couple days with me at camp. She & I went & had lunch in an old train car & saw some of the Amish country.

We climbed to the top of this scenic tower to take some cool pictures--unfortunately we couldn't get the scenery & us at the same time.

10. Skeet Shooting in Virginia

We had lunch at one of the staff guy's houses & went skeet shooting afterwards. I am proud to say I hit all three pidgins! I also hit 2 out of 3 targets with an AK47. I'd take credit but I'm pretty my shooting abilities come from my momma (who was on the riflery team at Univ. of Texas), so I have to say it's in my blood.

My Golden Birthday!

26 on the 26th! So far being 26 is pretty good!

My New House!

Last Friday while driving through downtown Chicago, IL during rush-hour traffic I bought a house in Bryan, TX! Read that sentence again & let it soak in...buying a house while driving a 15 passenger van full of college students through a city of almost 10 million, at least 8 million of which were bumper to bumper with me on I-90, or was it I-94? I don't know, don't care really, because the bottom line is...in the midst of all that I became a homeowner!!

My wonderful Realtor, Lisa, had sent me a list of houses in Bryan/College Station last week (Tuesday probably) & I fell in love with one of them! An older 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in Bryan with real hard wood floors, a red front door & black & white checkered tile in the kitchen & bathrooms. My mom made plans to drive up to meet with Lisa & look at some of the properties that Friday afternoon. She (my mom) warned me not to get my heart set on any house in particular because anything could happen. Well during the next few hours anything & everything did happen! My mom met Lisa at 12:30pm, saw my favorite house first, realized it was as wonderful as the pictures, went on to see some other houses, came back to the first one and learned that at 4:30 that day the owners were picking a buyer!

My mom had called me about 2:30pm & I was in the midst of packing & loading up camp & getting on the road. I told her I'd call in 10 minutes. I called about 15 minutes later...driving to O'Hare Airport to drop some staff off & she answered the phone, "I'm buying you a house!" I laughed & said "tell me about the houses!" So she does & tells me how great the first one was (my favorite one) and then she tells me that it's been on the market a week, there are 4 offers already & that Lisa had said, "Offer X amount right now if you want it!" That was when she'd called me & I said I'd call her back. So she called my dad & he said to go for it. She did it & so now we wait.

So I'm driving in this awful traffic just praying for wisdom & patience & that if this isn't the house God wants me to have that I'll be able to trust Him to provide something better. I called my mom about 4:15 and she said again that I needed to guard my heart because there was a good chance we wouldn't get it. My dad called a few minutes later & said "Congratulations, homeowner!" I said, "That's not funny! Don't joke with me, that is so mean, I can't get excited because then I'll get disapointed!" He said he wasn't kidding. I still didn't believe him, so I called my mom. She said he was telling the truth! They'd picked us! I kind of still didn't believe it, but I did start screaming & woke up everyone sleeping in the van & made them scream with me! Lisa called a few minutes after that, and with her word that this was all really happening I finally believed it! Screaming ensued again, as did another retelling of all the events to my captive audience, aka the residents of my van who had no choice. :)

I hadn't even finished filling out my loan applications or anything! Actually the evening before I had been close to giving up the idea of buying entirely based on how frustrating filling out all that paperwork was! Justin (the loan guy), named in my phone & referred to as, "Justin loan guy" wrote a letter stating they'd loan me the money I needed & I finished filling out all the stuff that night, got every other detail about my life they needed to know in over the weekend & signed my life (the next 30 years of it at least) away this week! I should close at the end of July (this month!) and can move in August 10!

All the inspections were today & so my parents went up to meet with all the people & take some pictures! All I've seen is from the realtor's website, but my mom says they're exactly what it looks like! So here it is...(the pics from the realtor that is...the ones from my mom have to wait for her to get back home tonight & for me to talk her through putting them on her computer & then emailing them to me)!

The front--black shutters & a red door!

Living Room.

Kitchen--how sweet are those floors?!

Dining room--the doors on the right lead into the kitchen.

Pink room.

Hallway bathroom.

Master bedroom.

Backyard--I will definitely need some high school kids to come mow my lawn!

A good sign! My mom took this on her phone today & sent it to me.

Isn't it adorable? I love it! All the inspections were good. My mom says it's in a great neighborhood with some awesome houses! And there's a Starbucks right down the street! What more could a girl ask for? I can't think of anything! So if you're in College Station after August 10th come see me!

The Coolest Thing I've Seen (today at least...)

I'm not a big "go green" person. I mean I'm pro it, but I don't do crazy things to try to be green. I use recycled paper/post its, I recycle my ink cartridges, and I do have re-usable shopping bags (and I remember to take them to the grocery most of the time). But today I became a fan of Printworks multipurpose paper! They apparently feel very strongly about replacing the trees they use to make paper and are doing their best to do something about it. I was pulling out paper today to put in my printer when out came a small ziplock baggie of seeds! They actually include seeds in each reem of paper so you can go plant them! How cool is that?!



Pretty sweet huh? I guess the flip/cynical side of this is that the company is trying to deflect any blame or criticism for cutting down trees. "You got a problem with us? Plant a tree!" Or perhaps they're just trying to get their customers to provide more trees for them to cut down & use to make paper. Can't you just see the execs up in their offices, "Hmm...how can we appear to be environmentally friendly and also get our customers to do the planting work for us? Ahha! We'll give them seeds...two birds with one stone!" A little ironic isn't it? They give you seeds just so in a few years they can cut down the trees. Hmmm.

Well, I still think it's pretty sweet. They won me over.

Sisters Married: 1, Weeks of Camp Ahead: 9

This past weekend my sister became Mrs Grobe! She & Robert got married at Roddy Tree Ranch in Hunt, TX & it was a wonderful weekend & beautiful wedding! Here's some of my favorite pics for the interested (some are other people's that I copied off facebook so forgive the poor quality):

Beautiful bride!

First dance!

Father/daughter dance.

Sister of the Bride/Maid of Honor, aka MOH1. :)

Our fam.

The whole fam! All the Grobes & all the Nelsons, et al (you can tell it was a friend of the groom's who took this picture--they cut off half our family)!

The Nelsons & the new son.

The Grobes & their new daughter.

Silly wedding party. Mostly silly girls, the boys were not so silly.

And now, I'm in Bartlesville, OK for our staff training camp. The week is going wonderful so far--the Lord has provided an awesome team this summer! On Saturday we'll head up to Missouri to begin our first official week of camp! Please pray for safe travel & good health over the next 9 weeks, and also that we would be willing & available to serve the Lord in whatever ways He gives us to serve Him!

Thank you! Hope you're having a good beginning of summer yourself!

Three Peas in a Pod

Check out these awesome pictures! My sweet friend Rachel took these of my two good friends, Sarah, Dawn & I. I wanted to do something fun for the three of us before I left for the summer & then moved in the fall & when I realized we didn't really have any good pictures of the three of us I called Rachel & set up a surprise photo shoot! I told the girls to wear boots & rodeo/country western dance type outfits & to come to my house! Rachel met us there & the fun ensued!

Rachel is such an awesome photographer! I wanted to share these with you to show off her mad skills & our fun time!



The Lord sure has blessed me through these girls' friendship! I will miss them dearly when I move! And in case you haven't heard...I am still moving in the fall, but not to Dallas anymore! I'm moving to College Station, where I'll be on staff with Grace Bible Church! This is the church I went to in college and I'm beyond thrilled to be moving back to work with the youth group there!

Hope you all have a good long weekend!

In 48 hours...

The countdown is in mere days & hours until the season finale event of LOST! I was really worried that this season was just going to be weird-crazy, like the time travel at the end of the fourth season of Felicity or the season of Alias (third maybe?) with the Rembaldi juice. JJ Abrams' shows always seems to start strong but use all their good material too quickly at the beginning. Don't get me wrong, I still love Felicity & Alias, but if you've watched them, you know what I mean. But anyway...this season of LOST has definitely been crazy, but it's been good-crazy! And crazy-good! :) I've ceased to be surprised by anything that happens on the island or that the island itself can do...bring it on! Oh I can't wait till Wednesday night!

Angela's Last Day

Yesterday was my friend and office-mate Angela's last day at Worldview. In a little over a week she'll be having a baby! For the last three years we've stared at each other almost every day--our desks face each other, with only her gargantuan computer monitor between us.


Doesn't she looks quite comfy sitting in this chair with her feet up? She doesn't usually sit like this at the office I made her do it for the picture. :) It's been quite a learning experience for me to share an office with a pregnant lady. I've learned some things I wish I hadn't. The funniest/coolest the other day was when I was sitting next to her & noticed her belly jump! The baby had the hiccups! It was so cool to get to see & also to put my hand on her belly & feel him move & hiccup. He should be here in a little over a week!

Don't do this.

This is the most useful, practical advice I've seen about how to avoid catching swine flu!
Thanks, Bonnie!

I solemnly swear I am up to no good.

I really really want to see this Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago this summer!


Who's with me?

April Happenings

If I haven't confessed this lately, allow me to now...my issue with blogging is that I feel like I have to have something funny or entertaining to write about or in the very least pictures to show in order to make my blog reader-worthy. I truly do enjoy reading about other people's new couches, cats, kid's latest tricks but I just feel silly writing about everyday events. I'm trying to get better. So here's a photo blog of sorts of the last few weeks.

Easter.
I got to go to Austin for the Thursday before Easter to spend the night with the HELKs--my last group of college roommates. Somehow I don't have any pictures from that event. Someone else did...need to get them... Erin (the E in HELK) came back to Midland with me to see her family & were gracious to invite me to spend a couple of Easter meals with them! Such a fun family! Saturday night my friend Sarah had an Easter egg hunt to which I contributed several dozen confetti eggs. Here's how we looked after the "hunt" (read: "battle").



Teen CBS.
TCBS ended mid-April with a big circle "camp fire" time of music & sharing. I was blessed to hear how the kids had grown that year & how their walks with the Lord had been strengthened through the study of His word. They made me a cool book filled with random pictures of Midland friends and a note from each of the leaders and kids. It'll definitely be a treasure when I'm missing my Midland friends next year! Here's our group of leaders eating yogurt together after our last Bible study.


And here's my friends Sarah & Dawn at the same event.


Let's see...this weekend...my sister is getting married in May & we gave her a bridal shower this weekend. We had dinner at this awesome place in Houston--Berry Hill Baja Grill--awesome fajitas!


Sunday some dear friends who met while serving together with Worldview got married. It was so fun to get to see some other dear friends at the wedding! Corrie (left) served a couple summers as a small group leader & Rachel (right) & I got to serve as female staff directors together...a summer like none other! :)


Need I say more?


And with the bride, Janise Medina Cookston. :)

And that brings us up to just a few days ago. :) Happy Friday eve to all!