High School Reunions....

I'm leaving for Dallas in the morning to attend a conference for child welfare trainers. I'm looking forward to the conference, but not the long drive. I need to be doing laundrey and packing right now, but I don't feel like it, so I decided this would be an excellent time to update my blog.

I had my twentieth high school reunion this weekend. I was really dreading it because I'm not very good at socializing, but I actually had a nice time. I got to visit with a couple friends from the neighborhood I grew up in, and some of my close buddies from my high school youth group. And my friend Sherry kept me laughing all night, which I really appreciate!!! Here's a photo of me with my friends Renee and Becky. We all went to church together and had a lot of fun with our high school youth group.

And here is a photo of us from high school. It was on one of our youth group trips to Colorado and we were trying to pose, but it wasn't working out very well. I just like this picture because I am wearing my swatch shorts, which I used to really love! They matched my swatch watch :)

10 Things I like about Wheatland Mission

We had a good night last night with the Wheatland Mission crowd, so today I wanted to list out some of the things (there are many!) that I like about my church.

1. The people - I feel so fortunate to go the church with the coolest people in the city of Wichita! Everytime I meet a new person I am wowed by their story and excited about the things I am going to learn from them and with them in the future.

2. The lack of history - I really love that we never get into situations where we have to deal with "but we've always done it that way". Everything is new, so there is no history to base it on.

3. The kids - I know, the kids are people too, so they are technically included in the first point, but I think they are special enough that they should get their own point too. Yesterday I was talking with someone about how unique and fun each one of the kids are and it got me so excited for our elementary kids to get to middle school so they can be a youth group. They will be one fun group of kids! I can't wait to go on a road trip with them! (Seriously here - no sarcasm - I love trips with middle school kids!)

4. The willingness to serve - I've never been in a church where so many people are willing to help at a moment's notice. I don't think there is a person there that I couldn't tap on the shoulder and ask them to come help in the nursery at a moments notice. Okay maybe Paul, but only because he is busy preaching.

5. Our space - I know we are looking to move someday, and I'm sure it will be a good move, but it's really nice to have the outdoor picnic area and lots of grass to play games in like we did last night.

6. My house church - I love all the people, but I especially love the families in my house church and I miss meeting with them when my schedule gets busy and I miss a week, or a month as is the current situation.

7. The grace and forgiveness - nobody ever gets mad at me when I forget things (which I am very good at hiding, but actually happens more often than you'd think! For example, I have not sent any kid birthday postcards in three weeks. Sorry September birthday kids!) I'm so thankful that Michel and Monica never made me feel bad for not being able to get up and make it to breakfast at 6:30 on Tuesdays. Instead of making me feel like a bad Christian, they just made it known that they missed me when I couldn't be there.

8. Making me think, and study, and pray - I haven't been very good at keeping up, but I do love reading the insights on the many blogs our members have started. They make me think, and challenge me to look at myself differently. I also appreciate the sermons, the house church studies, and am looking forward to the upcoming study we are going to do on Wednesday nights.

9. Saturday nights - I will be fine if we move to Sundays in the future, but for right now, I'm loving meeting on Saturday nights and having my day of rest of Sundays!

10. A sense of belonging - as a single adult, I appreciate being in a church with lots of families and kids of every age. I've always disliked singles ministries and prefer to be in groups with people in every circumstance of life. I appreciate having a church where everyone can belong.

Confession time...

I have to confess that I've been ignoring my blog because I've been playing with my Facebook page. I was sick several days this last week and someone sent me a facebook note. I created my facebook page several months ago so I could monitor my niece's page (she loves it when I do that!), but I never looked at it much before this week. The way facebook works (for those of you who don't use it), you can't view anyone's pages until you create your own, which only takes a minute. It's been kind of a fun way to connect with some people I haven't talked to in awhile.

On another note...I made chicken enchilada soup tonight and fed some to Kara (my niece). She took one bite and said "is this the first time you've ever made this?" I panicked and prepared myself for the smart aleck comment that I knew was coming. I figured I must have left out some key ingredient or done some other obvious failure that she would find amusing. She is used to her dad (my brother) who is a much better cook than I am. So after I answered her that no, this wasn't the first time I had ever made it, she suprised me by saying it was good. I still didn't believe her and waited for the next smart remark, but then I realized she was being serious. Sometimes it's hard to communicate normally in a family that uses sarcasm as the main form of communication. When something serious is said, it sort of freaks me out and I don't know what to do with it.

One more confession. I was just reviewing my to do list (which I do multiple times daily) and realized I had not crossed off very many things on it today. So I added "update blog" and immediately crossed it off. It made me feel more productive.

side note: Tracey you owe me a dollar. Calana said so.

High School Musical 2

Here's the video I mentioned in my last post...my friends watching High School Musical 2:

Random notes

I've been getting a lot of harrassment lately about not updating my blog, so here's my latest news:

My niece Kara moved me in with me about two weeks ago. She is a freshman at WSU and and is very excited about her new job at Red Lobster, which she hasn't even started yet. It's fun to have her here, but I'm kind of upset because she won't let me check her homework. I even offered her a dollar and she still won't do it. I thought about going through her bags and finding her homework and doing it anyway, but then I decided I need to be a nice aunt and respect her privacy.

Tommorrow I'm headed to Chicago for a quick trip. I was dreading my early morning flight at 7:30 am and just found out that they canceled my flight and now I'm rebooked on a 6:00 am flight. Yuck! That puts me into Chicago before 8:00 am and my meeting doesn't start until noon. At least the meeting is downtown on Michigan Avenue where all the shopping is, so I guess I can window shop for a few hours. I'm meeting with a few other trainers from other states to work on revising the training manual we all use for our new employees in the child abuse prevention programs we work with. The other trainers are the experts in the training topics like brain development and parent child interaction. My job is to make sure the manual is well organized. I hate our old manual because I don't think it's laid out very well. There is not a good index and it's hard to find what you are looking for and the worst part is that the facilitators manual and the participants manual don't match up. So they are going to let me work on that part. We're working Tuesday and Wednesday, then I fly home Wednesday night. Short trip.

I tried to post a video of my friends Bella and Racheal dancing while we watched High School Musical 2, but the internet is not cooperating with me so I'll have to add it another time. Too bad, because it's really cute.

Things I'm Thankful For

Calana tagged me, so here's my list of things I'm grateful for
1. My friends (and Calana, you are definitely on the list!)
2. My family
3. My church
4. My job
5. My bed (it's late and I'm tired)
6. Funny kids
7. Mountain Dew
8. Rain

On the road again....

Tonight I am in Jefferson City, Missouri. I was a good tourist today. I visited the home of President Lincoln, the tomb where he and his family are buried, and the Presidential Museum and Library. And also the church where he used to attend where they have the Lincoln family pew on display. It was interesting. I learned some stuff about the civil war that I didn't know, which basically would include anything about the civil war. I don't know why it is that I remember nothing I learned in school, but every time I visit a new historic site it is like I am learning it for the first time. At the gift store I bought several books about Lincoln so I could read more. I'm not sure why I think I will have time to read books about Lincoln when I can't even get through Tom Sawyer, but it's hard to pass up the opportunity to buy new books.

I had forgotten that Springfield was the capitol of Illinois until I drove by the capitol building this morning. It reminded me of the last time I was there, over ten years ago. I was working in Indiana for a short term missions organization. There were about 8 of us who worked there full time and we lived in trailers at the edge of the old church camp that the organization had purchased. Every summer we would send out about 10 or 12 teams of junior high, high school, and college kids to locations around the world. Being the most anal-retentive member of the staff, I was in charge of the paperwork, which include ensuring that all the kids had their passports and visas in time. Somehow, we discovered that one of the boys did not have his visa paperwork at the last minute. He was from the Chicago area and we called his parents and they insisted that they mailed it, but we had not received it. We made some phone calls and found out we could get another copy from the state government office that issued the paperwork originally, but his parents would have to request it. So his parents agreed to drive from Chicago to Springfield to get it. I packed up the car with a couple of our summer interns to keep me awake and we drove all night to meet his parents in Springfield the next morning. We met his parents, picked up the form as soon as the state office opened that morning, then got back in the car and immediately drove to Indianapolis where the team was waiting at the airport. We got the paperwork to him about an hour before the flight left. I was so stressed out! The worst part happened a few days later. One of my co-worker's wives had been picking up the mail every day and delivering to the office, then dropping our personal mail off in the trailer we lived in at the edge of the camp. During our training camps, when we were doing the week long training with the teams before they went out on their mission trips, things were always so busy that I barely had time to sleep, much less read mail. But a few days later when I finally started looking at my personal mail, I found his visa information. It was addressed to me and Amanda just assumed it was personal mail, so to be helpful she had put it on the kitchen table. So we made our all night trip to Springfield for nothing!