Headed Home for the Holidays

So, it has been a really long time since I blogged. Not only have we gotten into a pretty mundane routine, but it has also been crazy busy. A lot has happened since I last blogged. We had All Clean last Monday which went well. After work, we all met with Craig Ingelsby to plan Entertainment Night for the Work Crew and Summer Staff Reunion this weekend. It is always the interns' jobs to put on Entertainment Night, which is super fun. More on that later.

I went to bed really early and slept really late. I spent a lazy day Tuesday hanging out and watching movies and the West Wing with Darren. It was definitely needed. It had been such a long week, though full of fun stuff.

Wednesday was a rough day for us. We got some bad news. I woke up in the morning to Kristen saying we needed to go over to the boys' condo and found out that my friend and fellow intern, Shea, was going to be leaving that afternoon for good. It has been really hard on us to have him leave. We are definitely a little family and it is a definite loss to have him gone.

We spent the whole day dealing with that news, and then we had the auction that evening. It was hard to get excited, but the auction is really a cool event. Everything that was left in Lost and Found and not claimed gets auctioned off and all the proceeds go to camp scholarships. Rich used to do livestock auctions, so he's got the for real auctioneer stuff going on and it's really fun. It was my job to log all the purchases into the computer. It was fun watching people get into bidding wars over random things like crocs or swim goggles. Most of the staff was there and it was fun.

We went back to work in Housekeeping the next day. Everyone was definitely emotionally heightened with everything that had happened the day before, so it was kind of a rough day. We had small group that night, followed by staff worship and then dance practice. We had decided to do the final number from Hairspray as the opening skit for Entertainment Night, so we had to learn it Thursday night. I was really tired, but it was really fun learning the dance with everyone. We may have looked like idiots, but we had a great time doing it. The boys were hilarious. It was definitely unifying to put together stuff for Entertainment Night, which is exactly what we needed. However, the my roomies and I were all on edge with each other for a few days which was making things difficult.

I passed out after dance practice and then was in HK all day Friday. People started arriving early Friday afternoon. It was kind of a weird weekend because everyone who was here had worked here for some length of time. All the old interns were back which was weird because you kind of like to think you're the only one who has ever lived here and had this job. Also, it meant all the old Work Crew and Summer Staff felt like the owned the place which meant we had to lock everything. But it was also really fun. They are all part of the extended Wildhorse family and many will be back this summer.

Saturday was a Sassy day. I got to sleep in and worked the afternoon shift. Then was Entertainment Night. First, we did the dance. Next, I came out by myself as Rosanna Suzanna Millingham and made a complete fool of myself telling the story of when I was on Work Crew and fell in love with an intern. And I wrote poems about it that just happened to be the lyrics of pop songs. Classic. I came out 3 times in my ridiculous outfit. It was a lot fun. Somehow, I'm the skit girl out here which is funny because I completely wasn't in Missouri. But I had a ton of fun doing it. We ended the night with "Hey There Reunion," which is our made up and recorded in the boys' house version of "Hey There Delilah." It was pretty impressive if I do say so myself. The whole night was seriously fun and followed by a late night in the Sassy.

(Also, there is video. I will attempt to find a way to show it to you all.... Craig.)

Sunday was HK all day. We did all the perifs in the afternoon because there is a camp in the day we get back. So we wanted to get as much done as possible. But we couldn't do the Iron Kettle or the Sports Center because people will be using them, so Jen has to do them by herself next week. I can't even imagine how much that will suck, but she seems excited.

After work, we went to a goodbye party for Kacie, who is leaving to go work at an orphanage in Northern Thailand. Yeah, I'm jealous. Then we played some poker. We've gotten really into Texas Hold'em the last week or so. I won 948 million fake dollars. It was pretty sweet.

The Iveys, Kristen and Drew all left last night, so we were short a few people for All Clean today. However, when we got in this morning, Jen told us as soon as we finished the list of things we had to do today, we could go home. Which was great because a lot of people were driving tonight. So, we kicked major booty and had everything done by 1:30! It was awesome. And also a really good thing because I'm still doing laundry and it's 9:00. I'm just about to start packing and I leave at 8:00 in the morning. So, I'm really glad we got off early.

It's down to Lacey, Dan, Darren and I here. Lacey leaves tomorrow morning and Darren's driving me to the airport on his way down to his hometown. Dan's staying for a couple more days before going home. It's weird to think I'm headed home tomorrow. It hasn't really sunk in. I'm pumped to see everybody. I feel like it's going to be a whirlwind.

Give me call; I'll have my cell phone! Love you all and see you in a couple of days!

Winter Wonderland

As I write this, I am curled up under my blanket with my heater going. It's literally freezing outside and I just got back from watching Elf with a bunch of the staff in the club room. Christmas in the Canyon is proving to be similar to Christmas everywhere, a time of cozy busyness. A time where your thoughts turn to friends and family, where the days are short and the nights are long. I love Christmas time.

I'm coming home in 8 days! And I am very excited about it. Although, I have a certain amount of anxiousness as well, which is surprising. I have just realized that Christmas at home will never again be the relaxing month-long break from real life that it has always been. When in college, Christmas was the time I got to come home and not worry about seeing any of my friends because I saw them all the time. Oh yeah, and I got a month worth of it. Now I have a week and, not only do I want to spend time with my family, but this is also the only time I get to see all my friends back home as well. It's just a little stressful to think about how much I want to cram into my time at home. And I'm wondering if I'll find it changed at all. Weird. But I miss Missouri a lot and really can't wait to see everyone. I'll just have to budget my time well.

The Christmas festivities have definitely continued since I last blogged. Tuesday was Craft Day at the Milstens which was very fun and relaxing. I learned to knit and have made a decent amount of a pretty awesome scarf for myself. We watched 5 movies including Elf, Little Women, Polar Express, Muppets Christmas Carol and Miracle on 34th Street. It was really cozy and informal and everyone just came and went all day long.

We met the boys at 8:00 that night to practice our skit for the Christmas party the next night. We got it pulled together, although it is definitely a trial to get 14 people to focus on something, especially when there's no clear leader. We got it done though and the went back to the condos and hung out. I got Darren addicted to the West Wing, which is fun for me. We've been watching episodes here and there for the past couple weeks, so that's what we did after rehearsal.

I got up around 10:00 on Wednesday and headed into town with Lacey and Shea to go grocery shopping. It was a fun trip with Shea in the car blaring LL Cool J and Boyz II Men. We went to Thriftway and all Shea bought was an onion, gizzards, cow tongue and Shake n' Bake. He then cooked them and brought them to the Christmas party. It was hilarious.

We got back in the afternoon and spent some time cooking and then got ready for the Christmas party. The party was in the Orchard Inn and it was fun to see everyone all dressed up. They had set everything up really pretty and fancy. The kitchen had made rack of lamb and some pork and everyone had brought sides and stuff. It was really yummy.

After dinner was the kids program which was one of the cutest things I've seen in my entire life. The kids out here are so sweet and fun. And ridiculously cute. After the kids program came the white elephant exchange which I did not do well in even though I brought an awesome football phone.

And next came our ridiculous skit. My parts included singing the German version of Silent Night and singing Oh, Holy Night in my church lady voice, all while wearing a shirt that has cats on it and says Meowy Christmas. I was pretty sure we were bombing but we had a lot of people tell us they thought it was awesome. It was a lot of fun to do together and I feel like people got to see more of our goofy personalities. Rich told us that no other intern group would have ever gotten up in front of the staff this early in the year and that he was really impressed with us, which was really to hear. So it was definitely fun.

Thursday was back to work, although it didn't really feel like I had a weekend. We did perif buildings and then spent the rest of the day continuing the deep clean on the quads and laundry. Friday morning was much of the same. I did make it to Morning Mudd, but just barely. The Sassy was open Friday night, so I only had to work in HK in the morning. We did the Sports Center and the Sassy and then continued deep clean.

After lunch, I trained Kristen and Drew in the Sassy because they were working there this weekend. They were the first group I've trained, so they were my guinea pigs. I'm excited to train and to plant some of the vision I have for the place in others, but it's hard to train other interns. I have kind of a weird role because I am running the Sassy but I'm not their boss, so it's a little weird. But we got it done and the group rolled in that afternoon.

We had an Assemblies of God youth group camp here this weekend. They were a first time group and most of the people had never seen the place. They were fun, but there's definitely a learning curve with first time groups. We opened the Sassy from 11:30 to 1:00 Friday night which is the latest we've stayed open since I've been here. It was also really slow. So that kind of sucked.

I slept in Saturday because I wasn't scheduled for morning espresso. We went in at 1:00 and did devos and set-up. The afternoon open was better than the night before. Our kid this weekend was Brandon. There's always at least one kid that spends all weekend in the snack bar and this weekend, it was Brandon. I really feel like that's the point of what we do in the snack bar. There are some kids that aren't going to be comfortable in the Sports Center or out by the pool, so the snack bar is a place where they can hang out and feel comfortable and welcome. I pray a lot that it's a place where that can happen. It's cool to see those kids and remember their names and get to see little glimpses of their time here.

We had late open again Saturday night, but we were packed all night. It was pretty crazy and people bought pretzels like they were going out of style. I was exhausted by 2:00 when we got home and passed out, only to awaken 5 hours later to be in HK this morning at 8:00. Late night, early morning is killer.

I ended up spending most of the day today in the Sassy, doing vending and ordering. It was fun to work by myself and probably better because their was a good chance I would have been cranky.

After work, we made some taco pie and then went to watch Elf, which was hilarious as always. That movie does not get old.

Also, we got our personality tests back and mine is almost exactly the same as the last time I took it. I'm still an otter, still talk a lot and still really love people. I work at a relational level and tend to be emotional. It's freakish how right most of the stuff they put was. It's been fun reading everybodys.

All Clean tomorrow and then the weekend! I'm so excited.

See you all very soon!

Christmas Time in the Canyon

Christmas is fast approaching and, just like everywhere else in the world, that means a crazy amount of fun stuff to do in the canyon.

I got over being sick last week and headed back to work on Friday. Friday and Saturday were the same kind of routine. Me being exhausted from being sick and working my butt off deep cleaning in the quads. Deep cleaning the quads has seriously been an undertaking. We have had to move bunks, scrub walls, scrub down every bunk, take down light fixtures and generally clean anything and everything. It has been a long and arduous process broken up only by random shifts in the Washboard. The whole time we were deep cleaning the quads we were taking hour shifts of two of us in the Washboard. The Washboard became our safe place where we all wanted to be all the time. Seriously though, it's been hard and made harder by the fact I was sick but also enjoyable. We did a lot of stuff that put us all in the same room, so that's always fun.

Friday night was our first intern once-a-monther which is the monthly dinner and hang out time that we decided to commit to at the beginning of the year. It was also Kristen's birthday. So we had a lot of fun hanging out and eating dinner together. We then met for a while to plan the Christmas skit that we will be putting on at the All-Property Christmas Party on Wednesday. We're pretty excited about it. After we were done with that, we borrowed Korey's lazer tag set and headed to the Sports Center. That's right, we spent the next 2 hours playing lazer tag in the dark in the skate park which was super awesome. Seriously, you can be jealous. It was a lot of fun. Although I got out everytime because I go on ultimate offense every time I play lazer tag. Tis the price to pay.

Saturday was another day of deep clean followed by the most depressing football game I've ever watched. And I had to watch it in the company of OU fans. I will say no more. I believe you all understand my pain.

I woke up Sunday feeling much better and also excited because Jen had announced to us the day before that we were going to get a surprise special project to work on the next couple of days since we had finished the deep clean on one of the quads. I was very excited to find out that Becca, Lacey, Mandi and I were going to spend all of Sunday and Monday organizing and cleaning the Prop Room! It was amazingly fun to sort through the ridiculous amount of random costume stuff that we have here at Wildhorse. We, of course, dressed up in the most ridiculous outfits we could find and wore them around camp the entire day. It was also a great job because you could really see a huge difference at the end of the project which is always satisfying. And we weren't deep cleaning! It was all around awesome.

The other girls spent the past couple of days organizing stuff for the auction which is a once-a-year canyon event where they auction off everything that has been left in lost and found over the past year and all the profits go to campership. It's a fun event and I've already staked out some sweet stuff like a shirt that say Czech Me Out- Prague on it and some Mexican Train Dominoes. It's going to be sweet.

Tomorrow is Craft Day, which I'm stoked about. I'm going to learn how to knit. Other than being excited about that, we've basically just been hanging out and watching movies and playingn board games... Winter in the canyon personified.

I love you all and hope you're developing some festive cheer as you get ready to see ME at Christmas!

Bryce, I'm Sorry

So I just got a rather haughty facebook message from Bryce pointing out that I had not blogged in a while. I apologize. And I'll make up for it right now with a super long post. Get excited.

Since I last posted, we had Thanksgiving Break and it was wonderful. We kicked it off with the Turkey Bowl which, being from Missouri, I dominated. Wednesday morning we slept in, hung out and took our time getting ready to depart for Dan's. Kristin, Mike and I were the only interns who ended up going. We left the canyon mid-afternoon and arrived to Bend at around 5:30.

We had all agreed that we wanted to go see a movie and get some dinner (simple pleasures that we don't take for granted since living out here). So we met up with Dan at the Old Mill District which is this cool outdoor shopping district in Bend. We decided to see August Rush which came out that day. We went and got our tickets and then headed to Red Robin to grab some food. I had never been to Red Robin which you would think is a crime by people's reaction to that statement out here. So we went and their burgers are, in fact, ridiculously good. It actually lived up to the hype.

After dinner, we went to the movie and Dan's parents, sister and sister's fiance joined us. The movie was really good, although sappy. But we all loved it and really was just fun to go to a movie. We headed back to Dan's after and stayed up playing Bang! with his younger brother and older sister.

The next day, we slept in, had an awesome breakfast, took a driving tour of Bend, stopped at the Deschutes River and then spent the rest of the day eating and playing board games with Dan's family. It was so fun and relaxing. The next day was much of the same. Becca and Peter drove up and we hit up some Black Friday sales and went to a really fun and festive Christmas tree lighting at a resort called Sunriver. It was beautiful and relaxing. Dan's family was so wonderful and it was great to spend a few days in a real home just relaxing. They definitely took care of us which was so wonderful.

We headed back to the Canyon on Saturday in order to be home in time to watch my Missouri Tigers dominate the Jayhawks. It was an incredible victory and it was so fun to watch it with some of the other interns and introduce them to the incredibleness that is Mizzou. They had no idea. As you can see from the picture, I represented for my Tigers.

We spent the next couple of days just chilling in the canyon. The Iveys, Mike, Kristin, Darren and I were the only ones here so we had a lot of fun just hanging out. It was a really great group. I feel like most of the people that stayed at the canyon were the people I hadn't gotten to know as well, especially Mike, Dan and Darren. Everyone who was here was just chill and fun and it was so relaxing and fun. I feel even more comfortable here now and feel like I really solidified a friendship with all those guys.

We went back to work on Tuesday which was a pretty easy day, although I was developing a nasty cold. We had small group that night which was our best small group yet. I made orange chicken and crab rangoon, a la the Dudenhoeffers, which was super yummy. And then I told my life story, the extended version. Seriously, I talked for a long time. It was just nice though because since we switched it to Tuesday this week, we didn't have to worry about getting done in a hurry to get to worship afterwards. So we ended up having a 3 hour small group. We like to talk. And the boys kept running up to the door and then leaving when they saw us which was funny and made us all feel loved.

I woke up the next morning and was completely out of it. I took a couple sick days the past couple of days and have literally not left my condo. I'm feeling a lot better now so I'm gonna go back to work tomorrow. It's been sucky, but people here are really good about taking time off to get better. It's a physically demanding job and we spend a lot of time outside, so if you don't take the time to get all better you just end up sicker. So my bosses have been great.

That being the case, I'm going to bed at 9:00 tonight. So I have to get some stuff done. I added some pictures to my last blog, so check those out. Love you all!

Bryce- I hope this has satisfied you. I added pics because I know how much you like them. Go Tigers!

Turkey Time!

So, our Thanksgiving break started today and it could not have come a moment too soon. I am stoked for a couple days off. Although, I feel like I just got beat up. Tonight was the 1st Annual Turkey Bowl. The boys have been talking for weeks about playing flag football and tonight we kicked it off. Kristen and I went thinking we were going to watch but ended up playing and it was so fun. It was us and Sarah from the kitchen as the only girls. The boys had the classic problem of never throwing it to us, but after they figured out that I caught literally every pass that was thrown to me, they started sending it my way more. It was freezing cold, I got laid out a couple of times, the grass was slick and the boys were brutal, but I had a chance to wear my Mizzou beanie and repeatedly yell, "Third in the nation, baby!" So all was good.

The past few days have been a little crazy here at the Canyon. This weekend was huge and Saturday was the busiest we've ever been in the Sassy. It was crazy. But it was also a ton of fun. It felt like there were so many kids here but it's only half of how many will be here during the summer which is even crazier. But the Sass was a lot of fun and people were great about stepping in and helping us out even though they had already worked a full day.

Also, I continue to be amazed at how much money kids will spend in the snack bar. There were these 2 kids this weekend that had to have each spent 30 bucks. And that's in one day. And they're served meals. Kids blow through the money.

After the Sassy on Saturday, we got the privilege of seeing a concert by Jonah Werner, who came as special music this weekend. I like his music, but beyond that he is an amazing entertainer. He was very funny and definitely had everyone's attention the whole time he was on stage.

Sunday was an easy day. Checkout took forever and consisted of a lot of standing around. I became officially certified to handle food in the state of Oregon. And I spent the afternoon in the Washboard which is fun in small doses.

Sunday night we had game night which was so fun. We started with a game of Battle of the Sexes, followed by Catch Phrase and, our intern favorite, Apples to Apples. We have definitely picked up that game are fun, which is extremely exciting for me. Because I love games, at all times. I'm hoping I'm not getting too competitive. But I am. I can't help it.

Monday was All Clean which was really fun this week because the guys stayed with us all day. We're starting the Deep Clean on the Quads which is going to be ridiculous. After we finished bathrooms, we stripped all the mattress pads, blankets and pillows off the beds and hauled them to the Washboard. There is now a huge, daunting pile of stuff that we have to wash, literally 8 feet tall. After that, we broke up into random teams to do random things. Nick and I began polishing all the chrome in the bathrooms. It was fun to hang out with Nick. The more I get to know him, the more I like him. However, satin shining the chrome is a much longer process than you would think. Everyone was done with all their jobs in both quads and we only had 1/4 of one quad done. It sucked.

After work, we headed home and got ready for Dip Day at the Milstens. The Milstens have a traditional, non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner consisting entirely of dips at their house every year. It was a really good time, mingling and hanging out and grazing through all the dips.

We had a little celebration afterwards back at the condos as well for Becca's birthday. We have a lot of fun together. There was some dancing...
We had to work today so that we could get days off in a chunk over Thanksgiving. So us girls were in HK and spent literally all morning finishing the chrome. We had decided to start at 7:00 and take a 45 minute lunch so we could get off at 3:45 which was great. I'm kind of turning into a morning person. No, that's a lie. I still can't function in the morning, but I like it when I have to go into work early and get done early. It makes such a difference.

Anyway, we spent the morning polishing and after lunch headed to the Washboard. We were only there until about 2:30 though. After that we went back to Geronimo and spent the last hour of our day decorating Geronimo with snowflakes and such for Christmas and deciding on the rules for our girl secret santa exchange and what movie theme we want for Jen's craft day that she always has in December and consists of sitting around watching movies and crafting all day. It was a fantastic way to end the day. Our job is great.

We came back from work and Lacey and Mandi headed out and Drew left yesterday, so our house was really empty. It already feels weird. But Kristen and I watched a couple episodes of Felicity and I cooked Paige's pasta for dinner. And then we headed to the Turkey Bowl, dominated, came back and watched movie. It was a great night. But I'm gonna be sore tomorrow. This is also the latest I have stayed up since I got here. It's almost 2:00 which was basically my bed time back home. My life is definitely different.

So, I'm going to be in Bend the next couple of days and other than that just hanging out doing nothing. I'm going to be very available. Phone calls would be much appreciated. I love you all and miss you a ton.

I'm a Gamer, Baby

So I just got back from maybe the most fun event I've been to since I got here: Game Night at the Inglsbys'. Craig and Kathy Inglsby are my heroes partly because they're a lot of fun and cool people, but mainly because they own an incredible amount of games. But I digress.

Thursday was another easy day in HK. Since we got caught up with laundry things have settled a lot, but that will all start up again after we finish the deep clean and have another round of laundry. We did have a staff meeting in the morning where we talked about the Staff Christmas Party and were volunteered by, well, everyone to put together a little number to perform. We have some great, funny ideas so it should be a blast.

After work, we had small group and intern worship. Small group was at Jen's and was again very fun. Mandi shared her life story which was great because she's the one I feel like I've gotten to know the least. She's very quiet, so it was good that she had to talk for a long time. Worship was fun as well although it has gotten pretty cold which makes it hard for me to sing. Lance Wagner came and shared with us about scripture memory which was pretty cool. Also, he recited Colossians. Yeah, he's for real. My favorite point he made was that he tends to memorize large chunks of the Bible or whole books so that he doesn't take things out of context. It was cool and challenging. Also, his 9-year-old daughter can recite Titus. For real.

I was in HK again all day today. We started out cleaning the Sports Center. Becca's home for the weekend and Mandi and Lacey were in the D Hall and the Kitchen, so it was just 4 of us cleaning the Sports Center. But it was fun. After lunch, Sara went to the store so Drew, Kristen, Sara Morrow and I cleaned the Sassy and then Drew and Kristen got off because they were in the Sports Center tonight. So Sara Morrow, Jen and I did really random things like clean the vacuums for the rest of the afternoon. It was fun spending time with Sara, she's really cool, quiet natured but in a calm way not a shy way and also pretty funny.

I helped with Morning Mud this morning which was fun but also a little crazy. People show up for $.75 espresso.

After work, I came home for a while and then went to dinner. There's 2 groups in this weekend. The first, bigger group is from Walla-Walla High School and is a leadership weekend put on by their student board. It's kind of run by a teacher there who is married to a guy on YL staff who also happened to be one of my Work Crew bosses at Malibu. So he's here this weekend helping put on program and stuff. It's funny because it looks a lot like a YL weekend but without the spoken name of Christ. They're a lot of fun and very enthusiastic. The other group is a small Campaigner group from Sunset High in Portland who are just having a retreat and using some of the smaller buildings.

After dinner, we headed to the Inglsbys' and got our game on. It was so much fun. A lot of people from property were there and there were kids running around all over the place and lots of yelling and laughter. And they have literally the most board games I've ever seen. An entire closet full. We were there for almost 3 hours playing, it was so much fun.

For Bryce- You have to find and play a game called Cash n' Guns. You'll love it.

No morning espresso this weekend! Which means I will be sleeping in tomorrow. Praise the Lord.

Much love.

Feels Like Home to Me

So, I'm sorry that it has been a while since I posted. It has been a wonderful past few days and I'm excited to share it. I had a moment this week where I finally began to feel at home in this place. I feel comfortable, I feel happy, I'm having fun. It will most likely still be really hard at times, but I feel like we've finally gotten to the point where we're excited to be here. So it's awesome. Thank you all for being behind me and being the people that I can always turn to and feel completely myself around. You're awesome.

So, the last I blogged, we were in the middle of Work and Worship which was really fun. On Sunday, we had morning espresso again and then I was scheduled for vending for the rest of the day. Turns out that only takes a couple of hours. So after I got done with vending, I spent the next few hours in the Store with Sara deep cleaning. We had such a good time, jamming to music and talking about our lives. Sara is super cool and so sweet and I feel like we have a lot to learn from each other.

After I got off work, I hung out for a while and then headed back down to main camp for dinner. This was the first weekend I made it a point to get to all the meals and it was definitely worth it, just to hang out with people. After dinner, we went to the last worship of the weekend. Almost all of us went, so it was fun to sit in a row in the back and be the obnoxious intern kids. Ben's talk was again great and Judy was again funny.

After worship, a bunch of us went to look around in the store. A bunch of the guys came and ended up buying the $1 Zubs we still have in the store from 2002. Zubs are those stretchy material tubes that they have on Survivor that you can wear as a headband or a hat or a tube top. They're very versatile. Anyway, all the boys got them and have been wearing them and it has been pretty funny. And we now have a contest to see who can end up with the coolest Zub by the end of the year. The only rule is that we can't buy them on Ebay. So please send me Zubs if you happen upon one.

Monday I was in Housekeeping and it was a great easy day. I spent the morning deep cleaning in the Ranch House which was pretty nasty. We then had checkout and All Clean, but since checkout had been so staggered, a bunch of the All Clean was already done. So we ended up getting off work a half hour early! Such a little thing, but it was so great.

After work, we watched Love Actually and talked about first kisses and other awkward moments. It was a lot of fun. We also played Nerts. I dominated, of course. Actually, I beat Mike by 4 points. It was a lot of fun.

Tuesday was another relaxing day. I was supposed to go to Madras. I didn't. Instead, I slept until 12:00 and hung out without changing out of my PJs all day. We watched movies and spent all night playing games including Nerts, Scattegories and a game called Bang! which is much like an extreme version of Mafia. It was my kind of night.

Today, I got up and went into Madras with Lacey. She had a dentist appointment, so I chilled in the waiting room and read. And then we went to Safeway and I finally bought real food. I have been bummed that I haven't cooked for everybody, so I decided to fix that. I bought food for all kinds of meals and tonight made Mama Gore's tortellini soup and some cornbread. It was a lot of fun and the boys came over and ate with us. Then we played another game of Bang!.

After dinner, we had the Lady's Tea at Judy's house. Almost all of the women who live on property came to the tea and we got to get dressed up and eat yummy food. It was really fun to just hang out with all the women and get to know people better. The ladies here are so varied. It's crazy to me how all these random kinds of women ended up out here. There are stay-at-home moms and career women and athletes and women with Masters degrees and young women and old women. It really makes me feel validated in being here to see all these brilliant woment who also see worth in being here. Sometimes it's easy to think that I should have a real job and that people think I'm hiding out here or something. But the more I get to know the other people here, the better I feel about being here. These are brilliant, educated, smart people who also realize the importance of being out here in the middle of nowhere. It's great.

Becca and I were talking tonight and both realized that we had the same moment this week where we started feeling completely comfortable here. I think that we're all in the same place, which is great. I'm excited to go into the winter together, ready to grow and have fun and be cheesy. I love the cheesiness.

I love you all and I miss you a ton. Please call me because I don't have any more minutes on my phone card and I can't call you.

Another Day, Another Dollar

Today was such a fun day. I really have enjoyed Work and Worship this weekend. The people who have come are, of course, awesome. And it has been fun to be a part of a weekend completely put on by us. Most of the time, speakers and musicians and everybody come in with the group. But this weekend is completely our staff putting on program for these amazing volunteers. And it was fun to walk around and see all of the work being done today.

We had morning espresso this morning, so I was up and in the Sassy by 6:30. After espresso, Becca and I were scheduled until 11:30, so we did some of the many things that needed to be done in the Sassy. We finished our deep clean list and then we went over to the kitchen and organized all the stuff we have in the freezer which took a long time and was extremely cold. It was really fun though to hang out with Becca and spend and easy morning.

The Work and Worship teams are on the most random jobs, so it's really kind of funny to see. A huge crew of people have joined the Maintenance boys to clean out the pond which is something the boys have been working on for about a week. Our pond is pretty huge, so it has been quite an undertaking to drain it. There are some problems with the irrigation, so it had to be done. This is the first time they have every drained it and it is nasty. There were all kinds of fish and a ton of algae and stuff. But it is drained and now they're doing what they can to clean it out. They volunteers have been raking all the algae and such out of the bank while the boys use the fire hose to clean off everything else. It'll stay drained through the winter and apparently it will take about 80 days to completely fill it back up. It's crazy.

Other groups are doing things like taking out all the flowers from the flower pots and recplacing windows and working on condos. Anything and everything is being done and it is awesome!

After lunch, I had the afternoon off which was so productive. I was able to get my room cleaned, finish some letters, pay some bills, take care of some stuff at the office, AND start some laundry. It was great. I feel much better about my life after having taken care of all of that.

I went to dinner tonight and sat with the Brown family and Kristen and Mike which was very pleasant. The Browns are great. Korey is running the MCL project and he and his wife Sara are very sweet and welcoming. They have 2 elementary school aged girls who have all kinds of attitude but are very sweet and funny and a little baby boy. I feel like I'm finally starting to really get to know people here, which is so comforting.

After dinner I went to the first part of worship. It was so refreshing and again, I love Judy. I had to sneak out early to open the Sassy, so I didn't get to here Ben speak which I was bummed about but worship was really good. The Sassy was crazy busy for the first hour we were open. So much so that Ben came in to get a soda and ended up scooping ice cream with us for a while. Also, our freezer broke again. So there was ice cream pouring out into the freezer and when we tried to take one of them out, the bottom busted and it was glooping out everywhere. It was really pretty hilarious and we ended up having a really good night.

I'm back in my condo. I'm super tired. I can't really sleep. We have morning espresso again tomorrow. I feel like this is the first real tiny glimpse of what the summer will be like. I can't wait.

Life in the Canyon... It's weird.

Love you all!

One More Night in Hollywood

I love Fridays because that means new people come in. We started out the morning in the Sports center, cleaning away. We have definitely got the groove down now. I mopped the basketball courts which was just one more step towards the awesome arm muscles I am currently developing. After the Sports center, we cleaned the Sassy and did some laundry.

After lunch we went to Little Joe and picked up the big tubs full of dishes that we put in the suites for the assignment team during the summer and took them to the kitchen to be washed. We got to spend most of the afternoon doing dishes in the pits in the kitchen which I believe to be one of the most fun jobs at camp. But I normally think that about every job that is not my own. It's just fun to get to do new stuff.

After we got done with that, we went back to the washboard and went to a couple of other places like the Ranch House to check on laundry. It was a fun, relaxed day.

After work, we headed back to the house and ate dinner and hung out. And then a bunch of us decided to go to the first Club for Work and Worship tonight. It was a lot of fun. Judy led the singing and Ben talked and they were both fun and funny. I generally enjoy both of them. Although Ben managed to embarass all of us when he suggested in his talk that people had only come this weekend because they had heard about the good looking single women he had on his staff and then suggested he introduce us all. He always just awkward and inappropriate enough to be hilarious. His talk was really good. I feel like I have a lot to learn from Ben this year. He's an incredible property manager from all I've seen and really has a vision and a passion for this place and the people that come in and out of it.

We hung out for a while after club, but now I'm back in my room waiting for last night's Grey's Anatomy to load. It should be done now, so I must go do that. Morning espresso tomorrow is going to kill me. Love you all!

One More Day Out in the Canyon

Ah, the days are flying by. I'm really tired and the week has just started, but I feel like I need to connect. So I blog because it's already past midnight in Missouri and I can't call anyone.

My days off were blissfully leisurely as usual. I did literally nothing. As you'll remember from the last post, I had several goals that I wished to accomplish this weekend. I'm happy to report that I did get the sleeping and reading goals done and even managed to watch 6 episodes of Grey's Anatomy in order to be fully caught up with this season. Unfortunately, I did not get to cleaning my room or finishing unpacking from my trip to Missouri. Also, the Grey's Anatomy episodes I watched had Chinese subtitles. Because I live in the middle of nowhere and, while we do have internet, it is sketchy at best and the full episodes on abc.com rarely work. So I found this website that puts the episodes up with Chinese subtitles which works much better. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Needless to say, it was a very relaxing weekend. One bummer is that it doesn't look like I'm going to get to go to LA for Thanksgiving because we now have to fly and it's just too expensive. But I think a bunch of us are going to go to Dan's house in Bend and I think it will be really fun and help this place to feel more like home. A lot of the staff will stay in the Canyon for Thanksgiving, so it should be a relaxing and fun 6 days off. (That's right, 6 days. YL is such a rocking organization to work for!)

Today was back to work. Thursdays tend to be really long days because there is just a lot going on. And I ended up staying up really late last night talking to Lacey, so I was kind of dragging this morning. We had the weekly staff meeting at 8:00 which was fun as always and from there we headed to Geronimo. We spent the morning cleaning the perif buildings and then we had ops lunch.

This weekend we have 2 groups. The large group is our Fall Work and Worship. We have 2 Work and Worship weekends during the year and they are just a chance for people to come, hang out, worship together, and do every crazy odd job we need done. We are so blessed to have people with such talent coming to do everything from plumbing and electric in the MCL to literally scraping the sludge out from the pond. They do all the extra things that we can't do. There are about 150 people coming. We get more done in these weekends then our staff can do in months. It's great.

There's a 2nd group here as well, which is a men's group from a church in Madras. There's only about 40 of them and they're staying in the finished side of the MCL. They're only here for 24 hours and they're making their own food in the Orchard Inn, so we probably won't really see them. But that did mean that we had to make up rooms for them and clean the MCL today.

We spent the afternoon doing a ton of random things. Jen and Erin always have a lot of meetings on Thursdays, so we get left by ourselves a lot. It continues to be hard to live and work together as little beefs from home come to work and vice versa. We're all hard-headed and positive that we're right and so we have definitely been feeling some tension. But I have been really encouraged because I feel like we're learning every day how to better handle potentially destructive situations. We have started bringing stuff up instead of just letting it fester and are all learning more and more how to deal with each other. But it is definitely a long and hard process and we could use a lot of prayer.

One a lighter note, I got to jump into the foam pit today and it was awesome. Also, I almost tripped over the same doorstop that caused me to fall last month again. That would have been really bad.

After work, we had half an hour to chill before we had to be at Pam's for small group. Small group was really good. Jen shared her life story and we discussed good old Celebration of Discipline, which I am having a love-hate relationship with right now. We take turns kind of co-leading the discussion and this chapter is my turn. Planning for it last night made me realize how much I miss Campaigners. I just keep realizing that I learn better by teaching which may sound backwards. But I dive so much deeper into something if I know I'm responsible for teaching it. So I really enjoyed this chapter because I felt like I took the time to really test it.

After small group, we had staff worship which was awesome this week. Judy ran it. Judy may be my favorite person here. She's kind of crazy, extremely peppy, hugs a lot and has a perpetually positive outlook on life. She was jamming out on her piano at worship tonight and managed to make every song upbeat. She just reminded me of every children's choir director I've ever seen. And she has invited us to tea next week. She's awesome.

After worship, we headed back to our house to have a continuation of small group because some people had some issues in the house that they wanted to air. I think it was a really good, really productive time and I hope to see a turn in our house because of it. We're all continuing to learn how to communicate best with one another. It's such a weird situation to be in, to move in with complete strangers whom you also work with and worship with and do absolutely everything with. We're working it out and I'm excited to see where we end up.

And now I'm very tired. And there's Morning Mud tomorrow. And even though it was awesome last week, I again don't want to go. Yet I promised. So I will awaken and go to Morning Mud.

I love you all and I continue to miss you like crazy and talk about you all the time. The first person to come visit wins a prize! It's gonna be something good! It could be all yours! Come visit!

Friday Night, Just Got Paid

OK, I know you're looking at the title and thinking, 'It's not Friday night.' What you are forgetting is that Monday night is Friday night in the canyon. But I digress.

Since I last posted, the sex group left, I did vending, we deep cleaned the Hideout and we had an All Clean. It's definitely starting to become routine. The weekend in the Sass went well. The group was really small and definitely didn't care about Night Espresso. Friday night we made $6.50 in an hour and a half. But Saturday day opening went well and was pretty busy. It was a pretty small group but they were all college kids which was fun.

Saturday night was also slow but we had a lot of visitors which was very fun. People tend to come hang out in the Sassy with us which I really appreciate. Mike hung out with us the whole time we were open which was awesome. I've come to like Mike a lot. He's funny but not attention-seeking and when he speaks, he always has great things to say. He's really cool.

On Sunday, I helped with checkout and then did vending. After vending, I met the other girls who were at work Deep Cleaning. The Deep Clean is going to be quite the project as we clean everything that never gets cleaned. But it's fun to work on that stuff all together and we already have 3 buildings done.

Today was All Clean which was surprisingly fun as always. Erin, who is on staff in Housekeeping, hid in a shower and scared the crap out of Sara when she went to clean it which was entertaining for all of us. After All Clean, Drew, Mandi, Erin and I went to the Washboard while the other girls worked on more Deep Clean.

After work, Nick, Kristen, Mandi and I decided to make a trip into Madras for groceries. There's talk of going into Bend tomorrow to get dinner and a movie, but we decided to get grocery shopping out of the way tonight. It was so much fun, although Nick is a crazy driver on the scary, scary roads out here. We had a lot of fun laughing in the grocery store and jamming to music in the car. It's been fun getting to know Nick. I feel like I don't get to see the boys a lot mainly just because I see the girls so much. So it's always good to hang out with them.

Now I'm back and getting tired at 11:20. It's way past my bedtime. Luckily, I went to bed at 8:30 last night. No lie. I'm turning into my brother. Or an old person. Which is pretty much one in the same.

My plans for the weekend: sleep, read, unpack from my trip to MO and do laundry. In that order. See you on the flip side.

The Meat Market is Here

Today was another wonderful day. Because we're open for late-night espresso tonight, I wasn't scheduled to go into housekeeping until 10:00. However, we had Morning Mud this morning and Kristen and I had made a pact to go every week. Morning Mud is a Friday tradition where the espresso bar is open for staff and all drinks are $1 (or $.75 if you bring your own mug). It's really fun and a lot of the staff go so it's a great time to run into people you wouldn't normally see. The problem is it's from 7:00 to 8:00 and that's really early. It's not so bad on a normal work day but since I didn't have to go in until 10:00, I really didn't want to lose a couple hours of sleep and go.

However, I had promised Kristen I would go with her so I dragged myself out of bed and headed to the Sassy early in the morning. Staff volunteers take turns running Morning Mud, which is great. Becca, Kristen, Sara, Lacey and I hung out, spent some time reading and generally had a great time. At 8:00, everyone headed to their jobs, but Sara and Becca and I stayed in the Sass and ended up talking until we were scheduled in housekeeping at 10:00. We had some really great conversations about why we're here and what we're passionate about. I feel like I really got to know them better, which was really wonderful. So, I'm definitely glad I got up for Morning Mud. However, it's like 9:00 now, I'm already tired, and the espresso bar doesn't open for another 2 hours. It's going to be a late night.

The 3 of us headed to HK and joined Jen, Erin and Sarah. All the other intern girls were painting in the MCL again this morning, so it was kind of a small crew. We cleaned the Sassy and the Iron Kettle. After lunch, the other girls joined us and we cleaned the Sports Center. Becca and I mopped the skate park, which takes so long but is still oddly fun. We then spent some time deep cleaning the Washboard. Deep cleaning is the once-a-year full clean that every building gets and it's our next big project since we've caught up with laundry.

We then headed back to the condo, ate some dinner, watched some 90210 and played some Sorry. And now I'm waiting around to go to the Sassy.

There's some kind of Southern Baptist sex convention here this weekend, which is cracking me up. It's a whole weekend on chastity for a college group of Southern Baptists. It's a first-time group here, so you never really know what to expect. And we keep joking that everyone's going to go home engaged. They're keeping their eyes peeled, that's for sure. And apparently the brought an illusionist who will be performing tomorrow night in the Sassy. I'm not sure what that's about.

Anyway, it should be a fun one and I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. I love you all!

I Can See Clearly Now

Aaah, what a day. So today was the much anticipated intern paint project day. What's really great about our jobs is that we get to get our hands in a lot of different departments. Basically, wherever they need us we go. And today they needed us to paint things in the Muddy Creek Lodge which is Summer Staff/Work Crew/Assign Team housing and also the new Washboard and meeting space and all kinds of stuff. It is a beautiful building and one of our big capital projects right now, so it was fun to get in there and see all the stuff being done.

One wing of the building is completely done and already housed the Summer Staff and Work Crew this summer. The other half with the meeting space and the new Washboard and stuff is still very much in progress. Young Life only builds with cash on hand, so when we run out of money for a project, the project stops. No loans. So right now, we have a beautiful big new room with hook-ups and everything for the Washboard which would mean that we would get to move out of the Sports Center and take the giant laundry carts out of the sight of guests. But we can't use it because we don't have the money to finish it. It's definitely hard, but the Lord's faithfulness and people's generosity continues to impress us and we always end up with what we need. We'll be in our new Washboard soon, I'm sure.

Anyway, back to the day. We all headed to the MCL at 8:00 and met up with Korey and Mark. Korey is basically running the show at the MCL and he's very fun. Everyone seems to have such crazy stories about how they ended up here and it's so fun to get to hear them all. So it was good to get to know him a little.

Mandi and I paired up and got our color (Bamboo Beach) and set out to find the walls we were to paint. We started in a little elevator alcove and then moved to a giant meeting room where we spent most of the day. It was so fun having everyone working together and even more fun to get to experience the maintenance guys' lives for a day. I really think maintenance would be the most fun job. They get to do a little bit of everything and they learn so much stuff, like how to wire phones and how to fix a Coke machine. But they also have to do the trash, so I guess it's a trade-off.

We had an ops lunch today and learned about our group for the weekend. They're a college ministry called Northwest Collegiate Ministries, so another new age group. Good news for me is that college kids do not get up early for espresso so we have a free-time open and late-night espresso. So I get to sleep in! I love the Sassy.

After work, we had small group at Jen's. Last week was our first one, but I was gone for it which was a total bummer. I think it's going to be great, although I am a dominant talker so I probably need to scale that back a little. We're reading Celebration of Discipline which I was a little pissed about but I think is going to really challenge my "get out of the box" crusade, which I sometimes take to far. So, the Lord's making me spend months reading and discussing a conservative how-to book. Funny how that works.

After small group, we had our first intern worship which was also great. Although again, I am a very loud singer and other people here are not really getting too into it. I'm hoping that will change but I think that they're all just not singers. Which is unfortunate because I'm not going to stop singing loud and sometimes I get off-key. So I'm gonna be that girl who nobody wants to sit by because she gets them off-key. I've resigned myself to my inevitable fate.

Steve, who is our Director of Development, came to talk to us a little about his job and his views on fundraising and how we go about it in the organization. It was really great to talk to him and get his perspective on why we fundraise and how we go about it. He talked a lot about how organizations often see the donation as the end game, but we see the donor as the end game. Our goal is to encourage people to join in something that we see as life-changing. We believe that being involved in this mission is something that brings you closer to the heart of the Lord. We want to show people what we're working for and inspire them to be a part of it. I don't know if I was able to relate it well, but he is a really cool guy and he has some great vision for development. Also, before he worked for YL, he worked at a paper company. He was the Michael Scott of Portland. I feel so much cooler now that I actually know a paper executive.

The day was good. I feel like we are on an up-swing after the drama of the past few days. I feel like we are drawing closer to each other, but more importantly, I feel like our focus is being renewed. We're beginning to be comfortable to be who we really are and to love each other for that. For the first time since I got here, I'm really, truly excited about the work we're going to do here. And I hope you're excited about reading about it!

I love you all!

High School Drama, Real World Prices

OK, so I have been getting some hate mail because it has been so long since I posted. I apologize. It's been a busy few days. But I will not make excuses. I have let you fine people down. I would say it won't happen again, but it might and I like to keep my word.

The big event of the past week was that I got to spend some time in the great state of Missouri! That's right, I was home for the weekend. And let me tell you, it was no easy task to make it there. I left Thursday immediately after work and headed to Portland. I got there at around 8:30 PM and found out that my flight was running really behind so they had switched from a layover in San Francisco to a layover in Sacramento. I caught a 9:30 plane to Sacramento which landed at about 11:00. I left Sacramento at 12:45 AM and landed in Dallas at 5:30. I found an extremely NOT comfy chair and curled up to sleep for a couple of hours. When I went to sleep, the area I was in was pretty deserted so I was sprawled out over a few chairs. When I woke up, the area I was in was pretty packed and I was still sprawled out over a few chairs. Woops.

I finally boarded a plane headed directly to Missouri at 9:30. I landed at the Springfield airport and 10:50 and found my brother passed out in a chair near baggage claim. You see, he had to fly like an hour and half, so he was pretty exhausted.

Anyway, from there we headed to Big Cedar lodge where my stepsister Kelley got married. It was a beautiful wedding and a beautiful weekend and we had a great time. It was good to hang out with the fam.

On Sunday, we headed back to Jeff, so I did get to go home for a while. Craig flew out on Monday, so I drove him up to catch MO-X and got to hang out in CoMO for the afternoon. It was extremely great and comfortable and made me really not want to go back to Oregon. Being home made me realize how uncomfortable I had been here, which was hard. It's definitely been a difficult transition and we're all stressed out trying to get to know one another and build community and learn our jobs, etc., etc. It was so wonderful to spend an easy couple of days back home.

On Tuesday, my dad drove me up to St. Louis, where I hopped a flight to Dallas and then to Portland. (A little less of a trek than the first time.) I got into Portland at 7:00ish and then made the trip back to camp. I didn't run into a single car the entire last hour of my trip. It was dark and creepy and I was excited to finally make it back to the condo.

However, immediately upon arriving I got an earful of all the drama that happened while I was gone. Apparently, there were some pretty impressive fights and basically the stuff had hit the fan. Everyone has hit the point where it's frustrating that this isn't easy, although we all knew it wouldn't be. Nothing's happening the way anyone thought it would and tensions are high.

Today, I had to work to make up for having Monday off, so I was gone most of the day while everyone hung out. We had a meeting to talk about some stuff and people were really honest about being disillusioned with what is going on here. I was really frustrated and flipped into let's fix this mode, although it's not quite that easy.

Although it is drama, I think it's really good that things finally came to a head. I had some really great conversations today and I think that we may have turned a corner of being more real with each other and feeling more comfortable. It has just been such a crazy, overwhelming month and we all need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and let things happen. We just need to have some fun together and get to know each other.

I had a really great talk about all of this with one of the guys here and it definitely shed some light on some things. I constantly pray that I wouldn't live a comfortable life and, yet, when I'm uncomfortable, I hate it and do everything I can to gain comfort again. When I'm seeking my own comfort, I end up selfish. I realized today that if I want a community here that is loving and welcoming and inviting, I need to shut up and make that happen. So, I'm gonna. Hopefully.

Anyway, that's the high school drama that's happening here right now. The price we pay to live together, work together and worship together.

The staff kids came trick-or-treating tonight and it was extremely cute. They are a really fun bunch. Several of us ate dinner together at the boys' condo and then Kristen and I attacked people with the Sock 'Em Boppers. There was then an intense game of Sorry in which Darren came from way behind to win it. It was my kind of night.

However, I then had to figure out how to pay my bills because we got paid today. It's hard and not fun to be a grown-up and try to figure out where your money should go. And I'm trying to book my plane ticket home for Christmas and they're ridiculously expensive! I don't know how people do it. Luckily, it costs like nothing to live here. I bought $27 worth of groceries the other day that will last me 2 weeks. So, I'm not complaining.

Also: I am going to make a bold statement right now. Missouri is the best state ever. The trees are pretty and the people are nice. What more could you want?

I miss you all and I have to constantly fight the urge to pack up and come home to you. Luckily, you're all going to come visit so I don't have to. Right? Right?

I love you all. Send me emails and update me on your lives.

Pop Goes the Weasel

OK, so today was the first day that I had a moment where I absolutely did not want to be working anymore. I have a feeling there will be a lot more of those days as the work becomes more and more mundane and routine. So, I will be prepared.

This morning we had checkout. We were late for work because of one of the girls in our house which I can already see will be a point of contention. So that didn't start the day off well. Our boss was mad because we were late and we were all mad because one girl had made us late. Also, it was freezing (literally) and I woke up with a scratchy throat.

But we made it through check out. I had to inspect a bathroom that had the aroma of being freshly used which was awkward and gross. But, the men were better than high school kids are at following instructions and actually doing the 3 things we ask of them. So it was a pretty smooth process.

After checkout, I went to do vending while everyone else stayed in housekeeping. I do vending by myself, so that makes for a peaceful day. It's actually a pretty long and complicated process which includes me carrying a lot of heavy soda and water around. But again, it was peaceful and I ran into the boys all over camp landscaping and maintaining. So I got to stop and chat a lot.

I finished up vending before lunch and went to work in the Washboard for about an hour after lunch. Then Sara and I met Angela back at the Mercantile to do the deposits for the weekend. That took about an hour and a half and then we headed back to the Washboard and were there until 5:00. I was really exhausted by the end of day and definitely still am. I'm also kind of dreading All Clean tomorrow, so let's hope I wake up with a better attitude.

We got invited to Tim (the kitchen manager) and Leah's house for dinner. They apparently invited the whole property and had a make your own grilled cheese station with an incredible variety of fancy cheeses and homemade tomato soup. It was really fun to hang out with everyone in an informal setting and to see some of the moms and kids. We sat and chatted for a long time, but everyone was really tired and we headed back early. Also, I met one of the volunteer couples who had been on vacation the first couple weeks we were here and thier son lives in St. Louis. So I got to talk about Missouri for a while. All and all a good night.

And now, although I have always been a self-proclaimed night owl, I am going to bed at 9:45. Life in the Canyon is extreme... and extremely different. I'm having so much fun, but I'm also so worn out and feel so challenged. It's a great place and I'm becoming more convinced that this year is going to be huge.

I love you all! I'll be back in MO in 5 days! Get pumped!

Settling In

Sorry it has been a few days. I'm definitely settling into the routine now, so the days are blending together. Still, I shall recap.

Thursday, I did absolutely nothing. And it was wonderful. Several people had stayed in Portland for the day off and Kristen and Sara had gone into Bend, so it was just Mandi and I in the house all day. I spent the day sleeping, reading and watching episodes of the West Wing. It doesn't get much better than that.

Friday morning was the Sports Center. I helped mop the skate park, which was pretty intense. You have to mop up the ramps in a lot of the parts so your arms get really tired. But I only had to do that for a little while and then I went to help mop the 4 basketball courts, which was slightly better. Still, it was a fun morning because we blast random 80s music while we clean and we're definitely learning how to clean quickly and efficiently.

We had operations lunch yesterday since we had Thursday off. We found out about the group in this weekend, which is a men's retreat from Rolling Hills church. I was excited to have someone besides high schoolers in because I knew it would bring a much different atmosphere to camp. It definitely has. There are a lot of men running around. They've been a lot of fun.

After ops lunch, we went to the Washboard and spent all afternoon stainblasting and folding. I really enjoy the Washboard because we're all in there together and it's easy work, so we get a lot of time just to talk and laugh and be silly. I'm coming to enjoy all the girls I work with, but I can see that it is definitely going to be difficult to live and work and spend all my time with the same people. I know there are days where it is just going to be miserable. But that's alright, I think it just comes with the territory.

After Washboard, we were done for the day and went back and hung out at the condo. I tried to go to bed early because we're open for morning espresso this weekend, which means I had to be in the Sassy at 6:45. And we all know, I'm not really a morning person. I had trouble getting to sleep, meaning I had very little last night. Still, morning espresso was really fun. The middle-aged men love their coffee, so we were really busy. It certainly kept me awake.

We were done with espresso by 9:00, but I was scheduled for the Sassy all day. So, I basically spent all day doing random stuff in the Sassy. I got to make some signs on the computer and use the laminater and do some cleaning and reorganize some stuff... I am coming to feel more and more like the Sassy is my own little domain, so it was a lot of fun just to be in there all day making it feel more like my own.

Since I went in so early, I got off at 3:30. People had just started on the ropes course and that's where most of the other interns were working, so I decided to go watch that for awhile. It was a lot of men trying to be really macho while actually being really scared. Which is understandable because that course terrifies me. It was fun to watch the interns run it and look like they knew what they were doing. It's also really pretty from up there.

After ropes, we all headed to dinner and then back to the condo. I've been downstairs talking with Kristen and Dan for the past couple of hours, but now it is definitely time for bed. I've got to help with checkout in the morning and then I'm doing vending which should be interesting and backbreaking. Gotta love it!

I love you all!

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Craig, I hope you're reading this and that you started singing that song in your head after you read the title...

So, I'm back at the ranch. And it was an incredible few days at the coast. I feel so good and so excited about this year now that we've had this time together. But, let me start at the beginning.
We left Sunday immediately after work and we were all exhausted. It had been a long day because we had to do All Clean before we left. But we got it done and it's always fun working together.

On the way there, I road in Jen's car with Jen, Kristen and Mandi. It was a really great drive. We talked the whole way and it was so good to get to know Jen better. Even though we've been working with her and she's been a lot of fun, I hadn't felt like I had been really connecting with her. But I think that I just needed to realize that all the other interns that were here before us left literally 3 days before we came. So this has been a really hard transition for Jen and everybody, just like it has been for us. But we had a ton of fun in the car and I now feel really comfortable around her. Which is good because she's one of our small group leaders.

We got to Breakaway around 11:30 and they had snacks out for us and our beds turned down. It's a great place, right on the coast, small and rustic. They have middle school camps there during the summer, but it only holds like 65 people. They have 3 people on staff there, Jeff, who runs it, Suzanne, who is in charge of housekeeping and helps in the kitchen, and Spencer, who runs the kitchen and did the internship at Wildhorse a couple years ago. They were all great.

We crashed that night and woke up early for breakfast the next day. After breakfast, we had some time to worship and then we had 2 and a half hours of solitude time to create some goals for ourselves for the year and to think about what we want out of the year. It was wonderful. I went and sat on the beach for two and a half hours, which was incredibly beautiful and peaceful. However, everyone left me because I had wandered a ways down the beach and I got lost for like half an hour walking back. But, I made my back and all was well.

After lunch, we did some team- building exercises which I thought were going to be nerdy, but ended up being really sweet. We had some great discussions about communication and how to respect one another. And some cheesy get-to-know you stuff. Can't beat it.

After that, we went back inside and Rich told us that we now had another 2 and a half hours before dinner and our mission was to create a mission statement for ourselves and develop some non-negotiables that we all want to follow. We ended up spending the entire 2 and a half hours on our mission statement. It was really cool to see how important everyone thought it was. We all wanted it to be perfect and to represent each one of us and how we were going to spend the year. It was also really cool because we spent a lot of time talking about how we wanted to live while we're out here. Ben, our property manager, keeps telling us that this program is designed to give us a year that will be completely different than any other year of our lives. We've decided to really challenge ourselves. We want to create a community where we love each other well, where we share life and challenge each other. We talked a lot about calling each other out on stuff. And people were really honest about saying that they've heard a lot of this before and it hasn't happened. I know that that is true but I feel like this is the best opportunity we have to learn a lot of these lessons because there are people around us to hold us accountable to it and because we all are in agreement. It's going to be really sweet.

So, we got through the mission statement with only one fight and then we had dinner. After dinner, we had worship again and then we went bowling! It was so much fun! I did pretty well, but mainly it was just fun time with our whole group taking over this random bowling alley. After bowling, we went back to breakaway and hung out. There was a pretty intense ping pong tourney and then we all turned in.

Yesterday, we had worship after breakfast again and then Chris, Rich's wife, shared with us and challenged us to think about what we want to give up this year and what kind of habits we want to develop. After that, we had more time to work on our non-negotiables. We came up with some sweet stuff, although it's hard to get 14 people to agree on something. Still, it was good.

After lunch, Rich talked to us for a while and then we met with our small groups for the first time. It was really great because we decided to set the tone of honesty from the first moment. We got some stuff out on the table that we were already struggling with in the house. I think it's going to be hard, because we have a lot of very different people with very strong opinions and personalities. But I think the more we get to know each other, the better it will be. We're all reading Celebration of Discipline in our small groups so it will be sweet to talk about that with everyone as well.

After small groups, we had free time to go into town. We went into Astoria, where we went up in this lighthouse that was pretty cool. And then we went to cannon beach, where I tried some marrionberry ice cream and also tried some huckleberry ice cream, which I had never had before and the northwesterners seemed to think was a sin. They were both very good. We then saw the haystack, which is this weird huge rock out in the ocean that looks like a haystack. Then we headed back and had dinner.

After dinner, there was more worship and then a sweet game of apples to apples. Love it. We woke up this morning, had breakfast, cleaned up and headed back to the canyon. We had a good car ride back as well. Jen and Jeff decided to take us up Mount Hood (the other cars went the shorter, more boring way). We stopped in Sandy, OR and had the best wood-fire pizza ever and then went up and over Mount Hood where we stopped and played in some awesome snow.

Then, after a couple more hours of Disney songs and random 90s mixes, we were back at the Canyon. It's good to be back and we get the next couple of days off, which is sweet. I love getting paid to go on an awesome retreat. Forget paying 50 bucks for the leader retreat!

I also really ridiculously miss you all. If you get a chance tonight or tomorrow, I'll probably be in my condo, so you could call. If I'm not here, that means I headed into town, in which case you could call me on my cell phone. Doesn't that work out so well?

I love you all!

Headed to the Coast

Hi Friends!

I'm headed to the Pacific Ocean for a couple of days, so I won't be posting. But I promise the mother of all posts when I get back. But I'm pretty sure only Bryce is reading them, so I might just call him. JK! I know you all love me and read these all the time.

Please be praying for the other interns and I these next couple days as we take some time to get to know each other, create some goals for the year, and spend some time with the Lord. We're all really looking forward to the time and hoping to get a lot out of it.

Also, my cell phone will probably work, so you could try to call me. That would be cool.

Much Love!

A Missed Handoff and an Interception? Really?

OK, short one today. I'm very tired and I still have much to do tonight.

Today was the same schedule as yesterday. I again slept in. It was again awesome. The Sass was pretty busy this afternoon and it was fun to see some of the kids that came in a bunch of times and remember their names and stuff. I enjoy that I get to see little pieces of their times at camp.

After the afternoon shift, Angela and I went to watch the Mizzou-OU game conveniently saved on her TiVo. Darren ended up showing up too, so the the 3 of us watched the game. I really like Angela, so I had a good time. I really did not like how we lost that game. It was a heartbreaker. And we stayed with them except for those 2 crappy plays. Sucky.

After the game we headed back to the Sassy and it was pretty slow again tonight. However, the band continued to make up for it by the mass amounts of food they ate. The band that's here this weekend is the Awakening with Ryan Long and they're pretty awesome and a lot of fun. They spent a lot of free time hanging out in the Sass and it was fun to get to know them.

We closed up the Sass at 11:30 and had to do all the end of the weekend clean up stuff, so I just got back here at 12:30. And, although I would normally do vending on Sundays, I'm in housekeeping at 7:30 in the morning because we're leaving for 4 days for our intern retreat, which I still need to pack for.

I'm super stoked for the retreat. We're going to a property on the coast and I'm excited to hang out by the ocean and have some down time to get to know everyone and spend some time with the Lord. It's been fun, but so overwhelming this first week and a half. It'll be great to get away.

So, off to packing I go. Much love.

Can't Touch This!

It's late and I'm tired. But I will tell you of my day...

The Gig Harbor Campaigners came in last night and, therefore, the Sassy was open twice today. Which means that I didn't have to go in until noon. Which was sweet. So I set my alarm for 9:00, thinking I would get up and get some of my paperwork and such done. There's a lot of stuff that we have to have in by the 15th, but we're leaving right after work on Sunday for our retreat, so I need to get it done quickly. But, of course, I slept in until like 10:30 and then took my sweet time getting ready and stuff. So, I didn't get anything done.

It's nice on the weekends because the house is empty when I wake up and people kind of filter in and out throughout the morning. We all have different schedules depending on where we're working and stuff. So, the house was quiet when I woke up this morning and it was very peaceful.

The Sassy was a lot of fun this afternoon. We were scheduled to be there for almost 2 hours before we were supposed to open though, so we spent a lot of time doing random stuff like cleaning out the refrigerators. But it was good to have time to do that. And we stayed pretty busy throughout the afternoon which was nice.

We did come up with our Billy Sundae song which we decided would be to the tune of MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This." It's pretty awesome and includes some sweet rapping. And we had 2 orders for Billy Sundaes today so that was fun.

It was also really fun working with Dusty and Becca. Dusty is a riot, very sarcastic and funny. He kept me laughing all afternoon with his commentary about the high school kids who were dumb enough to be in the pool in the freezing cold. The Sassy's great because it's right in the middle of camp, so we can see a lot of what's going on. Becca's really funny too, very random and just ditsy enough to be endearing.

After we closed for the afternoon, we went to dinner and then Kristen, Becca and I helped Sara bake pumpkin cookies that were delicious. Then we had to head back into the Sassy at 9:30 and were open until 11:30. The night shift was really slow, but a bunch of people came to visit us, so it was still fun.

One funny thing that happened today: We have all these squirt bottles with different topppings like chocolate syrup and caramel and stuff. We set them on top of the espresso machine so that they'll warm up a little and pour easier and use them as toppings in espressos and on sundaes. There's this white one that we all thought was mayo but Angela told us it was White Chocolate. So Dusty was making a White Chocolate Mocha and went to drizzle white chocolate on top of the whipped cream and realized that it smelled weird. So, he tasted it and realized that it was in fact mayo... that had been baking on top of the espresso machine all day. And, what I didn't find out until later was, Dusty just scraped off the whipped cream and redid it but gave the girl the same drink. So some poor girl out there was walking around drinking a mayo flavored mocha. It was really gross.

Anyway, we closed up the Sassy and then I came home, paid some bills, worried about the fact that I'm really broke, and then got excited about the prospect of a real paycheck very soon. It's going to be really nice to be employed. Also, I filled out my 401(k) paperwork. I will be participating in the 4% matching program provided by YL and investing in the Fidelity Freedom Fund 2040. I think it's going to yield well for me. (I'm just pretending with the lingo; I have no idea what I'm talking about. I really just did what Rich said was best.)

Now it's very late and I'm still tired, so I'm going to go to bed. I love you all!

If You're Still Reading These, I'm Impressed

Seriously, these are really long and I write them every day. I love you all for loving me enough to want to know what I do all day everyday.

Today was the first day that I felt in the groove and like we really knew what was going on. We were all talking earlier about how it already feels like we've been here for a long time, even though it has only been a little over a week. It's nice to be settling in and be done with training and stuff.

Thursdays are meeting days because they are the day before camps usually come in. So we started the day off with the weekly staff meeting in the upstairs meeting room of the office. It was fun to have the whole staff sitting in one room and I'm finally starting to sort out who is who and who does what.

Basically, it's your normal staff meeting, although we went around and introduced ourselves again. We also gave backstories to the fun facts they had printed about us in last week's Canyon Connection, which is our weekly newletter. My fun fact was sneaking into Game 5 last year, so I got to tell that story once again. However, people don't really seem to care that much about baseball out here. It's pretty much Oregon Duck fans all the way.

We also are taking turns, one intern every week, telling our 5-minute life story at the staff meetings so that the staff can get to know us. We're going in alphabetical order, so I won't be for a while. Dan started us off today.

After the staff meeting, we were in housekeeping. We split up into 2 teams and went to clean the perif buildings which are things such as the club room, the dining hall, the leader lounge, etc. I was with Kristen and Lacey and we had a lot of fun chatting while we cleaned.

We also had our second operations lunch today. The Guest Services kids were all excited because this is the first weekend that they get to actually do their real jobs since they were all in AE training all last weekend. We got our schedules and there's no morning coffee shop, so I get to sleep in late again!

After lunch, we went to get started on the sports center. We had to do it today because the camp was actually coming in tonight instead of tomorrow. So we have a whole extra day. Which also means the Sassy will be open twice tomorrow and twice Saturday, which will make for a fun weekend for me.

We busted out the Sports Center in record time and then I headed to the Sassy to train the other interns who will be with me in the Sass for the next couple of months. That is Dan, Becca, Dusty and sometimes Sara depending on the Store schedule. It was fun, even though I still have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to making espresso, so that was kind of the blind leading the blind. But it's going to be fun working with other interns. And we've been coming up with some great ideas for our Billy Sundae song, so all is well.

After work, I headed home, watched some 90210 (we've gotten really hooked) and ate some dinner. Then we had our first Staff Worship. We'll have worship every Thursday night, alternating between just the interns and all staff. Since we can't get to church on Sundays, this is our own little church service.

I was really stoked for worship, but it made me miss home the most of anything since I've been here. I just had this really clear memory of singing a capella worship in that weird TV room at Ben's house and I really missed it. We're so lucky to have the community we have at Mizzou, to be surrounded by people who are so passionate and expressive. I think it's just different being with people of such varied ages too. I'm going to need some more extreme worship if I'm going to make it through the year.

But worship was still really good and refreshing. And Tim, the kitchen boss, gave the message. He spoke on community and things that can be a stumbling block to it. It was a good talk and I'm excited to hear from more people as the year goes on.

The group that's here this weekend is a YL area from Gig Harbor, WA. They have an intense weekend planned including 5 clubs (the first one tonight). And, Ryan Long is their special music for the weekend. So I'm definitely going to try to get to club this weekend, either tonight or in the morning. It's nice because we're always closed while club is going on so I can always go if I want. I'm excited to see different people throughout the year. It's also a pretty small group comparitively, so that's nice.

One thing to be praying about that was brought up in the staff meeting: Next week there are a bunch of YL bigwigs coming in to look over the plans for a new camp on our property. Basically, there's so few camps in this area that we have been filled to capacity and have had to turn kids away during the summer because we've been doing both middle school and high school at one camp. We have the land and the permits to build another camp on this property that could be used for middle school, Capernaum, YoungLives, etc.

They already have the plans drawn up and the place is crazy. It's water park themed, so there would be like 4 slides and a wave pool and all this crazy stuff. The sweet thing is that there is a successful businessman in the area who has already committed to putting up the first $5 million for the project. The problem is it will cost around $40 million. So, the decision is whether or not we have the means to do it. We all have faith that if God wants it to happen it will, but please be praying for the people that have to make this decision.

Exciting things are happening at Wildhorse, this weekend and in the future. It's so great being here, even though I truly do miss you all like crazy. Please call, send me an email, write me a letter, something so that I know what is going on back home and can be praying for you all. I want to know everything! I love you, I love you, I looooove you! (Buddy the Elf voice.) Peace out, girl scouts (& weblo scouts- Bryce).

Chillaxin'

One thing about me has not changed: I love a relaxing day off.

I woke up this morning to the sound of Shea singing Candy Mountain very loudly. The vent from the living room goes directly up into my room. So, Shea decided to get as close to it as he could and sing to me in order to wake me up. It was a rather unusual way to awaken.

But I headed downstairs and everyone was hanging out in their PJs. We had decided to cook breakfast, so the guys made pancakes, we made eggs and the marrieds brought some OJ and such. It was really fun to all sit around in our pajamas and eat a meal together. Everyone is really excited to create community. It's really cool to see and I think I'm going to learn a lot from it.

After breakfast, everyone dispersed. People headed out of the house and I started some laundry and took some time to read my Bible and journal. I just started Velvet Elvis, so I read a couple chapters from it as well and then showered and took my time getting ready while everybody else watched Elizabethtown downstairs. I've come to realize how important it is to me to get some time to myself often. It was so refreshing to just sit in my room and read and stuff.

After all of that, it was already around 5:00, so I headed downstairs, ate some dinner, and hung out with the girls. I'm coming to really enjoy all the girls in my house, which is so wonderful. We just hung out in the kitchen and each cooked our own dinner and talked.

After dinner, we put in an episode of 90210 and Shea decided to watch with us. It was hilarious to see the early 90s mullets and Blossom hats and we had a lot of fun getting into the ultimate teenage drama. We had to stop in the middle of an episode to head to the ice cream social they were having for us to meet all the staff.

We headed to the Sassy and, because we've had to get into the habit of being 5 minutes early to everything, we were the first one there. It was really fun to meet everyone that we hadn't met yet. There are a ton of people on staff here and with their families, there are a lot of people on property. We got to meet some of the Moms who don't work on property but are here with their kids and meet some of the other people that work up in the Maintenance and Woodshops and stuff, so that was great. Although it was already weird to be in the Sassy and not be behind the counter.

After we left the ice cream social, the girls and I had a sweet dance party back in Condo 55. It was a blast and made me feel like I was back at 203. They've put us in the condos that are kind of away from the rest of the condos which was probably a good idea for moments like tonight. We eventually got shushed by Dan, who informed us that some of the hunters that are on property right now were staying in the condo next to them. So, we stopped the dance party and settled into more 90210.

We have our first staff meeting in the morning and in the afternoon I get to train the interns who will be with me the next couple of months in the Sassy. I'm excited to get have some other interns with me. We have to make up a song for the Billy Sundae, which is our ultimate huge sundae. Each staff has to create a new song to sing everytime it gets ordered and they're always to the tune of popular songs. It's going to be fun.

That's the day. Love you all.