Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

It snowed 6 inches in the Canyon today! It's so beautiful!

We had been having a pretty routine week. The staff returned from Florida, we worked HK, etc. This weekend we had 2 groups in. The first was a youth group from Calvary Chapel that have been out here before. The other was a group from the Salem/Keizer area. They were doing something really cool this weekend. It was a bunch of church youth groups from several different denominations and YL groups and stuff. They all came this weekend and the theme was One Body. It was basically a weekend aimed at unifying all the different groups. I thought it was a cool idea and something we don't see enough.

Normal weekend routine, we were only open twice. I continue to enjoy my new crew in the Sassy. Darren, Mike and Kristen are super fun and entertaining. Saturday was easy and fun. I woke up this morning and headed into work and it immediately started snowing. What's weird about the Canyon is that it will snow a foot up in Antelope but not a drop will touch us. Something about being down in the Canyon blocks us from most of the weather. You won't be able to get out, but the Canyon will be dry.

That was not the case today. We went to do check out, but it was up in the air whether or not the groups were going to be able to leave. So it was all chaos. They decided to stay, then decided to go, then decided to stay, then decided to go. Finally, both groups decided they were going to go and hopped on the busses. However, the busses got stuck on the roads and we had to drive out and shuttle kids back into camp. So all 380 kids ended up staying another night!

Things were crazy from there, but I was impressed with how smoothly we were able to take care of everything. We had to get the rooms that they had just checked out of ready for them to go back into. I had gone to the Sassy to do deposit and order and had just gotten back to HK when all this had been decided. So we got the rooms set up and then all the lady interns went to the kitchen to help them because they now had to throw together 2 more meals for 380 people.

It was a ton of fun working in the kitchen. I am definitely a little jealous of Mandi, the kitchen intern. Even though I ended up with the best job, she got a really fun one too. We got home after work and about half an hour later Andrew Pratt knocked on our door to ask if I would mind opening the Sassy for espresso for about an hour that night. I was excited to do it and rounded up some of my roomies to help. I loved being open again and getting to see all the kids one more time.

I have really come to love working in the Sassy. I feel like it really uses my gifts and talents well. Even though it seems like a crappy job, working in a snack bar, the Lord has really given me a passion for it. I love seeing kids come in over and over and doing what I can to create one more place in this camp where they will feel welcomed and loved. The Sass is so fun! I put up some pictures of what the Sassy looks like so you can all see it and wish you were here!

These are the lobby windows. We open them any time the full Sassy is open, for espresso mornings we just open the outside windows. We open both if it's really busy.
The Lobby...
Behind the scenes!
The Espresso Bar...

Anyway, it was a really fun night followed by weekly worship and now to bed. We have a 3-day weekend this weekend to make up for working MLK day, so a bunch of us are headed to Seattle. We're going to stay with Dusty's parents and celebrate Lacey's birthday while we're there. I'm really excited and just hope we can get out tomorrow!

Love you all!

To My Secret Admirer

You know who you are. You never post comments, but apparently you read my blog. I'm sorry that I have upset you by not posting recently. I will seek to remedy that today and do a much better job of posting on a more regular basis. I hope your GPA has not suffered too much. Please accept my humble apology and enjoy the ramblings of my life. Also, you're pretty and nice and pretty nice.

So, I last blogged on New Year's Day. Weak sauce. Unfortunately, not a lot has happened since then. We have our first camp since the new year in this weekend. There are actually 2 groups, both church youth groups in for 3-day retreats over the holiday weekend. Which means I'm FINALLY back in the Sassy. I've missed it like crazy. A lot of fun things are going on in my little piece of the property. We got 2 new microwaves and a shelf to put them on and a new safe! (Doesn't take much, does it?) Also, the Guest Services rotation switched so now Kristen, Darren and Mike are in the Sassy with me. I'm super pumped although sad to lose my old crew. We were finally getting the hang of it!

Other exciting news from the Canyon: we are starting the process of picking our summer jobs. This is more exciting for everyone else because the only way I would get to switch is if I made a strong case as to why I would be better somewhere else. They pretty adamantly encourage me to remain in the Sass which I absolutely want to do anyway. This is exciting for me though because we get to start thinking about summer. I already can't wait for the complete chaos. Rich informed me that I have one of the toughest and most stressful jobs which just made me more excited. I can't wait to have summer staff and hang out with kids and never sleep and all the other things that come with it. This also means that they have started taking applications for the summer interns. We'll get 9 more interns (we get first picks on jobs though!). It'll be weird, but fun to get new interns. And I just got a call from my good friend J-Mac saying he's going to apply which would be ridiculously great because I like him a lot and he can help me prove to people that Missouri is awesome.

The other exciting thing that is happening is that the interns get to take a work week to Oakbridge! Oakbridge is a Young Life camp down in Southern California. It was hit pretty badly by the wild fires a couple months ago so the first week of February, they are sending us down to help clean up the property and do some other stuff. We have to travel on one of our days off but otherwise they're paying us to go hang out in SoCal. And they're paying for our travel expenses and our food and everything. I seriously have the best job ever! Rich, Curtis and Jay are going with us because it's mainly landscape stuff we'll be doing. We are all super stoked for the road trip and for getting to see/work at Oakbridge for a week.

As to what I've been up to... The week after New Year's we were in HK pretty much non-stop. We broke up into teams to deep clean and Lacey, Kristen, Sarah Morrow and I were in the Sassy. It was really fun to deep clean the Sass. It is sparkly and looks so pretty.

That weekend our entire staff took off for Florida and Young Life's All Staff Conference. It is a once every 4 years conference for anyone on any type of Young Life staff, field, property, international, etc. It sounds like it was a really incredible week. It's cool to hear about who all supports YL. Jeff Foxworthy was there because he just became a leader in Marietta, GA! How cool is it if Jeff Foxworthy is your YL leader? And Jack Hanna was there, I guess he's on committee. And a bunch of different bands, authors, organizations, etc. sent their support. It's cool to know that there really are so many people who see the value in this ministry when it feels like we're always facing opposition.

So as cool as it was for our whole staff to go to that, I think we had more fun stuck here in the Canyon. It was literally the interns, the volunteers (the Petersons and the Thompsons) and Bill and Dena (Dena's the teacher, Bill's in Maintenance). Bill was in charge of us all and they left us the task of painting the 400 floor of Quad B. It was so much fun painting. I ended up on a team with Nick, Peter and Mandi. It was so great to get to hang out and get to know Nick and Peter more. They're both such cool guys. Peter reminds me the most of the guys back home. He's hilarious but super sincere and passionate about the Lord. I like him a lot. And Nick is never what you expect him to be. He's an even keel, always keeping us on task, but also cracking me up a lot. I enjoy him.

Bill and Dena became the intern mom and dad for the week and they were such a blessing. They have kids about our ages. Bill would walk into our room every couple of hours and just hang out for 20 minutes, talking about anything and everything and Dena brought us snack every afternoon. It was so great. We seriously bonded with them and they have been such a blessing. It was a great week of work despite the fact that there's still paint in my hair.

Also, American Gladiators is back! While the staff was gone, we were watching Charlie and Rufus. Charlie is Erin's dog and Rufus belongs to the Pratts. But that also meant we had free reign to watch satellite. What did we do with it? Gladiators! Wolf is my favorite Gladiator because he's so crazy looking! It has turned into a huge intern party to watch it and we get really into it. We convince Bill and Dena to come on Monday and it was awesomely cheesy!

The other fun thing we did last week was play Bunco with the Mark 2 girls. I'm not sure if I've talked about Mark 2 or not, so I'll explain. Mark 2 is a seperate ministry that exists out here and works with Wildhorse. The goal of the ministry is to place disabled women in a community where they can live and work, minister and be ministered to. There are 4 women here currently that live and work at Wildhorse and 2 other women that live and work with them and are on staff with Mark 2. They're just starting to remodel condos to bring Mark 2 men out within a year. It's a really cool program and it's been really fun getting to know those women. They invited us all over on Thursday to play Bunco. The Petersons, the Thompsons, Bill and Dena, and all the interns went. It was a joy to spend time with them. They are such great women and Bunco was really fun!

Peter and Becca also decided to have worship at their house on Sunday night because we hadn't had worship in so long. It was really wonderful to just hang out, the 13 of us (and Bill and Dena!) and spend some time in worship and prayer. It was definitely needed and a really great night. We're going to start trying to do it every Sunday night which I'm so excited about. I really miss worship back home, at leadership and church and praying in the weird TV room at 504 and Veritas and RUF and every other chance I had. It is certainly becoming apparent that it's a little harder in the real world than in college. There's a chance to be plugged into everything in college, but you have to be way more intentional as a real adult, even in a place like this. But we're getting better about it.

So that's pretty much that. I guess there has been more going on than I thought. It has definitely been routine since we haven't had any groups in. It is freezing cold and the days are short, but already starting to get longer. You should all call me because I'm not actually that busy and I like talking to you all. I'm extremely jealous of anyone who is on the leader retreat this weekend. Seriously. Miss you all and love you tons!

Happy New Year!

So, I had an incredibly wonderful time back home. It was relaxing, refreshing and fun. It was so nice to get out of the canyon for a while, to get away from all the drama that can accumulate while working together and living together. It was nice to be home because I felt like I was surrounded by people that had taken the time to understand me, who know my moods and my sense of humor. It was definitely a packed week but I got to see so many people I love. I got on the plane sad to leave.

But I got back into Oregon and was supposed to wait for Kristen to get in an hour later and Dusty and Sara to pick me up. However, Darren showed up at the airport to pick me up which was good because I had way too much luggage to fit into Dusty and Sara's car. We all ended up meeting up because it was snowing pretty bad and we wanted to caravan into the Canyon. It was seriously nasty the whole way in. We didn't end up getting in to camp until 8:00 when my plane got in at 2:00. What's even crazier is that it snowed the whole way until we get literally into the Canyon. And then there's nothing at all. It's weird.

It was really good to see everybody when I got back in. I was more excited than I thought I would be which is good. I really have come to love and enjoy the people here. We had a camp in this weekend called Northwest Teen Leadership Conference. They were sweet kids but there were a ton of them. The Sassy was crazy busy. But we made huge sales and everything went smoothly.

The camp left on Saturday so I did vending and the deposit then. I spent most of the day in the Sassy because there was a ton of stuff that needed to be ordered and organized and stuff because the group was so huge. I love it when I get to work in the Sassy by myself and get stuff organized. It makes me feel like it's my own little piece of the camp that I get to show what I can do in.

Saturday night Darren and I watched a couple of episodes of the West Wing. We're plowing right through the seasons. I've been hanging out at the guys' condo a lot which has been great. I get along with the guys really well and they're chill and a lot of fun. Darren and I have been hanging out a lot and he cracks me up. He's also really great about asking me about stuff that I need to be asked about. It's great.

Sunday we did All Clean and it was the biggest one yet because people had just stayed in whatever room they wanted. Every room in both quads was used which is ridiculous. But because the camp was so big we got the Landscape guys too, so it was super fun. I ended up on a team with Lacey, Dan and Dusty for a lot of the day which meant a lot of hilarity.

After work, I watched Planet Earth and Deadliest Catch with Darren, Dusty, Dan, Peter, Mike and Kristen. If you haven't seen Planet Earth, you need to go watch it right now. It is incredible. Make sure you watch the panda who cradles it's baby. It's ridiculously cute.

We had the day off today. Darren, Lacey, Mandi, Kristen, Becca, Sara and I all headed into Madras this morning. We had decided just to have game night and appetizers tonight. The trip to Madras was fun and we came back and spent the whole afternoon cooking.

Everyone came over around 7:00 and we ended up having so much fun. Drew was the only one who wasn't there. We had a smorgasboard of appetizers. We started out playing Scene It Squabble (battle of the sexes) and, of course, the girls dominated. Everyone was getting really into which was so fun. After that we played Balderdash and then Charades. In between each game was a sweet dance party and a whole lot of laughing. At midnight, we ran outside and banged pots and pans and such.

It was such a great night. I felt completely comfortable and laughed so hard I cried. Everyone was getting along and it was just one of those ridiculously fun, perfect nights. Great start to 2008.

I miss you all like crazy and I had an incredible time at home, but I'm finally having so much fun here. It's really great. I'm now watching one more episode of the West Wing before I go to bed and get up in the morning to watch my Tigers take on Arkansas. We're headed into Bend tomorrow night for dinner and a movie.

Love you all! Call me. I'm off until Thursday.