Camp Camp Camp

It's scary how awesome my 3 best friends are. Not only are we absolutely adorable, well educated, and employed, but we can conquer the outdoors too. We've all been lots of places with and without each other, but never ventured to the great outdoors together. I'm thinking there's a reason for that. Not that we all didn't have a fabulous time, it's just that we're lucky we ate on saturday night. I don't think we were quite prepared to build a fire lasting long enough for dinner and dessert, but our hobo's were really yummy. Erin burnt two fingers, Laura got the most bug bites, and me and Erica tied for the least amount of showers award. Saturday's 5am raccoon visit was probably the main event as me, erin, and erica screamed and dove head first into the tent while Laura slept through the whole thing. I truly believe God gave us to each other so that He could get a good laugh every now and then. As stressful and busy as my life has been so far this summer, a weekend in the woods and at the beach was exactly what I needed, with my 3 favorite people in the world.

Quote of the day(s):

Erica: "I be lookin like Davy Jones Locker up in that picture!"
Laura: "Our music minister?"
Erica: "That giant squid."

Erica: "Laura, do you want to go swimming in the ocean?"
Laura: "no."
Erica: "me neither."

at chickfila...
Laura: "OMG good thing you have a placemat!"
Erica: "Leave me and my drippy sandwich alone!"

right after the raccoon attack:
Erica: "I bout went all blair witch on that thing!"
Erin: "I can't find my chapstick!"

Erica: "At first I thought, oh that's Laura. And then I thought, oh that's too weird."

Friday Favorites

Most people don't know that breakfast food is my absolute fave. Pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs, french toast, syrup. You just can't beat that crap. I don't like the time of day that breakfast is set for, but I'll eat it any time of day really. A breakfast food that is kind of underappreciated and I just recently started to love is bagels. Why are bagels SO GOOD? Confession: I had never had a bagel until college. Story time: In Santa Cruz, my freakin awesome discipler, Dawn Kirk would wake me up against my will on Tuesday mornings to have bible study. She took me to Noah's bagels in Santa Cruz for our first meeting and I had to look like an idiot and tell her I've never had a bagel and wasn't sure I was ready to give cream cheese a chance. But she forced me to eat a bagel from that morning until 5 weeks later when she left. It wasn't really forced, I ended up loving them. So one night, me and the roomies found Bagels that had been sitting on the shelf in our room for 4 weeks. They were totally green and smelled horrible. Instead of throwing them away, why not put them on Dawn's door step at 3am? She loved us.

Now a few years later, Grace and I go to Panera every sunday morning between worship team practice and church and eat bagels. Thanks Dawn.

quote of the day

From the office next door.

Amanda: "Yes?...."
Donna: "This is Donna."
Amanda: "I thought this was your cell phone. I was confused."
Donna: "I'm in the closet."

quote of the day

Grace: "When things are numbered, aren't they usually called highways?

Me: "Can I draw a picture of who I think is a fox?"
Chris: "No. We don't want a picture of Zac Efron on Savannah's mobile."

Friday Favorites (monday edition)

The first rule for someone who works with youth is that you’re not supposed to have favorites. But let’s be honest, there’s always a favorite. Since my job is youth programming, I get to hang out with some really fun and silly young people. Out of all them, I have to say Tara (see left) is my favorite. Tara joined the Youth Service League (which is the summer program I run) 4 summers ago, the first summer I worked for PRT. She’s now a junior at Northwestern and this year joined the Rock Hill Youth Council so luckily I get to see her a lot. This weekend, Tara came along on our annual YSL retreat with 32 middle schoolers as a "junior chaperone." Some high school kids have maturity issues and don’t really know how to handle certain situations or know how to be in charge. But this was no problem for her. She was telling girls to go to bed, to get over themselves, to clean their cabin, and she was MVP of capture the flag. She’s pretty mature for her age overall, and just so much fun to be around. I love kids who are overly positive about life and can always find the good in situations and laugh about things. That is totally her and I can learn a lot from youth like that. Thankfully I have a couple more years to hang out and be silly with her, we’re really good at that. And I mean look at her. She’s precious.

quote of the day

"If all you're doing is taking the Gospel in and not giving it out, think about what that does to your soul? Someone once told me it's like having spiritual constipation."
-Kim Schmidt

quote of the day

Attention boys:

Laura: "If you're gonna go on a date with me, don't get me flowers. Give me a gift certificate to Wal-Mart or something. Something I can use."