Summer is finally here! And for me I am now in one of my favorite parts of summer, being at YL camp. This summer I am in Colorado & loving it so far. I am working hard, yet being refreshed at the same time.

I took my time driving up to Colorado (Cody will be here as soon as school gets out) & it was a great time in the car to just chill & think about the summer ahead. I stopped in Pampa, Texas the first night & spent the night with a great friend from ACU & his family. The second day I headed to Denver & spend some much needed time with one of my best friends, Missy, & also got to see some cousins. It was great to see folks that I hadn't seen in a while & I love seeing where people live so I can better picture what their lives are like.

Of course I forgot to take any pictures of my drive up, but I did just take a picture of the view from my room at camp. It's amazing I get to look out onto kids sliding into the lake, the mountains, & the blob (it's to the right, it didn't really make it in the picture.

I'll try to post some pictures of camp, but I can't make any promises, I try & stay off the computer as much as I can while at camp!

Cleveland '08!
Last weekend my WHOLE family went to Cleveland to see Luke & Jane & celebrate Mother's Day & my mom's b-day! We all had so much fun together & the only sad part about it all was that it was only a weekend. Hopefully we will all be together again at the beach this summer.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

We tried to go to an Indian's game, but it got rained out :(
The "I" pretzel I got at the Indians game (before the rain out)

Luke throwing out a ball to the fans before the big City Stars game

Us Texans were a little cold at the game!

On Mother's day we went out to a Brazilian steakhouse, it was amazing

Happy Birthday & Mother's Day MOM - we all love you!!!

Garage Sale & Baseball

We had our annual garage sale for Young Life a few weeks ago & luckily it only rained one out of the three nights we had the sale. It was pretty successful, but really I was just glad to get rid of all the stuff & be done with garage sale until next year. We didn't want to move in all the stuff on Friday night just to move it back out on Saturday morning so we spent the some leaders, kids, & Cody & me spent the night to "guard" all the stuff. We played some movies on the side of the house & hung-out, it was fun.

These pictures don't really do the garage sale justice - we had stuff lined up all around the house!

Some of our friends gave us some of their season tickets for a few of the Ranger games this season. We went to our first one last week & it was so fun. The seats are in a great part of the stadium & I don't think I've ever sat that close at a professional sporting event.

Cody's favorite part of the game - the garlic fries
My favorite part of the game - the dot race!
Go Rangers!

Welcome back 1985!

We are done with clubs for the semester! We ended another year of YL clubs with 80's night, 2 weeks ago, & then senior night this week. We try to mix things up as much as we can in the spring in order to keep up the momentum of club & it felt like 80's night was a great thing to throw in. During 80's club we played a hilarious game of family feud. Cody was the host & we had family feud categories such as, top songs on i-tunes this week, things you find in a high school students car, most popular places to hang-out on the weekends, etc. We had two "families" compete against each other & they made the game so fun.

To end 80's club I gave my last talk of the year. I talked about how a relationship with Jesus is something that goes beyond our wildest dreams. A relationship with him will not always be easy, but he will take us places & place people in our lives that we would never imagine. I ended with 1 Corinthians 1:9 – “no eye has seen, no ear had heard no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." I told them that God has so many great things in store for those that follow him, things that are so great, no one has even heard of these great things yet!

Senior Club

The last club of the semester was senior club. I was excited & sad about this club, because I love all of our seniors, they have made me smile & laugh so much this year. The seniors chose their favorite songs, games, & skits & led all of club. It was fun watching them be leaders & taking so much ownership in club.

The night ended with a senior guy & girl sharing with everyone at the end. I loved watching all the younger kids in the crowd listen so intently to the seniors as they were sharing. I am pretty sure they have never been that quiet when Cody or I were talking!! One of my girls talked about how much of an impact Windy Gap made on her life. The week before we were supposed to leave for Windy Gap last year one of her really good friends passed away & she really did not want to go to camp, but ended up going. She talked about how much she learned there & how much it meant to be there with all of her friends. She ended her talk by saying, "everyone in this room HAS to go to Windy Gap!"

Next, a senior that Cody has spent lots of time with got up to share. This guy came on ski trip with us last winter & it was there that we had the opportunity to really get to know him. Since ski trip Cody & him have spent hours at the driving range, working on an Eagle scout project, & hanging-out. The part about his talk that stood out to me the most was when he talked about prayer. He said, "I always thought praying was something you had to do for a long time, with your eyes closed & head bowed. But, in Young Life I feel like I have really learned what it means to pray. I learned that you can pray anywhere & all the time."

I will miss these kidos, but I pray that they will keep pursuing Christ as their journey continues.

Right now I am blogging from our small bathroom listening to storm sirens go off all around us. There is a major storm going through our area & they are telling everyone to take cover. Right now we are fine & hopefully everyone else around us is too. We were supposed to start our GIANT garage sale tonight for Young Life campership, but due to the storms we will have to postpone it until 6am in the morning. I am pretty bummed b/c we usually make a lot of money on Thursday night & we have so much stuff this year. Oh well, I hope we have lots & lots of people come through tomorrow & Saturday.

This week Cody played in our annual YL Golf marathon & tournament. We have marathon players that commit to have people sponsor them for playing 100 of holes of golf in one day. Cody & about 17 other guys played 100 holes of golf on Monday- they did great. They play most of the holes in the morning & then at 1pm we had a tournament start so he was joined by 3 other guys. The day ended up to be a perfect day for a golf tournament & everything went smoothly, thanks to everyone who helped make that day happen.

Now for the most exciting news...Drew asked my little sister, Hannah, to marry him! I am a little late in posting this news, but we are all excited. Oct. 12th is the big date & we are all in the wedding planning mode again.

Hope everyone is staying safe from the storms tonight, so glad our God is bigger than all the noise I am hearing outside right now!

Maybe you thought the only place you could get fried pickles, fried twinkies, fried mozzarella balls, fried oreos, & fried potatoes was at the state fair?? Well, for those that came to Young Life last week that was exactly the meal everyone had!

Sometimes in the spring there is just too much to compete with & instead of just being another thing to compete with during busy times we try & spice things up a little to keep folks involved. Since it was the night Kansas was playing Memphis for the big championship game we knew lots of people would be interested in watching that game so we provided a great place for the kids to come watch the game, hang-out with friends & leaders, & eat fried food - what more could you want?

Of course, we couldn't just watch the game, we had to give the night some kind of Young Life twist, we called it "Basketball & Fry Club." We told everyone they could bring some kind of food they wanted to fry & we would try it. We had the basketball game going on inside & the large turkey frier set up outside. We made some really good fried Twinkies, potatoes, pickles, cheese & oreos. The kids tried to fry jello & some other things, but in the end we did not discover too many new things that tasted that great fried.

Fried Twinkies -nice & hot!

The night was great & it was a really fun time to hang-out with kids. We had some new guys come that had never come before. One kid came, signed up for camp, & has come to 2 work days since!