Vacation!

We spent several days in Washington this past week at Creation Fest for our summer vacay. It was really fun and relaxing, which was just what we needed.


Yes, that's Kory's gum hanging out of his mouth...

David Crowder is just AWESOME--I love him!

Switchfoot was INCREDIBLE! They definitely put on the best show...I'm a big fan.

Thursday was a day that exemplifies my idea of vacation. We slept until about 8:45, got up and ate breakfast and were back in the tent napping by 10 :) After napping for a couple hours, we ate a picnic lunch and headed into a nearby town to spend the afternoon shopping at REI and Target. Heaven for each of us! We went back to camp that evening and I had a turkey leg for the first time. It was incredible! Wow, it was so yummy...I want another one right now! That night we saw Hillsong and Newsboys in concert. Newsboys was very nostalgic for us both and we loved hearing old songs from them and DC Talk.

Friday we spent a good portion of the day reading our books and enjoying 75 degree weather. We went to a youth leader seminar but I didn't really feel like it was worth my time. This guy is supposed to be one of the leading "experts" on youth ministry and I literally heard everything he said in my very first speech class as a freshman in college. So...maybe I am an expert too! Friday's concerts included KJ52, Matthew West, Thousand Foot Krutch and Toby Mac. Quite an excellent day of music! Toby Mac was very high energy and goofy. I definitely had the most fun at his show.

Beautiful view of Mt. Rainier from our tent

Sunday, after we got home, I spent pretty much ALL day watching Veronica Mars. I'm totally hooked on this show now! There are 6 discs in the first season and I finished 4 of them on Sunday :) I really love Kristen Bell and I can't believe I've never heard of this show. It's a real gem!

One of our youth group girls gave me The Shack a couple weeks ago and I started reading it while we were camping. I really like it but was quite confused because the entire foreword explains how it's a true story and then about half-way through reading it, I talked to Kory about it and found out it was a fiction book. I am sure the cover of the book probably tells you that, but this copy of the book was partially eaten by her dog, so the front cover is almost all gone and some of the pages are a bit gnawed on...so I didn't realize this was all made up. After reading the first half of it under the impression that it was a true account, I had a hard time finishing the book. I still like it, but I have to allow some time for my mind to adjust to this fiction story before I finish it. I think I only have about 50 more pages at this point, so I'm pretty close to the end now.

I am on Week 5 of my running program and still going strong so that is encouraging! It's certainly challenging and I never feel like it's too easy, but I always feel like I am making progress and want to keep going. I just got the paperwork to sign up for my first 5K which is scheduled for Saturday, September 11. That's only 6 1/2 weeks away and it seems pretty daunting at the time, but I will continue to take it one day at a time.

And now we're back to the routine of every day life! Church health team meeting Monday night, youth group Wednesday night, followed by a meeting with a financial advisor, small group Thursday night, Myrtle Creek Summer Festival this weekend and trying to fit in a full-time job somewhere in between :)

I was born for SUMMER!

Here are some pictures from our recent kayaking trip. We had SO much fun! I love it and want to go every day now!

It was gorgeous that day and we just drove down the road and saw a spot to pull over and got in the river.

Kory's a lot better than I am at steering the kayaks...I was all over the place.

This is a good arm and ab workout for sure!

I LOVE my Chacos and am so glad to have them this summer.

Also, I have wonderful friends and family. Thanks so much for your encouragement after my last post about feeling lonely. I feel much better now and God really used you guys to encourage me!

Late Night Thoughts

I am laying here on the couch (bed is covered in clean clothes and I am too lazy to put them all away) and I have a thousand thoughts running through my head so I will attempt to type them out here and then hopefully I can get to sleep.

My coworker won't stop talking about her son's wedding and she told me last week it is a potluck. I am trying not to judge but that just screams tacky!

I really really want a more flexible work schedule. I love my job but I HATE the 8-5, no exceptions. I am not made to live my life in an office.

After a year living in Oregon, I feel strangely put of place. I don't feel like this is home, per se, but it is certainly very familiar. I love it here but I just have this strange feeling that I will never truly belong here. That sounds negative and I don't mean for it to...I just think I will always look at this Pacific NW culture from the outside and compare it to NM/TX. I guess I can't expect to feel the same about a place I lived for one year vs. 23 years somewhere else.

Nobody told me how hard it is to make friends as an adult. Most of my college friends are discovering the same thing I am and I think it took most of us by surprise. I just never really thought about it in college and now I see that I may never have friendships that close again. It kind of makes me sad, but it also makes me really appreciate those friendships and makes me want to keep in touch even more.

For the first time in a very long time, I can look back at the past year and say that not much has changed. I have the same job, live in the same apartment, drive the same car, am in the same relationship, etc. I guess this is called settling down and being stable?

Sometimes I feel like my friends who are married and having babies are speeding ahead in life without me. It is like I am left behind as a college student still dating and they are full blown adults and I can never catch up now. I guess one of the true tests of friendship is whether you can remain friends even when you are thousands of miles apart and are in very different life situations and all you have in common is love.

I really miss TX/NM people tonight. Typically I try not to write this stuff down for everyone to see because I want to be a positive and optimistic person. However, I think it is more important to be real and for me to be able to share what is on my heart--good or bad. Lonely is a feeling I never really experienced until after college graduation. It has been hard for me to learn that missing someone or longing to be somewhere else doesn't mean you can't enjoy where you are right now. I love my life here and absolutely feel that I am right where God wants me. There is no better place to be than in the center of His will!

July Fun!

This month is going to be filled with lots of outdoor fun! I have never been more excited to see sun and warm weather...winter seemed to last forever.

We started meeting with our small group a couple weeks ago and it has been awesome! I love our group and really enjoy our time together each week. We meet on Thursday nights at my apt and we are currently studying the book of Romans. There have been 7 or 8 people coming each week which has been a great group size.

We went kayaking on Saturday and it was SO much fun! We both loved it! Kory got dumped out of his kayak as he went into some small rapids and I almost fell out of mine laughing at him. It didn't take long until I was falling out into the water though...I was about to run into Kory as he was standing in the water and I tried to lean away so I wouldn't hit him and I dove into the chilly water.

I am currently doing a running program called Couch to 5K. It is designed to help you go from not working out at all to running a 5K in 9 weeks. I have completed week one of the program and one day of week two. I do work out occasionally so I am doing pretty well so far. We have a Summer wellness program at work called Summer Buds that starts this week. You form teams of three and encourage each other to complete the wellness goals you each set. My goal is to complete a 5k by the time the program ends in mid-September. So I found a 5k in September in Roseburg (the city where I work) that is for recovering addicts and their family/friends. I plan to run in that to celebrate my older brothers ongoing recovery.

So I know that a 5k (3 miles) isn't super far, but it is much farther than I can currently run and it is a good start for me. I am Definitely not a morning person, so I run in the evenings. I am currently running 3 times a week and it is going great so far.

Our church is going white water rafting this next weekend so I really hope the water warms up by then. It is Getting up into the 80s now, which feels great since it hasn't been this warm in about 7 or 8 months.

I get so behind on laundry and dishes and keeping my apartment clean and I live by myself so I can't even imagine how people take care of a whole family. Goodness gracious it makes me tired just thinking about it! Hopefully I can take advantage of this day off work and get caught up on all these not-so-fun chores.

Long Overdue Update

Wow! We have been very busy lately, which is kind of a change from my typical lifestyle in Oregon. (I haven't blogged in a while, so this one is pretty long to catch you up!)

CrossX was this past week, which was a mission trip for the Hillcrest Youth Group from Abilene, TX where our good friend Evan Simmons is the youth minister. Our two youth groups worked together on service projects all week and then we went to the coast for a weekend retreat together. The week was amazing!! Oh my goodness, I still smile when I look back on everything that happened that week. I feel a lot closer to many of our kids and feel like I really connected with several of our girls. I am going to try to do a girls sleep over this weekend, but I know my 10:30-11:00 bedtime won't work out so well with teenage girls!

I have this renewed energy and excitement about working with the youth group! God just really worked on mine and Kory's hearts this past week and we both feel like it coming right at the 1 year mark was no coincidence. Speaking of which, I can't believe we have lived here for over a year now!! Hopefully I can do an extensive one-year post soon.

Summer has finally really arrived in Oregon and I'm thrilled!! Granted, summer here means that we're in the high 70's and I don't think we have reached 80 yet...so it's perfect! It's warm and sunny in the days and then at night, it's still cool.

We are starting a new small group at church for young adults this week. Kory is leading the group and I'm hosting it at my apartment, so it will require quite a bit of work for me to clean and get things ready, but I can't wait! Hopefully people show up...even if it's only a couple people, I think we'll still be happy to have other church friends to hang out with. Young adults is a pretty loose term...if they don't have grandkids, we'll allow them to come! haha

In just a couple weeks, we're going white water rafting with a bunch of people from our church, so that is guaranteed to be a good time! The only thing I don't like is that the entire day is spent throwing people off their rafts, or squirting them with water guns and soaking them, and it's not quite hot enough for that! It's fun to get in and swim or to sit on the raft and be dry, but I remember freezing to death last year when they would get me wet and then I was sitting on the raft shivering. I would prefer an old person's trip where we don't tackle other people, and ram into their rafts, and surprise attack each other with super high powered water guns.

My laptop has died and been resurrected so many times now! Thank goodness it keeps coming back...it is really old, it's actually Kory's old laptop that is probably 5 or 6 years old, but I really don't want to buy a new one. Hopefully this one will keep hanging on for a while! I need to get my iPhone update so now that my laptop is working again I hope to get that done soon.

June Pictures

Here are some pictures from the past several weeks. I am too lazy to rearrange them so they are in random order.

Multnomah Falls just outside Portland

High School Graduations for Youth Group Members

Random Updates

A co-worker told me today that I am the most talented person he knew. I was really flattered until he told me that it was because I was walking down the stairs in high heels, taking a drink with one hand and texting with the other.

I have been running for two days in a row now, which is a big deal for me. If I run tonight and make it 3 days, we'll be approaching world record status in my book. I always get super motivated and run for a day or two and it quickly fades. I'm not trying to become a marathon runner by any means, but I would like to be in better shape (I feel like walking up my stairs shouldn't make me out of breath!) and be healthier. It's definitely not because I enjoy running. I really hate running actually...I'd much rather ride a bike, so I need to check into buying one of those. I have gone running at 9:00 p.m. both nights because it is still light outside and really cool! The weather has been really nice the past couple days so I'm hoping it's an indication that summer weather is on the way!

Today I decided to wear a pair of shoes I almost never wear to work because they really hurt my feet after wearing them all day. The heel is much higher than I typically wear, but I knew I got to be at my desk for at least 4 of the 8 hours today, so I thought I could make it just fine. Well, of course, that didn't happen...I should know better than to plan for that. One of my co-workers didn't come in today so I was covering for her and ended up on my feet for most of the day. Yikes--my feet and calves are burning!! Back to flats for me tomorrow...I'm just not a heels type of girl.

Evan and his youth group will arrive this Saturday and be here for a full week! I am SO excited to see them and get to spend the week with them. We'll be spending a couple days on the coast for a weekend retreat and the camp we're staying at looks awesome!

I have quite a few pictures I need to post of recent events (high school graduations, painting the youth room, ministry fair, etc.) but I always forget that when I'm at home and have my camera cord. Hopefully I can remember to upload those soon.