No More Schedule Questions!

What a wonderful week for Junior 2!!  :)  God has done great things here in the Valley, but it's too late to write much, so I only have the video this week.  Thanks to everyone for their prayers!  :)

6 pieces later...

Senior High week is in the bag!  WHOA!  What a week!  It has been an incredible week here in the Valley! God has done some AMAZING things!

• All 6 of my girls made huge commitments in their walk with the Lord.  It was encouraging to hear the things that they want to do to radically change their lives as they head back home.  I encouraged them to write these things down so they can look at them and remember them better.
• Campfire was powerful!  So many stories were told about how life in Jesus has given them freedom.
• The weather was WONDERFUL!  Everything was beautiful and I had crick stomping everyday!  How fun is that??!!  :)
• There was a girl in the cabin next to mine who is going to UNI in the fall and I got to talk to her a little bit about the ministry plug-in opportunities there are there.
• My girls wanted to camp out this week, so we luckily got a hay rack ride up close to the Treehouse by Patrick and then we just walked down to Trail Breakfast the next morning where Nathan and I had a Heart Attack Toast eating contest.  We both had 6 pieces of the new toast size!  It was SO good!
• I chopped my hair!  9 inches are gone!  It's short and feels wonderful!  My dad will be happy to hear about my shorter showers!  :)
• I started a one match fire for cookouts!  
• We let off lanterns like the ones in Tangled!  It was so cool!  It was stunningly beautiful!

I must leave you with one funny, wonderful picture of my UNI BFF and I!  :)

We go into Junior 2 tomorrow and I just ask for prayers for soft hearts and continued unity among the staff.  I'm looking forward to the 9:30 bed time tomorrow night!  :)

Trampoline Time

No one could remember what day of the week it was this week.  We hosted an open house for the camp on Sunday where I was in the kitchen, Craft Room, and also facilitated pony rides.  It was a lot of fun talking with parents about the impact Village Creek has had on their lives.  We had evenings off all week, basically.  It was a wonderful week of refreshment!  I stayed in one of my favorite cabins, 602!

Great things of the week:

• Sleeping in.  Sad thing is that it all ends on Monday when I have campers again.  I got to sleep in 602 with 2 of my best friends!  It was so much fun!
• Family chapel planning!  Breaking down the pieces of armor and missionary walk planning was a lot of fun, and I feel like it will come together well.  I'm one of the leaders for the 6-8 year olds!
• Two nights this week, a bunch of us girls spent time on the trampoline giving testimonies.  It was beautiful and refreshing.
• I was able to go on a trail ride riding my favorite camp horse, Petey!!  :)  Also, Luke makes all the trail rides super fun!

• I got to night zip!  I love night zip lining, except this time it was cloudy so I couldn't see all the beautiful stars, but it was a thrill just the same.
• The Black Raspberries are coming in!!  This fact makes my belly so happy!

Senior High starts today and so I ask for prayers for soft hearts, wisdom for speech, strength and energy for the whole week as it will be exhausting but completely worth it, and weather to be good.  It rained practically every day last year.

I like my ice!

This week was AMAZING!!  It was long, busy, kinda crazy, but simply wonderful!  We had Young Teen 1 and Junior 1 going on at the same time.  I was one of the four girl counselors for Young Teen.  Katie Riley was my wonderful co-counselor!  The girls didn't have trouble remembering our names!  :)  I had 7 girls and they were so full of life!  Each of them had amazing passions and great personalities.  One girl I remembered from last year and I was a little nervous.  She did not have a good week last year, but she did really well and we even talked a little about last year and how much better it was this year.

Here's my first ever video blog from the week!



Some of the amazing things that happened were:

• I had a lot of firsts this week!  First camper with a birthday, first camp out with campers, first time to Treehouse, first camper with a concussion, first time eating as a cabin in the cabin...I'm sure the list could go on!
• The girls liked to tease me about the amount of ice I used in my water bottle daily.  My reply, "I like my ice!"
• I started to learn how to juggle!  Don't ask me to do it though...
• I had one girl pray a prayer of affirmation and four girls rededicate their lives.
• They got into memorizing scripture during the Team Verse Challenge!  It was amazing!
• I had inspiring one-on-ones!  Each one of these girls had incredible stories and were so open and honest with me!
• I've been thinking for a while about becoming a teacher in a children's hospital and I had a great conversation with a camper who spent time in a children's hospital.  He talked about his teacher and that really tugged at my heart.  I'm pretty sure that this is what I want to do, but I'm going to pray on it some more, and I would appreciate prayers too.

Tomorrow is VCBC's open house!  I'm signed up to help in the Craft Room and do pony rides!  Two of my favorite things!!  :)  Crossroads Church comes in on Monday and I have a feeling that it is going to be a really good week!

The Secret to Snot Bars

Because I had to leave staff training early, I was able to spend a couple of days at home.  My niece, Alex, was begging to come spend the night.  I obliged because she's my favorite and I miss her so much!  I went down to get her on Thursday and we had fun doing a Wal-Mart run before heading home.  Naturally, she got me to buy a couple of things for her, but they were under a dollar, so I didn't feel like my resolve had been broken too bad.  :)  Alex kept me on my toes as I finished up my last homework assignment for my May term class.  To end the night, we split a big bowl of popcorn.  Best ending!  :)

Friday morning, I got up before Alex and ate my breakfast in front of the TV as she slept on the couch.  Basically as soon as she was awake I heard, "Katie, I'm excited to go to Grandma's today because I'll finally know the secret to Snot Bars!"  That girl sure knows how to make me giggle!  When we finally got around, we headed into town to do errands and stopped by Gail's before Grandma's.  Gail had cookies for us!  I always feel at home there, no matter how many years have separated me from the days of day care.  When we got to Grandma's we got right to work at making Snot Bars.  Alex was so excited to mix them!  We even did 2 batches!  Staff, be ready to resist eating more than one!  Alex gave approval on the alterations that Grammy and I made to my graduation gown turned camp costume.  I'm kind of excited about it!  :)  We spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to catch kittens, watching TV, and running more errands.  After supper, Dad took us fishing!  Alex came away with 2, Dad had one, and I finally snagged one on my last cast.  A bluegill too.  It was not my night!

The first one!

The biggest one!

The smallest one!

I overcame my fear and touched a fish!  We spent the evening playing fetch with Ruby and with more attempts to catch kittens.  Neither activities ended in much success, but it was fun none the less.

May 2012

It's hard to believe that May is already over!  This month has flown by so fast and I feel like I've hardly had time to sit still between school, camp, and going home.  It has been a wonderful month!

Lows:

• I've seen too many snakes this month!  I hate snakes.  I almost stepped on a HUG+E one.
• I bruise like a peach.  I barely got hit with the ball during Gau-Gau, and I still have a bruise almost 2 weeks late.  
• I had to leave staff training early.  It was hard to go, but the time that I did spend there was WONDERFUL!
• I have absolutely no desire to unpack/put away my boxes of stuff from moving.

Highs:

• I was able to spend a fair amount of time at home.  I love being home!
• We had a family of foxes.  Todd & Trixie and their 3 little ones were so much fun to watch from the back deck!  How amazing is that?!  :)

• I taught my nephew a very valuable lesson this month.  I taught the little guy to talk/yell/laugh into a fan.  He will definitely use that lesson again in life!  :)
• Amy and I helped lead a little boy to Christ during the Men and Boy's Retreat.  It was so wonderful!  
• Rach and I headed to Country Night for 2 weeks in a row!  I love line dancing!!  It's so much fun, and that much better now that I have some boots to shuffle around in!

• I am going to attempt to video blog this summer!  This is in hopes that I will better be able to keep my church family updated with camp life and prayer requests.
• I have had many reunions with camp friends in the past couple of weeks!  It is wonderful to pick up with those friendships right where they left off.  I'm looking forward to continuing those friendships as well as starting new ones with new staff.
• I found out that I will be counseling a cabin of Young Teen girls for the first week of camp!  I'm kind of really excited about it!  I'm anxious to see if I will get my campers from last year, or if I will have new girls.
• I got to spend the last day in May with my niece, Alex.  What a Wal-Mart run!  We're both looking forward to tomorrow where we will spend the day with Grammy making snotbars and altering my costume for the summer!

I hope you all had a wonderful May.  Here's looking ahead to June!  :)

1034

Today I moved back home after living in an apartment for a month.  This was a new experience to me, and a complete answer to prayer.  When I had my graduation check done and found out what I needed to do before I could graduate, I kind of freaked out a little.  Refer back to this.  I prayed and asked around.  My good friends, Rach and Eryn, both had room mates who were staying.  I don't know that many people really close, so I was kind of at the end of my rope.  I brought it up with my co-teaching partner for Phase 2.  She replied that they had a room mate that moved out recently and they were looking for someone.  Is this real life?  Here's a room, close to campus, room mate needed, and with a couple of people that I know.  I quit asking around after that.  I moved in during finals week and stayed until today.  The only downfall from living there was the 3 flights of stairs to climb for move in and out, and the noisy neighbors downstairs who like to talk really loud on their deck late at night.

I had a great time in 1034.  My room mates were all wonderful and dealt with my super long showers.  We all kind of had some crazy schedules, and so we only really did one thing together as room mates.  4Queens hit the spot that night!  Apartment living isn't that bad, but I prefer my house in the country.  :)