Summer So Far

So my summer has been going pretty well so far. Some highlights have been working with my mom and dad, being a giant banana in a program video, and getting to know the staff better. Right now I am on a break from work because I am working for the guest group this weekend. (and all I really want to do is sleep). Oh, and I have been doing a ton of things (besides being a giant banana) that are totally out of my comfort zone... I now get up in front of the campers everyday before lunch and announce who had the cleanest cabin. It makes me really nervous but its kinda fun and people are now starting to use my camp name-Ruddles. Most of the time people just call me Sarah which I am totally fine with because I have never really been that into nicknames. Anyway just a boring old update from Sarah. Have a good week.

Purple???...Heck Yes!!!!

As you can see Friday night with Emily and Geron resulted in a new hair color for me. Yes, that is correct, my hair is now purple (but it's the wash out stuff so it could be in for who knows how long.) Anyway I really like it-its totally fun!

Parents reactions:

Me: Good Morning mom!

Mom: You have red hair!!!!!!

Me: Its purple!!!

Mom: You have purple hair!!!!!!

Then after a few questions:

Mom: Go show Dad and see if he notices (he's mowing the lawn)

Me: Hi Dad!!

Dad: You colored your hair!!!!

Me: yep, Its purple!

Dad: Yes it is very purple (Big smile)

So I was expected a little bit more shock. Maybe I have underestimated how well my parents know me and my sometimes drastic need to do something random!

My Crazy Life

As you can see my family came up to spend the day with us to celebrate my brother's 22nd birthday. These are my cousin's twins: Luke and Emma. Luke and I are on part of the set that I helped build during training week and where the rest of the program staff runs the shows during camp. Ususally I am in the back running the slides. We just finished up our first week of camp with the kids. I have been working for five weeks: two before the rest of the staff came and three after, but it seems like it has been a lot longer than that. I have been enjoying my time on staff. God has been teaching me a lot of good things and I am excited to see what else he has in store. Some of the highlights have been making a 60 foot blow up whale out of tape and tarp named Doris, getting to know the program team better, and being able to work with my mom and dad. Anyway I am trying to get in all the rest that I can this weekend before more than 200 kids come in tomorrow. This rest has included going into town with my parents and seeing Fantastic Four (a fun movie that I really enjoyed that had some interesting syimagery [symbolism and imagery put together in one easy word] at the end), and helping them buy a new Subaru Outback in a cool orange-red color. (yeah for spontaneous car buying experiences!) I hope you all have a really good week.

"How May I Direct Your Call?"

Thats right...I have started working at the office here at camp and I am quite enjoying myself. I have been getting into a routine of working and then coming home and relaxing but I know that that will all end very soon when camp offically starts on Sunday and I have to give up most of my free time. I am trying to get it all in before hand. Its not that big of a sacrifice because I know that this is where God wants me. So for now I am enjoying being with the fam and watching some good movies like The Queen, Pirates 3, and some oldies like The American President and Absence of Malice*. All of these films were very well made and not a waste of my time at all. I have also been enjoying The Waltons (thanks to my mom's renewed love of her old favorite show) and the first season of American Dreams which my family really like when I was in high school-even though it didn't last very long. It is the extended music edition so we have been enjoying some great music as well. Anyway just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the happenings of my life.

*Just as a side note-I love Paul Newman:)

Colorado!!!!!

Well, I have been having a great time here in CO. Yesterday we went to Colorado Springs to see the garden of the gods and we went to Focus on the Family. It was realy cool because we drove back in a thunder and lightening storm. Today we are off to Boulder to go sight seeing there. The first picture is of the three of us on Rachel's tramboline, as is the second picture with Rachel and me jumping. I am still sore. That day we also took a long drive into the Rockies with rachel's parents. The last two pictures were taken at the Garden of the god's.

ROADTRIP!!!

So here are just a few pictures from our roadtrip to Colorado! We have made it here safely and are enjoying the sun and mountains. The first picture was taken in Umatilla at a look out point. The second was Ashley being crazy while we were driving down I-84. The third is in front of the Utah sign. We had a great trip down here. I will post pictures of Colorado later but I just wanted to let everone know that we are having a great time.

Spring Break

Spring Break was so good. Rachel and I went to Seattle to spend some time with Ruth-Anne and we spend a wonderful rainy Saturday at the Washington Park Zoo. The top picture is the three of us with an Elephant in the backround. Then we took a five hour drive to spend the rest of Spring Break at Tadmor...Home!!!We had a great time relaxing, going to the beach, helping my brother and sister-in-law move, at watching a lot of movies. Now I am back at school getting ready for the last five or six weeks that are left.

DS Retreat

Thats right...we went to Tadmor for our Dorm Section retreat and it was a blast. It was (from left)Jordyne, Ashley, me, and Rachel. Lindsay, our RA, left right before we took this picture. There are are a lot more people in the dorm section but we had a blast just the five of us, watching movies and relaxing. It was a wonderful time.

Bridge to Terabithia

If you love the book than you will love the movie. Go and see it!!! You won't be wasting your time. Take a box of tissues, some candy, a good friend, and you will have yourself one fine evening!

Glasses upside down... Glasses normal!!!

Here we are goofying off with our glasses! Have a great day!

Another 1/2 year done...

Thats right, on Thursday of last week I celebrated my 19 1/2 birthday. It was a special day. After classes and work Rachel Ashley and Nicole took me out for Wings and we ate... a lot! Then we went to Safeway to by Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream but they were out, so we got popcicles!!! Then we can back and watched a movie!! It was a wonderful day.

My second first day of classes

That's right. After arriving at school last Wednesday I have only had two days of classes. Last Thursday was cancelled because of Ice (which didn't really amount to anything), We had class on Friday, Monday was-as you all know-a holiday, Tuesday morning we woke up to a good two and a half inches of snow which, of course, meant no school. Over the course of the day we ended up with a good three, and in some areas, four inches of snow that did not melt over night which meant no school on Wednesday. Thankfully when we woke up this morning the temp had risen to a balmy 34 degrees and we were only delayed two hours. And there you have it, I have completed my second first day I classes and I still have one sylibus that I have yet to recieve. To bad the homework wasn't non-exsistent. But the good news is that everyone was going stir crazy so people were really excited for classes to start again. I have to admit that I was too, but I really was enjoying the fact that I got to sleep in. Anyway I hope that everyone who was ragging on me to blog is now satisfied.

Christmas

Yeah for Christmas and spending time with friends and family! This Christmas has been such a wonderful one. Although I missed two of my grandparents terribly, I had a wonderful time with my other family and my friend (and roomie) Ashley who got to spend Christmas eve with us. This has been a difficult year, but God has show himself to me in wonderful ways and I hope that he will do the same for all of you in this coming year.

Crazy Friends

So..um.. all I have to say is that I really don't want to do my homework and as you can see neither do my freind and roommate. So I hope that all you who are reading this are having a much more productive day than I am.

Remembering Break

As you can see my mid-semester break consisted of the three X-Men movies (which I had never seen before and I must admit I did enjoy them but the third was a bit of a let down.), The Guardian (In theatres-it was a very well done film-if you haven't seen it you should.), Titanic(because Rachel had never seen it in English and you have to at least see it once.), Family Man (because niether Rachel not I had seen it and it looked interesting.), tons of Boy Meets World (because..um... Cory,Tapanga, Shawn, Erik...need I say more.), and of course spending time with family(because they are the best ever.) By the way I did do homework too, but I had four days so I had to get some relaxing in!!! Now I am back at school wishing I was at home relaxing but life is good and I think I passed my Bibliology and Theology Proper test!!!!

Weekend at the Beach!

Adventures

Well, I have decided that when ever something happens to you that you did not suspect and that is not particularly what you want to have happen to you, the best thing that you should do is have a good attitude. These events are what I like to call "adventures"-and not particularly in a good sense. Let me tell you about one that happened to me last friday. So, I took my friend Rachel to go see the movie Step Up-a very cute movie by the way-and we had a great time until the movie ended and when putting the smuggled food back into my purse I realized that my keys where not there. And sure enough when we got to my car they where hanging in the ignition! So after giving myself a few minutes to freak out, Rachel and I call my roommate, Ashley, and friend Nicole to bring a hanger and then we waited for a half hour before they arrived-not that it did much good because none of us could get the door unlocked. Can I just interupt the story to say that sitting in a movie theatre parking lot and having so many people stare at is not very fun. Anyway, we had to move to plan B which was to call all the people we know who might be able to help us. Esther, another friend, ended up coming and trying to get it, but she had no success either-and she is a security gaurd! Then we thought Security gaurd-what a novel idea-but that didn't work either because the movie theatre security gaurd could not help because of "liabilities". So after many many attempts a couple of guys came up to us and offered to help because they missed their movie-we were all so desperate that we accepted. We exchanged the casual greetings and found that one of the guys knows Multnomah and goes to the Nazarene church down the road! They soon realize that my car cannot be broken into with a hanger so they drive all the way to Clacamas to get a Slim Jim set and yet, it still does not work. Finally after three hours of intense stress for myself, and may sympathetic onlookers we get in-only with the help of a cool little air tool. Lets just say that I will never again leave my keys in the car-and if I do I will definantly have back up plans in place. So if you are having a bad day just remember my little "adventure"and it will make you not fell so bad.

Vacation

Well I just returned from my trip to Florida to visit my Uncle, Aunt and cousins and it was a wonderful trip. As you can see we got to go swiming with Dolphins which was a once in lifetime experience. We also spent a day at DisneyWorld and Sea world which was really fun but also really hot and humid. The rest of the time was spent relaxing and hanging out with my family. Swiming with such big and awesome animals was an adventure. The are very majestic creatures and it was fun to learn some ways to get them to talk and jump. They are a lot bigger then I would have thought and had no problem pulling me through the water-they are really strong. It made me want to be a dolphin trainer. While at Discovery Cove(the place where we swam with them)we also got to snorkel and see lots of tropical fish and in the middle of the reef was a ship wreck and if you swim up to the glass you can see baricuda and sharks!!! Its is really cool if you know that there is glass there but while swiming it is sometimes hard to see! We also got to wade into a reef with sting rays and we got to pet them and feed them-it was really neat. Now I am back home and am getting some relaxation in before I have to head back up to school in a couple of weeks.

Relearning the Alphabet

So today was my friend Emily's last day at the nursery (tear!). We had a good day but it was hard to say goodbye! The last couple of days have been filled with laughter(to find out more check out Emily's blog by clicking on the link that says Come Fly with Aerogirl)and today was no exception. As you can read in her blog, to pass the time we pick a theme and then use the letters of the alphabet to begin our thoughts. We have made up stories and have had some pretty interesting conversations. But today we decided that we would go through the alphabet and say what we were thankful for. This list included Amy(Emily's sister), our moms, friends, etc. Emily was the unlucky one who got stuck with the letter Q which just happens to be the hardest letter to use (you might think that X would be hard too but we allow each other to use EX for X-it's cheating, we know, but give us a break, what kind of letter is X). So after a long pause she says "Oh, yeah, God." Now earler in the day she had used the letter G in the place of Q and we had had a good laugh over it and I thought that she was just doing it to be funny, but no, she had no idea that she had made the mistake. That is until I started busting up and told her that we needed to go back to elemtery school because we both know that God starts with G and not Q. When she realized what she had said she started laughing too. It took us a good two minutes to calm back down and after a bit Emily says "OK, Quiet Time?" and I said, "Yeah, that works" and so the game went on. I would just love to get into the mind of the Hispanic woman who is working with us and see what she thought for us for those two minutes when we were laughing histerically-infact she probably thinks we are crazy because she was with us yesterday as well(refer to emily's blog). Any way I thought that I would share that funny story with all of you- may you all have a good laugh.
Em, I will miss you tomorrow and friday. Love you tons.

Bees, Baseball, and the 4th of July

So today happens to be the fourth of July, our glorious nation's birthday. A time of relaxation, family, hot dogs, hamburgers, and fireworks. A day on which we celebrate our freedom, independence, and liberty. We hang the flag on our porches and we play patriotic music as we strike up the BBQ. So as I woke up this morning to my parents yelling at our dog who got loose I realized with great joy that I did not have to go to work-an added benefit to freedom and liberty. I prepared myself for the day and sat down to a nice breakfest of fruit loops and a good baseball movie. I figure there is no better way to spend the 4th than to watch a movie about America's favorite pasttime. Much too soon the credits started rolling and I was off to my next task-cleaning Henry-my cute Ford. This was not an easy task-I had to overcome many obstacles including insane bees, out of control dogs, and neighbors. But an hour later he was shining like the top of the Chrysler building! Anyway I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th and I hope that we would all take time to be thankful for the freedoms that we have.

P.S. I'm pretty sure that on the 14th of July France celebrates some sort of independence day. And no, Geron, they don't wear necklaces with symbols of their revolution, I hope!