Colorado Update...the coldest place ever.

Well, this is my third day at new staff and i've got to say i'm freezing my butt off! It snowed Friday night (on our 4 1/2 our drive from the airport to Frontier Ranch), and snowed last night and today. CRAZY. There is SO MUCH snow, it's ridiculous. Funny story, when we were landing, I didn't even realize we were about 20 feet from the groud, because the sky was white and the ground was white. 20 feet up, I saw a bush and then we hit ground. SO CRAZY. The fool sitting next to me what a chatty cathy (is there a term for that for men?) and he kept telling me all about how cold I was going to be and on and on...the usual, i have a book open on my lap and I'm looking at the book, not making eye contact, did not even faze him.
So far, we've been learning a lot about fundraising which has been so crazy because it's my biggest hangup in terms of this minsitry that God has called me to. I have to be honest. God has been breaking me big time about this and i've been wiping the tears away like non-other.
I wasn't all that excited about coming here--not gonna lie and pretend like I was thrilled about it. But just in the past three days, God has been showing me again and again, why I love this ministry and why He has called me to it.
Tonight we start our first class from 7:30-10 PM. No joke. Should be interesting, but I couldn't honestly tell you what it's going to be about. The schedule just says "First Class." For a person who likes to know what's going on at all times, this is a huge stretch for me.

I'm off to Colorado!

I leave tomorrow to begin the adventure that is New Staff Training for Young Life. I'll be flying to Denver, Colorado (hopefully it won't be SNOWING!) and then I journey down to Frontier Ranch in b-e-a-utiful Buena Vista, the heart of the Rockies. Frontier is built on the side of 14,197 foot Mt. Princeton...which means it's going to be COLD! I will be celebrating my 25th birthday there (on Monday) which should prove interesting. Last year, I was in Florida--quite the difference in climate and surroundings. Last year: Beach with all the Ameri-Homies. This year: Mountains with a bunch of crazy Young Life peeps. Hopefully next year I'll be home! :)

Prayer request: safe travels, good weather and that I don't get sick! I've been staying up late for the past week trying to get all my work done (the require a bunch of pre-event assignments) and stay on top of work here in R-side.


A couple of fun pictures from the past week:

Saundra and I like making faces...it keeps us out of trouble!
That Saundra and Marisa, they are so hot right now.

Gramps, Dad and Miky (gotta love Miky's helmet)For my Dad's birthday, we went on a ride up the coast: Miky on "his" bike, Dad and Gramps on the Harley. And Mom and I? In the 'stang. :) My Gramps is 79 years old and had never ridden on a motorcycle until this trip. This was his second ride with my Dad. Rock on Grandpa!

Inspiring

In honor of my amazing family members and all those we have SURVIVED. In gratitude for those who spend their life researching for a cure! In memory of those who have passed on.

Women of the World!

So, I leave for Colorado this Friday and it's cold there...and there is snow. Not something that I am very used to, on either account. So, I embarked on a journey yesterday...to find some boots to keep my feet warm and dry during my two weeks there. :)

I went to 8 stores, that's right, 8 looking...and I found a whole lot of nothing!

They my brilliant mom reminded me that I should ask my brother, since he works at Sport Chalet.

Duh, Marisa.

So, I called him up and he informed me that I was looking for an "After Ski Boot"... but they were wiped out at his store in Irvine. Luckily, we have a sport chalet here in R-side! :)
This morning I made my way over there and sure enough they had some boots.

BUT!

All the boots for women that were waterproof and would do me any good were like $100. Not exactly my price range! Then, the nice guy that was helping me said that I could try a kids 7 because it's comprable to a woman's 9.

And you know what, THEY FIT!!! :) I prompty informed him that he had just opened up a whole new world for me. The kids boots were $40 and I got my brothers 25% discount...that's what I'm talking about.

Women! If you have the option...take your shoe size and minus 2 and that's your kids shoe size. They go up to size 7. :)

Christmas Pictures

So, I tried posting these earlier, but there were some issues... so here they are now!

Making Christmas cookies with my Grandpa...out family is part elf.

See...Santa comes to visit us on his Christmas Eve run...That's my cousin Amber, she's 13. Honestly.

Traditional Christmas Eve outing to the beach with my brother. It's not Christmas in Southern California unless you go to the beach.

The fam Christmas morning.

2006 ... Year in Review. CRAZY!

Another year has come to an end...it's been a busy one! Some reflections on what I've been up to and where I've been this past year:

January: Brought in the new year celebrating my Dad's 50th birthday with friends and family. Returned to Charleston, South Carolina for another 6 months of AmeriCorps! :) We journeyed to Fort Myers, Florida to work with Habitat for Humanity. I celebrated my 24th birthday there...spending time at the beach and an Italian restaurant where there was 9 other people celebrating their birthday's too!

Dad's Birthday Present...a Harley. :)

February: I was in Biloxi, Mississippi working with the Lutheran Episcopal Disaster Response. I worked as a case worker helping people who had lost so much because of Hurricane Katrina (there was a 30 ft storm surge that completely wiped out everything about a mile inland). I lived in a big circus tent with 35 bunk beds and pallet flooring. Also, I shared a bathroom (10 port-a-johns and 10 portable showers) with about 300 people). I visited New Orleans for the first time, celebrating Mardi Gras with my teammates and other NCCC corps members. Bourbon Street can be fun. I also lost my very amazing and wonderful Grandmother, Rosemary Ann Stock. She lives on in all our hearts.

My Grandma kicked butt! How many grandmothers do you know that will shoot hand guns with their grandkids off her sons porch? So much fun! She was amazing.

March: Off to Louisiana. Construction work with the United Way. I never thought I would come to love a group of people so much, but Cajuns rock! Food, music, Cook-Offs, small towns...they are AWESOME!!! Lived on an "experimental" farm with cows on three out of four sides. I don't think I've read that many books in that short a time since college. Awesome.

April: A visit to Grandpa on our way back to Charleston via Gulf Breeze. Good times. Spring Break in Charleston...the worst sunburn of my life (all Theresa's fault). A Week long project as a trail crew working on the Palmetto Trail. 8 days. No showers. Abandoned warehouse. sleeping bags. SWAMP! Stuck in the mud...red clay mud!

Hacking a dead tree that was in the path of our hand rails...about 30 feet from the swamp floor.

May: Easter Seals, Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. An amazing project working with incredible people. The stories from this project are seriously endless. A major highlight was going to the Grand Ole Opry. I'm such a country fan and this was a huge event for me. I saw two of my favorite singers live: Travis Tritt (It's a Great Day to be Alive) and Martina McBride. The show was a tribute to Ray Charles. Ah-mazing. :)Living conditions? A camp on a peninsula in the middle of God's beautiful creation.

The team at Chili's...our last night out at Easter Seals.

June: The end of our project in Mt. Juliet and the end of AmeriCorps. Saying goodbye to my team and other corps members that I met was difficult--emotionally and physically. Physically? Oh yeah, that's because my knee got caught between two vans when we were parallel parking the 15P in downtown Chucktown for Trivia night. Major bummer! My amazing mother and brother flew out for graduation and to help me get my "booty" back to Cali. Fun times!

In case you're wondering, the moose head has come to be our symbol...no clue why.

July: I began my new job with YOUNG LIFE! I moved back to Riverside and I live with an incredible woman named Ardie. She rocks! I have a pretty cool boss and an incredible job. A week after I started, I went to camp with 5 high schoolers from Riverside. Not too shabby. July also afforded (during my two week transition) a road trip up to Nor Cal to visit my good friend Joe and to see my family. Along for the ride, the infamous Punk, Brandon. :) In case anyone's wondering, I drive like the old woman I'm about to become (yikes).

August: My best friend's wedding. Doesn't get much better than that! :) Plus, my Mom celebrated her 50th birthday with a beach bash and dinner at Duanne's (with our favorite waiter Bogart. love him!) and my parent's celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary. Still going strong. Can you believe they only knew each other 8 months the day they wed? Crazy times. What's even crazier is that the same is true of my Dad's parents...anyone else see a pattern here? YIKES!

September: The first big "banquet" for Young Life that I was officially involved with...I ended up wearing a blond wig with a beach towel stuffed into my shorts to become part of the incredible du-o "Flo and Marge." Somehow I ended up in the pool, but I suppose it was worth the $300. The other BIG event first for me: being present for the birth of Jonah Bradford McClain, my little friend. I had the privilege of being in the room for the whole she-bang.

My little friend is here!

October: Wow. This month seems like ages ago. I did a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We started our leadership training and went to the YL Fall Leadership Retreat down at Oakbridge. I started doing Contact Work at King high school, working with the Drama program. Fun!

November: Took a trip up to Portland. So nice up there and the people aren't bad either! :) Spent Thanksgiving down in San Clemente with the parents and the brother. My Dad, Mom and I ran in the Dana Point Turkey Trot. My first 10K and definitely not my last! It was awesome! My friend Susan came out from Texas and we saw her brother in APU's production of Pride and Prejudice. Good times hanging out with the old APU crew.

December: Ah, the end of the year...last month was CRAZY!!!! Lots going on with work and getting ready to celebrate Christmas! Jesus, oh, what a wonderful child! My Grandfather came out from Florida to stay with us for a couple of weeks. It's always awesome seeing him--he's quite the character (explains my father and me a bit more). Also, Mike and Becca and their two cutie pie girls came down for a visit and we had a blast with them, as always.

Overall, it was quite a year. I've never felt so blessed. God truly is amazing. He is everywhere.

love it!

I always hated not knowing what words meant when I was a kid. It was inevitable that you asked someone and they didn't know so you would have to look it up and then I would start to look up the word, but get fixated on another word and usually never end up looking up the word that I originally wanted to learn.


...or maybe it's just me. :)

Thanksgiving

I had an amazing Thanksgiving. So much fun! I went down to San Clemente on Tuesday and stayed through Sunday. It was a much needed break and time with my family. Here are a couple of fun pictures from my extra long weekend!



My brother all dolled up for his 80's night club. He goes everyweek. Him and a friend started dressing up and this past week they had a costume contest because of it. Of course my brother was in the bathroom when they did it, but his buddy got first place! :)



Going for a ride with my number one guy--my Dad! :) We went up to Laguna and back. So much fun!



The morning of the race--The Turkey Trot 10k. My brother took this picture when he was waiting for the race to start. He couldn't run because he injured his back, so he was our official photographer!



Starting strong and trying not to get run over by people or strollers. Lots of people ran with their kids in those fun active strollers. CRAZY!



Half way done and still having fun! :) How awesome is this picture? Way to go Miky.



All done! Now we are ready for some TURKEY! :)

Trip to Portland

Portland was a BLAST!!! I had such a great time hanging out with Cassi and Sean and all the other homies up there. Good times, good times. AND it's actually cold up there...albeit a little TOO cold for me, but better than 90 degrees. I think that Southern California missed the "winter" memo. Oh well.



This picture is for Scott and Susan, the lime people as they are affectionately called by the waitresses at our taco night location.



Jinx and Mr. Boo being friendly. Aren't they so cute? This trip they didn't spend as much time jumping near my head while I was trying to sleep. However, Jinx started playing with what I can only guess was a bouncy ball or something similar at 3 am Sunday morning. So much for sleep.








We spent a lot of time in the car. No need to go into an explanation why. We still had lots of fun--taking pictures and video. For those of you on myspace, you can check out the video. For those of you not on myspace...sorry!







Cassi asked me what I wanted to do while I was up there. The only thing I really wanted to do was go to Powell's. An AMAZING bookstore. I got three books for 15 dollars: A collection of Short Stories by Flannery O'Connor, A Passage to India by E.M. Forrester and Running in Heels by Anna Maxted. :) Good times!
Have to give a shout out Don Miller because he is the reason why I know about Powells from his book Blue Like Jazz. An incredible book.


We had to get a little girl time in, so we went and got pedi's. Unfortunately, we were both wearing boots and rather than sit there at the nail place forever waiting for the polish to dry, we walked out to her car BAREFOOT. CRAZY! And then we walked around in flip flops for the rest of the day. Oh the things we do for beauty. Silly girls (however, the nails do look fabulous, if I do say so myself).

Other than the above mentioned adventures, we played a lot of games, drank some coffee (gingerbread latte's--so yummy) and went to our favorite restaurant, OLIVE GARDEN, for dinner. Overall, it was just a fantastic time, even though it was a bit on the short side. :)

Fun Times

This past weekend, Susan was in town! Yea! We had fun at her brother's play and hit up BJ's after so that we could have ringing ears for the rest of the night. Seriously. Why is it so noisy in that restaurant? It makes me feel real old to say that, but I just gotta be honest, that's how I roll...

In JONAH news...I saw him this morning and we were just standing--well I was standing, holding him, in his room after Sue had finished feeding him. They have KSGN on 24/7 in his room, so I was singing along to whatever song was on and he was just smiling and smiling. Probably the best feeling in the world. He is officially the cutest kid ever.

I'm off tomorrow for a short visit to Portland. SO EXCITED and I JUST CAN'T HIDE IT! yea for friends. I seriously need a little break and I think the best way to achieve that is by going out of state. I probably can't make a habit of it though...that would be way to expensive! :)

Grace and Peace.