90's flash back

I remember thinking punch fountains were really cool when I was five-years old and was trying to entertain myself at weddings. But really, when was the last time you saw one of these?

pictures don't do it justice

I spent new years with my grandparents this year and since my papa started falling asleep at 9:30 we decided to countdown for new years at 10. We were all sitting in the living room waiting and we had 20 seconds left on the clock. Papa grabbed the bell off the bookshelf that he got from his 1st grade teacher ( mind you...he's 91) He started ringing the bell and dancing around and all I had was my iphone to take pictures. If you know my papa, you can appreciate these :)

favorite moments of 2009

I haven't blogged in a while. I leave for new staff training in 2 days and life has been a whirlwind. But here are some of my random favorite moments of 2009 so far.. All 4 days of it..

In no particular order...
1. Sarah and Isaac coming to visit and picking me up from the airport.
2. Michelle coming home and going to sushi and the kitchen upstairs with me tonight!
3. running into Caitlin and Bekah on floor 3 of the Adam's Mark and Emily in the lobby
4. finding out the Emily got a tivo for christmas.
5. avoiding a heinous sinus infection through a nasty home remedy that I will call a "sinus rinse"
6. Anthropologie gave me 15% off for my birthday :)
7. rearranging furniture with Michelle and trying to make a purple couch look good until we get a kitchen table... and finding the whole experience really funny.
8. enjoying some time in my favorite places in boulder before i leave for 5 weeks!...
9. not having a cavity.
10. having my meter run out and not getting a ticket this time. pure mercy
11. watching the parent trap and parent trap 2 .... if you haven't seen the parent trap two yet, it will redefine "cheesy" for you.
12. not having to wake up at 6am tomorrow!
and many more...

2nd annual southwestern style chili-cook off christmas celebration

my favorite christmas song

It's so funny how I can hear a song over and over and never really pay attention to the words. Last year I remember singing this song at church and my eyes filled with tears. It felt like I was hearing the words for the first time.

More than great melodies or beats, I feel like I am in a season of life where I am more impacted by the truth found at the very core of art, music, etc... So I hope you too are able to read these words the truth in it will resonate with you as well.

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Til He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! O, hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming,
Here come the wise men from Orient land.
The King of Kings lay thus in lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friend.

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!
Behold your King, Behold your King.

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
His power and glory evermore proclaim.

Advent Conspiracy

watch this

google: the eavesdropper

since it's Naboplomo- I'm going to try and blog everyday for the rest of the month.. which means random thoughts and stories for sure....

I was talking to emily on g-chat a couple days ago and I think google was stalking us. We had been talking the day before about advisor stuff for tri delt.. (Yes we were both tri delts in college and yes we are now advisors... who would have thought!) But it's a fun way to be a part of girls lives whom we would not otherwise get to connect with. Anyhow, while we were talking on g-chat emily's name popped up as emily DDD... strange... google just decided to change her name on their own.. (p.s. If you know me at all, you would know the text I wrote in the box is not serious- but just in case.. i thought i should calrify :)

election night

my roomate made a map... i ate patriotic popsicles...this is what happened...

estes park

we went hiking during a thunderstorm... oops

I should have posted this last month but forgot... Michelle and I went to Estes Park (I bought a Rocky Mountain National Park pass if anyone wants to go) a few weekends ago to watch the elk fight..which I know may sound weird enough in itself.. but it ended up being more like watching elk at a single's bar.

the eligible bachelor...

sniffin'

Beam Africa

This morning at church I saw a table set up to sponsor children through Beam Africa, a community ministry we served with while in South Africa two summers ago! They had cards with different kid's photos and names on the front. I've always seen cards like these for compassion international and other organizations but I had never seen cards with pictures of kids I actually KNEW and recognized! It was crazy to look through the cards and recognize faces of the mischevious boy, the girl who always sang, the baby I held all afternoon one day, the kids we played duck duck goose with....

It's so neat to be able to still be a part of Beam Africa and the work they are doing in South Africa through sponsoring these kids! I'll find out if there is a way to sponsor a child for Beam online and write more when I find out!

This is Lerato, a sweet six year old girl who comes to Beam's development center every afternoon for food, a safe place to play, help with homework, care and encouragement.

"He lifts the poor from the dust and the needy from the garbage dump. He sets them among princes, placing them in seats of honor. For all the earth is the Lord's, and He has set the world in order." 1 Samuel 2:8

They die namelessly...

I'm reading this great and challenging book by Jeffrey Sachs called The End of Poverty. Sachs is a part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and has an incredible economic mind, balanced outlook, and passion to see the end of extreme poverty.

With each page I turn, I learn more about how people are climbing out of poverty and the viscious cycle of extreme poverty in the world. Sachs also explores the role the rest of the world can play in meeting needs and in turn, I face my own greediness, ignorance, and love of things that, pathetically, I still don't even realize the depths of.



Here's a little blurb from the intro...



Every morning our newspapers could report, "More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty." The stories would put the stark numbers in context- up to 8,000 children dead of malaria, 5,000 mothers and father dead of tuberculosis. 7,500 young adults dead of AIDS, and thousands more dead of diarrhea, respiratory infection, and other killer diseases that prey on bodies weakened by chronic hunger. The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, such stories rarely get written...


Read it!

rain, bananas and fire

where's your bonnet?

This is the picture that pops up on my brother'si-phone when I call him.

a. Can we talk about the bonnet?

b. I look like I'm about to punch him!

human trafficking: modern day practice of slavery

I remember listening to the news when I was in highschool and hearing about a sex-trade ring that had been busted in a small town a few hours away from San Antonio. Men who smuggled illegal aliens from Mexico promised women they would take them safely across the border. Once arriving in the US, they told the women they needed more money to let them go and that they would have to "work off" the rest of their debt to the smugglers. These women were found locked in bedrooms in a house and no one new how long they had been held as prostitutes there. I can't even imagine sneaking across the border in hopes and excitement on a new life and second chance to only find myself locked up to be raped and abused by men at their whim with no glimmer of freedom on the other side. This was the first time I ever realized that human trafficking and modern day slavery was a huge problem right here in the U.S. and is the second largest criminal industry in the world.

My friend Jaya recently went to a human trafficking conference here in Denver and she was blown away by how widespread this problem is and how many people are entangled in it.

Here are two things to check out...

Polaris Project- for facts and info on that state of human trafficking in the U.S.- the facts on the first page are really eye-opening. They are also looking for volunteers to help hang posters and pass out info for their Slavery Still Exists awareness campaign on August 23 in Denver.

Street's Hope- a way to be involved right here in Denver. Streets Hope is a ministry that serves and provides an escape for women who have been involved in the sex for sale industry.

jazz in the park- denver

thanks remax

This is random but last night I had a huge hankering for bananas. It wasn't dark out yet so I decided to be earth friendly and ride my bike to the store. I ended up borrowing one of my roomates bikes since my tires were flat as usual :)
The trek to our grocery store is down hill the entire way from my house so I was looking forward to the quick trip. I started down the hill a little ways going pretty fast and needed to slow down a little. I gave my brakes a squeeze only to find out that my brakes didn't work! And of course I was wearing flip-flops and no helmut, so stopping with my feet was not an option. Luckily the Remax office by our house has a steep grass embankment so I turned to ride up the embankment and with a little wobbling and falling I finally came to a stop halfway through the parking lot. I finally figured out how to fix my brakes and was on my merry way.

I started thinking about it and realized this marks the second time the remax office has helped me out. Last year I locked myself out of our house without my cell phone and went to remax office to look up a phone number to call my friend Frank to get a hold of my roomates. I could tell the receptionist thought it was pretty weird but I was out of options by this point.

So this is my official muchas gracias to the Louisville Remax Office!

Where God Left His Shoes

Friday night I went and saw "Where God Left His Shoes" in City Park...(which, ps. watching a movie on a big screen in a park is the way to go). The movie won some awards and deals with the issues of family homelessness- which was especially good to see in light of Denver's Road Home- plan to end homelessness in Denver... http://www.denversroadhome.org/.

Sometimes when I think about helping people out of homelessness I think mainly about a roof over their heads, but this was a good reminder of the huge spectrum of hurdles homeless families face such as, employment, childcare, abuse etc... It also made me really thankful for the services set-up in Denver to help families on a holistic level move out of homelessness.

If they are showing this movie near you, you should go!

summer skills

Since it's been so long since I last wrote..here's my top ten list of skills and lessons needed to survive my life this summer...

1. When going to the neighborhood pool, you must master the skill of swimming while constantly surveying the lawn chairs to see if one opens up...if one does, you need to be close enough to a wall to jump out and claim the chair and signal to you friends to bring your stuff over before the moms who are speed walking toward you try to claim them as their own. Moms are really protective of those lawn chairs.

2. Suncscreen is good... I don't think I have been sunburned since I was in Junior High but i definitely happened while we were floating the medina river...painful.

3. Jobs are not gauranteed to work out even though somehow God works out the bigger picture.. I am no longer working for amali... so now I nanny, go to yoga, clean, write and try to figure out what's next.

4. Texas will always be home to me...spending time with family and friends, hearing a band at Gruene Hall, eating great mexican food and margaritas, and floating rivers, going to the ranch, slacklining with my brother and sister...there's just something that seems to always draw me home...

5. Vitamins are incredible and Naturopaths know their stuff...I take like 5o pills a day now but I feel great and I've learned how to strength test people and it kinda creeps them out.

6. Somehow hotdogs taste amazing when you're camping... even to a vegetarian.

7. You don't have to do everything RIGHT NOW... In one week decided I wanted to start my own company, go back on staff with Crusade, go to Naturopathic school and work at Anthropologie all at the same time...not happening.

8. Honey Nut Cheerios are delicious, especially with Vanilla Rice Milk, or maybe I just choose to beleive that cause it's my only option.

9. "Yous" means Y'all in Pennsylvania...When visiting Big Papa in Pennsylvania, be prepared for eating Potato Pancakes, Kielbasa and playing lots of Skip-bo. And coal mines stay between 48 and 52 degrees so bring a jacket when you go- random fact!

10. Toilet seats and countertops are great replacements for a ladder when painting a bathroom. It takes some acrobatic skills but is a peice of cake once you get the hang of it... Also painting goes way faster if you watch the dance scenes from Step Up 2 over and over again :)

mad bike skills

Well, maybe not "mad" bike skills, but I do pride myself on random things about bikes that I've accomplished. Like buying the cheapest bikes ever. This one below I bought in Long Beach from these guys who were having a garage sale. I originally bought this cool 80's bike from them for $5 but then I upgraded to this awesome cruiser for $10. They liked my southern accent to I milked it for all it was worth! :)


Then last year I bought this bike from a granny who was having a yard sale. She said it was her mom's bike. A granny's mom's bike- how old is that?! But I didn't have any bike tools and the seat was for someone who was like 8 inches shorter than me. Emily and I rode it to Kate's house last fall and I think I had shin splints by the time I got back from peddling on such a short base.

So saturday I went to University Bikes and finally bought the little tool to adjust the seat. One of my neighbors and I sat outside and cleaned and fixed our bikes while these 2 five-year-old twin girls kept getting their barbie jeep stuck on the tree out front. It was awesome :)

I rode my bike around the block to make sure everything was working right. The bike has these old gears in the middle and when I switched them the chain came off and I rammed my knee into the gear end... OWWW!!! Pain... I still have a huge knot and bruise on my knee.

But now everything is working, so call me if you want to ride bikes soon!

denver childrens home

today was a fun day at work. We went to Denver Children's Home...the oldest non-profit in Colorado and the recipient of some much needed help from Oprah's Big Give winner Steve Palleta. Both Steve and Eric, another contestant on the show, came back to Denver to celebrate and see what's been happening at the home. It was neat to talk with them about their experience on the show and what they are hoping to do next.

Although they did kind of burst my bubble about reality tv...it's all planned in advance....and totally scripted...bummer :(

My favorite part of the day was when a few of the kids performed their raps they had written about their lives. A local band, The FLobots, volunteers with these kids every friday. Talk about a perspective check! It was incredible to see what these kids have come from and the hope and perseverance they have now! It's neat how much their lives have changed because someone decided to step in and give them some time and love.