You Drive Me Crazy!

Tuesday, my mom, my cousin, and I loaded up my little Dodge Neon and headed up the 101 en route for Sacramento. The plan was originally to be just me and my mom, but my cousin is staying with us for a little while and so she came along as well. Our first stop was at Montaña de Oro State Park outside of Morro Bay. The coast was gorgeous and it was a great stop for lunch. After driving past Morro Rock, we continued up Hwy 1 (only stopping at Elephant Seal Beach) until we reached Limekiln State Park to camp for the night. We did a little exploring around the camp ground (we did a little hiking around the campsite) before it got too cold.

After going to bed at 7pm (thank God for Tylenol PM!!!), we all got up and headed out around 9am. We made it up to Monterey Bay close to noon. One of our co-workers' parents live up in Monterey and they are members of the aquarium. So , long story short, we got to go to the aquarium for free which was pretty sweet! After a couple hours at the aquarium, we drove up to Elk Grove to visit the Burgs. We were going to leave the next day, but after Shelly invited us to spend the night with her out on the Delta, we couldn't resist. The Delta was really nice and it was nice to just hang out around a campfire for the evening (by the way, campfires are my favorite!!!)

Friday morning we loaded up the car once again and headed the rest of the way up through Sacramento to my Tia Irma's house. We hung out most of the day and then went to Ryan's graduation. Right now I am sitting at the house getting ready to take a nap before his graduation dinner. We are going to drive back tomorrow morning (I think we are planning on leaving at 3:30am) so I should be back for church, but we will see how things go... Feel free to check out some of the far too many photos I have taken. Please pray that the rest of this trip goes well. I have been having some trouble with my ears and stuff which has been leaving me feeling pretty nauseous and with terrible migraines. I am going to the doctor's again this week to see what's up with them, but until then, I am just trying to hold out until then...

What Is Going On?

Ok, I know it's been awhile since I have blogged (with the exception of the last post), but I have good reasons. Things have been super busy with work ending and summer starting and helping out at Forest Home and babysitting... It's been crazy, but let's see if I can't catch you up on what's going on...

Last weekend (I mean two weekends ago... not yesterday's weekend but the weekend before that) was my last weekend working for the summer. The kids graduated on Thursday and they all went home (some to stay for the summer and some only for a couple weeks before returning for summer camp). The weekend was kinda stressful as most of the kids were all ready to be done. We did our normal Santa Barbara State Street trip to end out the year. Weekends were fun and I am looking forward to working them again next year (but I am super pumped to have them off for the summer... too bad there is not Community...). So, graduation is always a fun time for the kids and for the teachers. I really like our graduations because they are not too long and they give out a ton of really fun awards. The best part, I have to admit, about graduation is shopping through lost and found after the kids leave. There wasn't as much stuff as last year, but I did find some cool things (well, some of them weren't actually lost and found but I had fun taking pictures of them...).

Monday I hosted again at Forest Home. This group was a little strange because they had already been at camp for a couple of days and I was taking over for the other host... It was just weird coming in on an already established group... Youth group ended this week which is sad, but just in time for me to be way busy.

Friday I went over to watch my boys for the weekend. Mason has made so much progress (he is walking, signing, sort of communicating - without words -) and Caden is a giant! There is seriously like a 7 lb difference between the two of them. But watching them was fun and I am hoping to do it a couple more weekends this summer.

On a more future note, tomorrow I am heading out on a road-trip with my mom and my cousin. We are working our way up to Sacramento to visit my tia and my cousin (he is graduating this Friday). We don't have any really set plans other than we are driving up the 1 and stopping at a campsite for the night around Monterey. We were able to score a couple of free tickets to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which I am super excited about!!! We might stop and a friend's house on the other side of Sacramento for another night and finally end up at my tia's house maybe around Thursday (in case you aren't familiar with the lay-out of California, driving straight through to my tia's house would maybe take 6 hours, but we wanted to make a trip out of it so we are stopping here and there along the way). I am really excited to get to spend some quality time with mi madre this week! I am going to try and barge back Saturday night so I should be at church on Sunday...

I have already started a ton of planning and scheduling for summer camp. Our meetings start on the 16th, but I will probably start really working hard around the 9th... I know it sounds pretty busy, but I love this time of the year... I love having crazy schedules but still making things work... So, yeah... that's what's going on...

To Barge (v.)

To Barge - verb - orig: Ojai
a combination of two words, Charge and Barn... To charge to a distant location for no apparent reason other than having a fun like a barn or barnacle.

Last week Amber Carlson and I decided it would be fun to barge up to the closest Sonic. She had never been to Sonic before and we both had the day off (well, she had the day off... I have everyday off...) so we figured, what better day than today to go for a nice two hour drive up the 33. The 33 was beautiful! Everything was super green and the wild flowers are all blooming. Two hours and 5 counties (yes, we drove through 5 counties...) later, we arrived at the sketchiest area in the middle of Bakersfield, CA right across the street from Happy Mart... I know this sounds super pointless and random, but that's what barges are all about... It was great getting to know Amber better and it was a great addition to my small but growing list of random road-trips...

How Big Is The God You Serve?

Last night at youth group, Ryan had this guy named Richard come and give his testimony to our High School students. It was a super intimate night with only 8 students (usually we will have a good 30-40 kids on a Thursday night but they all have a 4 day weekend because of Memorial Day on Monday...). It actually worked out really well because out of the few kids that came, at least half of them really needed to hear Richard's story and they were totally moved to chat with him about it afterwards. Richard's testimony was absolutely spectacular! It's incredible what God has done in this man's life. I wish I could share some of it but for reals, no one would ever believe me... After he shared, Ryan asked us all, "How big is the God you Serve?" For Richard, God is bigger than drug addiction, abuse, violence, prison... How big is your God? That's something I have been dwelling on since last night... We serve a Huge God who is bigger than all of the crap of this world... And what is incredible to me is He chose us... He chose me... He loves me... and he says that NOTHING (neither death nor life, nor angels nor semons, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing: Romans 8:38-39 ) shall be able to separate us from the LOVE of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!

Hello! I will be your Host for this Week!

Last week, Wednesday - Friday, I got to work at Forest Home Ojai Valley. Basically what happens is there are groups that will come in and run their own programs. While they run their own programs, there has to be a "Host" who provides whatever the group needs in order to run their program (The Host is basically the contact person for the group... They carry the Host cell phone around all day and night). So, that's pretty much what I did last week for those of you who were confused. I stocked bathrooms, set up Audio/Visual equipment, helped with Recreation (Zip-line dismount... so much fun!), Did announcements... and broke up a midnight water raid...

Ok, so here's the story with the water raid. Apparently their host last year (I won't mention his name but some of you might be able to guess who...) helped some of the male counselors raid a girl's cabin in the middle of the night. So, having heard all of the stories from last year, the kids, led by the leaders, decided to have a full on water battle in the middle of the night. I had finished all of my "Host" duties, hooked up my cart (highlight of hosting was probably driving the electric cart around all day!!!), and headed over to Holly's house (where I was staying while hosting). I took a shower and got ready for bed then sat and chatted with Holly as she was cutting out stars (long story). Then around 12:30am I heard some girls screaming... It only lasted a couple seconds so I figured they maybe saw a bug or an animal or something and just freaked out... Then I got a phone call from the ground's keeper asking if I heard all of the noise. I then figured that it wasn't just one scream and I had to go check it out... I walk out to find bathroom doors covered in silly string, water balloons being hurled at people and boys and girls throwing buckets (actually trash cans... they used their trash cans) full of water at each other. It had woken up a couple people so I had to make everyone go back to their tents and go to sleep. I thought the whole thing was pretty funny and if I were in middle school (or a leader in the group), I would have been so pumped on this battle... but, because I was working and a couple of people (the ground's keeper in particular) got pretty pissed, I had to shut it down. The kids and leaders were great the next day and made sure that they picked up every last water balloon shell and dried up piece of silly string... All in all, Hosting was fun. The group was great and fun to be around and to chat with (especially this one EMO kid who kept asking me about my gauges... He called me "Plugs" the whole time... pretty funny... I got a few pretty fun nicknames from the kids... "Plugs," "Mae-Mae," "Chae"...) I think I am hosting again this next week, Monday - Wednesday (so I will be at youth group next week Ryan... sorry for missing it last week!)

As far as work goes, we took the kids to the beach this weekend. It was so nice to get out of the heat for the afternoon. One more weekend and I am free for the summer! I am super excited. These last few weekends have been super special for me. I have been connecting to a few kids on a little bit of a deeper level and just enjoying every bit of them. I am excited to have my weekends back for the summer though!

One of Those "Born-Agains"?

This weekend at work one of my coworkers (all of the teachers are put on weekend duty's to help supervise the kids) said something that really made me check my heart and evaluate myself (does that ever happen to you? Someone - maybe even someone who isn't a Christ follower - says something that makes you check yourself?). She is sort of a Chatty-Kathy ("sort of" might be being too nice... she talks A LOT and it's usually pretty negative... not super fun to work with). Anyway, she was talking about one of her friends and referred to them as "One of those Born-Agains." I said "Born-Agains?" and she sort of just went on with her story (I honestly don't even remember what she said because I started to really think about what she said... I think it was something about how she had cancer or something... that sounds bad that I was zoning out, and it probably was...). Don't get me wrong, I was super excited that she called her friends this. It sounds like they are doing a pretty good job of furthering God's Kingdom. It did however make me look at myself. Do people call me "Another Born-Again"? Is God's love pouring out of me to make people see Jesus in me? Are the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) apparent and driving factors in my life today? What am I doing to further God's Kingdom? I just finished reading Jesus for President (I will be posting on that later) and it talked a lot about living like Jesus lived/s and loving like Jesus loves. It talked a lot about being a part of a different Kingdom; not the Roman Empire, or the American Empire, or the European Empire, but being a member for Kingdom of God and what that means for how our lives should look. They should not look like those with devotion to the Empires of this world (focusing on money, power, military might...) but those with a devotion to loving God and loving others! I pray that people will see Jesus' love shinning through me! I pray that one day, someone will see Christ in me and that they might even refer to me as "One of those 'Born-Agains.'"

Introducing...

MIKA!!!

That's right, we got another dog yesterday. Not just a dog, but a puppy. She is a 10 week old Australian Shepherd-Boarder Collie Mix. We adopted her from the Humane Society and she is absolutely adorable. She will be a pseudo-family dog, but Janae will be caring for her. She definitely is a puppy and we are definitely dealing with lots of "puppy" things (potty training sucks!!! when we got Toby, he was already paper trained...). Speaking of Toby, I am not sure how he is reacting to this new addition. He did mark his territory in the house which made me really upset (he has NEVER done that before!). He is pretty cute with her though; herding her around the house and stuff. She's still pretty scared, but is starting to get comfortable in the house and with all of us.

Go Dodgers!

This weekend we took the kids to a Dodger's Game. I don't think I have been to a Dodger game in maybe over 10 years. I am not a huge baseball fan, but going to events are fun and games are pretty entertaining because you can either watch the game or people. Let's just say I watched a lot of people! Dodger's scored in the bottom of the first inning (do you like that baseball lingo? I used to play softball...) making the scored 2-0. The next 6 innings were uneventful. The pitcher threw a no-hitter of the first 7 innings of the game before starting to lose it, so they switched up pitchers. We left right as they were switching pitchers (we had to make it home for dinner on time...) and from what I was told, the game went downhill after that. For those of you who aren't at all familiar with baseball, there are 9 innings (usually, as long as there isn't a tie). Apparently the final score was 8-5 Houston. So sometime in the 2 and a half innings from when we left, Dodger's scored 3 more runs and Houston scored 8! It sucked that we had to leave early, but we made it back right on time as it was (to the minute!!!).

Anyway, It was a really fun day and a really fun weekend. I had some good bonding time with a couple of the kids (it's about time I get some bonding time... only two weekends left before summer!) which was really special to me. Another praise for all of you is that I finally got offered a contract for next year! They weren't sure if they were going to have enough in the budget to hire me back (they do all of the hiring around February/March time) but yesterday they offered me a contract. So I believe I am on for another year of crazy 30 hour weekends hanging out with some great kids!

Where Did The Sun Go?

Sorry for totally lagging on blog updates. Not a whole lot has been happening, but I've been really busy... Does that make sense? Kinda an Oxymoron maybe...

Anyway, if you read my last post you will know how tired I was last week. The after Prom party really did me in and I pretty much haven't stopped since. Last week Wednesday I had another all nighter (I drove my friend Holly to LAX Thursday morning at around 3am and we might have gone to bed around midnight or so giving me another night of only two hours of sleep... NO GOOD!!! but totally fun!). Last weekend at work was pretty mellow. All of the kids had just gotten back from their backpacking trips so most of the weekend was spent unpacking, doing laundry, and just relaxing.

This week was a pretty exciting one. Monday was Cinco De Mayo so we celebrated by having Mexican Food at Home-Group (and who better to be on the main dish than me?). I spent most of the morning cooking and cleaning (like a true Mexican I suppose... I had the apron on and everything... I totally reminded myself of my abuela...). That afternoon I drove down to pickup Holly from the Airport which was fun. We had some good bonding time on the PCH. Dinner that night was AMAZING! We had so much food and all of it was great! Tuesday I got some stuff done around the house and around town before driving up to Santa Barbara to pick up Mackenna. Later that night I got to watch Mason and Caden again. They have both grown so much! Mason has made some incredible progress (he's walking, dancing, signing, and interacting with you... still not talking, but totally communicating through signs and nods!). I am actually going to be watching them the last weekend of this month while Mom and Dad go away on a much needed vacation.

Which brings me to my next big news; I only have three more weekends left before summer!!! Yes that's right! Counting this weekend (which starts in about an hour), I only have three more weekends left for this school year. I still don't know if I will have a job next year (they aren't sure if they have it in the budget to hire an Assistant on the weekends, but the Headmaster is "Cautiously Hopeful"... whatever that means...), but it's totally in God's hands! In other news, Holly has finally recruited me to work at Forest Home. I am going to be hosting a group this next week (Wednesday-Friday) which I am actually sort of excited about. It should be fun! Life is beautiful right now and even though the sun disappeared today, I thought I would share one of my favorite photos right now... Enjoy the weekend!

Fried, Toasted, Spent...

I'm not so sure that this weekend was as good as I thought it was going to be. I mean, I didn't think it was going to be spectacular or anything. I knew it was going to be pretty rough, but I didn't anticipate how rough it actually was. Overall, work this weekend was really stressful. The kids were really high strung and not behaving really well. I actually had to discipline a few students this weekend which I never do because I hate it! So work was crazy. I did get to go home Friday night (I was supposed to be on sleepover duty). One of the dorm parents came in around 11pm as I was curling up on the couch and asked if I wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed... "Heck Yes!!!"

Saturday was similar to Friday as far as discipline and all that. We did open the pool for the kids (it was way too stinkin' hot for the end of April). I got to clean out a dead rat from the pool which was fun (or not!)! The pool was incredible and I totally jumped in a couple of times to cool off! Saturday night after getting off work, I headed over to the After Prom Party at Jesters/Ojai Playhouse. I got to pretend to be paparazzi for the first part of the night which was super rad! The rest of the night, I helped watch kids (Tried to keep them from making babies) in the movie theater (Goonies... "HEY YOU GUYS!!!"). I think I ended up getting home around 4am and fell asleep at 4:30am. I slept for about 2 and a half hours before getting up to head over to work. I took a cat nap on the bus on the way down to Santa Monica, but the whole day was pretty miserable from being so exhausted!

After work, I went straight down to Ventura for Nicki's birthday dinner. It was sort of a girl's night thing which was super fun. I felt like I was drunk (not that I know what that feels like) from having no sleep and walking around all day long. After dinner we did a little bowling. I was way loopy by this time so I don't remember everything (I took pictures though to try and remember some of it... I am totally exaggerating by the way, I remember everything). I am slowly trying to play catch up as far as sleep and stuff, but I am still super tired... Was it worth it??? ABSOLUTELY! It was a great weekend even if I am totally fried!

PS: I did manage to take a lot of pictures from this weekend despite being super tired!

Pictures of The Prom After Party

Pictures of Santa Monica/Work

Pictures of Nicki's B-Day Party

Pictures of my new gauges... That's right, I went up to 0G's this weekend... they don't hurt at all which is super awesome! I probably won't go any bigger despite the constant nagging and temptation that some of my High Schoolers dish out... I can almost put my finger through the whole which tell me they are big enough!