Father's Day Pictures

While I'm at it, I'll take the opportunity to post some pictures from the early Father's Day we spent with my Dad 3 weekends ago (yep, I'm late with this one!). We had a great time with Dad spent at the Wild Animal Park. I am so thankful for my Dad and his wonderfully adventurous spirit. We always have a genuinely great and carefree time when he comes to visit me. I know that I can always count on my Dad for a good story whenever I need my spirits lifted and I'm very grateful for the relationship that we share. Anyways, it was an absolutely perfect day for the Wild Animal Park with few visitors and great weather.

Update Time!

I've been so busy that I haven't had a moment to blog lately! But I'm on here now for a quick update on life. Daryll and I just got back from Henderson, NV this afternoon. We were there for a surprise party for my Great Uncle Rod's 89th birthday. He was so pleasantly surprised to see all of us and we all enjoyed ourselves immensely. We enjoyed hearing him tell amusing stories about his entire life to this point (many of which I hadn't even heard) while his daughter Sandy recorded them. We are so thankful that Uncle Rod is still doing well and it was wonderful to be there to celebrate 89 years of life with him.

This time of year in San Diego brings one of my favorite things...the fair! Daryll and I took advantage of the grandstand entertainment this past week, going to see Bill Engvall and Switchfoot. Both performances were fantastic in their own way; Bill Engvall was hillllllarious and Switchfoot put on a good show. We also got to see the little piggy races, which are definitely one of those small delights in life!

Work at camp has been going very well so far. This week's Leadership session is Food Frenzy, so on Friday we got a tour of a UCSD dining hall where the kids got to make their own lunch feast of spring rolls, stir-fry, pot stickers, and chocolate dipped rice krispy treats. Even I learned a bunch from it and had a lot of fun. Other fun activities of the week included a trip to the beach and a morning spent at the challenge course.

Anyways, I'm so far behind on blogging that I'm not even sure what I've missed or forgot to cover at this point, so I'm just going to move on and leave it at this for tonight!

P.S. Here are a few pictures from last weekend when Scotty was visiting.

The Madness Begins...

Well, 1 week and 1 session down; 11 weeks and 6 sessions to go. My first week at camp was a challenging one, with the Leadership Camp's Theater session. The big group activity for the session is to create, plan, develop, and act in their own play. To say this could have been a nightmare is to put it mildly. My group was pretty young and mostly male, so in a word...immature. The last thing that any of them wanted to do was plan and rehearse a play. I left work Tuesday evening thinking that all hope was lost. There wasn't a chance that we'd actually pull this thing off. But then, Wednesday morning I woke up and inspiration hit! I presented the idea to the campers that day, they loved it, and we went from there. When they performed today I was very pleased that they had actually pulled it off (and also very relieved that I wouldn't have to do that again this summer!). You can read about the play a little bit over at the other blog. I'm glad to be finished with the first week and I'm looking forward to the 2nd session: Food Frenzy! Overall the first week was a raging success! The new counselors are AWESOME and the first day of camp was the smoothest first day I've seen in my 4 years at KA. My arm is sore from playing so much dodgeball, but I'm sure I'll survive it ;0). Now off to a great and friend-filled weekend!!

One Last Moment of Peace (for a while...)

Well, I thought that I'd better get in a few words here before the chaotic part of my life starts up again. Yep, camp starts on Monday and I'm so excited about this summer. I'm going to be working predominantly with the older Leadership Campers this year, so it's keeping it fresh (yes, even after 4 years...). I have a ton of fun things planned for them and I'm excited to participate in the activities too! It's crazy to see that a bunch of the kids who were in Group 2 when I started at KA are now Leadership Campers! I'm getting old fast!

During the summer months I'm going to try to keep up on my blogging posts, but I'll also be blogging for camp. You are more than welcome to follow there too, but we've disabled the comments section, so you can't leave any there. (FYI my camp name is Dot. This is the name that all the kiddies know me by and they can all tell you why they think my name is Dot...because I have "dots" all over.)

Daryll and I sat down this week to look at our summer calendar, and it appears that we're back to our old ways...meaning that we're booked until August! Our summer schedule looks a little bit like this:

June 13-14- My Dad is visiting for an early Father's Day (Wild Animal Park might be in store)
June 20-21- Daryll's friend Scotty is visiting (Angels v. Dodgers game and lots of friend visiting)
June 27-28- Surprise trip to Vegas for Uncle Rod's B-Day (don't worry, he doesn't read the blog)
July 3-5- 4th of July trip to Dad's house in AZ
July 11- Ryan and Rebecca's wedding in Sacramento
July 19- Greg and Jen's wedding
July 30-Aug 1- Refugio Trip

And that's just the weekends! Daryll and I had to create google calendars to keep up with our own schedules. It's busy and crazy, but we love it.

Other than that I'm trying not to worry too much about what's going to happen when September comes (yet again... welcome to the loop that is my life). It doesn't really do me any good to worry about it, so I'm just trying to remain optimistic that there's something out there for me and the God has it all under control (I wish that He'd fill me in on His plans sometimes though...).

I tried to think of something cool to do today on my last weekday of freedom for a while, but I couldn't think of anything. It's too cold and ugly out to go to the beach. Doesn't San Diego understand that I'm not supposed to be wearing long sleeve shirts in June? I don't pay good money to live in paradise for nothin! I demand a refund! :-)

I had to take the puppies to the vet this week because they were itchy all over. The vet said that they both have bad allergies and now he's making me give them steroid pills. I guess that soon we're going to have the buffest pugs on the block. They've been less itchy since they started though, so I guess they're working. I've been taking them on walks every night (sometimes Daryll too, when he's not too busy) and we've really been enjoying the extra hours of sunlight.

Alright, I'm off to find something to do to enjoy my dwindling hours of freedom...

Catching up on Pictures

Thought I'd share a few pictures that haven't made it onto the blog yet (including the zoo and the Sparks game)...

Home Weekend

I got to spend a nice little while at home this weekend before all the madness of camp begins. I made my rounds and had time to visit with both of my parents, Amy, and George, as well as time to get a haircut. We also randomly squeezed in the season opener for the LA Sparks on Saturday (box seats, and totally worth the price...free!). We had a good time at the game and were impressed with the athletes. They said that it was a sell out, but I can tell you that their sell-out didn't look anything like the Lakers sell out today. Hopefully there is a picture of this game soon to come, but that all depends on whether Amy emails it to me or not... (hint, hint Sister). Daryll had a fun and busy time without me this weekend (baseball, a concert, a bachelor party, oh my!). Just hanging out tonight watching the Lakers. Hope y'all had a great weekend too!

3 Things that Made Me Smile, Chuckle, and/or Otherwise Feel Happy Today

1. Twitter on paper. Hillarious.

2. College Softball World Series Game 2

3. Creative Flow: The almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Let the Games Begin...

Over the weekend I was lucky enough to be able to help train the new Knock Around Counselor over our Training Weekend. It was such a fantastic weekend! Our new staff is going to be sooo great and I'm almost sad that I still have 2 weeks until camp starts full time. Friday night was our meet and greet/game night (which you know I love!) where we got our first glimpse of our fun and fantastic staff. Saturday our best laid plans got thrown out the window with the rainy weather so Sunday we were playing catch up. Luckily our staff was very attentive and quickly picked up and understood everything we were trying to teach them. I had some bad luck this weekned personally though. I got a cold on Thursday that lasted throughout the weekend (everybody will be surprised that I don't actually sound like a man on the first day of camp). Then on Saturday night I accidentally dropped a steak knife on my toe and cut it (luckily it didn't actually cut my toe off...). And theeeen, on Sunday I pulled my hamstring playing a tag game (which of course happened on cue right before our talk about safety). But, alas, I made it through the weekend and I'm feeling pumped up about the summer!