nice people

Let's talk about how some of the nicest people seem to be located in the south. Particularly Georgia, because that is where I am right now. Being from up north I think that I am surrounded by pretty nice people-- it's just that everyone has their bad days and we northerners tend to get a bad rep. I am rarely honked at when driving (compared to what my parents endured, hailing from Long Island, New York) and sometimes people even hold the door for you when entering a store. I also know lots of people from the mid-west and those are some pretty nice people. But, as much as I have visited Georgia, I forget just how nice people are here (generally speaking). That southern hospitality, I guess.

I am not just talking about our friends that are family, (they are very nice) but strangers. People in my aunt and uncle's neighborhood always wave and give the appropriate greeting for the time of day. I have heard "good morning" and "how are y'all" more than a few times. This morning Ben and I had breakfast at a local cafe and a guy walked in from outside with his coat still on and stopped by our table to say "do y'all need more coffee?" I am assuming he works there (if not, then he is a super accomodating stranger) but the first thing he does when he walks in is see how he can best serve us. A cashier asked how how my holiday was, and as strange as it sounds, had real sincerity in her voice.

I also met a friend of our friend who was also very nice. She is a very amazing and fun artist whose can be found at edhose.com, and she is nice. So nice, in fact, that we got to talking about camp and frog-themes and she said something along the lines of "I have a few rough sketches that you might be able to use for day camp things." Just hours later she, whom I just met, sent me three fantastic sketches of fun froggies to spruce up some Day Camp signage. Watch out Day Camp-- ED Hose has come on the scene and you're about to get cuter!

I have taken lots of pictures of our Christmas and festivities in Georgia, but I have no camera cord... so, another blog...

'tis the season

In a few hours (the operative word being few) Ben and I will be driving to Georgia to spend Christmas with our family down south. We are all ready to go, Ben, I am sure underpacked, and I know I overpacked. It's how we roll. We are so eager to see everyone-- even if it means leaving our White Christmas here. It is crazy to me that it is Christmas Eve, and then...boom... it's Christmas day!

I love Christmas-- for so many reasons. I love buying gifts and wrapping them, finding the perfect (er, sorta perfect) Christmas tree and lighting an evergreen candle daily so the house smells like the first day we brought the tree home, decorating the house, alternating between 3 Christmas-music-all-the-time radio stations, hearing the story of the birth of Christ over, and over, and over again. I love it all. So, when Christmas day comes it is always bittersweet because all this preparation is over in a sense. Although, I think it's not really over, because, "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year!"

So, we've wrapped all of our presents and packed the car- we even took down our Christmas tree. I am sure, in all my life I have never taken down the tree prior to Christmas day, but to avoid fire hazard and also to not have to vacuum up more needles than have already fallen off that tree, Ben dismantled the whole thing. By himself really, which is fantastically helpful and also less depressing for me. It's like it just disappeared like magic, instead of me enduring each painstaking moment of removing ornaments one by one (Ben doesn't have as many feelings as I do about Christmastime, or anything, for that matter... I have a lot of feelings). I have to remember that where we are going there are Christmas trees and that is where we will actually spend Christmas, so it will be perfect!

This is what we've been doing to get into the holiday spirit...

We visited the National Harbour to see some fantastic decorations and the lighting of the tree there. This took place on the coldest night of all time.

Sometimes I get to ichat with Kaley, since she is a little bit farther this Christmas... it's been hard without her (and Nick too) but, hooray for technology!

I tried ice skating. This is the first time I have agreed to go with Ben- he didn't believe me when I said I was terrible. I was, and, as much as I wanted to love it, I didn't. It hurt my feet a lot and I just can't get the gliding thing down. I was happy to spend the time with our wonderful friends-- and Karl was kind enough to try to show me some sweet moves on the ice. I never perfected these.

We celebrated an early Christmas with Ben's family. I even went sledding with the fam. I don't really sled, either. I've gotta say, it was a lot of fun.

And... Sarah and David got engaged! So, that was pretty awesome! When she walked back into the room in tears I will tell you, my first instinct was not "they're engaged!", but I was so glad that was the announcement!

Here's to more Christmas-- because I would like to say, it's only just begun!

a few inches, tops.

When I heard the weather report for Saturday would include up to 18" of snow... I didn't believe it. I really thought maybe we would get a few inches. Sure, we've had our fair share of "blizzards" here, but they are few and far between and closer to Valentine's Day than Christmas usually. This time, they weren't kidding. The snow came... and it kept coming... and then still more snow...

Our friends came to get snowed in with us- which made for a fun weekend of lots of movie watching, board games, card games and eating food. We even trekked across the knee deep snowy field to our sweet neighbors house because they offered delicious soup, jalapeno cornbread and love. There were only a few moments when I felt a little bit like cabin fever was sinking in. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that you really can't do anything productive. And that's okay, because it's not really your choice. This photo kind of captures my craziness- a little self-portrait, if you will...

Kristi's dog, Babies, enjoyed the snow- it was just questionable as to whether or not he would get lost in the snow that was deeper than he is tall.

Beth and Kristi convinced me to throw myself into the snow with reckless abandon. Then, I froze and couldn't get up, so I just screamed a lot.

This one time, there were cars in the driveway...

It really was a beautiful snow. And I did enjoy being snowed in with friends. Ben and I finally ventured out yesterday (with thankful hearts for a 4-wheel drive vehicle). We got to go sledding with Ben's sister Tori at his parent's farm. Though I am skeptical (of anything involving cold or exerting too much energy) there are some serious hills there, and I put on lots of warm clothes, so it was really very fun.

Hooray for a White pre-Christmas!

what do you get when 20 friends do a murder mystery role-play?

A bunch of crazies in one small room. For the second year in a row, we did a Murder Mystery Dinner Party with our (almost) entire staff. You know, you are sent an invitation to a dinner party giving you a character whom you must dress and act like. Someone in your group killed one of the other guests (who never shows up, of course) and you all have to figure it out. It's a little odd, I know, twenty christian-folk playing a holiday murder game. But who doesn't love a good game of Clue, right? My friend Jen took some great pictures of the evening, so I felt they couldn't go un-published!

Meet the cast...

Adam and Shirley Good, our hosts (you can tell that Shirley can't be trusted...)

Brandon Marlo & Farrah Foster, big-time movie stars

Whitney Wordup and her nemesis Babra Waters

Harry Lord (the VP of the United States, apparently) with the host.

Seymour Proffitt and Lacey Proffitt

Prissy the pro tennis star and her trainer

Bob, pro football star and his clingy cheerleader girlfriend, Pippy Prescott

Spruce Steen and chorus-line dancer Brooke Fields

Noah Good and Candy the "other" woman

Noah... up to no good... one too many glasses of sparkling cider.

Trying to get to the bottom of this...

A fun night for sure! If only to get us all together at the same time!

words

The first words spoken over extended radio broadcast 103 years ago, was the voice of Reginald Fessenden reading from Luke:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest,and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Those words are as astounding to me tonight as they must have been 103 years ago when people heard that voice over the radio, for the first time.

cookie party

Tonight was our second annual cookie party. Mostly I just love an excuse to have a bunch of friends over to my house. It was wonderful- we made bazillions of cookies and made way too much icing and had too many sprinkles. Perfect. Our tiny townhouse was packed with dear friends and christmas cheer.

It just really brightened my day that so many wonderful people came- including Clare.

If you weren't there, I wish you would have been-- but don't worry, we'll probably hold the 3rd annual cookie party next year.

The talent of some was astounding--

But, this is what I came up with.

I basically just kept dipping the cookies in icing and eating them. De-licious. I am thankful tonight, for Christmas and friends... and good reason to eat my weight in gingerbread men!

the party's on, the spirit's up

This past weekend was a great weekend. Why? The Winter Retreat. (or Fall Retreat, since it's not really winter yet) Anyway, about 50 children came to camp this weekend for a jam-packed weekend of summertime fun, just in weather about 60 degrees colder than what we experience in the summer. I love these retreats- I love to see the campers who return and I love to see staff who travel (some of them hundreds of miles) to volunteer for the weekend.

This weekend we played games, ate food, made s'mores (in the oven), watched a christmas movie, ate some more, went ice skating in the snow, heard the gospel, laughed a lot- you get the idea. As for the organized games this weekend, someone thought it would be a good idea to put Ben and I in charge. We are not funny and we are not hip. But we gave it our all. If you've ever been to camp you know that games, these days, include a theme and a set of "game-masters" whose job it is to run and hype up the games while wearing some ridiculous costume. Hence why not being funny is a challenge.

When Ben and I were given this task we knew one of the first things to do was to pick a theme and a set of characters. Being a middle school teacher, Ben polled his class to see what they are into/what they find to be entertaining right now. The popular vote was Twilight and Degrassi. I don't have to explain why Ben and I weren't dressing up as a set of star-crossed vampire lovers, and I don't even know what that second thing is. Then my talented and slightly-more-funny-than-me husband said Rock Band is pretty big right now... and do you know what version of Rock Band came out just months ago? The Beatles. I can do Beatles...

There was the tiny insignificant detail that Ben knew little to nothing about The Beatles other than that there were four and they were kind of a big deal. On Friday night Ben and I had a little crash course- I will always love and respect The Beatles, but when I was in middle school I was relatively obsessed. I blame that all on my annoying shadow-like personality when it came to my relationship with this girl. So I pulled out my 12 Beatles albums and together Ben and I got in the spirit (I'll admit, it rekindled my love for them...)

So, our theme for the weekend was The Beatles. We aptly named the 4 "teams" that the kids would be a part of: I Want to Hold Your Hand, Octopus' Garden (because I think Ringo is grossly overlooked as a Beatle), Ticket to Ride, and (of course!) Eleanor Rigby.

Ben dressed up as John, Paul & Ringo (sorry George, there were only 3 games) and I just picked one girl to pose as for the weekend. That's right, Yoko Ono. It wasn't too tough- I just wore black clothing and walked around saying ridiculous things like "We are all butterflies, we are just inhibited by hatred"... and "Give Peace a Chance". Paul and Ringo kept calling me Wacko, and Loco instead of Yoko, and a few Beatles-saavy campers yelled at me for breaking up the band. One kid asked if we were Sonny and Cher... but all in all, it was a lot of fun.

You have to excuse the zero-budget camp prop closet clothes-- but, here we are!

i've been waiting all year

for Christmas. I love Christmas. Lately these things have gotten me into the Christmas spirit-

"When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about. So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told." Luke 2:15-20