Mission Journey Part 2

Remember when I said I would post the pictures tomorrow? That was July 9th :) Oops. To say this summer has been busy for me would probably be an understatement.

When we got there we would stretch, pray, and do our silly banana dance. :)

Front of the house. the dark blue was the original trim color.

End of Banana Dance :)

Carrying ladders.

 We had (and needed) LOTS of ladders. We tried to plan strategically so there wouldn't be a bottleneck of people waiting on the ladders but we weren't always successful. The house was really tall and 6th graders (and me!) aren't! We made it work and several of the kids overcame their fear of heights. So proud of them!

Lots and lots of paint!!!

Scraping and painting the porch.

Working on the left side of the house.

Blake holding the 2 story ladder to make sure Olivia didn't fall off as she painted the trim. Like his socks? :)

I spent most of my time on this wall on the right side of the house. Scraping it and painting it with 2-3 coats!

Back of the house (Grayson replacing rotted wood)

Amy aka the scraping queen!

Blake again making sure the kids don't fall. It wasn't the most exciting job but someone has to do it! Always time for safety! :)

Back of the house

Full view of the back of the house

You can see the original aqua trim (yes, not all the trim matched when we first got to the house)

Ok, so I gave my camera to one of the kids to take pictures of me! She had lots of fun taking pictures :) The next set are taken by her.

Sweet girls!

ME!

They loved Blake's socks. :)

Front of the house is almost done!

The kids had to get high on the ladder (and they LOVED it) :)

Cleaning up! All done!

My handsome hubby!

Dead tree on the side of the house

The backside of the tree. Super cool deep hollow hole

Dead tree from far away

Back of the house done!

Back of the house done!

Great Wall of Connie done!

The Beavers!

At the end of the day I somehow ended up with a blue streak in my hair...

The whole group with Ernest.

Some of the girls turned the mustang into a unicorn and added a smiley face :)

Us with all of our kiddos

I am so thankful that Blake took off work so we could have this experience together. We were able to see different parts of each other and learned a lot (especially about dealing with 6th graders!) I am very blessed in many parts of my life and many of those things are not in my control. I was very blessed to be born to the parents I was and able to grow up with many advantages. Not everyone gets that chance. I have worked hard to get to where I am but many people have to work harder than I did to reach the same place. It might seem like a small thing, painting a house, but with an organization like Generation One working in the Third Ward, hopefully that one generation will be able to break their cycle of poverty.

So I have made a blogging to do list of things I still need to blog about! I really want to be better so I will keep trying. Thanks for hanging in there with me and being patient with my crazy hectic life!

Mission Journey

So I forget if I have mentioned this or not on here but Blake and I both serve with junior high students at our church. We have done it for the last 2 years and started because we wanted to serve together. I thought that junior high kids would be a good place to start because we have the time (no kids, etc.) and we are closeish to their age.

I started with 6th grade girls and he started with 7th grade boys. Now my girls are going into 8th grade and his boys are going to be freshman. We have really enjoyed our time with our kids and have learned A LOT. We have learned about ourselves, working with teenagers, and most of all, our Lord. The plan is to continue with these kids until they graduate high school. It has been really amazing getting to know these awesome kids and continuing to build relationships with them and watching them grow and mature.

Wow, that was a long intro! I doubt you would expect anything less from me! :) So last year I was able to go on a mission trip with my girls and other girls and boys their age to downtown Houston. It was a really neat experience, both helping the students learn and also learning myself. So this summer, I made sure I had time to go on a mission trip and encouraged Blake to take off work to come also. It was a sacrifice since Blake only gets 2 weeks vacation but I am glad he came and in the end, he was too. We were hoping to be able to work with one of the age groups we normally work with but we were needed with the 6th graders (going to 7th next year). We accepted the challenge and it actually worked out better for the both of us. The 6th graders go out for the day and come home at night while the 7th and 8th grade trips stay overnight. I am currently working on grad school so it was nice to be able to come home and work from home instead of a bunk bed like last year. :)

So for the last 5 days we have been going down to the 3rd Ward in Houston and working with an organization called Generation One.

They are an amazing organization that works in the 3rd Ward building relationships and helping the next generation realize their true potential. I could go on and on but you can check out their website linked above if you want to know more.

So we would meet at the church at 8:00, eat breakfast, make our lunch, clean up, and have our devotional time.

Making sandwiches

Eating breakfast

Devo time

Around 9:15 we would load the van, and yes, I was the driver of the 12 passenger van. :)

My copilot :)

The van!

We would get to Generation One around 10sh, tell them we were there and then head to our site.

Our fearless leader Stephen checking on stuff before we go to the site. I like that you can see me in the mirror. :) I'm so artistic!

The kids like to say that I was a "nervous driver". I did try very carefully and did hit the curb a couple times but I promise I wasn't that bad! This is me being a "nervous driver" :)

I promise the kids are acting!

So we would work from 10-12 eat from 12-1 and then work from 1-3. The first day we worked on painting a house. There had been other groups there before us so we were working on finishing up their work. We also spent the morning of day 2 there and then moved to Ernest's house the afternoon of Day 2. Ernest was a very nice man in his 60s? We worked on scraping paint off his house and then repainted the entire outside of his house. It was a pretty tall house and unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of before. There were 9 kids and 6 adults and we spent about 14 hours on his house.

And this is where I need to end this post! I will hopefully be able to post the rest of the pictures tomorrow!

Summer Slimdown

So this post will need to be short and sweet because I am way overwhelmed with grad work.


I (unfortunately) have gained weight ever since I started teaching. Yes I do walk around the classroom a lot and am on my feet, but I am a stress eater. Kids are frustrating me, grab some Hershey Kisses. Too much to do, too little time, here come the Cheez-its. Not enough time or energy to cook, hello Whataburger. On top of that, I rarely have time or energy to work out in the evening and I am NOT a morning person. I know these are a bunch of excuses but they are my excuses.

I also have migraines (I forget if I have mentioned this on my blog or not). Part of my migraine triggers is that I need to eat enough food and eat every few hours. If I go a long time without eating or don't eat enough, I get a migraine.

Some more background info. I am 5'2'' on a good day. This means I should weigh anywhere from 102-130 (according to some website). In high school, I weighed anywhere from 105-110 (thank you high school metabolism and dancing all the time). In college, I was anywhere from 110-120. Not bad I think. Then I started working :) My heaviest I think has been 135 (I am not sharing this info so people can be like, 135, that's nothing, I weigh such and such. I am doing it so I can document my (hopeful) weight loss. Also remember, I am 5'2''! 135 on me probably doesn't look the same on someone who is taller). The summer I got married, I was able to get down to 118 for my wedding. I am now back in the 130-135 range. The past 2 years have been VERY stressful (and not because of my marriage, because of my work). Last summer I tried working out but I was taking my first grad classes (excuses again, I know).

This summer, I am determined to lose weight! I am still taking 9 hours of grad school (more on that in a later post) but I feel like I have a better handle on then. Plus I'm tired of the excuses and it is now or never. A couple years of go, I downloaded an app called My Fitness Pal. It tracks your calories and then subtracts how much you work out. I have it set for me to lose 1 pound a week. I would like to lose more but I figure I'll start slow. I have been doing it for a whopping 3 days now. :) It has been interesting to track my calories and really think about the food I am putting into my body. My workout has consisted of Just Dance 2. :) I don't know exactly how many calories I burn but there someone who weighs about the same as me put on a calorie counter and burned 190 calories in 30 minutes! This game is a huge plus for me because I am not good a traditional workouts unless I have a trainer kicking my butt. When I am dancing, it is fun and I forget that I am working out. Just Dance 2 really gets your heart beating and is exhausting.

So speaking of, I am off to work out. This week will probably be the easiest because it is my only week this summer where I have nothing to do besides grad work. Hopefully I will start seeing results soon!

Disney World Part 4

So it's Saturday afternoon and I have a few choices, I could be cleaning, working out, or blogging. And you all know what I decided :)

So Monday, we went to Hollywood Studios (formally MGM). I remember this park having some fun rides but easily doable in a day. Of course, one of my favorite rides, Star Tours was closed at the time. :(

I was bummed :(

So of course the first thing we did was get our fastpass for Tower of Terror. Then we started visiting some of the less trafficked rides. The Great Movie Ride takes you through different scenes from famous movies with robots. It was ok, but definitely more fun for kids. Then we saw the film that was about the life of Walt Disney. While we were waiting for the film to start, we saw some relics and replicas of Walt Disney and had our first beaver sighting in this park.

After lunch, we went on Tower of Terror. I will admit that I have a love/hate relationship with this ride. I really enjoy the story and the detailed settings, but I'm not a huge fan of big drops. This ride however is different every time you ride it and I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. Speaking of detailed setting, check out this ceiling... just takes you into a whole other world.

We then rode Rockin Roller Coaster which was not there on my previous trips. I didn't know much about the ride except that it involved Aerosmith. After riding it, I can see what all the hype is about. It was AWESOME! You are pretty much completely in the dark with glow in the dark signs every now and then. LOVED IT!

The lines at the good lines were long and all the fastpasses were used up so we walked around for a bit.

Love Castle!

and of course I had to take this picture :)

We did stand in line for the Backlot Tour. Again, it was ok but hasn't changed much since the last time I saw it. The best part was the Villains display at the end. Fun with pictures :)

I was trying to look evil.

Enchanted!

While at DisneyWorld, I wanted pictures with some of the characters but I did not want to stand in the LONG lines of kids. So as we were walking around, we saw some of the army men from Toy Story and I saw my chance! Oh goodness, this is what happened...

Normal picture

Then he starts following me (Blake of course documents instead of coming to my rescue.)

Trying to nicely have him back off.

After he got his hug, he was happy to go on his way.

Since it was getting later and we had done most of the rides, we decided to go ahead and stand in line for Tower (it really only took 30 minutes) and then we were going to stand in line for Rockin Roller Coaster but it was temporary closed. That is never a good sign for a roller-coaster so we decided to go over to the Toy Story Midway Mania. We hadn't visited it earlier because I had read mixed reviews and the wait time was always about 70 minutes. I guess the wait time should have told me it was a good ride but we decided to wait in line in the hopes that by the time we got out, the Rockin Roller Coaster would be fixed. Good decision! It was so much fun. It was an arcade style game and unfortunately this time, Blake beat me. But we both won the same prize. Second beaver sighting!

When we went back to Rockin' Roller Coaster, it was fixed and we went into the single riders line so we could ride faster. There was an interesting story about some of the people we were in line with but I don't feel comfortable sharing that on the internet for their own privacy so I will tell you in person if you ask. One last random picture.

Yellow Ranger for the win!