a full friday, a holiday party and a christmas pageant

This weekend was a wonderful holiday-activity-filled weekend! (was that a mouthful or what?) I came home to the Portland area for a nice and jam- packed 3 day weekend! If you were wondering, that's why it has taken me awhile to write a new post.

My Friday was filled with an early morning breakfast with my daddio, errands around town, lunch and shopping with my grandma, and a great evening with Mark and Jeff.
One of my favorite things about coming home are my early morning breakfasts with dad. Being the busy gal I am, and my dad being the busy guy he is, we don't often get a lot of big chunks of time quality time together, especially without interruptions. I cherish our early morning breakfasts filled with catch up and wisdom sharing conversations. We always go to the same restaurant, Millers Homestead, and eat yummy food and just enjoy each others company. This early morning rendezvous was no different and equally wonderful. After that, I did errands around town and then headed up to see my grandma. I always have a really relaxing and rejuvenating time with my grandma, and this Friday was no exception. One of my favorite things about my grandmother is her flexibility. She is so able to go with the flow, I don't need to worry about being five minutes late or staying an extra hour. She loves spending time with me and will do so on whatever pretense; this feeling is definitely mutual :)
After returning from my grandma's, I spent the evening with one my dearest friends from high school, Mark, and his good friend Jeff. I love friendships that are so easy to pick up where you left off, where there is no tension or pressure, and you can just be your ever changing, always the same self. Mark is one of those friends. He, along with a handful of other friends, played a really defining role in my high school experience. It was so nice to catch up with him and spend time with Jeff too. The three of us had wonderful conversation, relating to how facebook is changing our reality of friendship to how you know when someone is the one and many little interrupting anecdotes in between. We just sipped wine and enjoyed the conversation. Even when the power went out, we just continued talking. As the night went on, Mark started demonstrating his DJ skills for us, which was incredible and so much fun. Overall, it was just one of those sweet times spent with good friends and filled with good conversation and cheap wine.

Mark and Jeff a couple summers ago

Me and Mark the night I left for Gettysburg College before my freshman year--love this one :)

Saturday was another wonderful day. My mom and I had a really great time at coffee, just getting some time to really talk and catch up. I love getting to talk about how I am doing on the heart level, and hearing my mom's wisdom and advice. I also just have a really great time with her, and know how much she loves me too. Family is so great! After coffee we prepared for our annual holiday potluck party. We have been having this holiday shindig for as long as I can remember and I absolutely love it! Some years we are snowed in and only our neighbors can come, other years we have around 80 guests! It is always great to see old family friends, new neighbors, and everyone in between while eating the most delicious hodgepodge of food! I tended the fire and mingled away all evening long. These are perhaps two of my favorite things to do! After all the guests had left, my mom, wonderful neighbor Teryll and I plopped down and watched A White Christmas to top off a perfect day.

Sunday was the day that initially triggered my coming back to the Portland area. My brothers were performing in a Christmas Pageant at their church! And boy, did they do a great and adorable job! The pageant was how I would imagine any pageant by children who had limited practice would be--adorably wonderful and filled with pauses, nervous smiles and lots of laughs! It was absolutely wonderful getting to be there and support my brothers. Spending the afternoon with them afterwards was also pretty great :)
Needless to say, I am officially in the Christmas spirit! I sang along to Christmas carols most of my drive tonight, back up to Seattle.

Matt as Joseph

Andrew as Zechariah 

Sean as a wiseman

I love this shot!

I hope you all have a wonderful week, last couple days before Christmas! I know I will be busy finding presents for my brothers, wrapping gifts, baking cookies and hopefully finally getting my room clean! There will also be at least two more blog posts too, so stay tuned!

PS Did I mention I also got to decorate a few Christmas trees? :)

The Seattle Children's Museum!

Last week we took our Colorful Hands kiddos to the Seattle Children's Museum. They currently have a Clifford exhibit which was all I was really expecting, however their permenant exhibit is pretty unbelievable as well.
The Children's Museum is really beyond words. It is a child's paradise! Everything is hands on and meant for experiential learning. It is also child size. There is an exhibit filled with rooms dedicated to what homes look like all around the world, from kitchens demonstrating the type of food there is to bedroom and living rooms showing how different cultures live and spend time together. Another exhibit they have is a mini grocery store with plastic food and mini grocery carts so the kids can play pretend grocery shopping. There also have a fire truck and a theater and everything in between, all designed for the children to be able to touch and play with. There is even a whole room dedicated to art. This room had every type or art possible and was so kid friendly! The kids were able to play with clay, paint, draw, cut shapes and all that in between.

The kids really loved it! Even those children who are slow to become engaged and participate were active and enjoying themselves. We opened the field trip up to parents so that they could go with their children. We had nine children go total and six of these children were accompanied by their parents. It was such a fun outing!

Here are some more pictures. How cute are these kiddalinks!?

all lined up before we went into the museum!

cutest catch of the day I've ever seen :)

snack time!

art room!

Isaias enjoying the Clifford exhibit

Mr. Fireman!

just grocery shopping, you know?

If you are in Seattle and have a reason to take any kids to the Children's museum--do it! It was such a wonderful experience!

10 days til Christmas!

pen-pal relationship

hello everyone!
it's been a while and I am sorry to have not been more consistent in the last couple of days! It's been a busy time and blogging has not been on the forefront of my mind. Thank you for bearing with me :)

As you all know El Centro is an organization that I absolutely adore. I worked there in the summer of 2009 and I volunteered there for the second half of my Gettysburg College experience. I also developed wonderful relationships with the staff and the kids, which I continue to treasure so much. Being with New Futures now, I see a lot of similarities between the two organizations (though many differences as well!). Because I totally believe in writing and expressing oneself as vitally important to our human existence (you'll read more about this in an upcoming blog on poetry!) I thought that a pen-pal relationship between El Centro and New Futures would be wonderful. The kids I worked with at El Centro and am now with at New Futures are in the same age range and both populations deal with really similar issues and experiences. Staying in touch with my kiddos from El Centro was also appealing :) I suggested the idea to my supervisor and she loved it! I made all the necessary connections and El Centro was supportive too! It has been really exciting and build these relationships and connect our communities that are over 2,500 miles apart from each other.

We are in currently in our second round of exchanging letters. New Futures mailed off the first letters to El Centro and we have received responses. The 1st-3rd graders have all finished their letters and now the 4th-6th graders are finishing up theirs. By the end of this week, I hope they are on their way! The kids write about themselves, their interests and their experiences. It is really cool to see them become engaged in writing and interested in these people across the country. Of course, at times, the concept of letters going through the mail doesn't quite make sense, nor does the time it takes to get there and back. However, the kids have been overall excited and I would deem this project a success.

These kids are writing to...

...These kids

And back and forth and back and forth... I hope :)

Twelve days to Christmas! I'm home this weekend for my mom's annual holiday party and my little brothers' Christmas pageant! I am looking forward to the holiday activities :) What do your holiday plans look like?

PS Did you have a pen-pal growing up??

Eiffel Tower and the ring bearer

Have you heard of the website Overheard in New York before? This website is pretty hilarious. People post various things that they overhear while in New York. This website is pretty hilarious will all the random and weird things that are overheard... you never know when someone is overhearing the conversation at the wrong time! Make sure you check this website out if you're in need of some laughs!
One of my all time favorite Overheard in New  York posts is below... you'll see why I like it :) John posted this on my facebook wall over 2 years ago, and I dug it up to share with you all!


College girl #1: Which way to the Eiffel Tower?
Suit, puzzled, pointing East: That way?
College girl #2: How far is it?
Suit: ... About three thousand miles.
College girl #1: No! No! [Makes peak with fingertips of both hands.] The... Eiffel... Tower!
Suit: Yeah, that way about three thousand miles -- across the Atlantic Ocean -- in Paris.
College girl #2, also making peak with hands: No! No! It's a... It's a... The Empire State Building!
Suit, pointing at looming Empire State Building: The Empire State Building is right there.
College girl #2: You have to excuse us -- we're from Oregon.


What do you think?? Pretty great, right?! I bet you can guess why I like this one :) The truth of this Overheard in New York is what makes it so funny--I've totally had to make sure that I was saying Empire state building rather than the Eiffel Tower.
Another funny website is called My Life Is Average (MLIA). On this website people post funny but seemingly average things that happen in day to day life. One of my favorite MLIA is below. Believe it or not, I posted this one on John's facebook wall about a year ago, and that is how I dug it up for you, my wonderful blog readers :)


Today, I attended a co-worker's wedding. A little boy who looked about 6 was coming down the aisle and he took two steps, stopped, and turned to the crowd (alternating between bride's side and groom's side), put his hands up like claws, and roared. Step, step, ROAR, step step, ROAR, all the way down the aisle. The crowd was near tears from laughing so hard by the time he reached the pulpit. The little boy, however, was getting more and more distressed from all the laughing and was almost crying. When asked what he was doing, he sniffed and said, "I was being the Ring Bear." MLIA


I love this website, and often used it as a study break in college. It always gives me a good laugh. Especially when the posts are about children :) Make sure you check it out when you have time!


Another thing I'd like to report on is my blog! I started my blog October 24th, so about a month and a half ago. Let me tell you how it's going. First of all, I am LOVING it! I really appreciate the opportunity to write and reflect on my life. Secondly, I'll give you some stats. In the first month of All the Places I Call Home's existence there were 586 page views. Right now we are up to 921 page views. I have posted 31 entries (including this one!), averaging around 4 a week. I have received one comment and have four official followers. The viewership is largely from the United States with the second largest viewership hailing from Oman, third from Malaysia and many others from the United Kingdom to Germany to Ghana to Israel to Ireland to Japan to Mexico to Australia and a whole list of others. How cool is that? 


What I really want to say is a big THANK YOU!!! Thank you for reading my blog! If you are interested in commenting more and letting me know what you think, I would love to hear from you! Let me know what you like, what'd you'd like to see more of, etc. If you are interested in following my blog, I would be truly honored! To follow my blog, look to the right of the post, and there will be an icon that says follow. Click that and follow the instructions!


I hope that I have given you some good laughs tonight! Happy Wednesday everyone and thank you for reading! Tune in tomorrow for my weekly Thankful Thursday post! 

weekend highlights and urgent care!

Hello friends!

I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far. For some reason, today has really seemed like a Thursday. It's been a long week, but I'm not quite sure why. So, I was thinking that if I reflected on the weekend, perhaps I'd get a reality check, and realize that it is just Tuesday. 

Friday, I went to Burlesque (the movie). It has Christina Agulara and Cher in it, and I wasn't sure what to expect but, I was really impressed. I have my critiques of the movie, and perhaps just movies today in general (being overly sexualized or overly violent--the first in this case) but I would definitely recommend Burlesque and would love to see it again in the future. Perhaps the best part of going to the movie was that I went with Maia (remember my post about her and her family?) I just love hanging out with Maia and I got to see her a lot this weekend, which made it extra wonderful :)

beautiful Maia, all dressed up

Saturday, was the Oregon and Oregon State civil war football game. Sarah (one of my lovely roommates) and I went over to watch the game with Maia at her house. And then.... I had the best time helping Maia get ready for a school dance! Man oh man, high school dances are what I miss most from high school! (sometime I'll try to dig out old pictures and post them for laughs!) I did Maia's hair and make up and she looked gorgeous! She was smokin' in that little black dress! 

After seeing Maia off, Sarah and I headed back to our apartment where we unashamedly had a Twilight marathon. If it wasn't on your radar... Eclipse (the third twilight movie) was released on Saturday! I am a new Twilight convert so I hadn't seen the third movie yet. (don't judge.. I really love them, especially the third and forth book, you would too if you made it that far in the series)

Sunday was filled with a wonderful Church service. We sang some Christmas carols mixed in with other worship music and these lines in particular stood out to me.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay close by me forever and love me I pray. Bless all the dear children In Thy tender care and take us to heaven to live with Thee there

I was incredibly moved all throughout the service, and left feeling so thankful for the gift of Jesus. After church I headed over to the house of a family that I will start babysitting for tomorrow (yay! I am so excited!). I had a great time with their daughter and am excited to get to hang out with her more, she was so sweet and spunky!

Though I had a wonderful weekend, I had a persistent migraine which definitely tainted my weekend activities. There was much more down time than get up and go, which turned out to be pretty great anyways :) Yesterday, the lingering migraine was there, but an additional sinus pain began. By the end of my day, I knew I had a sinus infection but wasn't quite sure what to do about it, not needing to have medical care since I've been in Seattle. 

So after a few phone calls I found out that Group Health and Kaiser have a reciprocal relationship where they offer the same services and benefits to each others' members. The advice nurse suggested that I go in as soon as possible when I explained my symptoms. Group Health had an urgent care clinic open 24 hours just blocks from my house, which made getting to the clinic totally possible. I am so thankful for how simple it all was, and how easily it worked out! Thank God for making all the pieces come together. And my wonderful roommate Sarah, even came with me and kept me company in the waiting room!  

Here are some shots from my experience: 

proof I was admitted to urgent care!

my view from the urgent care room

I am feeling better today and know that soon my sinus pressure/headache mess will be all over soon. I am so thankful for how easily going to the clinic yesterday was and just how well it worked out. This is just another one of those examples for past Thankful Thursday post.

Happy mid week! Expect a funny blog post tomorrow :)

skate park

they were so cute with their helmets and knee pads!

This last Wednesday, I had one of the best days I've had yet with the 4th-6th graders at New Futures. I usually approach Monday and Wednesday afternoons with a bit more anticipation than other afternoons of the week. I've discovered that working with a large group of 4th-6th graders is just plain challenging. Even when a lesson has been successful, it doesn't seem like it has because of all that has surrounded it. I leave extra exhausted and beat. I really enjoy this age one on one or even in a group of three or so. But the energy these kiddos have together is just pretty intense. Needless to say, I find working with the 4th-6th graders generally much more challenging than the 1st-3rd graders.
This last Wednesday was pretty remarkable. We went on a field trip with the 4th-6th graders to a skate park. The kids were sooo excited. This field trip has been a request of there's and seeing it come to fruition was just wonderful for them.

love this genuine smile!

We were at the skatepark for about an hour an half and they kids had a blast. They were able to rent skateboards, scooters or rollerblades. Most of them started off with scooters (there was a limited supply of skateboards) and a few brave souls started with rollerblades. It was so fun to see them step up to the challenge. These kids were so brave trying new things.
For us adults it was pretty wonderful too. We couldn't actually pass into the skatepark itself, so we stood or sat just outside watching from a distance. The kids started off in the far corner, where we had no line of sight to what they were up to. It must of been so empowering for them to be over there, trying new things and figuring out what worked and what didn't without us adults reminding them to do this or that. It was also great for me :) Soon, the kids moved over to an area where we were just feet away. It felt pretty great that the kids wanted to be closer to us and show us what they were up to. I had fun taking pictures and also catching some videos that are just too funny!

The whole time there was super fun and entertaining! The kids left on cloud 9 and I left so happy to see this side of these guys. I hope we are able to go back to the skatepark again!

I hope you all had a great weekend :) Now, on to the week!

Thankful Thursday: where I am

It's Thankful Thursday time! I hope you have all had a wonderful week and are excited for the weekend ahead. When thinking about what I wanted to reflect on and share with you all today for Thankful Thursday, I had so many ideas. Most of them were vague and I wasn't sure how I could articulate them well. I realized that right now, what I am very thankful for is in fact, exactly where I am--where I am in life, location wise, and just plain and simple where I am.

God's blessings are so abundant, but often we don't recognize them, or make time to see them and give Him thanks. I have been so reminded by God's presence and perfection in my move to Seattle. His provision has been overflowing. Even in moments when I am completely overwhelmed, I feel like it is just a reminder from Jesus saying, "lean on me, I've got this." So today, I just want to express how thankful I am for where I am in my life and all the ways that God's perfect plan has me here.
Here are some examples:
When deciding where to go after graduation, I was looking in four main cities. I ended up having interviews in Seattle and New York, both were promising. After personal deliberation, prayer and discussion, I felt so at peace with the organization in Seattle. Now looking back on this decision, I can see the wisdom in it. I am so thankful to be here--closer to my brothers, in a completely new place, with no strings and no pressure.

Soon after my move to Seattle,  I landed on a church that I really love. (It is called Bethany Community Church.) This was a big priority and something that I was a bit worried about. God not only took care of it, He made all the paths there easy. I am so thankful for this.

Financially, God has provided where I have needed it, when I have needed it, and when I didn't see a solution in sight.

Having my family friends (check out this Thankful Thursday post to read more!) close by has been such a blessing. They have helped me have some sense of community and family along with providing me with meals, and whatever other support I need. (For example, they drove me to the light rail station so I could get to the airport last week when the roads were covered and snow and taking the bus was risky).

My roommates are very different from each other but are each such great people. I love our dynamics and our living situation. Moving in with complete strangers could have been a disaster, but it has been so pleasant, and we are all committed to keeping it this way. What a blessing!

Being able to see my family on a much more consistent basis has been so nice as well! I love being able to see them about once a month. Having the option, if I need to, or even just want the change of pace to be able to drive down for a weekend is incredibly liberating too.

I have been so blessed with keeping in good contact with some of my absolute best friends. It is great to have wonderful friends, and even better to be able to talk with them! Even those friends who have been a bit more challenging to keep in touch with, it is a great blessing to know that we can pick up right where we left off the next time we are able to chat.
My car situation was looking really rough right before I moved to Seattle. I ended up driving my mom's car to Seattle because my car wasn't reliable enough to drive the distance. She came by train several days later, helped me unpack and then drove her car home. A couple weeks later, after careful budgeting by my wonderful momma, she realized she could get a new car she was planning to get in a couple years and then give me her old car. For having no budget to think about a new car, this was perfect! I am so grateful :)

I even see back up plans in God's provision. This may sound silly, but I see how if one plan hadn't worked out, there would have been another plan in place to make sure I was taken care of. God is so good, not only that this is the case, but that He reveals this to us, and thus, shows us His love for us!

Being in a long distance relationship is tough, especially when you need to factor in vacation days when trying to see each other. Working with AmeriCorps gives me GREAT flexibility when it comes to days off. I need to be on track for 1700 hours of service, and if I am on track or serving extra hours, I can take days off. This makes trips to New York possible! God knew distance would be good and healthy, and that seeing each other was equally important!

I could go on and on and on. There are so many examples of how God has provided and made where I am such a wonderful place to be. I am just so thankful to have the freedom to try new things. I am thankful for the challenges and insight my AmeriCorps placement is giving me. I am thankful for being able to trust God completely even when I do not see the way. I am thankful for the joy and positive attitude God continues to give me along this journey and how He renews me each step of the way.

I am so happy to be where I am, and so thankful that I am here! It is an exciting, (sometimes/ often scary), and incredibly liberating and empowering time of life! Wooohooo to the post college, early career category!