Sister's Wedding

My sister and bobby cutting the cake!

My Sister is now a married woman! I can't believe it. We have definitely had a role reversal these past couple of years. She didn't think she would ever get married, and if she did she said it wouldn't be until she was at least 30. I always thought I'd be married younger, but now I feel like 29 or 30 would be the perfect age! It's pretty funny how that happened. The day of Meg's wedding was magical, there was something in the air, it was truly a fairy tale. She was the most stunning bride I have EVER seen! The day was definitely a celebration and HUGE party! No one held back. When it came time to dance, my entire family was out there cutting up a rug. We all let loose.....FOR SURE! My family definitely likes dancing, we might not be the best dancers in the world.....but we have NO problem going crazy, dancing like no one's watching. My dad did a dance off with one of my brother's friends doing the "ostrich"....here are some pics of that....

The Ostrich was definitely one of the highlights of my night!

Here's my roommate, me, and brianna on the dance floor. This picture is so funny because we ALL look SO cheesy.....cheesy poses, cheesy smiles.....all around cheesiness.

Weekend Part 3 - San Jose to Santa Cruz to San Francisco

So, while driving on the freeway down to San Jose, I suddenly hear loud screaming and honking. I look to the side of my car and there's a girl half way out of the window (with a cowboy hat on) waving her arms, yelling my name, and trying to get my attention. I realize that it's one of my good friends from school who I had lost touch with and didn't have her cell phone number, and she didn't have my new number either. Weirdly enough, I had been thinking about her a ton lately wanting to try and connect. So, I roll down my window and scream my cell phone number out to her. She calls me, and it turns out she's working in the bay area, and we're going out to dinner this week! So great!
After that occurrence, I decided to call one of my friends who was up visiting a camp we both worked at in to Santa Cruz mountains. I knew that she would be up visiting and that she was moving this week to Colorado, so I at least wanted to say my good byes over the phone. Turns out, she was still up at camp (which is pretty close to san Jose), and she convinced me that I should DEFINITELY come up to camp on my way back to SF.
After picking up my wallet, I made my way up the mountain to Ponderosa Lodge. As I drove the familiar drive, I felt a lot of different emotions rushing at me. I guess it was simply the feeling of driving back to something familiar and dear. Kind of like visiting my old college town, or driving home to visit family. Except with Pondy it's a little bit different. Pondy is a place where God has arrived in my heart in ways that have shaped me, changed me, and made me who I am. My two summers at Pondy God has done some serious unveiling of my eyes, breaking of my heart, working at me, softening, telling me that it's okay to stop trying, freeing me, opening me up to teach me how to dance before Him. To me, Pondy is a place of sacred grounds where God is present, and shows up to pursue His people, to love them and love them until it hurts sometimes.
I arrived at Pondy and to put it shortly, was blessed. Was blessed by the amazing people and friends that I worked with in past summers. Was blessed by seeing two of the girls I counseled last summer. Was blessed by the worship, the speaker, and the conversation. Mostly just blessed to feel God richly in my heart, strongly but patiently reminding me, "I'm here, and I still love you." The drive back to SF was good, and now I'm back to work, but I feel refreshed, I feel different today for some reason. God did something in me yesterday, and he used my forgetfulness of losing my wallet to get me to this place.

Weekend Part 2 - San Fran to San Jose

Sunday morning I woke up early, brought my laundry to the laundry mat, and used the last quarters from my jar to start the wash. Then I walked to a nearby cafe to grab a coffee........and realized when it came time to pay that I had forgotten my wallet in my friend's car (who lives in south san Jose)!!! I was embarrassed and felt like an idiot! So, I don't get to drink my coffee (which is tragedy), then I walk back to the laundry mat and these weird guys were taking my clothes out of the wash (so they could put their stuff in) and were touching my underwear and all those embarrassing items of clothing you wouldn't want strangers handling, and I realize I don't have money for more quarters to dry my clothes. So, I grab all my clothes and hang them all over my house to try and dry them out. Then I started to get ready for church, and go to put my contacts in and my eyes start stinging like CRAZY, and I can't see. I realized that while traveling my face soap had spilt into my contact case and my contacts had been soaking in soapy water all night. (greeeaaat). So, it took me a good hour of laying down with a wet cloth on my eyes until my vision was fully restored. By then there was no way I was going to make it to church. I knew I was going to have to drive down to SJ to get my wallet cause I needed to buy food and everything else. So, basically the day started out pretty crappy and my 2 big things I wanted to do (go to church and laundry) were not accomplished. My roommate came home in the midst of all of this and knew something was wrong so I told her what was going on, and she stopped and insisted on praying with me before I left. My roommate is a good friend. I needed to just sit, be still, and let her pray for me. My heart was brought to a place of peace. She prayed that God would have a purpose in sending me to San Jose to get my wallet. I thought that was an awesome perspective to view God in the midst of the details of the monotonous hour drive there and hour drive back just to pick up my wallet, and he definitely was....

Weekend Part 1 - Russian River to SB

This last weekend was filled with lots of traveling and different people and places. On Friday I drove up to the Russian river for a "Mandatory canoe trip" (how great is that?) with my department. 35 of us set out with 2 to a boat and paddled down the river all day. The next morning I woke up at 5:30 am to drive down for a friend's wedding in Santa Barbara. I met up with 2 of my friends in San Jose and we car pooled down together. The wedding was beautiful! It was really good to see a lot of friends I haven't seen in awhile, and to get the chance to catch up. My friends and I decided just to drive back the same night. Sooo, I got home at 2 am, and went to bed.