Feast Your Eyes

If your name is Maike, stop reading this post, right now. ;)

Otherwise, you may continue and feast your eyes on glorious cheeses and lovely ladies.

A while back, Nicole was spending the night and the next day our cobbled lunch consisted of cheese and crackers, fruit, and bruschetta. We found ourselves discussing a mutual love for cheese, and then the idea came! We could host our own cheese party! We excitedly set out plans--cheese to have, people to invite, dresses to wear...

Getting ready for the cheese party.

She came over early to help clean up our patio, prep food, and set up our food table. We originally intended to have it outside on the back porch, but a rainy forecast and the prospect of mosquitoes kept us inside. She had also come over previous weekends to plan and go cheese shopping! (Pictures of which I will post in a separate post.)

We asked each guest to bring one unfamiliar cheese. Some people got a little excited and brought extra and between Nicole and I, we provided several different cheeses. All in all, we had seventeen different cheeses and only one duplicate. This included a number of semi-soft cheese (including three different types of Gouda), hard cheeses, bloomy cheeses, and blue cheeses. We had one Gorgonzola and a peaches and cream Stilton.

our table spread

The Duo Hostesses:

It was really nice to have Nicole alongside me in this, as it made it much much easier for me to relax and enjoy the party.

 Mom helped me print out "cheese evaluation" sheets so that everyone could rate the cheese based on appearance, aroma, texture, and flavor. It was really cool to see everyone's different taste preferences. Personally, I like creamy/smooth/buttery cheeses, so the Havarti, Fontina, and Goudas ranked pretty highly on my sheet. Nicole, on the other hand, really likes the hard/flaky/salty cheeses so the Asiago, Piave and Manchego ranked higher on her lists. The evaluation sheets opened up a nice dialogue of comparing and contrasting cheeses. Everyone liked the Havarti and the Peaches and Cream Stilton and virtually no one (except myself) liked the Gorgonzola. It became the "bad cheese." We would say, "Oh, Veronica's trying the Gorgonzola!" and everyone would stop and watch. I was the last to try the Gorgonzola, but I didn't think it was that bad. It was a little weird, but the flavor was...earthy and soft, almost damp. Maybe that doesn't appeal to everyone, but I thought it was alright. The other thing the evaluation sheets did, was they encouraged the guests to try every cheese and rate it. It created a safe and fun environment for trying new things--and as a lover of food, I'm all over that!

 One we finished tasting, we played card games for the rest of the night: Hearts, Bartog, Egyptian Rat Screw. Bartog is a new game we discovered in which you get to make up the rules! You start with a few basic rules and the winner of each round gets to add a new rule. Everyone caught on so well! We had loads of fun!

 Dad was our Master Photographer so we took lots of group pictures together!

 He even got a few candids:

Silly picture:

And last, but not least, we had to get a picture with Cam. He just wore a plain t-shirt, but we told him he couldn't have any cheese if he didn't abide by the dress code, so he threw on his favorite over-sized suit jacket and proceeded to enjoy cheese. But that wasn't enough. He had to take pictures with us too! (Which was a much bigger ordeal for him than it should've been.) But this picture is totally priceless.

How to have team spirit: Recreation!!

Recreation is sort of like the epitome of camp experiences. (Except not for me.) Personally, I'm not very fond of recreation--it's actually my least favorite part. I much prefer chillin or conversations over food in the cafeteria. However, this doesn't keep me from enjoying recreation!

At Hume, there are two teams: The Oohs versus the Ahhs.

I was an Ooh. And on each team there are 8 sub-teams which utitlize the main team name. So my subteam was the Oopsies. Cam was an Ahh and he was on the team La Cucarachas. So the big teams compete against each other, but the little teams also compete to get first. You can get points by winning in the games, team spirit, and memorizing Bible verses (my weapon of choice).

The first two days of Recreation are 4 Way Games, where groups of four teams face off in different games. Wednesday is relay games with all teams competing against one another. We have a "Night Rec" in which we play a giant game of Kajavi Can Can in the dark with awesome music and glowsticks everywhere. Then the final Rec is The Amazing Race! During the amazing race, you must complete twelve or so challenges all over campus. These challenges include such things as: a questionaire, doing the hokey pokey, group picture with mustaches, ten man pyramid, and hopscotch. Here's the catch: as you are traveling across campus, your team must be connected at all times (ie. holding hands or linked arms.) This is extremely difficult when, say, running uphill or up stairs. I think I would've died doing the amazing race if it weren't for my inhaler. (Who has been so helpful, it deserves a name. Suggestions anyone?)

Wednesday is also Super Spirit Day and this year the theme is Red/White/Blue (Probably in honor of fourth of July and the Olympics!) So everyone was dressed in fabulous red, white, and blue.

Jacque, Myself, Zoe, and Kazmira (my roomate)

This is Joe in his patriotic-ness. All the guys had crazy hats! One of the leaders even shaved his head!

The girls on Oopsies!

And this is our whole church group!

In case you missed it, here's a fast bullet point list on how to have team spirit:

• Smile.
• Make up amazing cheers everyone on your team can scream at the top of their lungs. (Bonus points if your cheer is so catchy, people will still be hearing it in their heads two years later!)
• Wear the craziest getup possible: Red White and Blue!
• Help pick up equipment after Rec.
• Bribe referees with sweets.

Hiking Up A Mountian

When my mom told me we were going hiking up "A Mountain" this morning, there was some confusion as to "Which mountain?"  But apparently, there is a mountain called "A-Mountain." And we went hiking up it!

And the reason why it is called "A mountain" is detailed in the above photograph: there is a giant plastic A- the university's logo- right at the top. It was pretty cool. The boys went up and climbed all over it. I stayed below and looked at all the graffiti messages written along the short little wall. Surprisingly, there were very few obscenities. I wrote a few snatches of messages here and there, perhaps to use in some poetry or story later.

It was a nice day out and the hike took about an hour. Then we all went to Stacey's house to hang out for lunch and swim and play with the cats. (I may not have mentioned before, but Stacey and her husband Bruce adopted Rooftop!!! ^-^ so we go over and visit lots.)

All in all, it was a good day.

Way off in the distance, you can see a little gazebo perched on that mountain. We went there. It was nice and cool and breezy under there.

Club Santa Rita!

Have I talked about our awesome youth ministry before? If you want to hear my shaky voice speak about it in front of our congregation, go here. If you'd rather see awesome pictures with awesomer commentary, read on!

I really wasn't sure about this ministry when it began. Not because I didn't like the Morgans, but because I loved Jacob so much and he played a very influential role in my life, and it was hard to "let go" of that relationship, as I saw it.

But I let go of my expectations and I was pleasantly surprised when I put effort into the ministry and allowed myself to enjoy being a part of it instead of sulking over the "loss" of Jacob. (Again, as I saw it. He is still around, just not as present in my life these days.)

So last semester, we talked a lot about love and how to love people. We defined it as four things: Go, See, Have Compassion, and Act. And Jesus did each of these things throughout his ministry on earth. We talked about loving people and seeing them the way God sees them and pursuing relationships withe people, not because we want to convert them. But because we love them. Because God loves them. And because as Christians, Christ's love ought to overflow out of us and into them. And it is a beautiful thing when that happens.

The Morgans encouraged us to use these four aspects of love in our relationships with people and work on building a few new relationships. So we did.

And then this semester, we're doing a crazy awesome event called Club Santa Rita! It is based a lot off of the young life model. We play games, sing songs, do funny skits, and in the end, there's a short little message.

But the whole thing is all about the relationships. It's all about loving our friends the way God loves them. And it's been a lot of fun.

 We've done three club nights so far! A disco night

 A regular club night.

 And Country/Hick night!

 Jake looked amazing in his country get-up! It was difficult to take him seriously!

We've been meeting on highschool campus and it has been LOADS of fun just being goofy with the kids. Everyone is a great sport! This week we played "Do you love your neighbor?" "Mad Gab" and we had a Cricket Spittin' competition.We do crazy stuff and it's awesome!

This whole ministry has really grown on me over the last year and I have learned a lot while participating in it. I am so grateful to everything the Morgans have done for us and all the effort they have put into it. Youth ministry is so cool!

I Love My Church Family!

Today was our Annual Celebration! (Which for those of you who don't know, commemorates the beginning of our church. We had a short church service, in which several people (including myself) gave testimonies about what God has been doing in the last year.

Then in the afternoon, we went out to the Puffers for a big party! And as I looked around, I struck me, not for the first time, how much I really love my church family.

Good old Knock out. The classic basketball game that guys get bored with while girls love it to death. The object is to stay in as long as possible. And you can get people out if you are behind them and you make your ball in the hoop before they do. (But of course, the person at the front of the line gets to make the first shot, before the second person can make theirs.)

 Lenea is a doll! She was praying for her dinner and it was so cute! My heart melted!

 The Elder Team!

 Jake keeping the little ones busy!

Praying over the elders..

All in all, it was a wonderful day full of fun and fellowship and LOTS of good food!

Live Blogging on Espresso!

9:14pm:  I don't know how many people (who actually look at my blog) are online right now, but I realize there are some things, I probably shouldn't have... Is Espresso coffees after 6 o'clock one of them? I don't think so!! (as my dad would say, "You're not qualified to make that diagnosis..")

In any case, I have decided that I like espresso coffees and Daddy made one for me tonight. It was sooo tasty!! I feel like a gorilla cheerleader!!! I want to chant "Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!!" While I prance around my mother in circles.. Haha! The thought of that makes me laugh so much!

9:17 pm. I want you all to know that I feel ALIIIIIIIIVVVVVEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Huah! Please excuse me while I paint you a picture showing the victory and energy I feel...

 9:23 pm. This did not quite turn out the way I intended it.. One reason is that it looks quite a bit more despairing.. I am not despairing.. I am a lion!! Roaring in triumphant energy. ROOARR!!!

Let me try this again on a piece of paper and with crayons and maybe it will turn out a little better. However, this may take longer as I have to take a picture of my drawing and upload it after I draw it...

9:33 pm. I am back!!! Behold!!

This, I believe, is an accurate crayon representation of what happens to me on Espresso... It's funny; I've had a few lattes the last couple weekends hanging out with friends, and I never felt like this... @_@

It is truly fantastic! I feel like frolicking through fields of flowers and dancing under rainbows and around the butcher block in our kitchen and doing cartwheels while whooping through lawns of green grass!!! I feel like a dog with it's head out the window...

Kinda like this:

But without the floppy tongue and all the slobber...

9:42 pm. I feel like this is the extent of all I have to say.. but I still have energy!!!  Like a pogo stick on steroids...

9:45 pm. Did you know that if you google "pogo stick on steroids," you actually get a result for a super powered pogo stick!! It's like pogo stick for adults... it says it works like a trampoline.. Cool? Yes..

 This teeny tiny picture doesn't do it justice... Look up the "Fly bar" if you are interested. Or just "pogo stick on steroids" would work too..

9:52 pm. You know, the thing about coffee, is that it goes right through you... It's kind of like tea... (Or tea is kinda like coffee? I'm not sure which one came first..) I'm also drinking an arnold palmer at the moment, so that oculd be contributing..

But I hate having to go to the bathroom every ten minutes or so.. I went to starbucks a few weeks ago and I got a tall vanilla latte (and tall is the smallest size they have!!) And then, I had to go to the bathroom like eight times over the next four hours!! What's up with that? I don't get it... It also didn't help that I was sucking down water like a camel.. (or a cactus) at IHOP afterward... I had like three glasses...

9:58 pm. So You know what I just realized? I was supposed to take a practice test for a computer exam tomorrow which I'm taking at 1 o'clock... But I didn't.. I am so ready for this test to be over.. How computers work can be a very dry subject... Especially if you have to read 200 pages or so of it... =P Anyways, the test is tomorrow.. I'm feeling relatively confident about it.. If confidence were a measure, I'd have half a measure and be looking at it as half full, not half empty.. if that makes any sense... Or is anything on here making sense? I don't even know...

10:08 pm. I just nicked some candy out of my super secret stash... (which everyone who comes to my house pretty much, knows that it lives in the jaws of my closet..) I wish I could say I nicked it out of my little brother's stash just because it would be really funny when he finally noticed (if he noticed at all, that is..)


10:11 pm. I just announced to my mom that I have been live blogging this whole time about Espresso jitters and she laughs and says, "No more espresso for yous!" And I start the "insane giggle" as I'm lowly feeding (or attempting to) a twizzler into my mouth like a log into a lumber mill.. She said that adding sugar on top of it, isn't helping.. But I don't mind. ^-^

10:21 pm. I believe you can do a lot of damage with these things... Phone, camera, crayons and twizzlers? Oh yeah!!

10:24 pm. A haiku for you:

Yummy Espresso
You do stranger things to me,
Than just plain sugar.

A dead man walking,
Prowling through the house at night,
But I feel ALIVE!!!


I decided that some of my best prose comes out at times like this: late at night, on caffeine and/or sugar, sometimes with friends around... On Friday night, Nicole spent the night to write our brains out together and we ended up staying awake until around 5 in the morning... But I think one of the best scenes in my whole novel came out about 4 am or so..

I wrote this amazing cannibal scene in which my main villain cuts off the MC's (main character's) finger and cooks it up like a sausage and then eats it in front of him!!! The scene was totally epic. I read it out loud to Nicole and we were scaring ourselves with it.. It was so... gruesome.. But it was awesome. Best scene in the whole book so far... Which is almost finished. I will be sad when this one is over. I've had a lot of fun with it..


The only thing with late night prose is that as you get later into the night, even if the prose gets better, the spelling gets worse.. Fun stuff though.

10:34 pm. Whelp, I think this is enough crazy weirdness for tonight.. I'm gonna sign off here for now.. I apologize that I neglected to break up some of the text with more pictures... But you can only pirate so many off of Google before you start to feel bad... In any case.. This is all for now.. Chow.

bathroom tally: 345

Youth Camping Trip!!!

It's the post you've been waiting for: the youth camping trip!!! Sorry I haven't been on top of things. THIS IS PHOTO HEAVY. PREPARE YOUR EYES FOR AWESOMENESS.

First night: Nicole, Melissa, and I playing hearts.

It soon became evident that it was a looong hike to the bathrooms so the girls decided to go together on Saturday morning to wake ourselves up. Later, we found out that there was a bathroom much closer. (Though you had to walk uphill.) And I was so thankful I brought hand sanitizer.

After breakfast (apple bread and cereal) we took a hike (longer than the hike to the bathrooms) in the mountains. We probably hiked for about two hours and were all very hungry when we got back to the campsite. But the views were amazing!!

Rest break! This is: Nicole's head, Alex, Christian, Cam, Kerri, Kevin, someone else, and Logan.

And that's Daniel, who didn't want his picture taken.

About halfway through the hike, We found these massive rocks, which we climbed and you could look out and see all the mountains. It was so beautiful! I think you could even see a bit of Tucson (or maybe Oro Valley, not sure which) in the distance.

Me and Christian! ^-^ All along the way, I picked the pretty flowers I saw and poked them into my braid. Sadly, they wilted by the end of the hike, but while they lasted, they made me happy! I love flowers!

Nicole!

We took a (mostly) group picture on the top of the mountain. Not everyone was in it, but it's still a great picture! And we have few group pictures of us as it is.

After we got back to the campsite, we made sandwiches and had free time. We played a few card games and then the boys started playing poker. When they started to take their shirts off, the girls decided to hike in the nearby woods. We ended up sitting by a little crick and singing worship songs with the guitar. (The guitar wasn't singing though. We were singing and I was playing the guitar!)

For dinner, we roasted hotdogs on sticks. I pioneered the stick part as I was very hungry and the stick I found... well, it had character. It was a bit skinny and wobbly at the end, but I made it work. (All the while, burning the end of the stick. When I took the hotdog off, my stick was all charred except where the hotdog had been.) However, the stick ended up roasting several more hotdogs!

Jacob, Daniel, Cam, and Alex. I'm really not sure what they're doing.

We got a huge game of hell (or "nertz" if you prefer) going, and Jacob was trying to distract us. Nertz is a fast game similar to Solitaire with multiple decks of cards (approx. one per person.) It gets harder the more people are playing. We played with six.

I'm a cowgirl at heart! Yeehaw! I tried on Jacob's hat for size.

More Nertz-playing.

 Jacob, myself, and Christian! The flash on Jacob's camera was so bright! I was squinting in almost all of his pictures.

The boys did crazy things at night after the girls went to bed. One of these things included the decimation of our ladle and can opener. o_O Jacob replaced them for us though so it was all good. When it comes to this sort of stuff though, you're better off not knowing what happened.

In the morning (Sunday), we packed up the tents and had a little worship/devotion time with Jacob. It was really nice. And Cam helped douse the fire before we left.

 

And that concludes our (awesome) youth camping trip!

All in all, it was a great experience. I loved spending the weekend on the mountain with my friends. We talked about doing hard things and how God has been working in our lives. And we also did a lot of goofing around. 

Jacob also announced to us that he would be stepping down from youth ministry and another couple from our church would be taking it over. The transition has already happened and while it's been difficult for some of us, it has also been a good thing. Sometimes, God uses change in big ways and we just need to accept it. (Which is always the hardest part.) Youth ministry isn't the same without Jacob, but I've come to terms with it. And it's okay.