Logan SAH 1

the SAH stands for Stay-at-Home, so you know.

This was the first week of the summer and it was a good warm up. SAH programs are great because the kids come at 9 am and go home at 9 pm and in between there we can do anything we so desire. There are 9 of us that will work the entire summer together as a team, Braden and I are the coordinators. Katie, Kylie, Britta, Jay, and Colby are Building Counselors (BCs). And Laurie and Eric are our Health Counselors. We all got to stay in Richard's Hall on USU campus, and it was a party. For some unknown reason they decided we needed the rooms the farthest away from either stairwell in the building and put us on the 3rd floor in the middle. We're pretty sure we were the only ones staying there the whole week. It sure got us our exercise though! I'm pretty sure Braden and I didn't do anything but help new counselors figure out their jobs the whole week. Check in was a breeze because we didn't have any housing to mess around with. We didn't have any sick kids because they either just went home or didn't come in the morning. The biggest problems we had were counselors who didn't know they had to do something or things that just come naturally with being somewhere for the first time. It was a dream. The kids were swell, the counselors were good given the situation, and no one died. Good week.
Our session director was Bro. Miller and his wife from somewhere in California. They were really fun to talk to and he was an excellent teacher. He had a lot of stories but they were always applicable. And many of them embarrassed his wife, which was really funny. He was totally clueless that it was something embarrassing until after when she would tell him. In his defense they were usually only mild, but she gets embarrassed easily. But that all just made it more fun for the rest of us. (That sounds mean doesn't it... but it's true) I think one of the best things of being a coordinator is getting to spend so much time with the session director and his wife. It's fun to see how different married couples interact and hear about some of the the lessons they've learned. (and hear all their funny/embarrassing stories = )
One of the best parts of the SAH is that after the kids leave we can all go out and get food. Dinner at EFY is really early. It's even earlier at the SAH sessions, 4:30-5:30... by the time the kids leave we're all starving, so usually we'd get whoever wanted to come and go get something to eat and hang out for a while. You would think that having the kids go home at 9 we would get more sleep. Ha. Wrong. I think I came out of that week just as tired as ever. But that's life at EFY and that's part of why we love it = )
Here is a picture of us eating greasy Mexican food on Thursday

 and one of us after cleaning the institute on Friday after the kids went home.

Once we finished cleaning we took advantage of the giant screen and projector and watched How to Train Your Dragon while we ate our nightly meal. Ah, good times. Braden says that if he ever does EFY again he's only doing SAH because they're so easy and fun. It's true.

EFY-ing

Currently I am sitting outside of my dorm building while the youth prepare their cheer and banner for games night. I was thinking about how exciting EFY is and how I have failed to share any of it with anyone who chooses to actually read my blog from time to time. I probably will only have a few minutes before I have to go set up, so I may not get very far, but I want to explain some of what my job is this summer.
  It's been really different being a coordinator. (that's my job) In short my companion, Braden, and I are the top people at our session of EFY each week. We do most of our work on the weekend and Monday. Saturday we get everything ready for the next week. Sunday we do counselor training and conduct the fireside. Monday we deal with all the upset parents because they think their kid isn't getting what they want. The rest of the week we conduct a meeting every other day and do whatever else people need done. The best part of the job is Wednesday at games night we get to be judges for the banner and cheer competition. We get to watch all of the cheers and judge all of them and the banners each group of youth prepare and pick 3 from each age group to do their cheers for everyone, and 3 winning banners from each age group as well. It's fun. Sometimes the cheers are really imaginative and funny. I feel bad sometimes that we can only pick 3 because there are others that are so funny and good. So being a coordinator is very different from any other EFY job I've had before. It's a lot fewer regular duties and a lot less teaching time, and a lot more time trying to find answers to questions I don't actually know the answer to. But it's been pretty good so far. We're working with a lot of new counselors so that's a fun adventure too. On one hand it's harder because they don't already know all the nuances of the job, but it's been really great for the most part. They are un-tainted by years of getting away with things and how it's been done in the past. Now we get to be the ones to mold them into the EFY counselors of our dreams. I hope we're doing an ok job.
 Anyway, time to go judge some cheers and banners! More to come about the adventures had here at EFY.

Ah, summer

Wow. What a spring. It was so full of surprises. And rain. It stayed downright chilly here until June. Really, I think June 1 was the first day with decent weather since finals week! I was so disappointed in the weather because it ruined all my plans for the month of May. They were to spend as much time outside doing fun things as possible. To fill my outdoors quota for the next 2 months when I'd be doing EFY. Now, I love EFY. I think it's a great job and I'm excited to get started again tomorrow. However it has a few drawbacks- no shorts, no time for hiking, etc. during the week. “Save it for Saturday” goes for hiking and swimming and many other things at EFY. So my plan was to get my fill of it in May then go happily (and tan-ly) into EFY come June. Well, I'm pretty sure there was still snow on most of the hikes up Logan Canyon until this week. No go. Oh well. I've been enjoying the wonderful weather this week, and I hope it keeps it up!

It's been especially nice to have the good weather while we've been cleaning the house and moving everything out. Most people think of fun and vacations and such when they think of summer break. I think of work and moving. That sounds really sad. But this year it's been a bit worse than usual. I have to think about work more than in the past since I'm a coordinator, and spent more time moving and cleaning and packing stuff than ever because everyone in the house was moving out. My roommate that owns the house, Becky, got engaged in December and got married to day to a man from Mississippi, Shane. So she's going to rent out the house as a whole and move to Mississippi. We didn't want to do that since 2 of the 3 of us would be gone all week to different camps, so we all just moved out. Kandi moved all her stuff back to her Mom's, and Dana moved in with our friend Alycen. I ended up with a unique situation. I have a friend, Cassie, who is doing EFY in Salt Lake & Orem all summer but was unable to sell her contract which goes through July. So she has offered to let me “apartment sit” since she doesn't have any roommates staying at the house right now. So I loaded all my stuff into the garage and now have somewhere to stay on the odd weekend I'm not housed by EFY. Lovely. It's really weird thinking that I won't be going home to Becky's house tonight. Oh well. Tomorrow I'll move into EFY and then things really get going. Ah, summer...

 (All my stuff excepting what I took to EFY stacked in Cassie's garage.)

P.S. This was intended to be published on Saturday, 6/4/11 but I didn't have internet access, so it didn't happen. Rough thing about blogs, you need internet...

Jane knows...

"What are men to rocks and mountains?"
You know, Jane Austen really hit it right on the nose.
I would just add a bit and then it would be perfect:
"What are men to rocks and mountains and warm summer days spent outside with a good book?"
Nothing Jane, nothing.


P.S. The book was "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society". Sounds strange, but is an excellent read. Excellent.

P.P.S. This was originally intended to be published on 6/2/11 but in the flurry of moving it didn't happen.