So, I got home from church and thought "What should I make for dinner?" Unable to readily think of anything to make I promptly laid down and took a long nap.
Upon waking I thought "Hmm. What could I make for dinner?" and then went upstairs and played Parcheesi with my roommates.
After the game I finally entered my kitchen and organized a dinner.
It's moments like this I wish I had gone to culinary school. I didn't have much of anything that would make anything I recognized. So I just started cooking things that were sitting in or around our fridge...
brown some hamburger...
chop some carrots and potatoes...
um... boil some carrots and potatoes...
ah, umm... drain them and pour BBQ sauce all over them.
Add browned hamburger...
Eat.
It's not to bad considering. I think I'll have to devote a little more time to my cooking skills in the future though... If only I had access to the Food Network again! I would cook a 30 minute meal with Rachel Ray every day!
Or... I guess I could just make sure I have in my kitchen the ingredients in order to make things I know how to make. That would work too... I suppose...
Oh well. Good thing I love carrots and potatoes!
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Rest of the Summer (Abridged Version)
So the plan was to write about the mountains of fun and awesomeness that happened each week at EFY this summer, but now the summer has past and I have only taken the time to detail the awesomeness of 2 weeks... Well, that's how it goes. Now for the abridged version of my summer.(It may be abridged, but this is still going to be a mammoth of a post...)
We had one more week in Logan, in which not very much happened that I distinctly remember. We only had 2 hospital visits for fairly minor things, it was terrific! I don't remember if I mentioned about all the sick people we had during Logan 1, besides the ones who went to the hospital. We had at least 10 kids get sick during the week and spend one or more days sleeping in their room. That first overnight week was just so special. But the problems seem to have used themselves all up and Logan 2 was just swell. That week during registration Braden, my co, and our health counselors came up with a plot to sneak out and go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter 7 part 2. I volunteered to remain behind in case something did happen and we began plotting. I told them we needed a name for our secret operation and Braden said "Operation Robot Unicorn Attack". Turns out this is an actual, really simple, ridiculous, fun, stupid, time wasting, addicting game. This game went on to take over our office for a week, then we all got better. But we even got our session director playing it during down time. We had a high scorer list on the board that we kept updated.
During the course of the week I happened to discover the way into the attic of the institute that had a door to the roof of the institute. It was one of those ceiling drop down ladder doors and the first time we tried it I was lifted up by 2 guys on my team and pulled the little ring they had to open it with. As they were lowering me I had the thought that we didn't actually know what kind of ladder it was, and I had this image of a sliding ladder coming flying out and whacking me in the face. So my finger of my right hand was stuck in the ring to open it, I was being lowered down by these boys, and I was trying to keep my face from being smashed in by a possibly sliding ladder... I wish I had a picture of it. It would be really funny. But the ladder unfolds and no damage was done. During the week we even got to use it once cuz someone lost their volleyball on the roof. The best part though is that when we told our session director about it he wanted to come up with us and see the roof! on Friday after all the kids had left we took him up there, and he took lots of pictures of our team. = ) An example is given below.
If this seems really weird go check out http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com that website provided the theme for most of our 'family pictures' throughout the summer...
So, Logan was good, but it was time to move south. We started in SLC with a bang and had, again, 4 medical trips that week. #1. broken wire on braces. Had to call a bundle of orthodontists to find one that could fix it immediately and for free... these requirements resulted in them driving clear to the south side of SLC for it to get fixed. #2. At games night a boy with a heart condition pushes himself to hard and his heart beats like it's going to explode. Eric and Braden rush him to the hospital. #3 During pizza night (same night as games) a boy who had been sick gets worse and they think he might have appendicitis and Laurie and Jay rush him to the hospital. (I spend the evening dealing with all the fun of stupid counselors letting their kids run around like loonies by myself cuz half of my team is at the hospital. It was an eventful evening. Boys in togas, sick kids... such fun) #4 was much less impressive and I can't even remember what it was. Maybe it was pink eye kid who we had to take to get diagnosed and get meds, but it turns out he just had really bad allergies in his eyes and it wasn't contagious... hmm...
Besides the hospital visits and the toga boys I had to get mad at during pizza night (this was our wild week...) we had troubles all week with counselors letting their kids do whatever they wanted. We literally had kids climbing the buildings. And on Friday the counselors allowed their kids to go running through the sprinklers and do a 200+ person bridge jump (We cross the Legacy Bridge on our route to and from the institute from the dorms. It was built for the Olympics, and it's cool. If you get about 30 or so people to jump in unison on it once you can feel it wiggle and it's cool. You get 200+ kids jumping on it a lot and you get really concerned, scared drivers going underneath it.) On the one hand (the 'I am the one that's in charge...' one) it was really bad and we were super frustrated with the counselors and the way things went. On the other hand, it was really really funny. One counselor sent us a video of the madness of all the kids running through the sprinklers (in an effort to alert us to the chaos) and I have to admit I laughed a lot at it. But it certainly was our wild week of the summer. It was craziness all week long.
On a good note, we did have tons of fun babysitting the session director's daughter a lot. The rule is that if the kid is under 2 (I think) they can bring their child with them to EFY. I actually had this session director last year in Ephriam when their baby girl was something like 3 weeks old. Her birthday was on the Saturday of this session, so that was fun.
Then we got a week off where I went to Bear Lake for the 4th of July with Alycen and Kandi and played in the lake in wet suits and little 2 man sail boats,
and then hung out the rest of the week and slept on Ashely or Alycen's couch all week... yay.
When we got back to EFY things kinda normal-ed out. We didn't have very many more hospital visits or crazy kids. We impressed on the counselors the importance of being responsible adults and things improved. The last 3 weeks were pretty laid back and we just got to enjoy being at EFY, without all the emergencies and chaos. The 3rd week in SLC one of the girl BCs got the start of pneumonia, but insisted that she was on meds and would be better by Tuesday. So we didn't hire a different BC and I did her duties anticipating her return... She didn't return till the next week. But it was fine that we didn't hire a different person. I had so much fun being a BC and everyone else on the team helped when my BC and coordinator duties overlapped. It was one of the best weeks.
On the day that HP7.2 came out Braden and the HCs came up with a sneaky plan to escape without anyone knowing they were going to the movie. They all left their dorms at different times and 2 of them went and waited at predetermined locations on campus. The 3rd then drove the car to each location and picked them up. We thought we were so funny and sneaky. When we finally revealed to the BCs that they went we were expecting some sort of reaction, but they didn't really care. So much for all the sneaky-ness...
Um, what else interesting happened... I had a dad call and yell at me because his son didn't make it into the variety show (the son refused to change the song he was playing on the guitar, but the words to the song have profanity. EFY rules don't allow this in the variety show so he didn't make it in) for about 15 minutes straight (I mean, he talked for 15 minutes straight, I couldn't get 3 words in) until I broke and told him he was offensive and (in not so few a words) a big jerk and the session director took the phone away... That was special.
I'm sure there's more interesting stories, I just can't think of them right now so y'all are spared.
Finally, I ended up working in Sacramento my last week, as a counselor. I was excited to see the coordinators out there who I'm really good friends with. I was not excited to drive to California. But that's where the job was, I had 3 other girls carpooling with me, so I borrowed Mom and Dad's van and we drove to Sacramento. It was great. The kids that week were so nice and great and funny. It's so nice to get to just focus on a group of the youth instead of everything. We walked all over campus, crammed ourselves into the tiny-est institute building you've ever seen, and waited in the longest meal lines you've ever seen but the cafeteria staff were the nicest of anywhere I've ever been. They were so cool. Because of these things our schedule was always in flux and we never quite knew when anything was or where, but it was kinda fun that way. It was more of an adventure = )
At the end of the week we slept most of Saturday and then drove down to San Francisco to eat dinner and see some sights with some other counselors. When we set the GPS for San Fran we said 'Yes, let's avoid toll roads'. Turns out that was a bad choice. We discovered, after about 2 hours in the car driving to who-knows-where, that you can't actually get to San Fran in a reasonable time without going over toll roads... Ha. So we changed the GPS and got there an hour later. We ate at the sourdough bread place, went to Ghiradelli square and enjoyed wandering around Pier 39. It was a fun evening, and I learned that even in the summer, take a jacket to SF. I thankfully had mine in the car, but the other girls all bought new SF sweatshirts. Actually, they all bought matching SF sweatshirts (mostly on accident) and 3 of the boys bought the same pattern but in t-shirt form completely by coincidence. So half our group was walking around with matching sweatshirts/shirts.
Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at 10 (yes, they didn't have a 9 am ward, how weird) and then drove home. We listened to an audio book that one of the girls had on her ipod the whole trip, but the problem was it wasn't the only audiobook, and the tracks weren't labeled in any particular manner so the whole trip home my job, as the one in shotgun, was to find the next chapter of the book. At one point we skipped 10 chapters of the book without realizing it, but we didn't really miss anything so we just kept going from there. As we neared Utah we almost met with catastrophe. I couldn't find the rest of the book! We had about 5 or 6 chapters left and I couldn't find the next track! It was very distressing. But at last the track was found and we continued on. As we neared SLC we realized we wouldn't have time to finish the book so we skipped to the second to last chapter. Then as we got into SLC we realized we had to drop off the girl who owned the ipod first! We skipped to the last chapter and made her parents wait while we finished it. Ha. We had to know what happened with the main character and his girl! Anyway, it was a fun trip, but I don't think I'll be driving anywhere far away for a while. That was enough to satisfy for a while.
Well, there you go. The abridged (yes, it was abridged) history of my EFY summer. Whew! If you just read all of that you deserve a pat on the back and a cookie. Congratulations! Thanks for reading!
We had one more week in Logan, in which not very much happened that I distinctly remember. We only had 2 hospital visits for fairly minor things, it was terrific! I don't remember if I mentioned about all the sick people we had during Logan 1, besides the ones who went to the hospital. We had at least 10 kids get sick during the week and spend one or more days sleeping in their room. That first overnight week was just so special. But the problems seem to have used themselves all up and Logan 2 was just swell. That week during registration Braden, my co, and our health counselors came up with a plot to sneak out and go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter 7 part 2. I volunteered to remain behind in case something did happen and we began plotting. I told them we needed a name for our secret operation and Braden said "Operation Robot Unicorn Attack". Turns out this is an actual, really simple, ridiculous, fun, stupid, time wasting, addicting game. This game went on to take over our office for a week, then we all got better. But we even got our session director playing it during down time. We had a high scorer list on the board that we kept updated.
During the course of the week I happened to discover the way into the attic of the institute that had a door to the roof of the institute. It was one of those ceiling drop down ladder doors and the first time we tried it I was lifted up by 2 guys on my team and pulled the little ring they had to open it with. As they were lowering me I had the thought that we didn't actually know what kind of ladder it was, and I had this image of a sliding ladder coming flying out and whacking me in the face. So my finger of my right hand was stuck in the ring to open it, I was being lowered down by these boys, and I was trying to keep my face from being smashed in by a possibly sliding ladder... I wish I had a picture of it. It would be really funny. But the ladder unfolds and no damage was done. During the week we even got to use it once cuz someone lost their volleyball on the roof. The best part though is that when we told our session director about it he wanted to come up with us and see the roof! on Friday after all the kids had left we took him up there, and he took lots of pictures of our team. = ) An example is given below.
So, Logan was good, but it was time to move south. We started in SLC with a bang and had, again, 4 medical trips that week. #1. broken wire on braces. Had to call a bundle of orthodontists to find one that could fix it immediately and for free... these requirements resulted in them driving clear to the south side of SLC for it to get fixed. #2. At games night a boy with a heart condition pushes himself to hard and his heart beats like it's going to explode. Eric and Braden rush him to the hospital. #3 During pizza night (same night as games) a boy who had been sick gets worse and they think he might have appendicitis and Laurie and Jay rush him to the hospital. (I spend the evening dealing with all the fun of stupid counselors letting their kids run around like loonies by myself cuz half of my team is at the hospital. It was an eventful evening. Boys in togas, sick kids... such fun) #4 was much less impressive and I can't even remember what it was. Maybe it was pink eye kid who we had to take to get diagnosed and get meds, but it turns out he just had really bad allergies in his eyes and it wasn't contagious... hmm...
Besides the hospital visits and the toga boys I had to get mad at during pizza night (this was our wild week...) we had troubles all week with counselors letting their kids do whatever they wanted. We literally had kids climbing the buildings. And on Friday the counselors allowed their kids to go running through the sprinklers and do a 200+ person bridge jump (We cross the Legacy Bridge on our route to and from the institute from the dorms. It was built for the Olympics, and it's cool. If you get about 30 or so people to jump in unison on it once you can feel it wiggle and it's cool. You get 200+ kids jumping on it a lot and you get really concerned, scared drivers going underneath it.) On the one hand (the 'I am the one that's in charge...' one) it was really bad and we were super frustrated with the counselors and the way things went. On the other hand, it was really really funny. One counselor sent us a video of the madness of all the kids running through the sprinklers (in an effort to alert us to the chaos) and I have to admit I laughed a lot at it. But it certainly was our wild week of the summer. It was craziness all week long.
On a good note, we did have tons of fun babysitting the session director's daughter a lot. The rule is that if the kid is under 2 (I think) they can bring their child with them to EFY. I actually had this session director last year in Ephriam when their baby girl was something like 3 weeks old. Her birthday was on the Saturday of this session, so that was fun.
Then we got a week off where I went to Bear Lake for the 4th of July with Alycen and Kandi and played in the lake in wet suits and little 2 man sail boats,
When we got back to EFY things kinda normal-ed out. We didn't have very many more hospital visits or crazy kids. We impressed on the counselors the importance of being responsible adults and things improved. The last 3 weeks were pretty laid back and we just got to enjoy being at EFY, without all the emergencies and chaos. The 3rd week in SLC one of the girl BCs got the start of pneumonia, but insisted that she was on meds and would be better by Tuesday. So we didn't hire a different BC and I did her duties anticipating her return... She didn't return till the next week. But it was fine that we didn't hire a different person. I had so much fun being a BC and everyone else on the team helped when my BC and coordinator duties overlapped. It was one of the best weeks.
On the day that HP7.2 came out Braden and the HCs came up with a sneaky plan to escape without anyone knowing they were going to the movie. They all left their dorms at different times and 2 of them went and waited at predetermined locations on campus. The 3rd then drove the car to each location and picked them up. We thought we were so funny and sneaky. When we finally revealed to the BCs that they went we were expecting some sort of reaction, but they didn't really care. So much for all the sneaky-ness...
Um, what else interesting happened... I had a dad call and yell at me because his son didn't make it into the variety show (the son refused to change the song he was playing on the guitar, but the words to the song have profanity. EFY rules don't allow this in the variety show so he didn't make it in) for about 15 minutes straight (I mean, he talked for 15 minutes straight, I couldn't get 3 words in) until I broke and told him he was offensive and (in not so few a words) a big jerk and the session director took the phone away... That was special.
I'm sure there's more interesting stories, I just can't think of them right now so y'all are spared.
Finally, I ended up working in Sacramento my last week, as a counselor. I was excited to see the coordinators out there who I'm really good friends with. I was not excited to drive to California. But that's where the job was, I had 3 other girls carpooling with me, so I borrowed Mom and Dad's van and we drove to Sacramento. It was great. The kids that week were so nice and great and funny. It's so nice to get to just focus on a group of the youth instead of everything. We walked all over campus, crammed ourselves into the tiny-est institute building you've ever seen, and waited in the longest meal lines you've ever seen but the cafeteria staff were the nicest of anywhere I've ever been. They were so cool. Because of these things our schedule was always in flux and we never quite knew when anything was or where, but it was kinda fun that way. It was more of an adventure = )
At the end of the week we slept most of Saturday and then drove down to San Francisco to eat dinner and see some sights with some other counselors. When we set the GPS for San Fran we said 'Yes, let's avoid toll roads'. Turns out that was a bad choice. We discovered, after about 2 hours in the car driving to who-knows-where, that you can't actually get to San Fran in a reasonable time without going over toll roads... Ha. So we changed the GPS and got there an hour later. We ate at the sourdough bread place, went to Ghiradelli square and enjoyed wandering around Pier 39. It was a fun evening, and I learned that even in the summer, take a jacket to SF. I thankfully had mine in the car, but the other girls all bought new SF sweatshirts. Actually, they all bought matching SF sweatshirts (mostly on accident) and 3 of the boys bought the same pattern but in t-shirt form completely by coincidence. So half our group was walking around with matching sweatshirts/shirts.
Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at 10 (yes, they didn't have a 9 am ward, how weird) and then drove home. We listened to an audio book that one of the girls had on her ipod the whole trip, but the problem was it wasn't the only audiobook, and the tracks weren't labeled in any particular manner so the whole trip home my job, as the one in shotgun, was to find the next chapter of the book. At one point we skipped 10 chapters of the book without realizing it, but we didn't really miss anything so we just kept going from there. As we neared Utah we almost met with catastrophe. I couldn't find the rest of the book! We had about 5 or 6 chapters left and I couldn't find the next track! It was very distressing. But at last the track was found and we continued on. As we neared SLC we realized we wouldn't have time to finish the book so we skipped to the second to last chapter. Then as we got into SLC we realized we had to drop off the girl who owned the ipod first! We skipped to the last chapter and made her parents wait while we finished it. Ha. We had to know what happened with the main character and his girl! Anyway, it was a fun trip, but I don't think I'll be driving anywhere far away for a while. That was enough to satisfy for a while.
Well, there you go. The abridged (yes, it was abridged) history of my EFY summer. Whew! If you just read all of that you deserve a pat on the back and a cookie. Congratulations! Thanks for reading!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Logan 1
We only had one week of SAH EFY as a team, so we got to start our over night sessions in Logan the next week. The big thing for coordinators each week is check in, and we were expecting a mess. Usually we'd take some time on Saturday night and go through the housing lists and try to head off housing problems before the kids arrived and made it all dramatic and complicated. We were expecting a mess because we didn't get the session info with enough time to do that. We were expecting a lot of upset parents and whiny kids. It didn't happen. It was magic. The only people who had housing requests were people who didn't want to room with their friend. One was really funny. A couple moms came up and asked us if they could move their sons into a different group. You see they were, by chance (really), in the same group as their other friends, which their moms weren't happy about. They wanted them to branch out and meet new people and not spend the whole week with their regular friends. But we couldn't let the boys know that their moms were asking us to move them. So we got to pretend that some other kids needed to change and so they had to switch rooms. It was really fun. I figured it was too easy and so something was going to happen during the week. I was right. It was a pretty special week. We had a crazy girl who (probably) wasn't taking her medications and was freaking out her whole group. We ended up putting her into a group with her sister and having the counselor watch her take her meds each day.
We also had a lot of medical problems. We ended up going to the hospital 4 times that week.
1. Complex migraine- they are commonly mistaken as mini-strokes. That was exciting because her aunt and uncle came and went back in the back with her, so Laruie the HC and I got to sit in the waiting room for some sort of word on what was going on. While we were there we got to meet some really lovely people. A 5-ish year old kid, that I really couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl, wrecked his/her bike and screwed up his/her wrist. The parents had a super adorable baby just learning to walk. There was our more intimate friend who was waiting to get stitches in her hand after she put a hole in it with a nail that was sticking out of an ottoman she was moving. Her husband and kids were at some relative's house, so it was her night to kick back, relax, and read a book... Then there was the amazing elderly gentleman who rolled his car down an embankment in the rain earlier that day, probably a good 5-7 hours before, and had only come to the ER because his wife wanted him just to make sure that his neck was fine. We had a lot of good conversation while we waited till late into the evening. Finally her aunt was able to sign for her and we came back to campus. She got better that night and returned the next day.
2. A girl with diabetes had extremely high blood sugar and couldn't get it down. I didn't actually take this one to the hospital, but from what I hear it was quite a miracle that she wasn't in a more serious situation. It had all the signs of being very bad and leading to a lot of time spent in the hospital, but she was just fine after they finally got her blood sugar down.
3. Thursday morning a girl got out of bed and went to walk and proceeded to fall flat on her face. She had a boot on her left leg because she had popped a tendon in her left ankle. She'd just gotten off crutches and was rejoicing in her freedom. Naturally her other leg was taking quite the beating because it was taking all the stress off the other one. She felt the pain behind her right knee, but Eric couldn't find any problem with it, off to the hospital we go. We had previously gone to the IHC hospital, but we weren't hurrying anywhere, so we went looking for an insta-care cuz we thought there was one at the specialty hospital. There wasn't one, but we went to the specialty hospital anyway. It was so great. They got us in right away. Our nurse, Eli, was great, he got Eric and I juice to drink while we waited. It was pretty fun. It turns out she did the exact same thing to her right leg that she did to her left and had to get a boot and crutches. Yes, she had a boot on both legs. She was a really good sport about it. She had fun getting pushed around in a wheel chair and dancing on crutches.
4. Friday a girl slipped off a curb and sprained her ankle. Eric confirmed that it was only sprained, but her mom wanted us to take her in to get it checked out. So at way to late at night we got to take her to the ER and waited around to find out that it was indeed only a sprain and get her some crutches.
Whew! It was quite the busy week. I don't really have a picture to post from this week. Sorry. It was fun being back to the over night sessions and all the fun that comes along with that (pizza!). Or session director was Bro. Anderson. He was definitely a teacher. He made teacher jokes. He did a "Tangled taking it home" lesson at the end of the week. Tangled really does work quite well as an comparison to our being children of God and our purpose on earth. It's fun to watch that movie trying to see how many gospel analogies you can find. Try it. = )
We also had a lot of medical problems. We ended up going to the hospital 4 times that week.
1. Complex migraine- they are commonly mistaken as mini-strokes. That was exciting because her aunt and uncle came and went back in the back with her, so Laruie the HC and I got to sit in the waiting room for some sort of word on what was going on. While we were there we got to meet some really lovely people. A 5-ish year old kid, that I really couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl, wrecked his/her bike and screwed up his/her wrist. The parents had a super adorable baby just learning to walk. There was our more intimate friend who was waiting to get stitches in her hand after she put a hole in it with a nail that was sticking out of an ottoman she was moving. Her husband and kids were at some relative's house, so it was her night to kick back, relax, and read a book... Then there was the amazing elderly gentleman who rolled his car down an embankment in the rain earlier that day, probably a good 5-7 hours before, and had only come to the ER because his wife wanted him just to make sure that his neck was fine. We had a lot of good conversation while we waited till late into the evening. Finally her aunt was able to sign for her and we came back to campus. She got better that night and returned the next day.
2. A girl with diabetes had extremely high blood sugar and couldn't get it down. I didn't actually take this one to the hospital, but from what I hear it was quite a miracle that she wasn't in a more serious situation. It had all the signs of being very bad and leading to a lot of time spent in the hospital, but she was just fine after they finally got her blood sugar down.
3. Thursday morning a girl got out of bed and went to walk and proceeded to fall flat on her face. She had a boot on her left leg because she had popped a tendon in her left ankle. She'd just gotten off crutches and was rejoicing in her freedom. Naturally her other leg was taking quite the beating because it was taking all the stress off the other one. She felt the pain behind her right knee, but Eric couldn't find any problem with it, off to the hospital we go. We had previously gone to the IHC hospital, but we weren't hurrying anywhere, so we went looking for an insta-care cuz we thought there was one at the specialty hospital. There wasn't one, but we went to the specialty hospital anyway. It was so great. They got us in right away. Our nurse, Eli, was great, he got Eric and I juice to drink while we waited. It was pretty fun. It turns out she did the exact same thing to her right leg that she did to her left and had to get a boot and crutches. Yes, she had a boot on both legs. She was a really good sport about it. She had fun getting pushed around in a wheel chair and dancing on crutches.
4. Friday a girl slipped off a curb and sprained her ankle. Eric confirmed that it was only sprained, but her mom wanted us to take her in to get it checked out. So at way to late at night we got to take her to the ER and waited around to find out that it was indeed only a sprain and get her some crutches.
Whew! It was quite the busy week. I don't really have a picture to post from this week. Sorry. It was fun being back to the over night sessions and all the fun that comes along with that (pizza!). Or session director was Bro. Anderson. He was definitely a teacher. He made teacher jokes. He did a "Tangled taking it home" lesson at the end of the week. Tangled really does work quite well as an comparison to our being children of God and our purpose on earth. It's fun to watch that movie trying to see how many gospel analogies you can find. Try it. = )
Thursday, June 30, 2011
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.
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
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
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.
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.
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