Heart and Journey, Round 2

I surprised Crissy with tickets to the Heart and Journey concert for her birthday! Her friend Dana, Jarod, Crissy, and I all attended the concert in Indy and it was a blast! Here are a few pictures and videos from the evening.

Journey

The stage

me and Jarod

Crissy and Dana

Crissy and me

And now for a few videos of some classic live music!

Randoms

In this post, I will post some random pictures from August to update you on all that happened!

This is the group of lovely ladies from the Social Venture Institute that I planned. During the week we looked at different social ventures from a local to global level, different non-profits that worked to pull individuals out of poverty, and the business mechanics of forming a non-profit and how to run a successful business.

Volunteering at the Horizon House day shelter by sorting clothing in their donation center

The group hanging out down by the canal

A random thunder storm that flooded the parking lot at work...don't worry-my car is not in this picture!

The ICC Summer VISTA's. Over a 10-week period during the summer, I had the chance to help plan professional development trainings and workshops for the ICC Summer VISTA's. These individuals were focused on beginning community-campus relations that are being carried into the school year by either full time VISTAs or students working on the campuses. This group was awesome and it was so much fun getting to work with them and a great experience planning their trainings and giving presentations!

Conclusion to the ABC's

So, I have 2 posts that I did during the ABC's but here are my final thoughts on the conference...

Just a refresher-the ABC's are put on by the Break Away office (my dream job) who works solely with Alternative Break programs across teh country. They host 3 conferences each summer in different locations in conjunction with a college campus. Butler and IUPUI worked together to secure one of the conferences this summer, so I spent 10 days exploring and learning even more about the Alternative Break scene.

Having had a couple of months to think about what I learned, I'm excited to report that I know I am on the right path. For a long time now my passion has been serving others, and my favorite way to do this is through Alternative Breaks. I love how close groups get when they work together for a week. I love the impact a group can make in such a short time-not only on the community members where they are working but also on each other. In short, I could go on and on about how much I love Alternative Breaks and how I know I have found my place. I want to plan and organize these trips so that I can give back a small amount of what has been given to me through these programs over the last 4 years. I could seriously go on forever, but I will spare you all :) Here are some pictures from the amazing week!

Jimmy and William- 2 of the guys in my group

The Copper Bellied Water Snakes playing the slap game while waiting for the kids at Damar to come play kickball

Jack, Chris, Mallory, and Jarod after a site-leader training session

The Copper Bellied Water Snakes creating our team mission on the first night

A pretty picture of Indy while the site-leaders were exploring the city

Surprise, Bella is a boy!

This is kind of old news...but incase you haven't heard...I learned on Bella's second visit to the vet that she is, in fact, a he. He is perfectly healthy though and going to be a big kitty- 12-14 pounds minimum! Here are some pictures both new and a little older :)

Bella and Justin napping together

Bella and Remy (Liz's dog) hanging out

Posing for a picture on my bed


Jumping trying to get the tape measure that Carson was playing with-he has a killer jump!

Nap time :)

Amanda's Wedding

Way back in June my best friend got married! I was lucky to be part of the wedding and got to spend a fun weekend hanging out with the wedding party celebrating :) Here are some pictures:

Jake (the groom) and me

Brent, my walking buddy

Inside the biggest limo ever!


The beautiful bride :)

Early in the morning at the salon getting our hair done

It was a great weekend and I am so happy for Jake and Amanda! I'm a little bummed that they moved all the way to Missouri and we're no longer 30 minutes away from each other but I guess that's part of growing up. So, congrats to Jake and Amanda :)

Updates coming soon

I have oh so many updates for you all...here is a preview to hopefully keep you coming back even though I have let all of my faithful readers down with inconsistent posting this summer:

-Amanda's wedding pictures
-the rest of my thoughts on Break Away as well as pictures
-new house pictures
-Surprise, Bella is a boy :)
-Heart and Journey concert updates
-a retreat from work update

and I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff in this list so there may be a couple of surprise posts. Sooo hang in there, good things are coming soon!

A Moment to Brag...

Hey all! I'm going to take a quick minute to brag on the work that I have been involved with at ICC. We had a great article published on the Environmental Leadership Retreat we hosted in May as part of the College Guide in the Indy Star. Check it out here: http://www.indystar.com/article/99999999/CPUB03/90730061/Environment+serves+as+teacher+for+these+students

Volunteering in America

**I took this post from a fellow VISTA member...Indiana is doing alright for itself in this study!

Volunteering in America 2009," a study published by the Corporation for National and Community Service, gives an extremely comprehensive look at service and volunteerism in America now and in the past six years.On this interactive web page of the study, you can select different states and neighborhoods to see how they compare, read the overall conclusions and statistics of the study, and even create slideshows, utilize training tools, and customize the results to get the information you're most interested in (including volunteer activity, service hours, or volunteer demographics such as age and gender).

Overall, the study finds that despite the recession, volunteer rates have not changed significantly in the last year, but the way we serve has changed. The study found that less formal ways of serving a community has increased in popularity.

So, how does Indiana stack up? Indiana ranked 19th out of the 50 states and Wsahington, D.C. in percentage of residents volunteering (30.5%). In terms of number of hours served, our ranking rises to 6th in the nation with 45.8 hours per resident. This might be attributed to another finding of the study- residents living in mid-size communities, especially in the midwest, contribute more volunteer hours than residents living elsewhere.

Nationwide, women were found to be the most likely volunteers (working moms have the highest volunteer rates of all) and men are more likely to volunter in their community in less formal ways (not through an organization). Enjoy the feast of service knowledge!

The Most Powerful Generation in America

Hey all- I received this article from the Director of our office and found it very interesting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20090713/cm_huffpost/230311

Life has been keeping me very busy lately. The lease on our old house ended so we spent the weekend moving-with plenty of help from all of our families! The old house is empty and cleaned but we still have a lot of unpacking/decorating to do. Once we get it all put together I will put up some pictures so you can see our new house! It is beautiful :)

Sorry this is such a short post, plenty of updates coming in the near future.

National Swimming Championships

The National Swimming Championships were in Indianapolis during July! Liz and I went to watch her cousin, Christine Magnuson, race for her spot in the world championships. We saw some great races and it was my first official swim meet for professionals. We also got to see Michael Phelps just walking around the pool! As usual-here are some pictures :)

Christine on the winner's podium

Christine wins!

Christine (in the 2nd lane from the top)

Michael Phelps hanging out

Christine!

Liz and me with Cullen Jones' mom


Randall Bal, Rowdy Gaines, and Matt Grevers signing autographs

Liz and me being nerds and posing with Christine's picture on the door :)

Tyler Clary and Ryan Lochte racing and missing the world record by hundreths of a second! Notice how far ahead of the rest of the group they are-it was so exciting!

4th of July Weekend

Every year for the 4th of July we have a family reunion with all of our cousins. As usual, it was a great time and so good to see everyone :) Here are some pictures to provide you with a little insight to our Family Reunion

Part of our night show

Brooke's first 4th of July

Carson after a long day of lighting fireworks-I love the dirt smeared all over his face :)

A view of everyone shooting fireworks out of the shed. It rained this year so Uncle Paul set us up inside his new shed so we could stay dry.

My sisters being sad about the weather even though we are all grown ups now :)

We went to New Salem on Friday to look at the old Lincoln sites. Here are some pictures from that!

Carson and Brian playing

Mom and Dad's "senior picture"

This bee landed right as I was going to take the picture-perfect!

Picture break :)

Brooke and Baby all worn out from a big day

My favorite little boy :)

A video of Carson setting up a smoke bomb behind the fan-what a smart little guy!

Days 3-4

Hey all! So, the participants are here in all their glory :) We have 50 participants plus the 10 site leaders bringing the total to 60 people from around 45 colleges across the country. It has been so inspiring to learn about the other programs around the country. We had a strategic planning workshop today and I had the chance to think a lot about what I want to get out of the ICC Alternative Break program and just to think for my future involvement with alternative breaks. I feel as though my dreams of working with an Alternative Break program as a main part of my job is being reiterated this week. I love the atmosphere, I love the people you meet, I love the community interaction, and basically everything about it. It's such a neat experience to help facilitate others through the learning process and group dynamics.

As I mentioned before, the issue this week is the Invisibility of Disability. We go to our service sites for the first time tomorrow and I'm very excited. Today part of our challenge was to only use wheelchair accessible routes everywhere we went. I'm learning that Butler is not very accessible. I had thought about it before but very little... for example, the only entrance to the union (and cafeteria) is at the opposite end of the building from all of the academic buildings. Some of the buildings don't have very wide entrances and some of the older dorms (and the brand new apartments they built 3 years ago) do not have elevators or only have service elevators. It was an interesting experience and made me very aware of what is around here in the way of accessibility.

Alright, it's almost midnight and we've been up since 6:30 with this being our first break, so I am heading to bed... sleep isn't a priority this week so I need to get it while I can :)

Days 1-2 of the ABC's Conference

Hey all! This is a late night post and I should be sleeping now but I'm going to do a quick entry...

I am currently at the Break Away ABC's Conference-it is a national conference that teaches you about how to run successful Alternative Breaks. I am a site-leader which means I was here 2 days early for extra training, and it has been amazing. It always blows me away when you get a group of people together who share the same passion and desire to make positive change in the world. I am also realizing how much I still have to learn and am inspired and amazed by programs from other schools around the country- some programs are sending 20+ trips a break!!! There are 10 of us site leaders with so many different backgrounds and personalities. We have all agreed that we are a very odd group but somehow it works really well :) Tonight was "family bonding"- we went to dinner at La Jolla (a Mexican restaurant in Broad Ripple), walked around downtown for about 3 hours, then came back and played in the fountain on campus. The Break Away staff was meeting in a room that is on the first floor and full of windows so after playing in teh fountain, we all walked by teh window and pretended like there were stairs we were walking down :) We thought we were pretty funny! Then all of us played games until a little after 1. This is such a unique group-usually there are 1 or 2 people who you have to beg to play games or hang out, but everybody was just out in the lobby hanging out.

We got to go visit all of the service sites today and they are amazing. The issue this week is disabilities and my group will be working with Damar. We will be doing some maintenance/beautification such as striping the track so that when the kids practice for the special olympics, they learn to run in the lines and will perform better at competitions. It sounds like we will get a little bit of time to hang out with the kids each day which will be really fun. It was fascinating to learn about the state wide services that are offered at all 4 of our sites today and it was fun to get to show off Indy to the out of towners. There are several people in the group who have never been here before!

I'm really excited for the participants to get here tomorrow! It will be super busy getting everything ready in the morning and I know it will fly by. We will start workshops and basically hit the ground running bright and early tomorrow....which means I should head to bed! Have a great week and I'll check in again when I can :)

Leigh and Brad's Wedding

So...it is pretty obvious that I have been failing at this whole blog thing lately. I will do a post that I started way back when, then I will give you all a nice long update.

Leigh and Brad got married back in early July and it was such a fun wedding! Here are some photos to recap the day:

The happy couple on their wedding day

Amanda, Leigh, me, and Katharine at the reception

Jarod went to the wedding as my date :)

Parents :)

Leigh and me before the wedding

Jarod and me after the rehearsal dinner