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

Jack's Mannequin and The Fray

Before I finish updates from the ABC's conference, I'm going to get caught up on teh rest of my blog... The Fray and Jack's Mannequin came to Indy and I couldn't turn down the opportunity to see them! I saw The Fray when they came to Butler my freshman year as an opening band-it was really neat to see them as the main band and to see how much the performance aspect of their show has improved. Lew and I went to the concert and it was absolutely gorgeous weather-I love outdoor summer concerts :) So, here are some pictures for your entertainment...

Jack's Mannequin- I love how passionate the band was about playing and performing! They were like this for every song!

The Fray covering Kanye West's song "Heartless"

Amanda's Wedding

On June 27, Amanda and Jake got married! I was a bridesmaid so I got to be there for all of the festivities :) The wedding was at Central Baptist and the reception was outside at Piper Glen. I think that Crissy and Brian may have lost their title of the hottest reception I've ever been to...it was very fun but definitely hot outside! Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

Me and my walking partner, Brent

Inside the biggest limo I have ever been in-22 people fit inside it!

Me and the groom, Jake with Julie making a really cute face in the background!

Alli and Anna, the musicians- they will be famous someday!

Amanda, the beautiful bride :)

Me and Amanda

Father's Day

I'm on a mission to be semi-caught up with my blog by the end of the evening...so be prepared for several posts! The first of these is wayyy back to Father's Day! Here are some pictures of my adventure home and the massive rain storm that made me wait in a Dairy Queen for 45 minutes until it passed....as always, the pictures are in reverse order!

The beautiful water lillies in Mom and Dad's water garden out back

Using the underwater feature on my camera when we went fishing- I love the little fish looking right at me :)

I love this picture-this is on Dad's fishing boat early in the morning

A great picture of Dad fishing



Sully hiding inside a paper bag waiting for me to walk into my room

Post rain when I was getting back on the road-I loved the light with the rain still on the windshield

This is the storm that I thought was going to make my car blow away...

As always, it was a wonderful trip home and I think it was a good Father's Day for the guys in the family! It was a relaxing weekend with fishing, the new Star Trek movie and just spending time together. Happy (super) belated Father's Day :)

Food for Thought

Here is a quick post with an intriguing blog entry. I get Google Alerts on AmeriCorps and this came up...it talks about the major flaws with our government's poverty assistance programs and something a lot of people don't think about or realize until they are in the situation or know people in the situation discussed here:
http://moneyapolis.blogspot.com/2009/07/living-with-hole-in-your-pocket.html

I have tons of pictures to update soon. It's been a crazy month and will be for a few more weeks. Thanks to all of the loyal readers out there who haven't given up on me :) I promise I will get you some updates soon!

The Meeting

Well, Bella (my kitten) and Remy (Lew's dog) had their first official meeting tonight and both of them came through in one piece! Bella had a test run in Illinois last weekend with Sully, Therese's cat. Sully was a champ and Bella showed just how fiesty she can be! There was a bit of hissing, a little barking, and a lot of running on both ends but they are now friends. When Remy was outside to go to the bathroom, Bella stood at the door and cried for her to come back inside and play :) She also had a very spiderman-like move at one point. She was chasing Remy (who is about 20 pounds bigger than she is) around the dining room table and jumped off the backside of the couch in the process! It was pretty funny. So yes, I am very happy to report that I think they are well on their way to being friends!

We had the Summer VISTA training today and it went really well! They are a fun group and it's good practice to give presentations to them. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with how much stuff I have to get done in the next week before the ABC's conference starts! I have my to-do list and will work really hard to cross off as much as I can and try to not get stressed about it. Stress doesn't do anything to make the situation better so really, what's the point?

I have several picture posts that I need to get up here soon- The Fray concert, Father's Day, Amanda's wedding, the 4th of July, the National swimming Championships in Indy and a few other fun days. So-be on the lookout in the next week or so for a massive amount of pictures to arrive! Thanks for sticking with me and being a faithful reader even when I am constantly late uploading pictures and stuff!