My Life as a Grown Up

Saturday, July 25, 2009

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!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

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 :)

Friday, July 17, 2009

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 :)

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

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