Crimson Bridge Missions Banquet

When I went home I got to go to *Crimson Bridge's dessert auction. This is their third annual banquet where they raise money for all the different places they are going. There is a team going to Kazakstan, China, Aberdeen, India and I think there is one more place. But I love it becuase I got to see everyone I have grown up with and have worked with in the church. My sister Kathryn might be going to Kazakstan so my family went to support her and all the other familes that we know. It was a huge success I think. A lot of people came and they had a ton of stuff you could bid on. There was a silent auction first where I really wanted to get a beautiful tea for one set hand painted and brought back from Romania, but no. One of my best friends mom wanted it too and at the last second she beat me. I was not very happy but that's ok, I will live. There was a boat load of desserts of all different kinds and flavors. My mom made some yummy swan cream puffs that I think went for 40 something. There was a nice painting that Madison Allen did that went for $180 and his dad sold a painting for $300. So yeah, it was a good night. The team also did a declaration stomp for everyone which was pretty cool. Its so cool to see everyone dress up in different outfits from all over. Don't worry, Anthony really is nice even if he doesn't want to smile for me.

*Crimson Bridge is a go network team of Kings Kids which is with YWAM. The goal of Crimson Bridge is to use familes in minstry to reach the lost around the world and at home. I have been in Crimson Bridge for 10 years since it began. CB has been something that has changed my life and has played a huge role in who I am today.

Kids Movie Night!!

Friday night I had a kids movie night where we watched Everyone's Hero. It was pretty fun especially since it was Nancy's birthday. I had plenty of snacks for the kids, we had fruit snacks, popcorn, carrot sticks, mints, and strawberry cupcakes. We had everyone decorate their own cupcakes which of course got the floor really dirty. I have no idea how sprinkles got all the way over on the other side of the room. I brought a ton of pillows so everyone could have something to cuddle with. We played four corners afterwards followed by a couple games of hangman. The kids seemed to have fun. After cleaning up I drove home to discover that Alison was already home!! She had surprised my family by coming home Thursday night. So I finally have my little sister home! Yeah!!! We are finally all back together again!

Oh and here is a group photo of our last day of spirit week: Dress Like Your Grandparents Day!

Crazy Hair Day and Superhero Day and Dress Like Your Grandparents Day

Oh yes, that's right. That would be me with my hair fro'd out. Didn't think it could get that bad huh? Well it was crazy hair day in my Wednesday night class, so I had to do something. Julianna helped tease it, and put hairspray in, and some hair glue. The whole thing took about 15minutes!! But the kids loved it! I brought all my products just in case they were inspired to do something more to their hair. Somone of course brought color hairspray so that was passed around too. I got a few weird looks but it sure was fun! Unfortunately I had to be video taped for a children's worker promotion video that is going to be played on Sunday... in front of the whole church. Yep, so I will officially look like a freak to the church. I am sure they will all want me to be the chidlren's director once they see the video.
This week is spirit week in GTC, today was Superhero Day. Me, MaryBeth, and Carissa all dressed up as the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. We pretty much just wanted to be pirates. The best part was driving around town and going through a couple of drive-thrus and of course walking across the road to and from the church. Here's MaryBeth driving around looking like a fierce pirate. I tried to do stubble on my face but it did not turn out very well. Ryan said I looked like I had chicken pox, Carl said it looked like acne, Jonathan told me it was scurvy, and Lindsey thought it was a rash. And people wonder why I dont' like make-up... Carl was Syndrome from the Incredibles, Kristina made up her own superhero and was Maxinator, I don't know what Brent is other than a cowboy, Jay is representing the armed forces, Ryan is Clark Kent, Kelsey is Indiana Jones, Brandon is a working man, Kim and Kacie are Baristas, Brittany is a lifegaurd, Ashley is an on-call hero, and Jesse is a GTC intern.
Tomorrow is Dress Like Your Grandparents Day. I forgot to get some authentic clothes from my grandma so I kind of had to throw soemthing together. I will try and put a photo up tomorrow of that day.

Running Aloha Chapel

Last night a bunch of us girls got together to spend the night at Dustin and Jamie's house since they were gone. Well at oh, about 11:20 we get a call from Carissa saying that we forgot we were supposed to do chapel the next morning at Aloha Christian School in Oregon and they needed someone to do the chapel. So me, Kim and Kacie got up at 4:15 in the AM, met at 5:30 and started our trek down to Oregon. And let me tell you, we had a blast!! The chapel was for prek-6th grade and had to be about 50min. long. We started out with a sort of scavenger hunt game, and then Kacie and Kim did a little talk show. It was soo cute, the kids were interviewed on their views about obedience. They did a great job. After the talk show I brought the word out of Jonah. I read the story of Jonah and then talked about how we need to be quick to obey and have a cheerful attitude when we do. I love telling stories. It was overall a great chapel, a little wierd with just the three of us, usually the whole team comes down, but I thought it was fun. Afterwards we went to Jamba Juice because... we could... It was a great day! Now I get to go to Crazy hair day at my Wednesday night class. I am so blessed. This is the sweet life.
Stay tuned for more blogs cause I got some fun events coming up!

Random Ramblings

So Happy Momie's Day!! I was going to dedicate this blog to my mom and maybe write a poem or something sweet like that, but I am not a poet, and believe me I do know it. So I am going to just put up a bunch of random thoughts.
First of all I would like to show a picture from where I spent my mother's day since I did not get to go home to see my momie. After lunch at the Willies we saw a couple of deer grazing in the field looking so serene. Deer are kind of cool, after you see them a couple of times they kind of loose their excitement though so yeah...
Another random rambling, my roomate Julianna's brother, Jonathan (not to be confused with Johnathan WIllie) is now in a sweet band called Aardvark Arsenal. You should check it out at their MySpace (link below.) Jonathan is clutch and I don't think the band would be the same with out him. Even if they do shows while he's gone...
Rambling #3 Um... I am not quite sure what I was going put except that I set a mouse trap in our laundry room and I have been waiting to catch the dumb mouse, but it hasn't taken the bait. The trap is actually this box that the mouse goes into but can't get out. I guess its supposed to be more humane, but Julianna just got it so that we could see the mouse run around in the box since the box is clear. There seriously must be an army of mice in our house because I hear them running around at night. I really want to post some pictures of it when I get the little intruder. So keep checking. Oh I will have some other stuff to post by the end of this week too. I leave in a week for Jamaica!!! Wahooo!!!
So this is the end of my ramblings, I hope you enjoyed them. Too bad if you didn't.
Happy Mother's Day Momie!! You are so cool. I wish I could rhyme.

Megan has a great fall...

So I thought it would be fun to meet a few girls from my Wednesday night class at this playground just to hang out. Well we were trying to flip all the way around on the bars. I can do a flip off, but I was trying to do this new one called the Spiderman. It is basically the same thing except you grab hold of the bar from between your legs instead of on the outside of your legs. I did it once slow and did just fine, but then I tried to go fast. Yeah, that did not work out very well. I landed straight on my head. Oh yes, I fell off the bars and onto my head. Sam busted up laughing and honestly I don't blame her. If I saw a 23 year old biff it on their head, I would probably laugh too. Just thinking about it makes me kinda chuckle. Plus, she did tell me right before "I would n't do that, you'll probably fall on your head." So she had a right to laugh at me. The other girls were in shock. I had to just sit there awhile to regain my composure. Amazingly I am fine. I actually walked Sam home after that and I managed to not pass out on the side of the road! As you can see it is not that bad, just red and sore. Julianna is a little worried about me though. She wants to take me to the hospital to have my head checked. I don't know if she is genuinly concerned or if she has just been looking for months for a reason to take me in to have my head checked. You never know. And on top of all this I got a fatty blister that popped on that last flip! Ouch!
Seriously, these pictures just don't do me justice!

Kathryn turns 18! (And she spends it at the races!)

So my sweet little sister turned the big 18 yesterday. And to celebrate we went to Emerald Downs to watch the races. We had never been there before so it sounded like a good idea. And I have to say it is quite interesting. i am not sure if all horse tracks are like Emerald Downs, but this one sure seemed nice.
We had no idea how the racing and betting thing worked. It seems pretty complicated if you ask me. They parade the horses through this nice looking courtyard, then the riders get on them and they go out onto the track, escorted by their companion horses. (I think they are to quiet the racing horse's nerves but I really don't know.) Then they all go to the starting gate and begin. The whole race probably lasts about a minute at the most. And then its 25 minuets until the next race, giving you time to go collect your mulah and bet on the next race. The winning horse of course gets his picture taken in the winners circle surrounded by his trainers and owners and all their friends. And that is about it. We just stood along the chain link fence to watch. Nothing fancy, unless you wanted to pay more for the rich people seats.
It seems strange to me the sort of people that are attracted to the races. There were a medium amount of elderly people (most of those seemed to be single men), a lot of parents with younger kids, a lot of Hispanics, and a few punks that would fall into the age range of 18-25. Seems like a strange mix to me. Some people looked like they really knew what they were doing others I think were just there for the fun of it.
We tried our luck at gambling and came out with about $12 more than when we came in. Beginners luck probably. I was a little surprised that they never even asked Kathryn for i.d. They would look at her a little funny, but never asked. So any daring 17 or 16 year old could get away with gambling their parents money away. This was a winning jockey, Kathryn made some mulah off of him.
We ended the day at one of the best hamburger places ever, Red Robin. I tried the Whiskey River hamburger and I will have to say it is very delicious. We made sure to have the waiters come sing to her and thoroughly embarass her! Overall, it was a great day. (I got her one of our fav movies - Howl's Moving Castle.) Have fun watching it Kathryn!

Texas trip

These are just some pictures from our trip to Texas to visit Alison. It is a little brief, but you get the idea. I pretty much just wanted to try out the picasa photo thing.

Random sign found in Texas:

Hmmm. That's a deep one.

Sushi, A dream come true

So one of my other goals for this year, besides driving a mini cooper, was to make sushi.*
So on my spring break I hung out with my twin cousins, Carlia ad Tilana. While we were trying to figure out goals for them to write down I showed them mine. When they saw that I had put down make sushi, they said "hey we can make that right now if you want." I'm thinking 'what? my 13 year old cousins know how to make sushi? and they wouldn't mind making some right now with me?' Yeah they are pretty much amazing.

So we decided to bust out some sushi. This is my account of how you make sushi:
1. Make some rice. This can be tricky if you have never made rice before. Be sure to wash the rice until the water is semi clear. We had to defrost the fish eggs in the rice bowl.
2. Get out some fish cake, pickled radishes, avocados, and fish eggs. Cut up the fish cake into strips, the pickled radishes into chunks, and the avocados into slices. The yellow log is the pickled radish.
3. Make sure you have some seaweed paper stuff (I really don't remember the official name.)
4. Once the rice is done, lay out the seaweed paper on a sushi maker (a little bamboo mat thing) and spread on the rice. Don't go all the way to the edges.
5. Pile on the goods and roll er up.

6. Enjoy!!

Me and my cousins also went to the Great Wall Shopping Mall and bought some goods from a Filipino bakery. They were pretty good. The stuff I'm holding is either called something like siopao or humbow. I have no idea what the purple stuff is.

*Some people argue that if you don't have raw fish it isn't really sushi, it's a California roll. When I made the goal I was thinking of what my cousins made so whatever.

And the winner is....

So I am at my cousin's house in Kent for Easter right now. I am on Easter break, finally!!! I would like to give a little shout out to the best roommate ever, Julianna Willey. Happy Birthday Julianna!! Woot Woot!!!
Anyways, last night there was a little competition. It was a classic boys against girls competition. The only unusual thing was that it was a dessert bake-off. All us girls thought "this is going to be good."
We raced to Safeway (my car won) and instantly we were all wandering around looking for those special ingredients, the ones that would sway the judges. We saw the boys looking in the magazines at Safeway and started feeling sorry for them. They looked so pathetic and desperate trying to find ideas. Us girls had a great idea for a recipe, we kind of made up our own. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate pudding, caramel syrup, and Heath topping, with a strawberry garnish. Sounds good huh?
The girls cooked at the Bates and the boys cooked at Chris Moore's house. We had a blast cooking! Kim is working so hard on making sure the caramel is perfectly spread evenly. And MaryBeth is using her crafty talents to arrange the garnish strawberries. And of course we had to have an appetitizer; a yummy strawberry banana smoothie.
At about 10:30 we got the call. The boys were almost ready! The girls were having a few issues with our cake not cooking evenly, but we made it work. Look at that masterpiece! Don't we look cute?
The boys did a nice job though as you can see. WOW! That's all I have to say. It wasn't desperation that drove them to look through the magazines, it was wisdom! They found a recipie called Mountain Dew Apple Turnovers and trust me it was GOOD!!! Here are the two competitors awaiting their fate. Who wil be consumed with vigor and the other with disgust.
Our judges were Jonathan Willey, Ryan Bates, and Pastor Bill. We were judged on creativity, presentation, and taste. The judges deliberated on the creativity and presentation while Whitney, our neutral party, dished up the goods.
The moment we had waited all night for, the big decision, the shining moment. Oh the suspense was making me hungry. Miss Becca made the announcement.
The BOYS won! Even though there is a rumor that the judges knew which one the boys made, I would have picked theirs if I was a judge. It was sooo good! Oh, it just melted in your mouth. Now we hope to have a full course meal cook off some time since the boys now think they are first class chefs. But props to the boys, it sure was yummy.