This is what I have to look forward to...

Happy morning to me! I woke up to my super fiance walking into my room with beautiful flowers! I was really sick yesterday and probably freaked him out, but none the less I have beautiful flowers and a beautiful vase that was made by beautiful fiance...

I did it!!

I survived!!! I made it through a pretty stressful couple of weeks with minimal amounts of cuss words and only a few hate letters. My first big project was called "Our Father's Farm". For this we invited 12 high school students from the inner city to come to a farm with 12 high school students from our church. We had a ton of fun and we learned a lot. The main goal of this was to expose people to new things and have a trial run for a possible week long camp in the future. My second big project was a youth mission trip to Chicago. It was intense for most of the time. We showered at 6:00 a.m., broke up some pretty big fights hourly, survived a week with no air conditioning, and exhausted our openness to its greatest capacity. God was good to me. I can't wait to have a few days to process it. So far though, here are things I've learned:

1. don't close your eyes while driving
2. tell people when you're mad at them
3. expect everything
4. Plan well, but plan to be flexible.
5. you don't always get to be friends with students. sometimes you have to be the bad guy.
6. PRAY
7. whatever your attitude is, so your kids will be also.
8. Nordstrom Rack is on state street
9. I am absolutely crazy for my loving, christ-like fiance
10. never leave home without hand sanitizer

Stress.

So, my life has been a little on the stressful side lately. All of the projects that I'm heavily involved in are all happening in the next couple of weeks. I have a lot to do... so I thought I would blog myself to a calmer attitude... Today at work, we had a little seminar about stress management. The guy in charge, told us that there are six things you can do to help calm you down. Things like rubbing your forehead, breathing deeply, and listening to baroque music. Also, Medi-smart.com came up with a long list of fun ways to reduce stress. Here are some of my favorites...
~Make a list of things to do that you've already done
~Dance naked in front of your pets
~Bill your doctor for the time you spent in the waiting room
~Leave a message with farm animal sounds on someone's answering machine
~Fingerpaint the walls and blame it on the children... [or the dogs]
~Call people in the phonebook that share your last name and pretend you're related
~Pat yourself on the back and affirm that you made it through another day

I'm funny.

So since I've been engaged, I've been having nightmares like no other. So last night, I was having my usual nightmares (something like Nate called off the wedding) and I woke up to a lot of sirens. I think I was already a little anxious from my dreams, but then managed to convince myself that those sirens were going to my parents house because it was on fire. I'm staying at a friends house because my parents are out of town for a week and I'm too afraid to sleep in their big house by myself. So anyway, I finally got up the courage to get in my car and go to my house and make sure it wasn't on fire. So at 1:45 a.m. I jumped out of bed, into my car, and drove to my completely dormant house. However, I did blow out the candles that I left burning in my room yesterday afternoon. Welcome to my ridiculous mind...

The fun stuff.

So my wedding planning has officially begun. We have found a place and set the date. We are so excited. I am more and more humbled by the fact that Natey loves me as much as he does. So... to keep you in the loop, we are having a small wedding on July 4, 2009 in Branson, MO at dogwood canyon. Our ceremony will be held at the glory hole (pictured above)... go ahead make all the jokes you want, but if you say anything about my glory hole within a month of the wedding, I will punch you in the face or elsewhere.

We've pretty much got our wedding party set... Nate's taking a while to make the phone calls, but about a week ago I sent hideous dresses to my bridesmaids in order to ask them to be in my wedding. I like to think I'm pretty funny. This is my friend Kayleigh, we may have to pick a different dress so she doesn't look hotter than me on the day of the wedding.

Camp.

So I'm way behind on the blogging train, but I'm guessing there aren't many who are actually concerned...
Last week, I had the honor of going to camp with a bunch of middle school and high school students. Sometimes I wonder why I do the things I do, in fact, sometimes, I want to punch myself in the face for doing the things I do, but camp wasn't one of them. God spoke to me in big ways and changed the lives of many others. I got to lead a bunch of 10th and 11th grade girls and we had a blast. I only lost one girl for a few hours! We went for a hike, played some mafia, got really muddy and learned about Jesus. It was a fantastic week.