So my friends Halecia and Erin joined me today on an excursion to find Ty Pennington. Of course we didn't see him, but it was really quite cool to go to the set of Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

They have been here this past week rebuilding a home in Albuquerque and this is the first chance I've had to go check it out. Apparently the inside is really quite awesome, but from the outside it isn't too thrilling.

So here are my not so great camera phone pictures....


They were trying to get a balloon up for a promo but the wind was less than cooperative.


The church on one side of the property that they are building.

The house on the other side.



A closer shot of the church area. Definitely very cool.

So I did make it back from Dallas at the end of last week and have been working my tail off the last few days to catch up with work stuff. Unfortunately, I am no where near caught up and still have an obscene amount of work to complete before the end of the week. Here are a few pictures from the event, some stolen from other PSYMer's and I will give credit where it is due...

This was our art project when we did a worship service on grief. Amazing... it is hard to describe how this piece of art came about, but if you want to know, just ask. It was by far the most moving experience of the weekend I would say.


These are the super awesome early bird people! Tweet tweet! Basically we all came early and did art and liturgical dance stuff. It was a rockin good time.


This was the fun table plus me. I sat in front of them and turned around a lot. Left to right... Lizzie, Casey, Erin, Me, Cathy, and Dexter. Dexter will probably be on the tv show "So you think you can dance." And then I will know a celebrity.


Haha we tried really hard to make this picture work but basically we all look kind of crazy. L to R... Erin's eye, Joseph, me, Lizzie, Casey, Halecia, Cathy.


Yes... my signature dance move. Or, ridiculousness. The essence is lost in a picture, but I laugh that Casey had this picture.


I think the blurriness in this picture happened because we were far too awesome to be caught on film. Lizzie and Casey rocked the hardcore 80s fun. I just came along for the ride.


What can I say... youth directors make funny faces sometimes!


Our Foundations class clearly rocked enough to take a picture. It was good times hanging out with Rod, Georgia, Walt and Joy.

Basically all the pictures post early bird I stole from Casey. She won't mind though because the one basic rule of youth ministry we learned was to borrow ideas (and pictures are really ideas right?)

I also came home with something else... a hand me down table that my brother said was my dad's mom's at one point. Basically it is just one more place for me to get work done. As you can see, I have wasted no time in using it to the fullest of my abilities. I can imagine that it will only get more use from here on out and is no longer sitting in my brother's garage. The plus side for him is that he won't have to move it to New Jersey.


So that was my week. I didn't really feel like I learned a ton, but the relationships I got out of it are invaluable. Afterall, the one thing they stressed (other than feel free to borrow things in youth ministry...) was relationships, relationships, relationships. I can't wait to go back next year!

A lot has happened since I last wrote on Dec. 19th. I went and spent the holidays with mi familia in Bourbonnais, I had a lock in with my youth, I attended a wedding, I made a website for my youth (it isn't quite done yet, but is getting there). I have played ridiculous amounts of Super Paper Mario.

Yesterday I drove 10 hours so I could be at Perkins School of Youth Ministry for the early bird event. So far I've bet a bunch of awesome youth directors and am fairly convinced that UM youth directors might be a little off their rocker but are always fun. I'm hanging out with my family here, especially my niece. She and I hung out with my friend Halecia tonight as I was babysitting. We had a pretty good time with very few meltdowns.

Tomorrow is more PSYM early bird but first I'm gonna go eat at my fav breakfast spot in town... Breadwinners. I'm going to miss it when my brother and his wife move away later this month. Going to visit them we have to find new places to eat in and around Princeton, NJ. But I'm always up for an adventure.

So I should get some rest sometime in the near future I suppose. I'll probably have thoughts about this week at the end of it all and if I can stop doing everything else in my life and get a little down time for writing, I'll post something worthwhile hopefully.