Reporting in.

Busy weekend ahead. And week after that.

Spending the day at camp again tomorrow. And hoping for less drama than last time. However, I will be guding a large group of GS Daisies (K5 and 1st graders) and their moms through their first camp experience so here's hoping it goes really, really well!

Sunday I will spend the entire afternoon at work for a meeting that we call a summit. It is a larger training/get together for a couple of combined areas and I am hoping we get a lot accomplished/learned that day too. Then working Monday night and Tuesday night too...I will be thrilled to see Wednesday come and be able to spend time with some of my favorite people (my sweet husband and our small group).

Running on empty feeling this weekend. Hoping a day at camp in the beautiful outdoors will recharge my batteries. I even get to play with a barn full of horses at the end of the day so I am looking forward to that bit...

Lucky team.

I will be spending the day in Knoxville tomorrow with my team from work learning all about conflict resolution. While it is a skill that I desperately need for professional development (I avoid it at all costs!), I am really not looking forward to it. However, we are having a pot luck lunch and I was in charge of bringing the dessert.

So...I'm bringing this. Peanut Butter Chocolate Heaven (my name...).

I found the recipe via the amazing Pintrest but it is originally from Taste of Home.

It was pretty easy but made lots of dirty dishes - 3 bowls and the blender and food processor. However, just from bowl licking, it was totally worth it.

Lucky gals that I got to stay home all day today. :)

A couple of days.

Since I started planning the big-event-that-did-not-happen a few months ago, I intended all along to take a couple of days off afterwards to rest and recover. Since last week's happenings, I decided to still keep my days off and get some things done around the house. I took off today and tomorrow and so far I have been really productive. Today I've folded aboiut 5 loads of laundry and put it away - before sadly finding another load in the dryer. Oh well - it'll go fast. I've done dishes, cleaned off the dining room table, and I am about to vacuum the floor. And I still have another day to go! I am hoping that Chad can take the day off with me tomorrow but even if he doesn't, I will have plenty to do to keep myself busy.

April Birchbox!

A major upswing in my day yesterday was coming home to discover that fabulous pink box came in the mail. Hello April Birchbox...which after 2 months, is still like having a birthday every month. In fact, I was so excited when I discovered that it was here that my husband went to bed and I opened it by the light of his headlamp. Oh yes, I was that excited. I carefully repackaged it so I could take pictures and share it with you when the light of day finally broke. So, here it is!

This is how the box looks when you open it and pull back the first layer of tissue paper.

The pretty wrapping is half the fun! 

The "lifestyle extra" of the month was two tea bags written in French so I have no idea what they are except that I know they are green tea. I bet Chad will help me enjoy these soon!

The company is called Le Palais de Thes.

The two larger items of the month were these two...Befine brand skincare sampler...there are 2 samples of the fash wash and 3 of the moisturizer. And they are larger samples too - enough to decide if you like it enough to buy it! I'll talk about the other in a second...

Sorry this picturei s a little blurry - I must have been super excited. 

It is a perfume sample -with a super pretty postcard - from Atelier Cologne. The scent is Orange Sanguine Cologne Absolue. It is really citrusy smelling and I like it a lot! Again, the packaging is making all the difference!

The other item - on the bottom - is Olle Biologique. An essential oil that you can use as a moisturizer on your face, body, and hair and it is in a litle spray bottle. Pretty excited to try this one.

This is Revolution Organics - Freedom Glow Beauty Balm. If I am not mistaken, this is a full size product that retails for $36. If you are keeping score, the monthly Birchbox is $10 so right here alone, I basically made $26! It is a pretty pink cream stick that can be used on cheeks, lips, and eye lids. I am pretty excited about using this all the time! The color is a perfect rosy blush - used it today! - but haven't tried it other places on my face yet!

So, there you go! April Birchbox goodness. Pretty exciting! And still really thankful to a fabulously cool sister who blessed me with my subscription!

Postponed.

As it turns out, the decision was made to postpone said big event this weekend. I completely trust that our leadership team made the best decision possible for our staff and volunteers. Hello July 14th!

There is an upswing. The event will now be the week after a week-long vacation. I will come back ready to rock and roll. I will have some more time to perfect the script and add a time to honor those we have lost the past year. I get a weekend off – my only one until the end of May! – to hang out with my dude.

The down side.

Today was a pretty bad day, not gonna lie.

First thing when I got to work this morning, I was informed that a long-time Girl Scout employee of our council passed away VERY unexpectedly yesterday afternoon. She had been working for our council for 27 years - since she was a teenager! - and was healthy the last time I saw her on Friday morning (over our video conferencing system - she worked in our Johnson City office). Without going into details, this hit me really hard.

It is very possible that the large event that I have spent 4 months planning - that should take place this Saturday - will be postponed. I understand if that needs to happen. We would like to celebrate our volunteers in an appropriate way but we also need to celebrate the life of this amazing person with her family as well. I have really mixed emotions about it all...

I'm exahusted, physically and emotionally drained. Please say a prayer for her family - she has children, the youngest being in high school - and I can't imagine that loss.

Eventful. and Long.

I didn't intend for this weekend to be quite as eventful as it was but as it turns out, someone had other plans in store for me.

I didn't have to work Friday night...the first night of the week that I didn't have anything to do or anywhere to be. After working Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night and having our small group on Wednesday night, I was looking forward to a night to lay low and go to bed early since I knew I had to get up early on Saturday. That didn't go as planned but not in a bad way at all. We did dinner (chinese food!) and a movie (Safe House...Ryan Reynolds, need I say more...?) which was fun but we got home much later than expected. I got into bed about 11 and fell asleep around midnight...normal.

Saturday morning, I got up around 6:30 and was headed up the mountain to Camp Adahi - our local Girl Scout camp - by 7am with my mug of heavily creamed coffee. I had a really uneventful day of teaching fire building skills and tending the same camp fire from 8am to 4pm. During my last group of the day, I got a call from the volunteer that was running camp for the weekend. I didn't answer it because I was in the middle of the class but was able to call her back about 10 minutes later. She reported that another parent had a prolonged seizure down at the waterfront and they were now waiting for an ambulance at the front driveway. I headed to meet up with the troop leader to get the parent's medical history card - which thankfully, ever person at camp has to fill out - and her wallet and cell phone. Once the ambulance got there - and we had spoken to her husband - we decided that someone needed to transport with her to the hospital (an hour and a half away in downtown Chattanooga) since her husband would be coming in from out of town. Since the other staff member on the property could not leave (since she was acting camp ranger), I got picked. So, off we went...my first ride in the front seat of an ambulance (which is notably less stressful than if you are the one in the back). We arrived at the ER, had friendly and kind nurses, and I stayed for a couple of hours until her husband could get there. She was noticeably confused - couldn't really remember what happened or what she has said recently - which I hear is completely normal for a seizure. Either way, I'm glad I went with her. She kept asking about her daughter and I could offer more reassurance and information than a stranger at the hospital could have. I kept thinking..."if this was my mom, I would want someone to be there with her until I could get there." It was worth every minute of peace I could offer her.

Since my car was still an hour away at camp, Chad came and got me from the ER once her husband arrived. It took a while for Chad to get there so I stayed and talked to the husband and told him everything I knew at that point and what the doctors had said so far. As it turns out, they lived in Columbus for a while and we compared notes on our old stomping ground. Her youngest daughter even went to preschool at the same school I went to ::Calvary shout out!:: 

Chad had our nephew with him when he came to get me and he spent the night with us for the first time. We really enjoy hanging out with him and I hope that we can have a positive influence on his sweet little life. It was not an easy night...his first at our house and I'm sure we messed up his nightly routine. He went to sleep pretty easily but woke up soon after, missing his mom, upset. Chad took first shift for a couple of hours of up-down-sleep-up-cry-down-sleep-cry-sleep and got about an hour break before it kicked in again around 2am. I took that shift of up-down-cry-beg-sleep-flashlight-up-down-cry and finally got him to sleep around 2:45. I am not entirely surprised about the difficulty of the night and it surely was not unexpected but of course, I am exhausted now and have a new appreciation for all parents (of any age children! but especially babies!). I also have an appreciation for the power of prayer...in my early morning exhaustion, I didn't know what else to do but put my hands on that child and pray. First night of parenting and I turned to Jesus - I hope that is always the case.

There were some bright spots in the strange night...mostly his weird questions and thoughts during his own exhaustion. Our favorite so far: Wooby was snuggled in bed with him - which I found strange since he was making a lot of noise and moving around a lot - but she obviously sensed that he needed the company. At one point in the night, I was standing in the hall outside his room trying to decide if he was just talking/singing to himself or crying. Wooby had finally had enough and was headed out, down the hall. I heard him say, "Cat, why you leave Walker??" while in tears and had to stifle a good chuckle. Chad and I said that we should write a book of the cats responses...beacuse it would be something like, "Oh kid, let me count the ways..."

So, that was my eventful weekend. We have another small group family that just had a baby so we will try to see them today but other than that, we are laying quite low today.

Edited to add: the parent who had the seizure seemed to be doing much better when I left the ER and was under the watchful care of her husband and in good hands with the doctors. And I could not be more proud of the way that the volunteers who were on the scene handled themselves and the situation. They were professional, calm, kind, and used their training to help - well done on their part.

it IS a Good Friday but an even better Sunday is coming.

Today we remember a very sad Friday that was oh so Good...it is a little odd sometimes for me to remember that we are celebrating a death, but celebrate we will. That death - thousands of years ago - was the ultimate sacrifice for a broken and hurting world. And I guess that it isn't really the death that we celebrate singuarlly by itself. It is important that Christ died - because it his death he took on the sins of the world and gave us forgiveness. But More Importantly - this Sunday's celebration that he also conquered death itself and rose.
Rose to life.
Rose to celebrate.
Rose to prove the doubters wrong and the believers right.
I believe in this Risen Savior.


We are going to Atlanta on Sunday after church to celebrate with those we love best that Christ is Risen Indeed. Looking forward to some sweet time together (and a new Easter dress with butterflies).