I've been trying to get a new post out for several weeks now, and just haven't had a chance to sit down and work on it. It will have to be a quick summary of the past month. There's just so many wonderful things to do in summer, it's hard to take the time to sit down in front of the computer! I just managed to figure out how to hook up my hammock yesterday (it's been a very long time since I've had a place to use it)! Do I dare take my laptop in it for blogging time??? We'll see..

Anyway, the past few weeks have been highlighted by some wonderful church-related events. Below is a picture of a couple of kids from my church helping out at the all-congregation work day we have twice a year. I always enjoy this day. There's something about physical labor that seems to bring people together. It's a great time to get to know new members of the congregation and other people that you normally don't talk to as much.


I also learned a little about power tools throughout the day. The guys quickly admitted they would be able to do their projects much faster without me, but said they had more fun helping me learn. So wahoo for patient men! I've always been a little intimidated by power saws and other items with big blades, but I'm a little less so after this day!

Below are a couple of not-so-hot pictures of another very enjoyable event I attended a few weeks ago. Even though the pictures didn't turn out well, I wanted to mention it because of it's it's importance here in Salt Lake. Many people in Salt Lake don't realize that evangelical churches in Salt Lake consider themselves to be ONE church with many congregations and denominations. The organizational systems that many other cities have (working together primarily through denominations) doesn't work very well here because of the small size and number of evangelical churches. Because our community is so small, it is always wonderful to get us all together, and the Church is increasingly making efforts to do so. My roommate and a couple of her friends set up this picnic, and got the word out to as many young adults as possible. I think about 200 people came, which, if statistics are correct, represents the large majority of evangelical christians of this age group in the city. It was perfect weather that day, and people played together for hours and hours. It was a great example of the Body of Christ joined together, and after living in Salt Lake for almost 5 years, I have learned not to take advantage of how refreshing this can be!

I've also accepted a couple of leadership positions in my church over the past month. I've agreed to head up the teen group, and am busy planning lessons and activities. Since the group hasn't had a "just for fun" activity in awhile, I decided to start the year off with a bang and we headed over to Boondocks for the day. Even though we only have 6 teens in our church, they are great at bringing friends, so we ended up with about 15 kids for the day.

In between all the church stuff, I headed over to Phoenix for the annual Child Life Conference. I admit I reverted to my past photography habits and only took one picture the entire time (a reminder that I started this blog partly as an effort to force myself to take a picture every once in awhile - I had whole years of my life that are pretty much entirely undocumented!). In my defense, there's not a lot to take pictures of when you are sitting in a conference room listening to speakers every day, and you can only take so many pictures of a group of girls going out to eat before everybody loses interest. I did find the trip to be worthwhile though. It's always to see what Child Life Specialists are doing in other hospitals and many of my seminars were excellent. I especially enjoyed touching base with a couple of past coworkers who had moved on to other places. And no, Phoenix was definately not to hot for me! I love heat!!

These are the girls that I drove (yes drove!) to Phoenix with. We stopped for the night in Las Vegas before heading to Arizona.


And last, but not least, I got in touch with my nostalgic side and went to "prom" once again! Also a church event, it was actually quite a bit of fun. We originally intended to go 80's, but as you can see in the pictures below, we didn't quite get there!

Oh, I said I would get a picture eventually of my new roommate, for those of you who are wondering who she is. She's the one with the dark hair sitting on the ground in the picture above.

And the Guys.. (looking their best of course!)

We were going to take a picture of all of us together, but it turns out the guys have a short attention span for things like that :)

ahh, Iowa

I love the picture above. The sunsets are spectacular in Iowa just about every night, and there's no buildings to block my view! I was there for the week, and we had perfect weather each day (especially appreciated considering it snowed twice in Utah last week :(

I spent quite a bit of my time home outside with my family. Here's my sister Melissa and my brother Matt..

My nephew Ethan..

My niece Abby..

And my grandpa and grandpa..
A few of you have asked about the Tulip Festival in my hometown area. i was only there for half an hour or so, but I did take a few pics. Here they are for those of you who are curious!