Big City Train

I was blessed to have my parents coming in and out of the valley for a few months.  Not only was it good to show them around this place I love, but it was great to have a few weekends here and there where I didn't have to spend much of my own money!  Hehe...

First, we met in Denver for the Nightingale Gala.  This was a wonderful night, at times a little times a little overwhelming.

Watch out for my medallions, my diamonds are reckless,
feels like a midget is hanging from my necklace
- Ludacris 'Stand Up' 

After this, they travelled around New Mexico for a bit.  For a few weekends, they came up to Alamosa to spend time here.  We did a few hikes, went some small town festivals, making family dinners, camping, and eating out!  I'm glad I enjoy my parents!

Being a volunteer makes it difficult to get home.  I don't know if you know, but I'm pretty good at working with what I've got.  Since my parents were coming down, I asked kindly if they could give me a ride home and they said yes!  While it sounded fine at the beginning, we were starting to get nervous about how much time we've been spending together.  Luckily, all went well and we actually had a nice time!

A fun part was that we were able to stop in Moab to visit my friends Sarah and Silas.  And, we stayed a night in the Willamette Valley with my friend Mari.  It was sooooo wonderful to see such special people in my life!  We also stayed a night in Durango and Boise.  These were two pretty cool places- I think Boise is going to be the next Portland!  

Not only am I thankful for the help in getting home, but thankful for the actual getting there along the way!

Casper... International Dog of Mystery!

You're different from the former

Honestly, I'm pretty speechless, I've never seen anything like what I saw on Tuesday (something so terrible be quite beautiful), but I'll do my best to put into words how I feel and what happened...

Mennonites and other people talk a lot about peace and justice (or, more appropriately, restorative justice) and you hear about it from time to time in the news, but it is something totally different to see people living it out in difficult circumstances.

Well, this restorative justice was on display at the Alamosa courthouse today by Chloe Weaver's family.  It was the sentencing hearing for the 16 year old boy that hit Chloe while she was biking and then drove off because he's a 16 year old boy and scared.  Chloe's mom, dad, and sister all said a few things at the beginning.  I wish I had these written down so you could experience the power of the combination of forgiveness and justice.  Some things I remember are Hope talking about how Chloe's spirit will always be with him and support him, Herm (Chloe's dad) saying that Chloe would want him to help others and improve the world.  The District Attorney spoke about a meeting with Herm, Hope, the kid and his mom.  He said, "You would not believe the.... the only word for it is love.... in that room.  It was one of the most incredible things I have seen in 20 years of being in the DA."

As for the actual sentencing (I hope I get this right), the Weaver's didn't really want him to serve time in detention because they want him to do more with his time than just sit there.  They wanted him to do more public service and contribute.  That's what Chloe would have wanted.  However, the judge said he couldn't let someone who killed someone not serve time, so he will be serving 45 days with community service for 2 years.  I spoke with Cindy, Chloe's mom, afterward and she said that they were asked about what they wanted for a sentencing and they said something to the effect of "We don't know who he is, what does he need?"  And that is the question that should be asked of everyone- what do you need to learn in order to be a productive member of society?  After living with my cousin who is a cop this last summer, I just realized how much this system isn't working.  I'm sorry, but it's broken.  I'm not sure what to do about it, but it needs to fundamentally change.

Through all this, I thank God.  I'm thankful for the strength and mercy of the Weaver family.  I'm thankful for the example and inspiration and encouragement they were to everyone in that room and will be to all they meet through this.  I'm thankful for the gift of eternal life, that Chloe's life is not over, she is still affecting people, God is still using her- you can feel it.  God works in mysterious ways, let's thank Him for that.

As the worst part about death is the people it leaves behind, I'm thankful Chloe is still with us in one way or another....

Trapped in a Box

Community living.  Yes, this is what I signed up for.  Yes, I knew it would be hard for me.  Yes, this is what I wanted.  Or, so I thought.
I'll be honest, I don't love it.  It's not the people (I like them), it's me.  I'm realizing I love control.  I'm know I can't (and don't want to) control my housemates.  My philosophy on living with people is: you affect me, good or bad, you affect me; and I affect you, good or bad.  Sometimes we affect each other too much.
However, that being said, I do like WHY I'm living in community.  For me, I'm doing this so that I can relieve a bit of financial pressure from the public health department of this rural county (have you heard?  there's no money in public health) and only receive a small stipend each month for full time work.  Then, that money goes into the house fund and we all pool our stipends together and live simply to support each other to volunteer in the community.  I think this is a great way to do it.  I like that I'm not getting money from other people, so I have more freedom- don't get me wrong, I think that can be a beautiful thing and I've supported people... I would just have to be 100% sure about the work and the organization (which I wasn't going into this).
With that, it does make me feel weird to think about living by myself again.  I loooooove living by myself and I am sure that I will do it again.  I miss the ownership and independence of it all.  However, it will be different for me to spend that much money on just housing when (in all honesty) I could be sharing with someone and using that money for more worthwhile purposes.  I'll have to see how I can justify to myself... I'm sure I'll figure out something!

But I do enjoy this...

...although hopefully people will come over for dinner, right?!?

Leftovers

In my past life (as I like to refer to it), with almost every paycheck I would buy a few CDs (sometimes more!) and a few books (I looooved Borders "buy one get one half off").  However, I didn't read every single one of these books.  It's ok though because now that I have little money, I can't buy any books.  It is my goal to finish my box of books by then end of my time here- next August!  So far, I've only read about 8, so I have about 30 more to go!  I do love reading, but sometimes I feel like I have better/easier things to do.  My biggest downfall (well, this could also be a good thing) is that I rarely give up on a book.  I might get bored and put it down for a bit, but I try so hard to carry through and usually I'm glad I did.  To keep me from getting bored, I have my books on a rotation by type.  First, I read a non-fiction (yep, I'm trying to learning something out here), then a heavy fiction (you know what I'm talking about... the harder books to read), and finally a fun easy read (oh so refreshing!).  Also, I have them in order on a shelf to motivate and get me excited to finish my current book.  Here is a list of what I've read so far...

- Nickel and Dimed
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
- The Inheritance of Loss
- Beat the Reaper
- Three Junes
- Fire in the Blood
- Free Food for Millionaires
- Three Cups of Tea

Right now I'm on an easy read: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  It's pretty good so far.  I have a lot of good books in my box, so I'm pretty excited about finishing them... I just hope I actually do finish get around to reading them!

And, yes, this also means I have means I have a number of songs on my iPod that I haven't really listened to... oh man, I wonder how I'll be when I go back to making money again.  I hope I've changed.

Open the gate

... But not to deer!  Our house has taken on a task that may be a little over our heads, but still exciting.  We've started a little veggie garden in our backyard!  Now, just so you don't get your hopes up of a huge harvest later this season, you need to know something about where I live: it's a high altitude desert!  I'll be happy if even half of it turns up.  However, it seems to be doing ok so far (it's been about a month!).  This afternoon we did our first hoeing of weeds- we'll have to do that more frequently from here on out.  We had our first visitors over the weekend:  deer!  Luckily, we can enclose our back area.

I'm excited to see what will actually pop up.  We planted onions, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, chard, peas, carrots, radishes, basil, and cucumbers!  Oh, I hope I can one day just go outside and get my salad or ingredients!

While our backyard is quite active, our front is something of an eyesore.  There are a few aspens which are nice, the tree we planted for Chloe (it survived and started to bloom!), and a few flowers around her tree.  However, the rest of the area is straight up dirt that  only has some weeds.  Maybe one day we'll get some grass going, but for now I want to concentrate on useful plants!

Making the rows

Planting onion starts

Broccoli!

One month later!

Onions

Broccoli and Chard

P.S.  I don't mean to make it look like the guys aren't helping... they were there just didn't make it into the photos, sorry!

I get one every year

It was my birthday on Sunday, I'm 26!  It's been a while since I've been so calm about turning another year older.  I think the last time was when I turned 21, it's been downhill ever since, hehe.
I had a good weekend away.  We took a retreat to Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp outside of Colorado Springs.  It was soooo beautiful there!  We stayed in a little cabin in the woods.  On Saturday we made waffles (our house thing) and went on a couple of pretty light, but nice, hikes around the camp.  The rest of the day was spent relaxing then making yummy food.  There were some games there and I picked up a box of Trivial Pursuit questions and just started asking, not playing the game or keeping score.  Man, that was fun!
It's funny to think about where you're "supposed" to be in life.  I remember telling Chloe "this is what I'm supposed to be doing" and she quickly turned into the carefree 20 year she was and said "you should be doing what you want, not necessarily what you're 'supposed' to be doing."  Well, I don't think I really think about it in the sense of "what does society tell me to be doing at this age?"  I think more about "what is really important to me and is that a focus in my life?" because that's what I should be doing- what's really important to me.  Well, I'd like to think I'm doing that.  I thank God for giving me this opportunity to have the freedom to focus on what really matters and what is important to me.
Am I where I thought I would be at 26?  Not necessarily.  Am I doing something I'm proud of?  I think so.  Have I taken advantage of life?  For the most part, yes.  I am where I'm supposed to be, even if it isn't always exactly where I am "supposed" to be.

A minute of your time

Ok, Ok, faithful readers, I'm sorry for my absence (and for being boring... see comment on last post), really, truly I am.  April was a funny month- lots of changes.  There were some good times and some harder times.  May has been a bit more fun.  There are many things I've been thinking about lately, some things I want to address here soonish.

I'm gonna be lame for a minute and give you some highs and lows:

- House changes:  Well, we started out with 6 people, then we were down to 5.  At the beginning of May, Chloe's older sister, Hope, came to live and work in our community to get a sense of what Chloe loved about this place, so we were back up to 6.  2 weeks later, Jared basically got fired from his volunteer position and had to go home, back down to 5.  2 weeks after that, Hope decided it was too difficult for her to be away from her family.  Now we are down to the "Core Four."  We are getting another volunteer in July who will (at this point) be here for 2 years.  Who knows what will happen next?!

- Trips to Denver: I went to a breastfeeding conference in Denver for a few days, it was great!  Made me think about being a postpartum nurse again because those first few days are so important for establishing breastfeeding.  And it gave me lots of resources for teaching clients before they deliver.  Another trip was meeting my parents in Denver last weekend for my State Nightingale Award dinner. It was fun and quite fancy.  I didn't trip and I didn't have to make a speech, so I was happy.  However, I didn't win, but I was the youngest person by about 20 years, so I've got that going me!  I was just so honored to be a part of it, maybe one day I'll make it to the top...

- Tests: Just FYI, I don't have HIV, Hep B or Hep C.  I was giving Tuberculosis test shots at the fire department and I was wearing slick gloves.  Well, as I was putting the safety cap on after giving a shot, I dropped the needle.  It was so small, I thought the other side hit, but later I saw a stream of blood.  I went to the ER to get tests done and the girl came back negative too, so I'm ok!  I just felt kind of silly about the whole thing and hope that I never have that happen to me again, really I am quite careful.

- Easter: I just loved Holy Week and Easter in April.  We had a nice Maundy Thursday dinner and Communion service with our little house church.  The oldest town in Colorado is about an hour away, San Luis, and they have a great "Stations of the Cross" walk.  Some of us went down and walked it, appropriately, in the rain and cold.  On Easter, we attended a sunrise service and later had our church and friends over for lunch (or, if you're from the farm, dinner because it's nice).  This was so lovely!  It was a potluck, we had an egg hunt (with confetti!), and sat around singing hymns (Mennonite style- four part harmonies).

- Fun Happenings: A few benefits around town- Rennaissance time with Romeo and Juliet and starting the dance party at Generosity on Tap.  A few walks- Coming Alive (a wellness program I coordinated at work) and Crop Walk (in the snow on May 1).  A few birthday and going away parties.  We are starting a garden at the house- I'm nervous and excited!

I will do my best to start this up again.  My camera broke, so unless I get another one, I'll be more wordy than normal (and viewership will decline, I'm aware...).  Thanks for checking in!