Catch up, wouldya?

Phew. Hold on. Give a girl a minute to catch her breath.
Okay. I’m good. Thanks for that.
SO MUCH has happened in the last few weeks- I mean MONTH since I just noticed that it has been that long since my last post. It seems like just yesterday I wrote an update, but apparently that is not the case (duh). As a brief overview, we have gone from MAD FREEZING temperatures to crazy balmy (33 degrees), which has made me very unhappy. If I wanted a rainy winter with slush and drizzle, guess where I would still be living? But I digress. There has been snowshoeing at the golf course in 55 degrees-below-zero winds, game nights with desserts lit on fire (Banana’s Foster, of course), Valentine’s Day parties with fondue and tattoos, trailblazing, all-nighters with 35 youngsters, a whirlwind of Girl Scouts in Juneau,a Star Wars Marathon, and most recently- ICE FISHING.
Pretty daunting list of activities to report on, not to mention the amount of pictures that accompany said activities. I'll try this in chunks.

Trailblazing wasn’t exactly part of the plan when Lori and I went to hike Mt. Riley. The couple-a-mile walk to the Battery Point trailhead was fun enough, then 0.9 miles to the Mt. Riley trailhead…that wasn’t really there. Surely someone else must have hiked from this side of the mountain to set the trail…heh. Apparently not. But we were feeling optomisitic and Boy Scout-like (hey- I have some experience with orienteering), but gut feelings and your inner compass only take you so far. After only four arrows in the beginning, an hour and a half of climbing, falling, guessing, losing a glove (me), we hit a roadblock---absolutely NO IDEA where to go next. No clues, no nothing. Sigh. So, resigned and starving, we headed back down (which only took us twenty minutes) to eat our sandwiches on the beach. The picture of Lori and the tree was the result of never knowing if we would see another arrow, which made finding this one (and validating that we were on any trail at all, even if we were actually pretty far off) pretty exciting. I like to call the close up of me "I Actually Have No Clue" Face, which I didn't let Lori see until it really was time to call it quits. Finally, the last shot is us on the beach with Mountain Market sandwiches on a beautiful sunny day with quite a front row seat of the mountains. After chowing down, we trekked the mile or so back to town and collapsed into Mountain Market to dry off and not move for a while. :) Trailblazers, we are not. :)

It began as a simple movie night. Our big outreach for the month, held after youth group for any kid and every kid. Then it evolved into an overnight. In the end (and The End was a glorious happening) it was an ALL NIGHTER. I remember exactly when it happened...the walls began to close in around me and my world suddenly seemed doomed once the competition began- "I'm not sleeping AT ALL tonight!" "Neither am I!" "I bet you can't!" "Leche, you can't be tired! You have to STAY UP!" Dun dun DUN!!!! Thirty-eight kids in little ol' Haines Presbyterian, eating junk food and watching movies and playing games ALL NIGHT LONG with YeaYea, Zazu, and I, though several other blessed souls came for a while to join in the fun and help with the pandemonium. The gutter sundae was a hit (in a real gutter that fell off someone's house from the church) and we wouldn't have made it without 4 a.m. Mac n' Cheese and brownies (the making of which is shown here). Unfortunately, after 3 a.m. it was less "what game can we play next" and "what fun can we have" Leche and more "if you bounce that ball against the wall one more time I might kill you" Leche, but such is lock-in life. I never thought the church would be clean again, but we got it spotless even with enough time for me to run off to work that day! Exhausted? Well, yes, as a matter of fact I was. And I think that the parents hated us a little, but the kids had a great time it seemed. And it only took us several days to recover. Man, I can't stay up all night like I used to. I must be getting old.

Well, stay tuned, friends. More to come. I'm breaking it up into installations. I like to keep 'em guessing. :)