gustav

gustav is headed our general direction - although that means it's scheduled to hit anywhere between mississippi and corpus christi, texas in the next few days. for those of you who don't know geography, that's a pretty big area. lutherhill is far enough inland that we will just get rain, nothing fantastic. we are actually gearing up the site to be an evacuation site for 100 people from a lutheran congregation in new orleans.

fayette county fair!

tonight i experienced the fayette county fair! it was ... well, it was stereotypical - underage drinking, expensive carnival rides, cheap alcohol, a polka band, and the who's who of la grange. but seriously, it was a lot of fun!

let me start at the beginning. first, today was matt's last day at work before his sabatical. we surprised him with a dinner of about 25 people, when he thought he was meeting his in-laws for dinner. (oh, this is after i realized that my fabulous 3 day weekend will now be full with new orleans residents fleeing from gustav. 31 of them in total as of now.) so we had a great dinner with lots of great friends. then we headed over to matt and jen's house for a few minutes, and then on to the fayette county fair.

first, you park in a grass field with rebar poles with flags marking the rows. as you drive up you're inticed (sp?) by the glowing lights and flashing signs. when you get inside you are once again hit by the lights and smell of turkey legs, funnel cakes, and alcohol and you hear the music from the LIVE polka band. it is quite the experience! we mostly just hung out and walked around, but we DID ride the ferris wheel and we DID eat some funnel cake. two things i think that are mandatory when going to the fair.

this weekend marks my one year anniversary of living in texas. (technically i moved here on september 1, but it was labor day weekend) last year my mom, dad, and i were going to go to the fair, but we got distracted by moving and such. i'm glad we didn't go - i feel like i had the greatest first fair experience tonight. i actually ran into people that i knew! it was fun to just roam around and find the very few people that i knew (and didn't come with!). it was a fun night for sure.

and now i'm off to bed. pray that gustav somehow magically dies in the middle of the gulf before it has a chance to cause any more havoc.

new recipies!

a while ago rachel gave me a book full of recipies, and the one recipie i tried was delicious! then i got lazy and bored of cooking. but after a summer of eating frozen food for 3 meals a day (well, when i ate it, it wasn't frozen, but it was just warmed up) i decided that i value eating fresh food and trying new recipies. so tonight when i went to the grocery store, i went with my recipies and bought lots of un-ordinary things - like water chestnuts and white wine vinegar and parsley and honey roasted peanuts.

here's what i plan to make:
pea pesto
special sesame chicken salad
zucchini feta bruschetta
cheese enchiladas (these are good, i already know that!)
black bean burgers
tortilla soup

now you're jealous, huh? yep, i thought so. so i'll leave you with the enchilada recipie. make sure to let me know (by leaving a comment at the bottom!) if you tried it and whether you liked it or not. this will be like sara's cooking blog.

cheese enchiladas
30 oz tomato sauce
1.33 cups water
2 tbsp chili powder
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp dried oregano
.5 tsp ground cumin
16 flour tortillas (8 inches in diameter) warmed
4 cupps shredded Monterey Jack Cheese
2.5 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 medium onion, finely chopped (the recipie says 2, but that's way too many onions for these)
1 cup sour cream (optional)
.25 cup minced fresh parsley
.5 teaspoon salt
.5 teaspoon pepper

in a large saucepan, combine the first six ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer uncovered for 4-5 minutes or until thickened, stirring occasionally. Spoon 2 tablespoons sauce over each tortilla. In a large bowl, combine the jack cheese, 2 cups cheddar heese, onions, sour cream (optional), parsley, salt and pepper. Place about .33 cup down the center of each tortilla. Roll up and place seam side down in two greased 13x9x2" baking dishes. Pour remaining sauce over the top. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cheddar cheese. Bake 4-5 minutes longer, or until cheese is melted. Garnish with letuce if desired.
Yield 16 enchiladas

you could also add cooked chicken or black beans instead of or in addition to the cheese if you wish.

ok, hope that's long enough to satisify you blog stalkers for a while, even though i didn't really say much of anything :) but it was long.

oh, i get to go meet with the architects who are designing our buildings for the capital campaign! i'm really excited!

new look for the blog! (soon...)

bear with me - hanna's blog inspired me to add some new elements. but, i am in the middle of adding and i must go to an alllllllllll dayyyyy meeting. so i will be back.

back in texas!

i made it safely back to texas. here's some highlights from my vacation:
1. counsin had baby
2. cousin had baby (other side of family!)
3. bought a wedding dress for rach
4. it snowed!
5. hung out with some fab people
6. my car is almost fixed
7. watched a lot of olympics
8. ate a lot of good food

funny how many things changed on one day - freshmen go to college, friends leave for foreign countries for a year, and i go back to my own foreign country. crazy.

more later...maybe.

summer camp is over!

well, we did it. we survived all 9 weeks of campers, 2 weeks of staff training, and half a week of leadership training. phew-ey! (well, we more than survived it, it went really well, but that's how i feel right now!)

as evan said "we all made it out alive, with all of our body parts" - which is pretty funny if you catch the hidden meaning behind that. if you're one of the lucky ones i get to see in the next few days, i'm sure i'll tell you the story :) it's a good one for sure. it's just good to know that other camps had crazy crazy things happen to them as well.

tonight we had a fancy dinner and then an awesome worship with the staff, followed by a fantastic movie made by our media people. tomorrow we get to do a lot of work projects and then the summer staff leaves and it's back to just me and justin onsite. well, me, justin, and maggie (his new puppy). i'm looking forward to the quiet.

oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY PADRE!

that's all for now, i'm going to go pack for colorado and michigan! i think i'll need a bigger suitcase!

we're in the clear

just wanted to let you know that the temperatures were GLORIOUS today, and i thank edouard for that one. it rained a little bit, but mostly it was just overcast and blustery. it was so "cold" that one of the campers even wore a sweatshirt in the afternoon! literally, the temperature was 80 with a heat index of 85 and it felt chilly. i wish you all could experience a texas summer so that you appreciate the summers you DO have.

in other news, alphas (our youngest campers) go home tomorrow, and then camp will be a little less crazy. the other campers go home on friday and then staff leaves on saturday and then i leave on sunday! oh my how time flies!

oh, and on ANOTHER note, we're hiring a program intern to work for 9 months. as of yesterday we had one applicant. as of today we have 3! one of them is from africa - how cool is that?? we're still trying to figure out how he heard about us.

today i got thrown in the pool during our luau all camp. sad thing was i had a walkie talkie on my belt and a cell phone. luckily the staff grabbed my walkie talkie and i was able to throw my phone to a quick-handed staff member and the only thing that got wet was me. i really really hate getting my head wet...like REALLY hate it. but, i know the staff likes me enough to pick on me like that, so i'll handle getting my head wet. but seriously, i hate it. i think it started with that whole rafting incident in 2004, but i don't ever really remember LOVING the water. maybe mom and dad can help me out with that one...?

tropical storm

there's a tropical storm headed my way, and it's kind of exciting! i'm sure i won't think of it as exciting when we get a million calls from parents (we have little kids this week, which makes the number of phone calls grow exponentially) and have to deal with freaking out staff. it doesn't look too bad from this vantage point right now - but maybe it will bring rain and cooler temperatures! today's high is supposed to be 102 - yikes! the seriousness of the storm depends on what station you watch around here, so i'll try to keep you updated. but for now, no worries!

week 9!

one week from today and i will be in the glorious sangre de cristo mountains, soaking up colorado! i'm so excited, mostly because the heat index was 110 yesterday. one hundred and ten - that's intense.

yesterday i went to a fantastic concert - john mayer, colbie callait, and brett dennen. it was at the outdoor pavilion in the woodlands (a suburb of houston) and it was in-credible. it was a little strange because brett started playing before 7 (which was the published start of the concert) so we walked in while he was singing, even though we were early. he sounded really great live, but we missed most of his performance while we were getting situated and everything. we had lawn seats so i brought my crazy creek. oh, here's a side note, since i've been in texas, 4 people have bought crazy creeks - i'm starting a trend! the other staff likes to make fun of me, but really they are just jealous :) the legs of two chairs fell off, and the staff has been calling those chairs their 'crappy creeks' - haha! it's been a fun little running joke.

anyways, back to the concert. colbie came out next, and she's pretty good. she sounds great live, but just doesn't have much of a stage presence. she just kind of stands there and sings, nothing spectacular. BUT during her song 'realize' john mayer came out and made it into a duet - very cool! their voices sound great together. and then JOHN MAYER! he was fantastic - great music, fabulous guitar solos and rifs, and a great stage presence. i would highly suggest seeing john in concert, and i would go see him again for sure.

i found out about this concert and invited people and got it all set up. we ended up buying 9 tickets, and then two people backed out and we found another person to come. there was a little too much drama for me over these tickets, but it all worked out. there was a group of 8 of us that ended up going. the lawn seats were very fun, just sitting on the grass and hanging out with friends - what a fun night!

so, more about my car. i took it to a body shop to get the dents popped out, but boy was i surprised! they ended up writing a formal estimate and their estimate was $2600! not at all what i was expecting! so, i ended up calling my insurance agent and making a claim and learning about how that whole process works. the adjuster came out to make his own estimate of my car and he wrote me a check that day! crazy, i didn't know that's how that would work. so now i just need to get my car into the shop.

today starts week 9 of 9! last week of summer camp! i'm excited for a change of pace, but also my staff is going crazy. someone thretened to quit on friday and others are just crazy in the way they are dealing with other staff members. i have 15 activity staff (support staff for you rtlc-ers) and hopefully we'll get a lot done this week and stay focused on the kids. here's hoping!

ok, time to get ready for the last sunday of the summer!