Pickles!!!!!!!

So Sandy I are in charge of planning our staff Christmas party. We do it every year and this year we decided to have a suprise theme, PICKLES!!!!!!. In our shopping we noticed a lot of pickle ornaments and we wondered why, after some research we found this story:
A decedent of a soldier who fought in the American Civil War, John Lower (Hans Lauer?), born in Bavaria in 1842, wrote to tell about a family story that had to do with a Christmas pickle. According to family lore, “John Lower was captured and sent to prison in Andersonville, Georgia. ...In poor health and starving, he begged a guard for just one pickle before he died. The guard took pity on him and found a pickle for John Lower. According to family legend, John said that the pickle—by the grace of God—gave him the mental and physical strength to live on. Once he was reunited with his family he began a tradition of hiding a pickle on the Christmas tree. The first person who found the pickle on Christmas morning would be blessed with a year of good fortune.”

This story was by far my favorite of the pickle stories out there, I mean, how can you ignore the fact the "By the grace of God" this man was able to survive. Needless to say Sandy and I feel that it is important to share this Christmas tradition with our fellow staff members. Sandy picked up some pickle Christmas ornaments to send home with everyone, I found (pictured above) a yodeling pickle and little pickle catapults, I also found some pickle band-aids but for some reason couldn't purchase them. The yodeling pickle will likely be a prize for a coloring contest of this pickle http://www.gedneypickle.com/index.cfm/go/palooza.COLOR. And the catapults will be given away with our white elephant exchange.

I plan to make a few pickle dishes surgery dip (of course), and pickle wheels with cream cheese and ham, I also plan to have a few varities of pickles for sampling. If you know of any more pickle recipes you can let me know. After reading this i hope you all incorporate the Christmas pickle into your holiday traditions.

I'm Famous

See Here or on the lundboats.com website
Last May Lund Boats came and shot their 2009 catalog here at camp and on Lake Shamineau. It got down to the last day and they had one more shot they need and no models. So mike and I found ourselves being whisked away to our Island on the lake for a photo shoot and this picture is the result. All of you will now be able to say that you knew me when.

It's a wonderful life

So I definitely grew up a city girl, that is no longer who I am. I was talking with my friend Kelsey the other day and we decided that we just don't fit anywhere. I spent this last weekend hunting. It turned out to be a pretty easy weekend for me, I went out with my friend Dale we sat in the stand for 30 min I shot a deer and that was pretty much it. I got a little button buck, I have only shot a rifle 3 times in my life and I got a deer with each shot. Dale and I think I might have shot 2 deer with one bullet but we searched and searched and couldn't find the other one. Here is a picture of bambi.

So I also have a pretty interesting job sometimes. Today I had to figure out how to send a woman a case of breast milk that she pumped through out the weekend. I have decided that I don't want to deal with or even think about breast milk until I am a mother someday. Those phone conversations were a little bit awkward.

One month and counting

I haven't done laundry in a month or maybe even more. In the past when I have run out of clothes I have just bought more socks, underwear, etc... I can probably still last a week but this is getting ridiculous.

Motherhood

I really don’t feel like my life is all that blog worthy right now so you get to hear about the mundane. Yesterday I watched our Adventure Director’s kid during the day while I worked. It apparently was my responsibility to watch him because I had the audacity to schedule a group of 45 people for the ropes course on a Monday. It made me really glad that I don’t have kids yet, someday hopefully, but not yet. I gagged a lot, there were lots of boogers, smelly pea baby food, one really nasty diaper, very little nap time and very little work done. The kid is the cutest thing ever I just don’t think my stomach is ready for motherhood.

because I love you

I am not big on the blog games but I love my girls and they did it so I will follow suit. I was tagged by my friend Janet which means that I have to share 6 random facts about myself with you. At the end of the post I will not be tagging 6 other people who also have to post about their own randomness.. beware, it wont be YOU!
So here goes..
First, the rules:
1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Write six random things about yourself.
3. Tag six people at the end of your post
4. If you're tagged, just do it, and pass the tag along! (I wont do it, I know I’m a loser)



1. Most things make me gag and people go to incredible lengths to see this happen about a month ago I received a letter in the mail with toe nail clippings GROSS!!!

2. I have had my belly button pierced since I was 18, I went with our youth pastor’s Wife.

3. I have an annoying ability to find answers and solutions to really strange questions and problems, the more people find out about this ability the more random things I have to figure out.

4. In most pictures I take with people I am usually to the other person’s right. I don’t even do it on purpose.

5. I love pickles and I eat them all the time.

6. I play Sudoku all the time, this boy taught me on a random date while we sat in caribou, afterward we wandered around Target, 3 months later after he dated a friend of mine he ended up engaged to a new girl. They are now married living in her brother’s basement, weird guy.

Sad Day

It happens so fast. Life happens so fast, you don't realize how every decision you make will change you even something as simple as washing your hair. This week has been tough and sad and just plain hard. I am distracted and I am doing poorly at all of the jobs I have. When there is too much I just shut down, I'm tired. The one thing I have to cling to is that God is in control, He knows what he is doing and the end result can only be sweet.

Rodney is a Sweet Dog!

I found a dog for Rudy on craigslist and he is the best dog in the whole world (maybe not the best but he is pretty amazing). We went for a bike and that Dog kept up with us running full barrel the whole time. After the ride we practiced holding the tailgate of Rudy's truck up so Rodney can high jump into the bed, he clears it everytime. We haven't gotten Rodney to jump in with the tailgate closed yet but he can do it he just has it in his head that he cant. What a wonderful dog.

This is a Squishy Bowl

What could be

I have very sad news...Bob's trailer was hit by a tree he woke up with just enough room for his body, if he were sleeping in any other position his body would have been impaled by a log. Luckily he made it out with only a few scrapes and bruises.

I didn't get to eat out of my squishy bowls this morning, I forgot that I planned to go to breakfast with Callie.

I told Janet that I would show her how fun it would be for Her and Christ to get a blog so here it goes:

[Fade into a 3rd floor Brooklyn Apartment]

Chris: I woke up this morning to the stupid cat playing with a ping pong ball, I decided that that was it and I gave it to the family across the street. It is safe to say that I will never see that cat again.

Janet: Dubs is missing and I am sad.

Chris: I wish Rachel lived in New York she does a mean Turtle Face.

Janet: I wish Rachel were here I miss her and I am sad.

Chris: I drank a bottle of XXX Vitamin water and I bought new shoes today.

Janet: My Shoes broke and I am sad.

Chris: Blogging is way better that I thought, I am going to do this every day.

Janet: Chris and I have a blog and I am happy!!

I got Squishy Bowls

Sandy made the comment today that most girls get excited about new clothes, a new haircut, or new jewelery, I get excited about Squishy Bowls. They're amazing everyone should buy some, I plan to eat my cereal in one tomorrow.

Craziness

This weekend turned out to be pure craziness. 4 different groups, some who have not been on site before, lots of activity requests, lots of activity cancellations, tons of snacks, and an annoying amount of snow, mud, slush, and ice. To add to the weekend festivities I found out that we have a computer virus which I am still working on, I need find and remove the virus from our sever as well as all of our individual computers and then run a few scans on our entire system. I am at the point where I think I need another vacation.
After the weekend craziness subsided and the groups left, a bunch of us went to the large metropolis of Brainerd for a night of pizza and bowling. It amazes me how terrible I am at bowling. In High school I bowled for 3 months with 3 practices a week while having tournaments on weekends, now I am lucky if I break 100. Either way it turned out to be a really good time and it made me realize that I just really like my friends. Which brings me to tonight, we were all sitting there hanging out when Charlie announced we were going to have a birthday party for Jordan and I on Monday night(strange because my b-day was a month ago). So tonight is my birthday, lisa made a cake and there will be bunches of snacks and lots of people which will add up to an all around good time.

Sometimes I really like my job

This morning started off with me giving a camp tour to a group that is coming out in early May, we walked all around camp and finally ended the tour up at the ranch. We stopped to look at the horses and found ourselves discussing logistics while petting a very large horse and a very small ugly donkey we named Gus. After the tour I came back to work in the office. I went to the back office to ask a quick question, instead of an answer I was handed an Indian squaw dress a sheet of paper with music lyrics. All of the sudden I get to be in a commercial. It ended up being a remake of an old coke commercial where we sang something about wanting to build the whole world a home and furnish it with love. It had to be the cheesiest song ever. My favorite part was that another one of the "actors" in the commercial happened to be Joel Hanson from PFR, he was wearing a tight see-through white shirt and a pair of American flag zubaz and all this happened before lunch. Well that's all I have for now, cheers, I hope you have a fantabulastic Tuesday.

Silence of the Lambs

Ever since the "Silence of the Lambs", "Hannibal" and "Red Dragon" movies first came out I have been terrified of them and I have refused to watch. Everyone has always talked about how scary they were and how they didn't think I couldn't handle them. Well this past weekend I decided to conquer my fears, I watched all three. I thought the movies were pretty good but not nearly as scary as people said they were. I thought they were much more interesting than scary (Jess I think you could definitely handle them).
On another note to keep life interesting I typically come up with different goals. My newest thing is to get good at biking, not simple road biking but sweet trail, single-track, mountain biking. I had a few easy warm-up days around the lakes and then got run through the mill this weekend. We rode on some sweet low maintained trails behind the Brainerd airport. I am a pretty logical person so it was hard for me to keep convincing myself that it was a good idea to ride as fast as I could into either a downed tree, or down a steep trail, or even across a thin little ledge. The good news is that a few cuts, scrapes and a deer-tick later I am still alive. We will see how this all pans out. Have a fantastic Monday!!!

Numero Uno

So Jess you got me thinking about doing a blog and I get too bored waiting for you and Dave to post new ones that I decided to start my own. I had a hard time coming up with a name cause really how do you name one if these things. I decided to go to one of those websites where you can find your Gangsta name and I was gleefully surprised to find that there were lots of different names to choose from . The names I got to pick from were Gangsta "Jimbo the Crack Smoka", Taxi Driver "Chow-Chow Johnson", Pirate "Jelly Wrist Eve", and Mafia "Fancy Pants Lucia" which is my favorite of all the choices so I dubbed it the winner. I dont know how good I will be at this but I thought I would give it a try for a while, so blessings upon you and have a splendid Monday.