This is too great...

No, these pictures are not of me, or anyone I know. (Though if this is you, I'd LOVE to be your friend.) I found these pictures on a new favorite website sent to me by my sister-in-law, devoted to awkward family photos. This one became a quick favorite because of the upper right hand picture. I guess I had just never seen this effect done with a cabbage patch kid before.

My first retreat...

This Sunday I have 16 people coming out to camp for a retreat called, "Love to Tell the Story." The focus is on passing on our faith stories to the next generation, and providing ideas and tools for preserving our faith experiences and beliefs and being sure we communicate those beliefs to the next generation.

I am so proud of this retreat already. And I'm so excited for how God will show up in the stories that I will get to hear of ways he has moved in the lives of the people gathered together.

The best part is that my folks, grandma and aunt annie are all coming. Honestly, the gift of family support and unconditional love and encouragement is just overwhelming to me lately. I feel so ready and able because of my cheerleaders. Dad is going to be the morning teacher, teaching about Jesus' stories and I can't wait. He's my favorite preacher/teacher and to get to lead an event with him is just about the coolest thing I could ever dream of.

So keep us in your prayers. I'm hopeful to do more of these things in the future.

I love planning kid's events and...

...little things like this make me want to have kids just so I can start throwing sweet theme birthday parties.

4 years!

Rory and I are celebrating four adventurous, nomadic, creative years of marriage today! I think the thing that has surprised me the most about these first years of our marriage is how fun it would be each other's cheerleaders in terms of work and career. Not that I thought this would be not fun. But these first years have been filled with so much dreaming and visioning and believing in each other. I remember this from dating, but it's so great when it's your very own husband saying, "then let's do it. I'm with you."

Actually, I think those seven words sum up our marriage the best so far. We said them when we decided to rent out Minneapolis house out so we could live in Montana while I wrote my thesis and he programmed Weather Defender. We said them when we moved back to Minnesota to try out my dream of camp directing, and said them again when we hopped in the jeep for a 6600 mile road trip last fall, and again when we moved to Nebraska. Those words fit lots of lesser decisions too...like going to a late night movie last Sunday, trying to squeeze out the last moments of weekend before Monday morning.

The picture below is one of my favorites from the big day. After the reception, my head filled with a horrible cold and we had to stop at a gas station for sudafed. I just remember giggling and laughing with Rory as we wandered the aisles in our wedding attire saying things like, "I kind of want some mike and ike's." We still say those eight words a lot too.

Rory's Grandpa...

I just got the best email from my mother in law. She wrote that she was asked to write a funny story about Papa (her dad, our grandpa) to be shared at Family Night at the Care Home where he lives. She wrote out the following and it is all true.

Dad used to like to "ride the rails" or "jump trains" when he was young. He was around 18 yrs. old and very poor at the time. It was just after the depression. If his father could send him $1.00 of spending money for a semester of school that was all he would get. He was attending Bible College, but there was no money for traveling back and forth from home. He solved that problem by traveling on trains for free. He was in college in Springfield, Mo., and home was Cleveland, Ohio.

One time when it was Christmas, the highlight of the year for a Swedish family. He jumped a train, climbed on top and lashed himself onto the boxcar with his belt so he wouldn't fall off when he fell asleep overnight. He arrived safely home, but another man on top of that same boxcar froze to death during the night.

Another time he jumped into a darkened boxcar where he couldn't see into the back corner of that car. After the train started a man came at him from the dark. He was prepared to fight. He had a sock with a bar of soap in the toe of it which he swung at the other man and protected himself.

A third time he jumped into an open doored boxcar at a station. The workers came through the lot and closed all of the train's doors. He found himself locked in a refrigerated car. He says someone working the lot must have seen him go into that car and before the train pulled out he opened the door just a bit otherwise Dad would have frozen to death!!

We KNOW that the Lord had His hand on this man and kept him safe (from himself) many times. I wish you could hear him tell these stories!!

CS Lewis

Volunteers are never Jerks.

I really like what I do and I am reminded of this fact in funny different ways. Yesterday I spent the day leading our Jay Novicki program where three times a month adults with special needs come to camp to enjoy a day of outdoor ministry. I had a faithful volunteer today who came just to help. She took the day off of work just so I had someone who could do the dishes and prepare the craft, and make all of the transitions from one activity to the next look smooth and organized.

This woman just blew my mind because she was so good at volunteering. She knew what needed to be done before I could even communicate what needed to be done next. At one point I was thinking through some extra time we had to fill before lunch and I looked over at her and it just kind of dawned on me that volunteers are never jerks. It just can't be. If a woman is taking one of her vacation days to come and help me run a program for 15 adults with special needs, there is just no way that woman can be a jerk! Of course volunteers get little credit, and I worked as a volunteer coordinator at a senior home for a few years and know that volunteerism on the whole is on a steep decline...But it shouldn't be, because volunteering sets a person apart from the jerks.

So to this sweet woman today, who I didn't even know before she arrived, I want to say thank you. And thank you to volunteers. Now I feel like I need to go and find a place to give my time. I hope you're inspired too.

Thrifty and Genius.

One of my classmates in my digital scrapbook class tipped me off to this brilliant site:

www.retailmenot.com

Basically, you search for whatever store or item you are looking for, and it will come up with a list of sales and promo codes that might apply to what you are looking for. For example, she had looked up Shutterfly and found a promo code for free shipping for orders over $30.

Now, usually I'm not a coupon shopper, because I tend to end up purchasing things that are good deals but never would have been on my list to begin with. But this changes everything! Here, I type in what I'm looking for or the online purchase I am about to make and it looks for the deal.

Cha. Ching.

A new word!

My friend and coworker, Casey, has a blog for non-profit marketing. Today she posted on a new phenomenon called Slactivism. Check it out... it's pretty great stuff.

Fredrick Buechner

A facebook funny...

My 92-year-old Grandma is on Facebook. I made her an account when I was with her in Arizona after showing her pictures of my cousins in New Zealand. She's really computer savvy, and has been able to keep up to date with all of her grandkids ever since.

I just got an email from her, sent to her entire family, where she wrote, "I spent the whole morning looking at pictures on Facelift--hadn't ever found them before, my, that was fun."

Calling Facebook, Facelift made me laugh out loud.

If you're reading...Grandma, I think your computer skills are amazing and I think your new name for facebook is perhaps more accurate than you know!

Every day life scrapbooking

This has been a funny scrapbook class because a lot of the layouts were designed for families with kids. So the whole book is ending up VERY Rory and Becca centered. But I have started to embrace this fact, grateful that I can use some of our more random pictures like coffee cups and helium balloons given after my last day of summer camp, into my albums. Usually I am more of a trip-specific scrapbooker, but I think this album will fill in the everydays in between.

The first day of school...

Technically in Nebraska, kids have been in school for three full weeks now. But I am still on my Minnesota clock, where the first day of school always fell on that highly anticipated day after Labor Day. I have sweet memories of waiting so anxiously to drive to Greenleaf Elementary school at the beginning of August to find out who my teacher would be for the year. They would post the class lists on the school doors and we would nervously chatter about what we had heard about Mrs. so-and-so and wonder if she'd be nice or mean or strict or funny.

This was also the time we would get our school supply list. I would hold that list so carefully as we shopped through the pandemonium of parents and kids at Kmart. One year I got these crayons that had different colors at each end. I made a special holder for them out of a check box that I decorated with stickers and wrapping paper. Oh how I love new crayons!

And then we'd go shopping for something new to wear on that first day of school. I specifically remember going to work with my mom in Minneapolis and making a special trip to the downtown JCPennies for this outfit. It usually was very comfortable, because I loved leggings and one piece outfits and sweatpants. (I didn't own a pair of jeans until I was in 7th grade!) And we'd get new sneakers and a hairthingy to go with it too.

Finally, the day would arrive, and with great joy, I walked my new crayons in my backpack to the bus stop wearing my new clothes from Pennies. That's me in the one piece white and purple striped outfit with the new hairthingy and sneakers holding Jennifer's hand.

The Great Minnesota Get Together!

Today is the last day of the Minnesota State Fair, my second favorite holiday right after Christmas. I love everything about the fair, love that I am a part of the fair and love the tradition and sameness of our routine from one year to the next. This year, in the 12 days recorded (today's attendance hasn't been added into this total), 1,663,573 people will have walked through the fair grounds, consuming an estimated half-a-million corn dogs. (I helped with that stat...) Below are pictures of my favorites at the fair:
Here's what you're seeing in these pictures, going left to right, top to bottom...
1. The Butterheads. The lovely ladies of the court of Princess Kay of the Milky Way hold this honor of having their busts carved in Minnesota butter.
2. One of my favorite food stops, up there with Sweet Martha's cookies and Hawaiian Shaved Ice.
3. Family friend Marcus and one of the pigs he showed his year. Last year, the pig he showed went home to have five piglets, but died during labor. They removed the piglets by c-section and Marcus and his folks BOTTLE FED all FIVE piglets every TWO hours for the first THREE weeks of their lives. Marcus brought three of those piglets-all-grown-up to show at the fair this year.
4. In the Creative Arts building, all of the quilts, canned goods and baked goods are on display. It is a life goal to enter cookies at the fair. Maybe next year...
5. Could there be a better center picture for a photo collage? I didn't think so. Behold, a finished Butterhead.
6. This was my favorite new experience at the fair! We watched the 4-H cow show. Oh my word. You cannot tell this from the picture, but these cows are naughty. And they don't like to be on leashes. And the poor middle school 4-H'ers have to do their best to pretend like they have serious control of these large, opinionated animals. There were scuffles, and tempers and I couldn't get enough. This is a new fair tradition.
7. The reason I love the fair like I do: My family arranges flowers for competition with the Minnesota Gladiolas Society. A lesser known of all societies (please smile here), we are a fascinating combination of people who love beautiful flowers. This is my Uncle Carl and one of his AMAZING arrangements. He always makes stunning, huge, glorious arrangements.
8. This is the white ribbon I won this year for this sweet little arrangement.
9. Pork Chop on a stick. Be sure you get one of these. Salty and perfect. And my mom's favorite fair food.


So, basically, if you haven't ever been to the Minnesota State Fair, you've just got to get there. I drove 12 hours round-trip from Nebraska down for 12 hours of fair fun because it's just great.

I'm proud of this one...

Today is Pastor Brad's birthday, and since I think he's a great guy and a great boss and since I love a good birthday celebration, I thought I'd throw a little party. So I decorated the program office with yarn strung all across the ceiling, made some happy signs and used his favorite Tigger's for decoration. But the room was missing people to celebrate, so I found our resuscitation Annie's used for camp staff CPR training and put our staff uniform on them complete with party hats. Truth be told, I had enough Annie's to fill the table, but I found two to be plenty. They are very happy as they smile non-stop, but tend to lean more towards a happy-creepy-birthday feel. Never the less, Happy Birthday Pastor Brad!!!!

Beautiful Weddings.

I went to three weddings in August, all beautiful and so fun to be a part of. These pictures are from Betsy's wedding, my next door neighbor for 17 years. The Anderson's have always been as family to us, and this wedding was a true celebration of this friendship. Dad performed the ceremony, mom did the flowers and Rory and I did our part by eating lots of Coldstone wedding cake (brilliant. every wedding should have ice cream cake.)

Betsy's older sister, Jennifer, was my best friend all growing up and basically we tormented Betsy as the little sister. When I was scanning family photos a few weeks ago, I came across this picture of me and Jennifer having a sleepover. It is amazing how life flies by.

BeccaGroves Font.

I typed that. And it's my handwriting!!! Isn't that incredible?!!!

And it wasn't really all that hard either. I simply wrote out my letters on the following sheet (printed from yourfonts.com), scanned the sheet, and uploaded my personal letters. The letters you see above is my first attempt...the scanner picked up something on the small p, so it has a long space after it (hence the uppercase P's used above.) Rory helped me fix this problem, so I'm about to upload a clean-little-p version. It cost me $10 per upload (should have only taken one time) and I know from reading about it that I should have been able to do this for free. But by the time I got to the actually typing my handwriting stage I was so excited I was happy to hand over the money. (again, if you do your research, you should be able to do this for free and you really ought to give this a try...) Here's the sheet I scanned:

So go play!! I love digital scrapbooking but the thing that has bummed me out is always using a computer font instead of personal handwriting. Well lookie now. The BEST of both worlds!

Chapter Two: Us.

I am so excited about this week of scrapbooking. All of the assignments have to do with family.

Hello Japan!

So I just had Rory look at my google analytics (tells me how many people read my blog) because for about a month now it has said that I only have one reader, and that my one reader is in Japan. Now I knew I couldn't really just have one reader because know from emails, conversations and comments that you, dear friends from college, high school, seminary, minnesota, nebraska, cousins, sisters and new blog world friends are out there and that you're reading.

But to my one reader in Japan...Konnichiwa! I can't believe I went global so fast.

Scanned + Scrapped = Success

I am completing one layout a day in this Jessica Sprague class. I would post more, but this first week the pages were "all about me" and it just feels very vain. But these last two pages were less about me and more about what makes me me. I borrowed the scanner from work and all my mom's photo albums a few weeks ago so I could start scrapbooking with pictures from my childhood. What a joy! I love mixing old pictures in with the current ones. So fun.

These scrapbook pages are set up as templates, so I simply drop the paper and pictures in and play around in photoshop until I'm satisfied. It means that some of the layouts I adore and others I can handle, but don't love. (ie: I adore the "influences" layout, and can handle this layout below. What it really means is that scrapbooking has never been so easy. Ever. I will print these out either as 12x12's or 8x8's (I am thinking 8x8) and throw them in an album and tada! An album made with one layout a day!