My life

a) I have been an awful, terrible, horrible blogger this past month. My apologizes. 

b) I have spam like crazy, any suggestions on how to get rid of it?

c) As of last Friday, I am the official youth leader for the middle school girls are First Pres in Chattanooga!!! So much more on that later---I AM SO EXCITED!!!!! 

d) I just went to New Orleans on a missions trip this past week and cannot wait to upload pictures/tell the stories. 

d) I am blessed. 

Red Rover, Red Rover

I played Red Rover last night...
As a part of my job...

Seriously? Could I have a cooler job? Red rover + Jesus + laughing = best job ever.

Speaking of Jesus...the boys decided to recreate the Last Supper. Hilarious.

Balancing a 24/7 Job

Middle school ministry is a 24/7 kind of job and this week has flown by because of it! Because I had Monday off (thanks to America's birthday!), I've had a busy week trying to pack a normal schedule into Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday!

I started off my Tuesday morning with Youth Staff Prayer followed by our weekly meeting at Joe Friday's! Our middle school missions trip is a quickly approaching 2 weeks away and fall kick-off stuff is right around the corner so we had some delegating and planning to do this week. After some office work, an all staff meeting (more like devotional time, which I loved), I met up with Chris Raynolds to walk around downtown for 2+ hours in 90-something degree heat while he took pictures that we are using to decorate our high school room with!

I went straight from pictures to pick up Allie (middle schooler) so she could spend the night. We stayed up past 2:00 watching the Bachelorette and Glee reruns, a Taco Bell run way later than I want to admit to, and some YouTube video searching!

Most of Wednesday was spent doing some work in the office and writing letters to girls working at camp this week. After another meeting, I got to meet up with Becca and Bailey for Sticky Fingers and what we hoped was a cheap movie night...Too bad the shows were all sold out, so we settled for "Remember Me" from Red Box. Most of the movie skipped, there was quite a bit of language and it was just depressing in general...in other words, don't waste your time on it. It was fun to spend time with them and I'm so glad we're all in Chattanooga together for the summer!

I babysat for about 10 hours on my day off...but when I say babysit, all that means is that I had a picnic lunch and played in the pool for 4 hours with 2 high energy boys (4 and 6 years old) followed by watching Little Mermaid and munching on a Digorno pizza with a 2 year old girl. I love both of those families and really enjoying helping out the moms whenever I can! After a fun day with the kids, I hung out with my co which is always good to talk and put things into perspective.

I slept in some today before running some errands, and met up with Katelynn for a 4 hour lunch date! :) I love good conversation with lots good laughs and some seriousness sprinkled in there. Ever since, I've been at the church office trying to iron out my talk for Sunday morning.

I'm so glad for a fruitful, busy week with a busy/relaxing weekend waiting on the other side of my office door. Hopefully I can get some sleep tonight so I can make it to one of my middle school girl's cheer camp show case in the AM before camp folk are off for the weekend.

PS#1: Sorry for the lack of pictures and/or super interesting blog topics as of lately...I'll try my best to avoid the recap-type posts!
PS#2: I feel a deep blog in the makings so hang in there!

My 5th 4th

I should just stop prefacing every post by saying my life is crazy/wonderful...but it's the truth!!

After coming back from camp, I didn't have much time to get into the swing of things, but leave it to a holiday weekend to throw off whatever normalcy I had going for me!

Last Thursday, I got to have dinner at David and Emily Geyer's with Ryan Davis, Cate Gilmer, and Megan Stephens!! How fun is it that Chattanooga is home to so many and a stopping place for so many others?! It was a blessing to catch up with old camp friends who I wish I got to see more often. I realized that I really had worked at camp forever when I mentioned David, Emily, and Cate to some of the staff that are working there this year and they didn't know who I was talking about! Weird...

On Friday, I squeezed in a chance to visit one of my middle school girl's drama camp production of Aristocats! Hannah was Dutchess and I was so glad I made the stop before heading to Marietta!
I got to see my now 3 month old niece (as of today!!) on Friday night after having dinner in Marietta with my parents. Kirby and I stayed up late talking, slept in, and then talked some more. It was so fun to see this little peanut and talk to one of my sisters.

After a day of being lazy at the Cleland's, I went to pick up my Mimi and spent the night at my parent's house before a 4th of July tradition--the Peachtree Road Race with my dad!! The Peachtree is the world's biggest 10 K that's always on the 4th of July with over 55,000 people! It was exhausting, but so worth it! It was Peachtree #5 for me and #22 for my daddy!!

After some rest and a much needed shower, family started coming to the Mardis household. My aunt (dad's sister), her daughter (my cousin-duh), daughter in law, and my cousin's kids (second? third cousins?) and both of my sister's/their families were there with us! It was so fun to spend the afternoon with them, especially with all of the kids running around.
I headed back to Kirby's house that night so all three girls could be at the same place together. I really wanted to enjoy a late night of talking and playing pounce, but I fell asleep on the couch!! I guess that 10K really did wear me out (either that of the 5:15 AM alarm...)

I got to see my "big brother" Shahrukh this weekend too which has become a once a year rendezvous for us.

All in all, it was a WONDERFUL holiday weekend and I even got to spend some extra time with Katie, Kirby, Lee, Charlotte, and Felicity on Monday. After more time in the car, I made it to a cookout at Bailey Conner and Becca Hart! I loved seeing lots of old camp friends in such a short period of time!

But now it's time to get some work done...actually, I have lots of work to do! More on that later! :)