"Are you in beginning teenage tap too?!" #swag #swag #swag

After school Friday I drove North to Downer's Grove to meet up with some of my favorite camp people. Soaps and Maeve, the first to arrive, were bursting with excitement and pure joy to be with camp friends. And look at this tree they spotted--all covered in knitted tree- sweaters/bracelets/scarves. So much love.

Rachel, Tina, and Mike met us for a pizza dinner. I hadn't seen Rachel and Maeve since they were CILTs over two months ago or the other three since they finished Day Camp at the end of the summer. It's just so fun to see people you love so much. My favorite part of dinner was Rachel and Tina discussing their tap classes and Tina dancing in the middle of the restaraunt.

Soaps is one of the captains for the LT student section- she carries the white board in her car and has one of the black jerseys with a C. It's a BIG deal. We had to see her in action and went to the football game a couple blocks away. As soon as we walked up the bleachers we were reunited with Katherine and MaryKate and camp-reunion screaming began again.

Camp people make sports so much fun.

After the game I drove up to Evanston to meet Sarah Briggs. It was late but I got to see her really cool apartment (exposed brick, giant windows, secret room) and meet her roommates Sam and Sarah before going to sleep.

When we woke up in the morning it was CAKE DAY! Our friend's sister has been celebrating cake day for 7 years and Sar has now introduced the holiday to Chicago.

Our morning began with S.O.S. Girl leaders from the area came over to eat breakfast together and have intentional conversation (two of my favorite things).

We read Hebrews 11 together which is all about living by faith. There are dozens of examples of people who lived by faith- maybe because they were in the right place at the right time or maybe an action of faith that took years. I was struck by these verses, "People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them." I want to be looking forward to what God has in store, to believe that there is a better life, a better country waiting for us that we're always working towards.

I loved getting to step into this community and talk with the women that are now part of Sarah's community in Chicago.

We went on a walk through a farmers' market and the neighborhood...

... until we came to the Lake Fill. It's an area right by Northwestern where they filled in the Lake to create this island for a perfect view of the city. The rocks that line the island have become this giant, creative, ever-changing, community art project. Anyone can paint these rocks with messages and they stretch the whole shore.

We were all about climbing up and over and around the giant rocks. Pointing out our favorites to each other and the ones that made us laugh or "awww" out loud.

They remind me of Post Secret in the way that they're all so similar but different at the same time. Now I really want to paint my own rock. (In case you missed it, there are a lot more rocks that I took pictures of on my last post.)

Back at #thecanvas we started baking whoopie pies and Sam made us the healthiest grilled cheese I've ever eaten in my life: cheese, turkey, tomato, red peppers, green peppers, and lettuce. So many vegetables. Someday I'm really going to love peppers. We had to make a Diet Coke run because these girls only drink La Croix and water, I'm reintroducing Sar to her roots.

Sar and Sam have gotten famous for their whoopie pies and needed to make some fall ones for a party we were going to that night. Pumpkin whoopie pies with cream cheese frosting. So good. The girls voted these the best whoopies yet.

Since it was cake day we needed more cake. Some of Sar's New Trier Young Life girls came over to make cupcakes.

I'd talked to some of them on Skype with Sar before but it was so fun to see them in real life. They are quirky and loud and confident and so much like our girls in Indy.

The rest of the night I got to enjoy Chicago style pizza, Sam's night driving, walking into a YL party and seeing the one and only Molly Too Cool, going to a "unique and intimate" gathering, seeing the layout of an apartment using phones/chapstick/cameras/wallets as building blocks, and meeting more Chicago YL friends.

Sunday morning I drove to Winthrop Drive to meet Annie Fazzio! Oh my gosh it was so fun. Annie was skyping with Mags when I arrived and got to watch our excitment right away. So much joy.

I really love Annie and am so thankful that she has become such a big part of my life even if it's at a distance. We often talk about how great it would be if we could hang out all the time and today we got to live that out.

It felt like such fake life that we were actually together getting Chipotle and driving by her school and trying out a new cupcake place and talking with her family and making top 10 lits and watching the new Moll and Coll video and talking about stories from our weekend.


Even simple things like seeing Annie's house were so fun because now I can picture her life so much better.

We were living the dream.

In Bittersweet, Shauna Niequist writes about "The Things I Do" and "The Things I Don't Do." I like that because I think it's so important to be aware of what you want to be about and how you want to spend your time so you're not wasting it. Showing up is something that I do. I want to be apart of the everyday lives of the people that I love even if they're far away. To all of these Chicago friends, thanks for letting me show up this weekend.