"It's like being pick-pocketed... with your words."

Due to inclement weather we spent about forty minutes in the hallway at the end of the day today. The kids were all lined up Indian style, not allowed to talk. They were golden for the first fifteen minutes and then the natives began to get a bit restless. I tried to pull from my inner camp counselor strength to come up with activities that would be silent and entertaining for the kids around me. Who knew one pop tab could be so mesmerizing?

The weather died down and eventually everyone got to go home. Later tonight I went to First Friday, an art showing downtown, with Young Life friends. We were trying to explain the event to our first-time-attending-friends and said, "You just feel so mature and adult, even though everyone there seems artsier and trendier than you are."

You wind your way through different hallways, rooms and floors of the building and get to see the work of dozens of different artists. We all have our favorites to go visit. Some of the work I love, some we walk past without pausing to stop, and most of it just inspires me to go create something of my own.

One of the rooms is my favorites because of the high stained glass windows, walls stacked high with books and every available surface filled with paint tubes, stacks of speckled water dishes and cups of paint brushes. On one of his walls he had this quote from Vincent Van Gosh written in chalk, "I do not intend to spare myself, not to avoid emotions or difficulties. I don't care much whether I live a longer or shorter time… the world concerns me only in so far as I feel a certain debt toward it, because I have walked on this earth for thirty years, and out of gratitude I want to leave some souvenir."


One of our favorite artists is a glass blower. We looked at all of his work but were sold when we found these tumbled glass rocks that were only fifty cents each. Through careful deliberation we helped Mary Ellen choose a selection of these beauties for her classroom.

Did you know...

We've been planning, counting down, organizing and anticipating and the day is almost here. Tomorrow is the start of the 2011 Spring CILT Reunion and I can hardly wait to see Karisa, Grace, Lizzy and the rest of the kids that are coming. These are some of the days that I look forward to the most the entire year. I already know it's going to be one for the record books.