*It's A Wonderful Life*: 1 1/2 weeks

Such a short time span can certainly hold alot of events. Hmmm lets see...

The day after my last post I woke up with a fever that lasted for a week. It was accompanied by a cough that unfortunately is still hanging on, although not as bad. Having a fever that long can be quite concerning. I kept joking around that my brain was being fried. :) Anyways, I went to the dr and sat in the room for 2 days (ok, maybe not that long...but it sure felt like forever) only to find out that it was a viral infection and there was nothing to do but ride it out. Talk about frustrating. No job, no insurance, dr bill that's who knows how high only to tell me that they can't do anything for me. Oh well. Such is life. :)

That weekend we had our first official visitor, Nicki! It was so good to see her again! Aside from me dying and her allergies, it was a great weekend for her to come because it was the Stampede!! The rodeo was SO MUCH FUN! It was the first I had ever been to, and I will definitely do it again! After church on Sunday we played chicken foot and enjoyed some of Chris' pizza. Mmmm.... Unfortunately Nicki started feeling really sick due to her allergies and she stayed an extra night. I was sad to see her sick, but happy that we got to keep her longer. =)

Let's see...I layed around most of the week contemplating who I would bequeath my belongings to if I died from the illness the dr wouldn't give me medicine for....I'm not bitter...nope...not one bit. =) Ok, I might be exaggerating a bit...but I really did lay around. I wasn't feeling good at all. If you're wearing a fleece jacket in 100 degree weather...somethings not right! The people in the waiting room must have thought I was crazy. Haha...I was trying SO hard not to cough because there was a sign saying that they would give you a face mask if you were contagious.

Thursday brought more visitors. The Radachs stopped by before the Hwy 20 campout. She even brought me some of her old Wilton cake pans! Awww...thanks!!! It was nice to spend a little bit of time with them before we all headed off to the 4th campout over here! Can you believe it? We've been doing this for 4 years now! It was SO good to see everyone that came! It had been almost 2 months! The campout went really well. I personally didn't go on outreach Friday because of being sick, but many were able to have some good conversations and hopefully we'll be able to follow up with all of the contacts. (Sorry...I don't have one.single.picture from the campout!)

It was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but on the way home Maggie and I started formulating a plan. More about that in a minute!

Saturday afternoon Pastor & Mrs. Sargent and Jake came over to spend our 'Grand Opening Service' with us the following day. It was great to see them again and catch up on what's been going on at BBC, the youth missions trip to Mexico in particular! While the adults went to dinner, Maggie, Jake, Andy (he stayed from the campout), Lilly, Olivia & I stayed at the house and had pizza, played at the girls' playground, and watched a movie. Funny story on the pizza. You wouldn't think it would be too hard to order some pizza, but it took me 3 tries before I had any success. The first one was a pizza & video place right here in town, but they said they weren't making pizza right now...probably when school starts. What??? The second one was in the neighboring town and said they don't deliver to residential addresses. Again...what??? My third try was a success and it was pretty good pizza too! I had to laugh at the first two pizza places...it was insane that they either weren't making pizza right now or don't deliver to homes! In the end, we got our pizza and were happy!

Sunday went really well! We had the most people yet with the usual 8 of us, 3 regulars, 3 first time visitors & 7 from our home church! It was a great service and the fellowship was thoroughly enjoyed! After lunch Pastor & Mrs. Sargent, Jake & Andy had to head back to OH for the evening service because the youth were doing a presentation on their recent missions trip. We were sad to say goodbye...or were we??? Little did they know, we would see them again....very soon!

I mentioned earlier that Maggie & I started formulating a plan on the way home from the campout. As we were driving back I was thinking about how nice it was to see everyone and even though some friends were not able to come we had seen them already or would be seeing them very soon...except for Alyssa. Because of her work schedule she didn't know when she would be able to get some time off. I mentioned to Maggie that I thought it would be fun to go back to OH and surprise Alyssa sometime. She then mentioned that she had been thinking about how Linnea really wanted her to come see the missions trip presentation and while she initially thought it wouldn't be possible she was beginning to think it would work after all. We discussed it a bit more, but I was kind of unsure about it and we left it at that. Once we got home we started talking about it more and it soon turned into a plan to leave after church so we could make it to OH in time for the evening service, and then spend that night and Monday with Alyssa...but we wouldn't tell anyone we were coming!! And that's exactly what happened. Except for our parents and the Majors, no one knew we were going to OH...not even the Sargents who were probably only 15 minutes ahead of us on the road! We made with an hour to spare and sat at the beach waiting for the time to pass. We were so excited to surprise everyone and were a couple of giddy little girls the whole afternoon! Unfortunately on our way to church we were spotted by Steve & Sherri but followed them into the church parking lot to make sure they kept our secret. As part of our plan, we tried to make sure we got to church right as the service was starting so no one would see us. We hoped to walk in during the first song, but due to the special events of the evening we weren't able to do that...but what happened was even better! Sherri let us in through a side door so we could wait in a classroom, and as we did we heard Pastor start talking about spending the morning with us. Perfect! We walked in right as he was talking about us and he sure was surprised to see us! Everyone else was just as surprised...our plan worked!

The service was great and it was wonderful to see others that weren't able to make it to the campout. After surprising Nicki who was home sick, we spent the night with Alyssa...the main reason for the trip. If she couldn't come to us, we were going to go to her. It worked out perfectly because Mondays are her day off! We had a picnic at Deception Pass, played at the church playground (hehe), played Sorry Card Revenge (Alyssa & I won!!!), and just spent time enjoying each other's company! We even got to spend a little bit of time with Josh on Monday morning! Even though the time was short (we came home today), it was wonderful to be able to see Alyssa (and others!) again! I'm so glad we decided to make the trip!