A little goes a long way...

Imagine this... you're sitting at home watching TV with your brothers and sisters, then your parents walk into the room and ask to have a family meeting. The summer is drawing to a close and school is almost here, so you fully expect your parents to be calling a meeting to talk about the new school year. So, you turn off the TV, get comfortable on the couch, maybe stick your toung out at one of your siblings, and the next thing you know your parents are telling you something that changes your life forever... "Mom has Breast Cancer."

Along with many other people, I dont need to imagine this, because it actually happend to me.

These words are said too often. The only way to put a stop to this scary disease is to find the cure.

I recently excepted the challenge to raise funds to support the Komen Portland Race for the Cure on September 19th, 2010 in the fight to save lives and end Breast Cancer forever. Along with raiseing funds, I will be running in a 5k race.

I have made a goal to raise at least 100 dollars. With your help WE can accomplish my goal. Please donate anything from 5 dollars to 100 dollars.

Thank You!

http://race.komenoregon.org/site/TR/Race/PortlandRacefortheCure?px=2001657&pg=personal&fr_id=1130

Portland Rescue Mission

This year I joined my school's Interact Club. For those of you who don't know, this club is basically a service club. One of the events that I just recently went to was the Portland Rescue Mission. Katie and I were the only ones there, but we had a blast.

(Sorry about the picture quality. The lighting was terrible, and I didn't bring my regular camera.)

All of the tubes that you see behind Katie are full of donated clothing, that has been sorted by volunteers, such as Interact Club members.

The guy in the back is my dad. He came to help out. The boxes you see are full of gently used or new shoes. Nike donates their sample shoes to the Portland Rescue Mission too, so there are some quality shoes.

Katie has a thing for cows lately. As we were sorting the shoes into boxes, she found a cow slipper. You don't even know how excited she was.

This is how the donations start out. In that pile there are shoes, shirts, pants, scarves, etc. Then volunteers sort everything into male/female, shorts/jeans, dress shoe/athletic shoe... Because of the amount of donations that PRM receives, they only take the best of the best. We are told to keep only the things that we would actually wear ourselves. The rest of the clothing is shared with other homeless organizations in Portland.

There is a massive amount of food that has been donated my Winco. They donate anything that has been sliced with a box knife. Therefore, PRM has crates full of good food where only one of the hundred packages is cut open.

There are poster boards with homeless people on them around the entire warehouse. The first time I volunteered at PRM, I would turn the corner and jump when I saw a fake person. But now that it was my second time, i got to see Katie jump.

Just a little fun with the barrels.

This guy works at the PRM warehouse. My mind is at a blank and I forgot his name, but he's a pretty fun guy.

Elda' Butters' two years are up

Elder Butters came over the night before his mission was completed. He and my dad both love golf; hence the golf balls and hat.

Butters has been a great missionary here in Oregon. I cant wait to meet him again...which wont be long since he and my dad are meeting up to play golf in Utah.

Thanksgiving

This year's Thanksgiving was a special one. If I was to describe it with a quote I would say "There is always a first for everything."

I had the opportunity to make the turkey this year....yeah, I'm still surprised my parents trusted me to do it. I was excited up until my dad informed me that I had to pull out the "extras" from the turkeys back side...if you know what I mean.

Bath Time!!!

The turkey was definitely made with love ;)

Spencer and Sarah decided to make a movie for Thanksgiving. Whenever Spencer has a camera and it's a holiday we tend to make movies....some of which have made it on to Facebook. (My first day of High School Freshman year I had teachers saying "Hey your the one in Spencer's movie." Not fun!)

Here's Spencer showing Sarah how to look mad.

I will always remember this Thanksgiving. Not because it was so fun or because for the first time I had no homework over break. But because my dad had our family host a dinner at a homeless shelter. At first I was a little nervous, I had never done this kind of thing before and I didn't know what to expect. The dinner turned out great. The amazing thing about the whole experience was that if the family hadn't told me that they were homeless, I would not have been able to tell that they were. It was truly an eye opening moment for me. Just because someone is homeless it doesn't mean they are worthless. If you think about it, Jesus was born homeless yet he has made the biggest and greatest impact on our lives.

When it came time to cut the turkey I insisted to do it myself. Yeah, that didn't turn out so good. I cut one piece and was frustrated with the difficulty of the seemingly easy task. I gladly passed the task over to my dad.

This year was great!

Dinner with a friend

A couple Sundays ago I was sitting next to my amazing Young Women leaders, aka my best buds, and we started talking about cooking. I told them about the addiction I have with my pork chop meal. I decided it was about time I cooked for them, so I set dates to cook for each Kelly Berton and Kirsten Hinton.

I made Kelly's family my pork chops for dinner that week. It was very fun sitting and chatting with her and her family. I cant wait for our next dinner date.

Tonight I brought mini pizza crusts and pizza toppings over to Kirsten's house with Sarah and we made pizzas with her little kids for dinner. I had a good time.

Jen your next on my list of dinners to make....oh, maybe a dinner and then a movie at the ghost place in Downtown :)

I love my Young Women leaders. They're more like best friends to me and I love spending time with them.

Haunted Corn Maze

For my church we have what is called Personal Progress. It is for the young women (ages 12-18) who are in the ward. Personal Progress is a booklet that is filled with challenges that cause you to form habits in your life, such as service, healthy cooking, choosing good friends, etc. If a young women completes a certain number of challenges in two months than the bishop, or my dad, plans a fun activity for all who accomplished it. The thing is, my dad never tells us where we are going or what we will be doing...basically we guess all the way to the activity.

So far I have been to Malibu Raceway, Beavers game, Concert, Lazar tag, and more. I finished my Personal Progress, and now it is my responsibility to help others finish theirs and most of all keep up the habits of service towards others.

For this past activity my dad took a group of us to Sauvies Island, in Portland. We went to a haunted Corn Maze. Being who I am, I brought my camera to document the activity. I took videos through out the corn maze. I had a blast with my friends and I cant wait for the next activity.

Da' Blood Drive

Last week some girls at school came up to me and asked me if I wanted to give blood. I took the form, signed it, and forgot about it. It wasn't till Wednesday that I actually remembered and realized what I had done. The blood drive was the next day and I was flippin' out.

Thursday came and I was feeling the butterflies race in my stomach. Thursday, also, happened to be the day that my English class' student teacher was shadowing me the whole day(for college reasons.) I didn't know when I would be pulled out of class for the donation, so she had to watch me freak out all day.

Finally I was tired of waiting so I went up to the blood drive and got in line. When I told them I had been to Mexico that year, they interrogated me to make sure I dint go to any skechy places. After what felt like hours of interviewing, forms, and reading I got the first of the torture. My poor little finger had to be pricked. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

I had a pass sent to my friend Shayna's class so that she could come down and hold my hand. I know I'm a wimp. I sat down to get "hooked-up" and right away I couldn't stop laughing. I tend to laugh when I am that nervous. The nurse I had was hilarious. She kept referring to me as the girl she was about to jab with a needle.

For obvious reasons, I didn't watch the needle when it was being "jabbed" into my arm. But Shayna was watching and seeing her face as it was all happening was enough. It turns out my arm decided to squirt the nurse with my blood. I filled a pint of blood in like 5 seconds. I'm a champ. I didn't even feel one bit different when I was done.

I had a great time donating blood, now I'm officially addicted to blood drives. :)

My Jam Packed Schedule

As you all know by now, I'm going off to Montana for the summer. Before I leave I wanted to hang out with all of my friends. I jammed each of my friends into my schedule. So far I have gone to a 3D movie, made muffins, service project, movie night, bike ride, picked flowers, lunch, etc.This has been one of those weeks that I cant even remember what day it is.

The first thing I did was hang out with Katie, Mckinna, Ms. Arrigotti, Stephenie, and John. We all went to the movie UP, in 3D. Katie and I enjoyed the 3D glasses the most. We agreed to wear them to Liberty next year...that's not gonna happen cause I already lost mine.

I'd have to say, we look pretty spiffy.

That same night was my service project. I planned a service project for a group of my church friends. A ton of people showed up and the project was a success.

The next thing I did was cook with Sarah. I made spaghetti, french bread, and muffins. Sarah made Alfredo. I waited forever for the muffins to be done.

That is my Portland-Wanna-Be water bottle that I told you about earlier.

I waited a long time :D When the muffins were done Sarah and I had a movie night.

Yesterday I decided that I wanted to go on a bike ride. Sarah, Shayna, and I rode our bikes to both Jen and Kelly's houses. We picked flowers on the Intel Campos for Jen...I'm pretty sure this act was illegal, but so worth it.

In order for me to take these last two picture I had to ride backwards....yeah I know I'm a dare devil. I'm surprised karma didn't choose right then to make me hit a rock in the road.
This is how Sarah puts her bike away....you can imagine what her room looks like. Actually her room is really clean.

This afternoon my neighbor and friend, Chris, took me out to lunch. Her daughter, Makenzie, and I are very good friends. We went to Spaghetti Factory, and for dessert we went to Cold Stone.

I want to finish off my week by taking a trip down to the Portland Saturday Market....we'll see what happens.