LHS Spring Fling

As I have mentioned before, I love dances. The school dances are too expensive (in my opinion) so I hadn't planned on going to the Spring Fling. But like always, there I am sitting on the couch, the day of the dance, and I cant help but gather up some friends and head to the dance.

Katie and I both rode our bikes to Jordan's house to ask him to go to the dance with us. This dance was casual dress (my fav), so we wore baggy basketball shorts, white T's, high socks, and Vans...(sigh) if only every dance was casual.

Anyhow, Lacrosse having started up, and me sorta kinda being "in-shape", agreed to Katie's suggestion to ride our bikes all the way to Liberty. I thought 'what the heck, it's only ten minutes away'. I failed to realize that ten minutes driving is a completely different story than riding on a rock for a seat attached to a piece of metal with two wheels.

After an hour, we arrived at the school.

Aside from the dead legs, I had a great time at the dance.

(Note: this last picture was taken with a cell phone in the pitch dark. Even photoshop could not save it.)

Spring Break

This year I had the best Spring Break I've ever had. I was able to do so much.

Mt. Hood Meadows

When I was younger, fear didn't exist. I loved to go snowboarding. I would go speeding down the slopes, without a seconds hesitation to how fast I'd be flying.

It's that time of the year. Snowboarding trip with friends. I had planned on taking my camera up and go snow shoeing, but Jen convinced me to go on the bunny hill with her the whole night.

Not once that whole night was I able to trust myself enough to lean on my back leg, like you're supposed to. Kelly, Katie, and I went up to a harder slope for one run, just to see what it was like. As Kelly and I rode the ski lift up the slope, we looked to our side and watched snowboarders do 360's, half pipe jumps, and go of ramps. I said "Kelly, I think this was a bad idea. I cant do that." After Kelly talked me off of the ski lift, we buckled up and headed down.

At one point, Kelly and I were yelling back up the mountain for Katie. It was night skiing, so we couldn't see where she was. Eventually, Katie made her way down. I fell, and hurt my knee, so I un-buckled one boot and sat on my board the rest of the way down. Surprisingly, it was very fun. I just got a couple looks and comments from the people riding up the ski lift above me.

Sadly, Kelly dislocated her shoulder and had to be taken to the hospital. When asked if she will ever snowboard again she says "Of course!"

Even with all of the fear and heart-pounding experiences, I had a great night.

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.

FHE with the Barnes

This past Monday we invited the Barnes' over for Family Night. We had a lesson on how we can become physically strong as well as spiritually Strong. As a visual add we made paper airplanes. Each individual fold or crease in the paper make it stronger and more sturdy (folds representing: personal prayer, fasting, tithing, sacrament, etc.) We had a great night.

J found the clothes pins and went at it.

Lilly had a blast making the best airplane.

Gideon had a fun time showing us how to be physically strong.