The Ravencrest Year Book

Today my fellow classmate John and I went to the Estes Park library to organize our videos and brains so that we can get a move on the video year book for Ravencrest this year. Thats right, video year book. I thought that monthly videos were intence…oh boy. This project is going to rock my world. John and I are editing the video, Amanda, Joe and Christoph are gathering footage and My is our expert picture taker. I’m really excited about putting it together though. It will be great practice for what I hope to study next year at George Fox. We are hoping to make the video as if it were a week-in-the-life of a student. Going through each day and encorprating the entire year in one week. I think it will turn out good, we just have to do it right. We are also looking to have a two-disk special dvd. the first disk would have the year book on it and the second would have all of the monthly videos as well as the Christmas play that we did back in December. And of course I would love to throw in little bouns features here and there. The down side is, that there is so much to filter through. My pictures, other peoples pictures, videos from Amanda, and so on and so forth. So much! I feel like my brain is going to melt. Once myslef and a few other buddies are able to sift though and get all of the usless junk out then that will make life a tad bit eaiser, but even then there will be lots of footage. Oh well, I guess that could be a good thing right?

This past weekend was mid-term break. Got off of school on Wedneday after morning classes. Thursday I went to Timberlineto hang out at the school and chill with Wes. They have so much snow! Sarah, Amy, and I frolicked through a feild of snow that came about half way up our shins. So much fun, trying to walk through thick powedery snow like that. Rather cold too, but so worth it. I learned how to ice skate as well. ^_^ Everyone kept telling me “no, Molly! You will fall and hurt yourself even worse than before!” But I still rocked it. Amy helped me not to fall and I felt like those kids at Holiday Skate to hold on the wall and slowly roll around the rink. Except that I did not have any wall to hold on to, I held on to Amy’s arm.

Sarah in the snow

Sarah, Me, Alicia ice skating

Eventually I slow skated around by myself. And I was proud of myself. Ice skating is fun and I want to do it again when I don’t have to act like a porcelain doll. Then I could go fast! After ice skating those of us who went to Timberline for the day went into town and ate dinner at a little mexican restaurant and then went back to Timberline to watch the Ravencrest vs. Timberline hockey game. Our boys put up a good fight, but in the end lost by three. However it was very fun to watch the boys battle it out, and watch the snow slowly fall to the groud. Although, the guys said that the snow on the ice was rather annoying. I’m no hockey player but I can see where they are comming from.

The Ravencrest Hockey Team ( Joe, Matt, Landon, Andrew, Eric, Clayton, Graeme)

And after a hockey game of epic perportions those of us who rode with Andrew jumped in the car and began the very long treck home. The rest of my mid-term break was filled with hanging out at the Chalet, playing Monopoly and going out to dinner last night at Pasta Jay’s for Spencer’s birthday. A very good break indeed. Next break is spring break. How amazingly fun that will be and yet how sad it will be as well. Because that means that we are that much closer to the end of an amazing adventure of which I wish could last forever.

(clockwise from me) Sarah, Clayton, Eric...Sarah killed all of us

Life with One Arm

Life this past week has been one of the most challenging/interesting weeks of my entire life. Living with one arm in a sling is not as fun as I thought it was when I was in 4th grade. I used to think it would be really cool to get a hard core injury and have to get a cast or have my arm in a sling. Why did I think that would be cool? They don’t heal fast enough can you can’t do anything on your own. Thankfully I have 6 amazing room mates who are more than willing to drop everything to help me when I need it. I love them forever for that. I have never been more greatful either. And my family back home has shown me so much love. Grandma N sent me a card with $40 to Safeway and Aunt Ally and Aunt Jen sent me a package full of movies and treats. Sarah said that she made a little something to send me as well. So maybe there are some perks to severly breaking yourself. Thanks so much to everyone! You guys are so amazing.

Life here has been going on as usual. People are out and about at ministries tonight. I could not go to mine, because I’m broken. So I’ve been working on homework, my testimony tomorrow, and I would be working on some schoolarship stuff but the internet is not wanting to be my friend tonight. >_< It is my turn to give my testimony tomorrow, and I’m rather excited to do that. I just hope that it’s not about me. I want it to be the story of God working through me. I’m just a small little pice of a much bigger picture. (btw-today at family group that was the theme of the day. Issac would not stop talking about “the big picture.” haha I love family) I want my story tobe a glimse of how awesome God is and yet how personal he is. Not just the story of me.

We have midterm break in about a week and a half now. At the beginning of the year I was planning on going to Timberline over the break, but seeing as how I am broken now and it costs $30 a night I wont be going. Instead I’ll be chillin here with some friends and finding random things to do. It shall be just grand. And John and I are gonna get moving on the editing for the yearbook. Woo-hoo!

And now I’m listening to Eric tell stories about chickens…hmm…chickens. I remember when we had chickens. I’m glad we have a dog now.

Friday in Class

This blog entry is taking place while I’m in class. Going through the book of Ephesians. It’s pretty sweet and I never noticed how packed Paul’s letters are. It’s like trying to eat a 7 course meal. And yet, I want to keep eating. It’s had to comprehend how amazing this stuff is, because all my life I have been able to “approach God in confidence.” I don’t know what it is like to struggle and have to fallow rules to talk and get to know God. It’s not as powerful to me as I think it’s meant to be. Now I know why youth pastors might struggle with getting to kids. We have heard it so much, that it starts to lose it’s edge and power. I think Satan has a bigger hold on the church than we think. The ones who aren’t saved he is not worried about, it’s the ones who are perusing God that he wants to bring down. That scum jerk face.

It’s snowing outside. Rather beautiful. This is the first ligit snowfall we have had this winter. We have had random nights where we have gotten about an inch, but it has been snowing all day and is supposed to continue to snow all this weekend. Nate, Joe, and I are going to Copper Mountain tomorrow. Can you say fresh powder? ^_^ It should be a really good day. And cold. At least I want it to be cold; you get more of a rush when it’s cold. This will be my third weekend in a row of going. Looks like I am going to get my moneys worth out of my pass. I think I have to go at least 6 or 7 times. If it’s only the third week in January, and I’ve gone three times, and the snow is going to be around into March and April…oh yea. Money baby, money.

Last night was the Amazing Race. Two more words-great success! And spirit week was rather entertaining. Considering that Wayne dressed up as Bruce Wayne. Awesome. And there were thugs, twins, nerds, and super heros everywhere.

Scott and Garth as twins

Gangsta Clayt

Spencer and I as twins!

Good week? umm yea.

News from 501 Pole Hill Rd

It has been far to long since I have last blogged. Partly because I am trying to give my blog a makeover. And by makeover, I mean making a banner headline thing. yea….

I’ve been back at school for two weeks now, and things are just as crazy as they were last semester. Student council has been planning The Amazing Race, family style. Basically each of the family groups are competing in a race around Estes park for a chance  to win some bucks to the pine-cone. yay! It has been quite the experience trying to plan this out. All our hard work is going to pay off for sure though. It is coming together very nicely, and I think that everyone will have lots of fun. Not to mention the video footage that I am going to get from this. Since there are six family groups and six student council members we are each going to be fallowing one team around and film their every move over the course of this race. So this extravaganza is going on this thrusday night. I’m pumped.

Another thing that is going on this week is we are having spirit week. Today was thug-life day. Tomorrow is twin day, wednesday is nerd day, and finally thrusday is superhero day. Spencer and I are going to be twins, and we are going to rock it. Still not sure what we are going to wear yet though. Hmm…better jump on that.

The past two weekends I have been snowboarding. First weekend, I went to Copper Mountian. And if a picture is worth 1000 words…

the guys I boared with at Copper

So, that was a very fun day. And the car ride home with Matt, John, and Scott (Scott is new this semester from Canada, and is one of the most friendliest people I have ever met. And we call him red beard) was equally fun, entertaining, and full of good conversation. And no, we did not get lost on the way home, we just went on an adventure. ^_^

Last saturday I went to Winter Park with a group of people. And yes, I did see Wes. We hung out for a pit and he showed us around Winter Park and Mary Jane for a few hours before he had to take off and I met up with another group of Ravencresters. So that was fun to board with him a bit. Hopefully we will get to do that again. Winter Park was fun because I tested myself and went off a few little jumps. And I didn’t die! I was rather proud of myself for that newly acquired skill. I’m getting more and more comfortable on the board and familure with how to maneuver my way down a mountain side with out freaking out. And I love my new board. It’s just what I wanted, that was the best money I ever spent on myself. I’m looking forward to much more use of it.

Classes here have been just as great as they were last semster as well. Right now we are going through 1 Corinthians with Wayne and just started Nehemiha in our Old Testament Survey class with Frank. Bonnie is taking us through Job,(which reminds me that I need to start journaling on that), and last week we had a guest speaker on cults. Talk about an interesting class. I now know so much about Mormons, JWs, Budists, Hindus, New Age, and witches I might begin to lose brain cells due to lack of truth. How that class has made my heart hurt for the world. I begin to worry so much about all of the evil and distruction of the human spirt that I get discouraged, but God reminded me the other day as I was driving into town that He has everything under control. “Don’t worry Molly, I made this world and I can take care of it. Things are never out of my hands.” Thanks God, I needed that.

And now that I have about 30 minutes till curfew I shall make my way back to the hood of room 7 and see what my homies are up to at this hour before I snuggle into my warm comfy bed for the night.

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Today was our second and final christmas production. And it was amazing. I don’t think I have ever been apart of been so much chaos and fun. The last few weeks have insane. Not only did we have to stay on top of our homework and junk like that, but we had to practice drama, dancing, painting, or whatevert group we were a part of. I waws a part of the drama team and actually wrote the skit that we preformed. It was more of a short play than a skit. And then I had to attempt to direct this play, and make it presentable. Thank God, that I have friends here that gave me support and helped me. Because I had absolutly no idea what I was doing. And thank God that He answers prayers, because there were so many times where I said to Him “God–I don’t know what to do! Help!” And He always came through. In the end it was awesome. We worshiped God through different mediums, and it was great to see everything to come together. But I’m not sad thats it’s over. It’s a huge relief.

Tonight we have fellowship night. And rumor has it that it will be around a camp fire. ^_^ I’m excited. I love spending time with everyone here. I love everyone here so much. And even thouhg I am very excited to go home on thursday I am going to miss the people here very much. Funny how life works. If I could I would bring my family and close friends here. As for now, I’m content and looking forward to the next few days. Not to excited about that paper I have to do anyway…Drew had to give us homework. >_<

Play writes

I have a new respect for people who write plays and movie scripts for a living. Its rahter difficult. Here is what is going on.

The second years here are in charge of putting on a Chirstmas program for the people of Estes Park. The theme of the program is worshipping God. So there is going to be singing, dancing, painting, and some acting involved. I some how got in charge of writing and directing the drama part of the prodcution. So, me and a few of my classmates came up with the story line and for the last two days I have been working on a basic script. It’s only about 30 minutes long, but this is for sure one of the hardest things that I have ever done. But, it is fun and I have been enjoying it. But I have to finish it, so back to work!

Prop 8 and Obama

The day after election day. And here we are. Looking in the face of a new age of American history. Two big things have happened. First of all prop 8 has been passed in California. That means, that gay marrage has been banned in the state of California. I’m rather happy about that. It bothers me when people say that gays do not have any rights, or talk about gays as if they were a race. Gays have just as many rights as any other American. The people have california have said that they will not allow gays to be married because marrige is between a man and a woman. It’s moraly wrong for a man and a man or a woman and a woman to be together. and gays are not a race, it is a life style. You choose to allow yourself to have lust for a person of the same sex. So yea, that is all I have to say about that.

Second, Obama has been elected. wow. I’m not sure what to think about all of that. All I know is that God has given me some peace about the future, and that He never changes. I don’t know what the future holds. All I know is that it is a new area in politics. I’m anxious, and currious, and my heart breaks for our country. Hmm…the next four years will be interesting.

Selling Things

Last saturday I went to Denver wiht Drew and Nate to sell some bikes at a HUGE bike sale. I woke up at 5:40 in the morning and got ready to go. After we packed up the trailer of bikes, the three of us hopped in teh 15 passenger van and took off down pole hill road at 6:30. It was still dark outside.

I slept the whole way to Denver.

We finnaly arrived at 7:30 at a rather large warehouse and Nate and I wandered around untill we found out booth. Set up 12 bikes on a stand and began the very long day of trying to sell these used bikes for $250 bucks a pop. I’ve have only sold one other thing in my life before. And that was girl scout cookies. The thing is, girl scout cookies pretty much sell themselves. All I had to do was walk up to the door, ring the doorbell, look cute, and hand them the cookie form. Not so with selling bikes with a couple of guys.  I spent the next 9 hours attempting to sell bikes. We ended up only selling four. But it’s ok, becuase I had fun hanging out with Nate and Drew. Toward the end of the afternoon we began to become a bit bored and so we wandered around to the other hundreds of booths set up. We got some free gatorade packets and “strawberry bliss” smoothies. Nate spilled the gatorade sugar stuff all over the floor, I gave Drew a pink hand print on his black jacket, and then Nate and I chugged the stawberry bliss which was anything but blissfull. It tasted like old yogurt that had been sitting out for three days. bleh!

After a long day, we headed home and grabbed some chineese food on the way home. Thankyou Ravencrest for the good meal, however I don’t think that I will be volunteering to sell bikes again anytime soon.

4:30 never looked so beautiful

Sadly, my schedule is so busy that I have not been able to tell me tale of my epic adventure to the top of twin owls. So now, I shall retell the events that took place.

I awoke to my roommate Candice’s (she is from Canada)really annoying alarm going off. I sat up and looked around to see a two dark shadows in my room string, and a clock that read 4:02. Clair (from down under) climbed down her bunk, and Candice proceeded to get ready to go. About 25 minutes later I was dressed in two pairs of sweat pants, and about 3 layers of shirts and jackets and stumbled out into the dark night…or morning.

We met up with 3 other girls and 4 guys. We jumped into Asa’s and Andrew’s jeeps and took off down pole hill road at 4:30 on the dot. I looked like it was midnight outside. We drove through a sleepy Estes Park, and over to “Lumpy Ridge.” Once the cars were parked and everyone was ready to go, we began to hike one of the trails that led to “Twin Owls.” I could see about 40 yards in front of me, and we all marched in a line calling out “step!” every time there was step up in the ground. The trail to start off, was not that terrible–in fact it was rather a pleasant hike. Phase two was a little bit more challenging. And then there was Phase 3. x_X

Needless to say, phase 3 picked on me a bit. It was nice to hike up that mountain with not much sun light though. We could not see the top, so we did not have any idea how far we had left to go. We just kept out eyes on the trail and marched. The higher we got, the more the conversation between people slowed as we struggled to catch our breaths.

About 45 minutes to an hour later we found our selves at the bowls of the owls. Now let me explane a little bit of what had to happen here. At this point we were at the top of the peak, but there are these two massive rock formations, called the Twin Owls, that sit on top of the peak. Our goal was to get on top of those owls. In order to do so, you have to climb up a 8-12 ft chimney shoot that is in between the two owls. This shoot is called the bowls of the owls. and it looks like this:

The thing is about the bowls, is that you cant just climb up, as if you are climbing a tree. You have to wedge yourself in between the rocks with your back and your feet or knees and then kind of shimmy up the rocks with your shoulders and hands. Quite an adventure let me tell you.

Once we all got up and out of the bowls, we climbed up the back side of the owls and when we got to the top were greated with the most amazing sight I have ever seen. 360 degrees of prefect veiw, with no trees or anything blocking our veiw. We could see for miles. Nothing but mountians rolling past  us in every single direction. If we faced east, right to our right was the little town of Estes, with cars slowly starting to drive around. At this point it was about 6:15. And so we sat and waited for the sun to rise over the hurizon.

My first reaction when I climbed on top of the owls I laughed. I could not beleive what I was seeing, and all I could do was laugh. Jumping up and down I kept on saying “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me!?” I could not even take it all in. The veiw was so breathtaking that all I could do was laugh. It was amazing. And I know that I tend to use the word amazing a lot, but when I say amazing here–I mean amazing.

From the time we got to the top, we waited to watch the sun come up over the mountains. Just sat and talked and watched the sky slowly get brighter. Around 7:10ish the reds and oranges filled the sky; and a few minutes later the opening scene from the Lion Kings was being played live in front of your eyes. the sun was so bright and red and slowly came up over the mountians. Beautiful barly even begins to desscribe the scene that was before. And since my words are not accurate, maybe my pictures that I took can give you a taste of that Saturday morning. Enjoy, although a camera does not do it justice.

We were on top of these rocks...yep.

Rhiana and Rachel

Sitting in the commons of the Challet right now, waiting for a video to load, and across the table from me is Rachel who keeps listening to the same Rhiana song. But that’s ok, cause I like it. I’m also not on my own computer. I’m on My’s, and she has a swidish keyboard, so there are some funky keys on this thing. And words are in a language that I can’t read. oh well.

A new week begins tomorrow. I’m excited. I don’t have to do laundry tomorrow-which is a good thing, cause I beleive I am out of money in my wallet, and I don’t want to take anymore out of my bank account. But, yea tomorrow while everyone is in town, I will be doing more schoolarship work. woo-hoo. Life has been quite the adventure here. Everything from rock climbing to hikes to chllin in Estes to Ryan putting coyotes on our deck. And yes, Ryan did just pur a dead coyote on our deck-it was the funniest thing I have seen all night. But now it is late, I must head off to bed. Goodnight world.