A Confession

I LOVE reading. I was always that kid reading under the covers with a flashlight and have been known to finish whole books in under 8 hours. But, I've got a confession, the past few months I have been horrible at finishing books. One of two things keep happening: I buy the book, take it home and it sits on my desk/bookshelf/bedroom floor for all of eternity or, I buy the book, read a few chapters and for whatever reason never get around to finishing. I'm determined to change my ways though and summer is the perfect time to make that happen!

I don't have much free time over the summer but last summer during session breaks when there weren't any campers around I read a lot. There's nothing else that melts away a stressful week quite like sitting on in the sunshine on the dock with my feet in the water and a book in my hand.

So far my summer reading list looks like this:

• A Year of Living Biblical Womanhood - Rachel Held Stevens
• The Patron Saint of Butterflies - Cecilia Galante
• Crazy Love - Francis Chan
• Bumped - Megan McCafferty
• The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
• 7 - Jen Hatmaker
• In The Land of the Blue Burqas - Kate McCord
• The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

I'm sure that there will be more to add, and I always love book suggestions!

I also love suggestions about what to blog about so starting tomorrow I'll be joining in at Story of My Life for the Blog Everyday in May Challenge! You can read the rules and the topics here. I'm not sure how well the blogging everyday thing will work out once I move to camp, but I'm going to try anyway!

Happy Monday!

My Monday got off to a really great start thanks to the Blog World!

On Friday when I linked up with Kelly's Korner for SUYL she shared a link from Beth Moore's blog that prompted 20-Somethings to post a comment about ourselves and our worries and in return a Non-20-Something would reply to the post and volunteer to pray for the 20-Something. I thought it was such a sweet idea so I commented and refesed the page for an hour in anticipating of somebody replying. After an hour I realized I was being crazy and decided to leave it until Monday.

Which brings me to this morning when I went through my usual morning ritual of checking e-mail, Twitter and blogs and remembered to check back with Beth Moore. And I was greeted with this comment. I was so happy to see that and I love that the lady who commented was kind enough to also leave her e-mail address. Things like this are such a refreshing change from the usual cattiness of girls and are such an encouragement!

For those of you wondering (which I'm pretty sure is nobody, but I digress) Operation Homemade Lipgloss with the Brownies went really well! The only hiccup was for some reasons the girls who used purple Kool-Aid to colour their gloss ended up with a grey-ish colour. So that's a lesson for the next time. But other than that they were all pretty happy with how they turned out, which made me happy too. 

The last week of April/first week of May is off to an excellent start!

Weekend Update

I had a pretty low key weekend, but in an attempt to update more often I'm going to blog about it anyway. 

Saturday I baby sat the Tiny Human from 9-5, being in a rush to leave her Mom forgot the bag of toys she usually brings with her, so we had to improvise. We spent a lot of time playing with fridge magnets followed by some good ol' fashion wooden spoons and plastic bowl time. Between make-shift toys, naps and lunch we manged to pass away the day.

Camp is less than a month away and now that 99% of the staff is hired I spent some time this crafting fun door signs for everybody. I used the Create-A-Critter Cartridge and kept with the animal theme for everyone. At first I tried to stick with campy animals...but with a staff of 22 and usually have a couple of volunteers each week too that plan ended quickly.

Tomorrow night at Brownies I'm attempting to make homemade lip gloss with the girls. It's one of those situations where I have high hopes and low expectations.

20 Somethings Link Up

Today I'm linking up with one of my very favourite bloggers at Kelly's Korner for College Girls/20 Somethings Connect Day!

Since I'm participating in a Link Up today I thought I'd do a post with a little more about me!

My name is Donna, I'm 23 years old and I live on the East Coast of Canada. I studied recreation and religious studies in university and hopefully someday I will be able to work full time in camp ministry. For now I work as the Assistant Director at a summer camp for children, youth and adults with physical disabilities and cognitive delays, which is still a pretty fabulous job!

When I'm not at camp I'm a Brownie leader with Girl Guides of Canada and spend a lot of time babysitting some big personalities in tiny bodies.

I confess to watching too much reality T.V., consuming more caffeine than I should and always forgetting to take pictures.

I love good conversations, cerulean blue crayons, my cat, summer, wearing rain boots, God and all things neon.

Somebod's Singing Lord, Kumbaya

I spent this weekend at Brownie Camp with my five favourite Brownies. I am such a proud Brown Owl, I feel like I could brag about how awesome they did for days. In the beginning none of them wanted anything to do with camp but then all five of them decided they would give it another try. (I'm not exactly sure what went down at last year's Brownie Camp but my girls did not have a good time.) Some of the Moms were pretty nervous too so I had given them my number and told them to feel free to text to check in to see how things were going. As I was getting the girls ready for bed I got a text from a Mom checking in and when I let her know what was happening (girls were getting PJs on, getting facials and then going to bed) I got the sweetest message back.

Little things like that make me feel so much better about life and I consider them a reassurance that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing in life.

The second (and maybe the most important) highlight of my weekend can be summed up in these 3 pictures.

For a little back story the camp that we had rented for Brownie Camp was one that I had been at before, the last time about 6 years ago when "my" camp rented it for a few weeks right after we lost our camp. So before I went I selfishly/secretly hoped and prayed for some sort of 'sign' that we had been there before. That 'my' camp had existed and in some small way continues to exist. I wasn't really expecting to find anything, I mean it has been six years. And if I did find anything I didn't expected it to either be super ambiguous (oh, I bet this random cup in the cupboard was "ours"). And I was proven wrong. The first thing I 'found' was a piece of painters tape with the name of a former counsellor/director written on it and taped to a griddle in the kitchen. I can guarantee that piece of tape has been there for six years. And then I found a mug that was clearly a relic. And the cross just served as a reminder that I love camp, specifically I love camp ministry.

I left camp Sunday afternoon feeling so much better about life.

And best of all with a new "Five Year Plan" taking shape in my head. And I have no idea how it will unfold, but it's there and it wasn't before and it's a feeling that can't be explained with words.

I Have Called You By Name

The past couple of weeks have been pretty rough. It wasn't any one particular life altering event, just a combination of little jabs that had me feeling pretty down about life.

I won't bore anyone with the details of several lead up stories but to summarize I was feeling pretty angry and upset with circumstances that I know are out of my control. The climax of the whole thing was when a lovely lately who happened to be sitting next to me during a course I was taking for camp struck up this conversation with me.

• Lovely Lady (LL): I find this so interesting! Have you done this course before?
• Me: No, I'm familiar with a lot of the material though because of my job. 
• LL: Oh, what do you do?
• Me: I'm an assistant camp director at *camp*
• LL: And you do that year round?
• Me: Right now it's seasonal and during the rest of the year I kinda volunteer and work on planning the next summer. I have a degree in Recreation and Religious Studies so I plan to work in Camp Ministry full time. 
• LL: Oh...well that doesn't sound like a very good way to make a living.

...Thanks for your opinion, person who I just met three hours ago that knows absolutely nothing about my life. 

I don't know why that conversation stuck with me, but a few days later I was still thinking about it and a million other things that were floating around in my head. And then I came across this blog post by Beth Moore. And I felt better instantly.

Because even though life isn't unfolding the way I planned everything is happening for a reason and I am SO SO SO SO SO blessed and lucky and thankful that I do know exactly what I want to do. I love camp. It's as plain and simple as that. The truth is some people will never find that thing that they love, or they'll find it "too late" (whatever that means). I've known from the time I was 12 that camp was my favourite thing in the whole entire world. When I figured out I could make that my job; it was a good day.

The point of this whole ramble is that things are looking up. The snow is finally starting to disappear and the sky is more blue than grey. Summer is only 6 weeks away.

It's all going to be okay.