A very Minnesotan summer.

As you may have noticed, I took a break from blogging this summer. I know, I know… I’m sorry. There were a number of reasons that I decided not to blog this summer, but that part isn’t very important. In any case, today is the last day of August and so it seems like a good time to begin blogging again. I’ve been at campus for 20 days now—20 crazy, stressful, overwhelming, amazing days. I’m still trying to process all that happened. Once I have processed things a little more, I will be posting about these last three weeks. Until then, I would like to give you a recap of my summer.

This summer, I…

Shot long exposure photos:

Spent time by the river:

Enjoyed Lake Superior:

Shot handguns, shotguns, and rifles with my family:

Shooting a milk carton at 300 yards

Had a Father’s Day picnic at Jay Cooke State Park in the freezing weather:

Shot bows with my dad and brother:

Went fishing with my family:

Watched the 4th of July fireworks:

Created a game with my extended family using giant marshmallows:

Shot photos of my cousin's wedding:

Spent a week as a counselor at one of my favorite places - Sand Hill Lake Bible Camp:

Old friend.

New friends.

My favorite boys.

 

Camped in western Minnesota:

Spent time with my cousin from Florida:

Had a photoshoot with a close friend:

Shot photos of my siblings:

It was an interesting summer. If nothing else, after a summer like that, I’ve never felt more Minnesotan.

SOS Beach Day.

I'll admit it: I'm a terribly blogger. I'm horribly inconsistent, and I tend to update on my life quite some time after events have happened. Just like I'm going to be doing right now. The last two months of my life have been crazy, but please allow me to update event by event.

One Saturday in the beginning of May, we had an SOS staff beach day. We carpooled to Corona Del Mar in the early afternoon and hung out. The weather that day wasn’t awesome, but it was warm enough to be in shorts and tees.

I had had a rough Friday night, and I almost bailed on the event. I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to be with people. However, as soon as I got there, my boss Claudia asked me how I was doing. She had seen a tweet I’d written the night before and wanted to know if I was okay. While everyone else went down to the water, she and I sat on our towels and talked about life. She is so incredibly wise and had great insight to offer to me. That conversation alone made my time there totally worth it.

Some people came back from the water, and more of our staff arrived. We all ate dinner together and spent time in conversation. It started to cool down, so I changed into jeans. A fire was lit, and we made s’mores. As it got darker, we all gathered together around the fire pit. We were each given a little container labeled “Pray for SOS,” which we filled with sand. We split up into small groups and prayed for the staff, incoming students, and fall orientation. When we gathered back together again, we spent some time in worship.

This staff is so incredible, I can hardly believe it.
I am so, so blessed to be a part of it.

FOLD Spring Retreat.

For my floor’s spring retreat, we spent the weekend in Hermosa Beach in a delightful beach house. Unfortunately, it was rather cool on Saturday and quite gray. As you can see, though, we still had a great time:

On Sunday morning, we spent quite time on the beach and then walked around the area. We walked down to the pier and got some Starbucks. I decided that beach communities aren’t real life. Just saying.

SOS Retreat.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I was selected to be part of the SOS (Student Orientation Services) staff. I was absolutely stoked about being selected, and I still love pretty much every minute of it.

The weekend following Missions Conference, all 70 or so of us packed us and headed on a retreat to an unknown location. I really can’t say too much about retreat, because SOS is all about secrecy (sort of), but I want to share a few of my favorite highlights.

We got to spend time with our crew groups, and I love my group. So much. My leader is Lexi, and she is such a beautiful person. Here is our group, Boy Meets World:

The nice one.

The one where the wave snug up on us.

The band photo.

I got to take all of the crew group photos (minus mine, of course), and I absolutely loved getting to do so. All of the groups had really fun ideas, so I just coordinated them in order to make it work for a photo. Here are all of the crew leaders; they are a truly amazing group of people:

I love when I tell people to fake laugh.

We also had a random lady take a group photo for us:

I never knew I could love such a large group of people so much.

That evening, none of the boys would let us touch our luggage. Richie even took my camera bag away from me, because I wasn’t allowed to carry it. The boys then delivered our luggage to our rooms.

Oh, those boys...

We just kind of hung out that evening. There was lots of conversation and laughter. We tried not to go to bed too late, because we knew that we had a full day ahead of us, starting early the next morning.

Well, that morning we woke up at a pounding on our door. We rubbed our sleepy eyes and headed to open it. When we did, this is what we found:

So precious.

The note read, “Morning Ladies, Please leave your luggage outside for us. Enjoy breakfast! Jesus loves you, and so do we. The Boys.”

We spent the morning doing different activities that bonded all of us. That was probably my favorite part of the retreat. The afternoon was spent at the beach, just hanging out and laughing together.

Fish faces for the fish eye.

Gorgeous.

I love Lexi. I stole this photo from her. It's one of only a few photos of me from the weekend.

As we were leaving, this was our view.

That evening, we drove back to campus and had one final activity together. It was amazing. Our retreat was officially over, but we decided to go get food. We just all love being together; it’s so great. We went to Boba Loca, but then they ran out of boba.

Photo stolen from Richie.

So we all got back in our cars and went to In-N-Out. We got some food, and then had a short dance party in the parking lot.

Our retreat was one of the highlights of my semester so far. Words cannot even convey how much I enjoyed it.