2014 in Review

2014 was an amazing and insane year! 

First of all, I finally got into and started graduate school. After a couple of years of taking classes part time, not working towards a degree on the chance that I could get into med school, then PT school, and actually not getting anywhere at all, I finally started finding direction in my life.

Not only did I start graduate school, but I successfully finished my first semester, only missing straight A's by one B+.

I got married, beginning my life with my true love. I know, saying it that way is cheesy. But it's true!

 

I finished the American Triple-T (that insane weekend long triathlon event, ending with a half iron) again, an awesome alien themed marathon in Michigan (giving me the ability to check another state of-yeah), and several other races: the Flying Pig relay, an 8 mile trail race, and the Heart Half Marathon. My time for the Triple-T this year was better than my 2012 time. :-)

I put in another awesome summer at Camp Otterbein!

Farewell 2014! Here's to hoping that 2015 brings wonderful things too!  :-)

Some of our official wedding photos! :-D

Here are some of our favorite wedding photos. They were done by Robert Gary Mihalko in Medina, OH: he did a great job! :-)  He happens to be one of Ray's former scout leaders too!



We were laughing because I have no clue how to do makeup. Hahaha!

 

the guys "getting ready"  ;-)



First look :-)

 

the wedding party, just missing the ring bearer

my favorite! :-D Haha!

 

:-)

 

first kiss as a married couple :-)

 

officially husband and wife :-)

with my big brother (on my father's side). I hadn't seen him in nearly 10 years, so before this pic was taken, we were both bawling our eyes out! Haha! I want a copy of that picture, from whoever may have snapped one!

favorite pic with Mom ever!

mother son dance

with Ray's family

 

with the Kelly clan (plus Darren); would've done one of these with all of Ray's family too, but there are just too many of them. Haha!

 

first dance

 

uncle niece dance

 

awesome close-up of our rings and the flowers, made by Ray's aunt Linda

 

Amazing cupcakes! Also made by Aunt Linda :-)  And Ray's mom put together the stand and topper :-)
 

And this is how the dance floor looked most of the night. Our DJ, Mindy, was the BEST! :-)

the ring bearer, Ray's cousin Levi. I love how excited he looks! Almost forgot to post this one!

 

Competitive ladies! Hahaha!

Ray ROCKED the garter toss!



 

There are so many awesome pictures, and this is only a few of them! Our wedding was amazing: everything we dreamed of and then some!  :-)

FREEDOM!

My first semester of graduate school was insane (but awesome)! In case you couldn't tell by my absence. Haha!

I turned in my last assignment for finals week at 2:30am last night/this morning. What a satisfying feeling!

I'll be posting a LOT of updates over winter break, so be on the lookout! :-)

Meanwhile, enjoy some pictures!  :-)

From my favorite place to run :-)

Pumpkin picking with my husband :-)

Old Man's Cave hike with a retreat group at camp



 

The Best Day Ever: Our Wedding

 We don't have our official/professional pictures yet, but I figured I'd go ahead and say at least something about this magical day. And we have some great unofficial pictures. It's already been a month and a half-ish. Crazy!

  The day, and the whole weekend, went great! The lodge was gorgeous, our DJ was the best, and everyone had a fabulous time! And (besides when we were all stuffing our faces with the delicious dinner) the dance floor was not empty for a single moment. That's the true sign of a great party! :-)






  

    We did almost all of our pictures before the ceremony, so the reception could get started right away after the ceremony (both were at the same place, in the same room). When I've been to weddings, the one thing I've always disliked has been waiting for hours after the ceremony for the fun and the food to begin. Being hungry especially is no fun. We didn't want to do that to our guests, and they seemed to really appreciate it. Yes, this involved breaking the groom and bride can't see eachother before the wedding, but it was totally worth it. Rules schmules. And the look on his face when he turned around was absolutely priceless!  I've never seen such a huge smile in my life! And he looked so amazing!

   The decorations looked awesome! Aunt Linda did an absolutely amazing job with the flowers and cupcakes! Our colors were blue, yellow, and silver and we had a sci-fi theme going.

  Overall, the day could not have gone better! I am incredibly grateful for everyone who helped make our awesome day possible and for everyone who came to celebrate with us!

   And hopefully, we'll have our official pictures soon! :-)

Fall Adventure #1: My Craziest Lifeguarding Experience Ever!

  Meant to post this awhile ago. Oops!

    The first weekend of September, I lifeguarded and volunteered for the Rev3 triathlon at Cedar Point. This race was a full Ironman (athletes also had the option to do the half iron), with the swim portion in Lake Erie. I lifeguarded for the practice swim on Saturday and the race itself on Sunday. My friend Hannah (who I met at the Triple-T) happened to be one of the other lifeguards! Small world! It was great to see her again!

  Sunday morning, I arrived and made my way to the beach before the sun even rose. We got our assigned areas, the sun started to come up, and before I knew it I was headed out by paddleboard-without a paddle. There weren't enough. That alone was an interesting experience!

   The waves were absolutely brutal. We had to remove a huge number of people from the water, and even more took breathers on our boards.

   One woman in particular stuck out in my mind. She got smacked by a huge wave and started to panic. I rushed over and assisted her. We talked for a little bit as she regained her breath. After calming down she was off again and I watched her very closely until she approached the next guard.

   Later, during my volunteer shift in transition as I was talking to another volunteer, she stopped and said "Wait, I recognize you! You saved me in the water this morning!" I looked closer, and sure enough, it was the woman who stood out in my mind from earlier! It turns out that she was doing the swim portion of the relay. She said she was able to finish. She was so grateful that she actually teared up a bit as we hugged. What an awesome feeling!

   Afterwards, they paid us on the spot, in cash. I highly recommend guarding for Rev3! Plus you get a generous discount on future race registration with them for guarding or volunteering. And they fed us really well.  :-)

  I'm planning on doing my first Ironman next year. I have been going back and forth between Ironman Louisville and Rev3 Cedar Point. After dealing with Lake Erie, I'm starting to lean towards Ironman Louisville. We shall see, though. In spite of Lake Erie's fury, the race organizers and other volunteers were awesome!

UPDATES GALORE! 'cause I've been slacking!

   I have not written in what seems like forever! Sorry about that. Life has been crazy! In a good way :-)

   First of all, I've been a married woman for 2 weeks now. Our wedding was amazing! I'll post about it in more detail when we have more pictures.  :-)  Married life is great! 

First Dance    <3  9-20-14  <3

   Grad school is hectic, but going great so far. It's great going to class and actually caring about everything we're learning about! I'm working towards a Master of Science in Recreation Studies (Outdoor Recreation & Education) and an Environmental Sustainability Certificate. For my first major project, I've chosen to investigate how to make endurance races more environmentally sustainable.

First day of grad school pic

   I'm currently training for a marathon and ultra. The marathon is an awesome trail marathon that I have also done in 2010 (called the Bobcat Trail Marathon). All of the proceeds for the ultra will be going towards funding for a camp in the Mohican State Park area. I have a friend who works there and told me about the race (called The Fuzzy Fandango).

   I finally bought a kayak! Actually bought it off of one of my professors. Isn't it beautiful?  :-)  I'm open to suggestions on what to name it. Yes, I'm one of those people who has to name my possessions.  :-p Gives them more personality.  :-)

My awesome new kayak! :-D

   I finally upgraded to a smartphone in August and am still very much enthralled by it. I named it Bubbles because of the sound it makes when I click on things. Hehe!  :-)

   That's all for now. I'll write more detailed posts over the next couple of days about fun things I need to catch up on.

The Last Days of Summer 2014 at Camp Otterbein

It's hard to believe that my fifth summer at Camp Otterbein has come to an end!

Last week was our final week with campers. In Wilderness Adventures, we had 5 guys. I called the group "Burgers and Fries". We had a great time! What an awesome way to end the summer!
We went on awesome adventures and had some great discussions throughout the week. I haven't seen a group of campers open up this year as much as these guys did.

The first day, we did our river kayaking trip. We changed up the route a bit, starting instead of ending at the whitewater kayaking site. As usual, we had a wonderful time paddling down the river. I led and Andrew, the counselor, stayed in the back lifeguarding. I know too many Andrews by the way, in case you didn't notice. Haha!

That night, we hiked into an area called The North Woods. Andrew made up a story about how we got lost in the woods and set up a great survival scenario. We then set up camp and slept out in the middle of the woods. It was a chilly night, but we had a fabulous fire going and plenty of layers. And the serenity of the forest at night is a wonderful way to fall asleep.

The next morning, we found our way back (very quickly thanks to the amazing navigational skills of the oldest camper) and had some delicious s'mores pancakes. A little later that day, we did the high course. I saw some amazing things happen up there: the boys worked together so well!

On Wednesday, we went on our rock climbing, rappelling trip. Unfortunately, a huge storm hit right when we were about to set up for the repel so we had to hike down and leave. Scott (our camp director) took us to a local place called Grandma Fay's for some delicious ice cream. That night was the last worship service and the camp tradition of Capture the Flag with all of camp. As usual, we had a blast chasing eachother around beneath the stars.

The last day came way too soon. We had a delicious double Dutch oven breakfast: Mountain Man breakfast (a casserole with eggs, meat, hashbrowns, and cheese) in one oven and fruit pizza in the other. Yum! The rest of the day we packed up, had some final discussions, and even got to swim. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, we sent the campers home.

 

Monday and Tuesday of this week was staff closing, in which we worked and cleaned up by day and did fun surprise activities by night. The first night, we did a fun scavenger hunt set up by Scott's parents and ended up at a local movie theater to see Guardians of the Galaxy in 3D: great movie!  The second night we had our last dinner together, went down the zipline, and then had our closing ceremony and final communion and worship for the summer. It was so hard to say goodbye to everyone: some that night and some the next morning before I left.

Readjusting to life after camp, as usual, is pretty difficult at times. I already miss my friends, the ability to change so many lives in such an amazing way, the beautiful places and adventures. Fortunately, there are plenty of amazing things coming up to look forward to: pre-wedding festivities, the wedding, and starting graduate school. My amazing summer job may be over, but big things are happening and I have so much to be grateful for!

2 Weeks of Insanity

A LOT happened during weeks 6-7 of camp! I've really slacked on posting updates. Oops!

In non-camp news, my mom came to visit a couple of weekends ago and we got a bunch of wedding stuff done! Yay! Less than 2 months!!  :-D

As far as camp goes, week 6 of camp I had a program called Wilderness Night Owls. It was a combination of the usual high adventure activities done in Wilderness Adventures and a camp that was offered years ago and has been brought back, in which you stay up progressively later throughout the week and don't have to wake up each day until noon. I found that I LOVED this sleep schedule! I've found that the 11pm bed time and 7am wakeup call has been hard to re-adapt to!

One of the days, a guest speaker came and brought snakes that we got to hold. So cool! We had great food, fun cookouts, and an exciting night time scavenger hunt.

My favorite part of that week was our night kayaking trip. The view of the river with stars, the moon, and some light fog on the hills was just breathtaking! We also heard an owl right by the river. It was pretty cold, but we stopped and made a fire during our dinner break and still had a great time!

I can't go into details, but the downside to the week was an emergency situation at the rock climbing and rappelling area we go to. It all still seems surreal. We had a very unique situation and (just like we've always planned), I was the one that ran to get help. The area is pretty remote and we had no cell phone service. I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life. Especially on hilly trails. The person involved ended up being ok, but we didn't get back to camp until about 4am and it was pretty traumatizing for everyone. On the bright side, we had a buffet of delicious leftovers and an amazing communion at 4:30 am.

Other than our emergency situation, it was a pretty good week with an amazing group of people!

Week 7, I had high expectations. It was a camp called "Explore God's World": we had trips and high adventure stuff every day. A couple of the campers were very adventurous, as expected. A group of them, though, came from inner city Columbus and didn't want to do all the activities or were really hesitant (except for a couple of them). One camper caused a lot of trouble through the week: being downright disrespectful, refusing to listen, lying to get her way, making a couple of the campers she came with very angry to the point of being switched to a different group. This situation made for a difficult week. However, we still had some amazing moments. 

The first full day, we did high ropes. Only a couple of campers sat out and the ones that did do the challenge course had a blast!

On Tuesday, we went to Sell's Park in Athens (the one park I hadn't explored much-go figure) to do some mountain biking. We were told it was a beginner trail: it was more like an intermediate trail. Though the ride was difficult, we had a great time!

On Wednesday, we did an 'extreme creek stomp' at a nearby 'metropark'. I put metropark in quotations because there is no big city near the Hocking Hills area, so I find it funny to refer to something as a metropark. We found some cool critters, mainly crawdads, and got to swim through a deeper part of the creek.

On Thursday, we went rock climbing and rappelling. Everyone had a great time!

On the last day, we went kayaking on the Hocking River. The campers did a lot better than I thought they would! They kept up quite well and we all had a blast! The downside was that since it was a Friday, the river was really busy.

Week 7 was definitely one of the more difficult weeks I've had this summer. But if I helped make a difference in the lives of any of those campers, it was all worth it.

More Amazing Adventures

The first part of last Week was kind of a blur because the medicine I was on for the severe poison ivy/oak left me with some really nasty side effects. Luckily, camp was only a half week.

For 4th of July, I went home to Cincinnati. The view of fireworks from my mom's condo was amazing! We could literally see fireworks from 3 states: Kentucky (these were the best), Ohio, and Indiana. The day after the holiday, I finally got to see my best friend Caiti! Ray and I went to her house on our way back to Athens for a cookout/pool party. We had a great time! 

This past week at camp was so amazing! On Sunday night and Monday we did some standard camp activities: initiative games, swimming, playing in the mud pit (they played, I hosed them off: not a fan of getting mud in every crevice of my body and eyes), and making fires. Our group clicked really well right from the start! 

On Tuesday, we had our kayaking trip down the Hocking River. We saw some really cool wildlife, including several softshell turtles, a huge flock of geese, and a kingfisher! A storm started to roll in, so we didn't get to the whitewater portion of the trip. That night, we hiked (led by our awesome camp director, Scott) to a part of camp called the North Woods. We were going to build shelters to sleep in, but ran out of time, daylight, and patience. It ended up being a gorgeous night, so we just slept out on garbage bags and emergency blankets. The serenity and stillness of the forest as I drifted to sleep (once I finally found an almost comfortable position) was wonderful!

On Wednesday, we returned to the Hocking River to do our whitewater kayaking. Everyone went down the falls and no one even tipped over! We had a blast! That night was the communion service at camp. There was some self reflection time and my thoughts drifted to gratitude. After many years of searching, I finally found the right path. Recreation is truly my calling and I'm so happy that I finally figured it out! During the small group reflection/discussion the campers said some really outstanding things. I love it when campers have such amazing breakthrough moments and are willing to share!

On Thursday, we did a rock climbing/ rappelling trip in Hocking Hills. We started with some climbing on a very large rock called Gear Shift. It got its name because it is actually shaped like a gear shift.

Then we moved on to an awesome small cave that us Camp Otterbein people call the Otterbox.  We were lowered by the primary trip leader, Kevin, (I was the secondary), into a narrow crevice in the ground. At the bottom, it opens up a bit into a chamber. Beyond that chamber is an even bigger one. I was lowered first, so I could talk people through it at the bottom and assist them if necessary. It was pretty scary at first: it got extremely narrow and there was no one below to help guide me.  I found the way I was supposed to go though and made it to the bottom. The cave was awesome as usual! As people came down one at a time I talked them through it.

We ended the trip with a breathtaking 130 foot rappelling site called Big Springs. The waterfall wasn't as big as last year, but there was a little bit of a trickle and it was still gorgeous! For my first time on a rappelling trip, I was the first one down. Another trip leader has always gone down before me and done the backup belaying or a counselor has just been at the bottom to do it for me. I was on my own. There was a backup knot, a prussic, so it was just as safe. However, not having someone below on backup belay made it a whole new terrifying and awesome experience altogether. The view from about halfway down (where the rock face goes away and it just opens up) was such a beautiful sight! At the bottom, I backup belayed for everyone else as they rappelled down.

 

That night we had the Thursday night fun Camp Otterbein tradition of Capture the Flag! Afterwards, my group went up to Vesper Hill (a particularly special part of camp where we do the Wednesday night communion) and slept out under the stars.

Friday seemed to come so fast! It was sad saying goodbye to the campers (except one is coming back next week-yay!). My very sore body was ready for some time to relax though. Today, I've been enjoying the time off relaxing with my wonderful fiancé.