I was completely blown away tonight by the number of junior highers that came out to the youth party tonight.  I didn’t even know we were having a party til yesterday but wow they sure found out!  Everyone is out participating in a photo scavenger hunt right now… except me.  Call me a party pooper or what not but they give me headaches and I’d much rather just stay and wait and allow a kid to have my seat in the jeep.  I put together a photo scavenger hunt last year for ayf around this time and while it was tons of fun it really was a headache running around everywhere and then to then get all the pictures up and ready to show.  Plus sometimes peoples pictures aren’t as good as they think they are.  So when it comes to the judging sometimes you become the bad guy.  Anyway here are some of my favs from last year that I found. 

I’ve felt the urge to take a look back at 2007 and reflect…A year ago today we were spending time with friends at the Deli celebrating Karl’s 24th birthday…  Funny that today we spent time with friends at the Lodge celebrating Karl’s 25th birthday.  Last year I wasn’t really working other then the 8 piano lessons I taught and Karl was still at the CMA.  We took our first trip to the cabin for our new friend Beth’s birthday and loved it.  We got rid of the silver neon and green contour and consolidated to our awesome Jeep.  I had my wisdom teeth removed which resulted in great stories for Karl to tell.  I experienced my first junior high retreat at Lake Champion and spent another weekend there as my own retreat with the Beth and the band.  We spent a weekend in Pittsburgh celebrating Kari’s graduation even though she had more classes just days later…  We saw our dear friends Spence and Beth wed on May 26 and celebrated our 1 year anniversary on the 27th (and my 23rd birthday on the 28th).  Trips to Williamsport became a little more frequent as our hearts grew for the city.  LIFE 2007 hit… to Florida and back again in a bus filled with high schoolers.  Junior high camp quickly followed where I watched a young leader flourish with her responsibilities.  Mike and Elisa Tukeva tied the knot August 4th and August 5th we told the youth and parents that we would be leaving the CMA… a very sad day.  A whirlwind of 2 weeks including sad goodbyes, lots of packing, tenting, a pig roast and lots of stuff done to our Jeep wrapped up our time State College.   Rufus gave us quite a scare with her sickness (basically gas!?) but she bounced back after a couple of days. And then we moved in with the Fishers and restarted in Williamsport. This began the hunt for a house, Karls position at First Church and a steady 9 to 5 job for me at Judd’s.  Middle School Fuse started with 20ish kids and peaked around 40ish which was the number needed before a High School Musical Party could be had.  Karl and I found out we really enjoyed High School Music (the first one is definitely better then the 2nd…).  I had my first taste of the rental season with the violin shop and began accompanying middle school choir again as well as some youth and childrens choirs at church.  A mystery dinner graced one of our Saturday evenings in a fun whodunit sort of way and was followed the next weekend by Jon and Emily Smock’s wedding October 6th.  After honeymooning the Smocks moved to Montoursville… and we love having them so close by!  Monday lunches with Gram started being the norm every week and we finally found a house.  We closed on the house October 12th and started in on the work.  We handed out candy for Halloween at our new house where our PSU Lion pawed pumpkin lit the front porch and Penn State fight songs bellowed out the front door.  We followed that up with scary movie night at our house for some friends.  We painted a room green another room blue and became masters of taking up carpet and were thoroughly blessed by the generosity of others.  Our house warming was oh so warm and the favorite bottles was an amazing idea.  We spent Thanksgiving with my family and many others at Dover UCC’s outreach dinner.  Justin Smith proposed to Kari… AND she said Yes.  The weeks leading up to Christmas were spent with amazing people at some truly amazing dinners.  December was truly an amazing food month… I tried ostrich and liked it.  Emily and Aden Wertz finished up the weddings for the year on December 22nd with a great weekendWe picked out our second puppy, Karl’s christmas gift though we won’t get him til 2008 (his name is Angus).  And we found out we’ll be an aunt and uncle come August of 2008, my brother and sister-in-law announced  their pregnancy!  It was another amazing year!