Time for some updates!! It's been awhile! This whole bullet thing seems to work out the best b/c it doesn't take me too long! And away we goooo.... in absolutely no particular order:

~ After lots of persuading Corinne donated her hair to Locks of Love and now it's REALLY short, but look REALLY cute!!
~ we had our last: confirmation weekend retreat (and phil and i lead and BOTH had small groups!), drama practice, AME (after meal entertainment) practice, and music practice of the year!! The last music prac. was a favorite b/c we played name that tune with our praise songs! it was great! OH YEAH-- and our LAST EVER co-leader BUSINESS MEETING!! woohoo!! and boy oh boy was it easy! we only had one week to plan and no practices or anything! and we only have TWO retreats our last week "on the road"... AND i get to lead out very LAST one! Hopefully I won't get all emotional and stuff!
~ I GOT A JOB!! I'll be the Local Outreach Assistant Coordinator for NET Ministries and I'll be working a lot with the Lifelines, next year's Home Team!, and with Discipleship Weeks!! And I get to room with my sister Corinne in a cute little house down the road from where i'll be working!!
~ Corinne and Phil are going to be supervisors next year, and for sure Ali is doing a second year and we're still waiting on Lauren! She's either doing a 2nd year or she'll be coming on staff too!!! It's a HOME TEAM TAKEOVER I'm tellin' ya!! I don't have to be too sad at the end of the year b/c most of my team will still be around!! =) Hooray!
~ We "saved" a GIGANTOR turtle a coule days ago!! He was trying to cross the street so my brothers got out and tried to help him across and after lots of snapping and jumping on the part of my brothers... and the turtle, they got out jumper cables and scooted s/he across to a lake! Hopefully it can swim!! =) You'll have to see the pictures! once i send them home!!
~ Heard my first ever real live tornado siren... and didn't do a thing about it! oopsies! I guess I was supposed to go down in the basement, but I wasn't too worried! Kristin and I's host family had just left for a couple days so we were home alone and didn't really know what to do.... so their daughter came over later on giving us a list of all the cities that were nearby so if they came up on the weather channel then we needed to head downstairs! But, it was all good, nothing came too close! TYL!
~ We're getting a NEW van!! NET may have to change over to a 12 passenger van b/c of insurance reasons... so guess who the guinnea pigs are?!? yup!-- the HOME TEAM!! woohoo! It just got here so we haven't actually switched over all our stuff... we'll prob. just use it the last week of our year and see how it goes, they just want to know if there's enough room for everyone and all that jazz! We'll see how it goes!
~ rode the new rollar coaster in the MOA! "Twister"-- and it was decent! esp. for being inside a mall, I definately recommend it if anyone is here to visit me (*wink *wink *hint *hint!!)!
~ Team day: Went to the Comozoo for a couple hours which was AWESOME! they have a really nice zoo, all the animals kinda depressed us b.c they were all locked up in cages and stuff but after I got over that we had fun! I made someone from the team pose in front of each and every animal looking like that particular animal... so I got some quality pictures! The monkeys were by far the most fun to watch and make conversations for! Dhan, Meg., Chris, and I stayed there most of the time!
~ Team day: we finally did the murder mystery dinner! But turned it into a lunch! We all hit the prop closet to find stellar outfits! Myself and Dhan were planning team day so we were Miss Bibi Gunn, and I had him wear my makeup!! It was great! Phil and Javy were our Mexican bandits "Juan Bandito" and when they entered into their characters they kept starting bar fights, it was quite amusing! Lauren and Meghan made perfect school marms being "Miss Patience" and Kris and Chris were our card sharks "Mr. Rowdy Azell"... Simo played the part of "Doc Mallard" excellently, and our lovely mail order brides from England Ali and Corinne fit the part just fine! We did it at the NET center so we had some pretty great reactions of people walking through wondering what we were doing!!
~ We finally got to go over to spend time with Mark Berchem and his family (he's the program director at NET and the reason why our team is still together!!Praise God!) for a little chit chat and dessert! The highlight of the evening for me, besides some excellent host family stories of the past was night prayer with their family!! It was very inspiring and if or when I get married and have a family we're hopefully going to do something like they did! It was cute b/c the youngest Joe, who's 9 or 10, prayed for JR in Canada... and just in case you don't know the story, JR was the male team leader on team #6 and they all went to canada for a team day last half and they wouldn't let JR back in the US! So he's been over there for the past 5 months now working with NET Canada! Crazyness!

I'm sure there's TONS more I could write, but it's also one of my last days off and the sun is calling my name "Julie Julie come walk in me!" ... heehee! I love you all and miss you tons!! BUT, I'll be seeing some of you really soon!!!!!!!!! Until then, hasta mis amores!!