Coaches Huddle Time:
Me: So girls, do you have any questions for me or Coach Katie? You can ask us anything you want. My shoe size is 8.5. I know you were thinking about asking that, so I thought I would throw it out there.
**dead silence**
Me: Are you sure? No questions at all?
S: When is your birthday?
--we all answer and huddle time ends slightly awkwardly –

SNACK time
Me: Hey girls, you get enough for snack?
R: Do you read the Bible in order?
Me: Um, what?
R: Do you read the Bible in order?
Me: Oh. Well, yes, sometimes. I’m not doing that right now but sometimes I do.
R: What page are you on?
Me: What page? Um…(racking my mind for what I last read; mostly lately I’ve been only reading our camp bible stories and translating favorite verses)
R: How do you decide what to read?
Me: Well, you know how there are 30 or 31 days in 1 month? My dad taught me that there are 31 chapters in Proverbs. So sometimes, whatever day it is, like today is the 18th, I will read the 18th chapter. If you do that every day you can read the whole book in one month.
R: Oh.
Me: What page are you on in your Bible?
R: Numbers 20. *groan*
Me: Numbers? Numbers is a little bit boring, right?
R: Yes!!! Its all “he is the son of this guy, is the son of this guy, is the son of this guy”
Me: How about you, N? What page are you on?
N: I’m on page 30.

So now I know: During coaches huddle, talk about candy and video games, tickle a little bit, TRY and review the theme and the memory verse and maybe a discussion question…and save all the rest of the talking for snack time!!!

A shocker to us all.

I am going to be a coach at my church kids sports camp this week. I am coaching CHEER. I know. Me. Cheerleading. When I told my family I was met with looks of shock, disbelief, and stifled snickers. But the girls are only 7 (in my “huddle”) and I was promised it will be easy and cute! Would it have been easier to coach basketball? Heck yes! Will I still faithfully serve my Lord and have a great time and serve kids with cheer? Yes! So, I’m stoked about it, although already *slightly* humiliated by the camp songs and arm gestures. Once the kids are there, though, it’ll be all for them and I’ll be super into it. (I hope.) So, if you think to pray for me this week I would really appreciate it!

On another note, it is only 3 weeks til I leave for the Yucatan! I have been gathering up all things “missions trip” (Spanish bible, pepto bismol, mosquito repellant, craft supplies) over the weekend and I am really looking forward to the trip. I feel 1000 hours behind on some preparations (…sports camp this will will *really* help me feel less stressed right?) but I guess I will just have some busy weekends to come. I am looking forward to serving the village we are going to, meeting the women there, trying to use broken Spanish, and being Jesus to people.

Mystery Person

Yesterday I subbed in Sunday School for the 1-2nd grade kiddos again. Those kids CRACK ME UP. They have a weekly tradition of "Mystery Person." Each of the kids has filled out a little survey about themselves, their siblings, where they were born, favorite food, etc. All the kids stand up and as the teacher reads off facts, the kids sit down if it doesn't apply to them until only one person is left standing.
So here is how the game went on Sunday:
1) All the kids stand up (and teachers).
2) Teacher Kurt reads off the first fact, something like, "This weeks mystery person was born in California"
3) All the kids who weren't born in CA sit down.
4) Teacher Kurt reads off a second fact, "This persons' favorite thing about Sunday School is learning about God."
5) One of the darling girls standing by me says, "Oh, darn it!" and sits down, along with about a third of the other kids.
6) Teacher Christy and a second Unnamed teacher laugh nearly uncontrollably.
I couldn't decide what was funnier - the fact that 1st graders already have the "sunday school church answer" thing down, or the fact that several kids were very particular about their favorite thing about church NOT being learning about God.

Anyhow, it was fun.

MATH ANSWERS!!!!!

To my 7 loyal readers and the 200 people that viewed/hit my page last friday after I posted the PI math problem, I have your answer. Let me say that this is a pretty good way to solve the problem but I don't really agree with the problem definition of "alphabetic shift cipher" and the way the actual answer played out. On the other hand, I KNEW "mathmovesu" had to be part of the answer but I thought it was at the beginning. Oh well. I did love some of the comments the original post got -both relating to the math AND/OR the pudding! Quite randomly addictive!

Answer:
“The digits of p can be obtained from the internet. The most common digit can also be found by doing a search on Google. One way is to load the 100,000 digits into Word. Use the find and replace functions to take out any carriage returns or other non-digits. Then use the find and replace to change each digit to another character, like an “x”. The find and replace will tell you how many it removed. Doing this you can see that the digit “1” is the most common. I also used Word to find the longest monotonic continuous integer sequence. In Word, I used the find function to look for sequences of “12345” etc. Each time it found one I looked to see what the number preceding and following was to see if there was a longer sequence. It turns out that “12345” is the longest sequence in the first 100,000 digits. So that becomes the key for decrypting the message. There are 15 characters. The first is shifted backwards 1 letter in the alphabet, the second 2, the third 3, the fourth 4, the fifth 5 and then it repeats, the sixth 1 and so on. This turns JNRZJNCWLRPXHWZ into ILOVEMATHMOVESU which is the answer!”

2008 Fun Run Stats

GHIORSO-MIFFLIN SACRAMENTO THANKSGIVING DAY CELEBRITY TOXIC POTATO AWARENESS FUN RUN TO PREVENT SOLANINE POISONING

56 degrees outside

35 pictures (we are digitally obsessed)

42 minute finish time (me) (4th place)

26 post-run bagels

13 runners (2 remote, 4 for the walk, 7 for the run)

6 repeat runners from last year

4.3 mile run/2 mile walk

3 packages of t-shirt iron-on paper

2 brothers pep talking my sister out of bed to run

2 years in a row Nathan finishes first

1 map: http://www.mapmyrun.com/route/us/ca/fair%20oaks/822001420761

1 Great morning

2nd Annual G.M.S.T.D.C.T.P.A.F.R.T.P.S.P.

That is right: G.M.S.T.D.C.T.P.A.F.R.T.P.S.P.
This stands for:
GHIORSO-MIFFLIN SACRAMENTO THANKSGIVING DAY CELEBRITY TOXIC POTATO AWARENESS FUN RUN TO PREVENT SOLANINE POISONING

Did you know potatoes can be poisonous? If they are green they could contain harmful amounts of solanine, very dangerous.

Tomorrow morning, 12 brave souls will be running to raise awareness of the harms of green potatoes and solanine poisoning.

Here is our logo I designed. (I'll keep my day job, don't worry.)

Tomorrow I will post race results and pictures. And maybe even throw something in there about thankfullness. Possibly.

PS: Wondering what all this craziness is about? Reference: Season 4 (2007) Episode 1 of "The Office" and the Dunder-Mifflin Fun Run.

For the sake of crazy cookies!

I am writing this blog as I make cookies. After everything I have gone through up to this point (the first batch are nearly ready to emerge from the oven), I am PRAYING that my Martha Stewart attempts are successful.

I got this recipe from my awesome friend Alicia who I have known since going to Redwood. (9 years, if anyone is counting.) I bought all the ingredients the other day at the store. This morning I started to copy the recipe off email and realized I was missing brown sugar and peanut butter. I'm taking these to 20's retreat this weekend, so, if anyone is going to be friends with me then I better make some darn good cookies. Meeting people is already tough enough without poisoning them or noticing them spit your cookie out into the trash.

After an hour of humming and hawing about the wet weather outside I decide resolutely that I am walking the dog to 7-Eleven (quarter mile away) for PB and brown sugar. At this exact moment, it is drizzling pretty hard. But, once I make up my mind, right or wrong, I stick with it. So I walk. 7-Eleven does not have brown sugar. I wonder...should I get the PB and just substitute white sugar for brown? I decide yes. On the way back I decide I will walk to a farther destination, a nearby friend, to see if anyone is home to borrow brown sugar. (Still raining.) No one was home.

I get home and google "brown sugar substitutes" and read that you can substitute white sugar, but the white sugar is drier and won't provide as much flavor. Well, I can't go bringing dry flavorless cookies to a 20's retreat. So I decide to go to the nearest bigger store. Walgreens. Also no brown sugar there. At this point with various distractions it has been about two hours since I started on the cookie mixing. *Sheesh.* So finally I end up at Safeway.

Finally onto baking.

So these cookies are a Reese's variation on the christmas cookies where you put a Hershey Kiss on a peanut butter cookie. Same concept, but you bake the cookie in mini muffin tins and shove the Reese's peanut butter cup in the middle after baking for a little muffin looking treat.

Chocolate does not photograph well. I learned this attempting to be artsy (Lisa L. style) by snapping a "while I'm baking" picture.

These cookies are not fun. I suck at this. (I'm writing this midway through baking.) Self-portraits are a requirement though if I ever scrapbook this event since I'm already taking pictures.

Ok, just took the last ones out. I started to get better by the end.

I think I still prefer snickerdoodles. Or regular peanut butter cookies.

Update. I made another batch because I was worried about quantity. I mean seriously. Could 40 (good ones) really be enough? So the newer batch mixed like a champ, much softer than the first batch (led me to panic: Were the first ones good??!!) but I am just going to get over it, take them all, and hope they disappear.

x