Sarah Green

WARNING: these things may or may not be true

Once upon a time, I was obsessed with the color green. Green things just started appearing in my life, I kid you not. Some of them were given to me as gifts; some were things I bought. Either way, I was surrounded by the color green. There was only problem: they were not all my green, the green I was so obsessed with. There was only one way to solve this problem: identify exactly which color I was so fond of, and name it after myself.
So, three or so years ago, Donna Perrott coined (I have ALWAYS wanted to use that word!) the term, "Sarah Green." It started as a small concept, and only a few selective friends and family members really knew about my color, and even my obsession. As the obsession grew, so did the popularity of the official color, "Sarah green." Instead of it being my color, the world started using the phrase "going green!" They stole my green, and changed the name! Everything turned green, from advertisements for organic foods to televisions. Now, I am in complete support of recycling to save our world, but did they have to steal my color?
For about 2 hours, this really bothered me, because I felt like it was my unique favorite color, and an obsession to say the least. But then I realized, now I can have a whole world full of green things! Everything I could ever want to buy comes in Sarah green- so I am constantly going Sarah green!

Labor Day Weekend

So, when Ben came to visit a week or two ago, we attempted to fit all of Colorado into one weekend. Now, if you have been to Colorado you know that this is impossible. But, if you have met Ben and I, you know this is maybe possible! I don't know if we fit everything into the few days we had together, but we sure came close.

We started by going to Ihop, as I am sure you all already guessed, with Hannah and her friend Josh. Josh actually had just arrived in Denver, on a bike! He is attempting to bike in all 50 states in about a years worth of time. Ben and I were very interested in his adventure, and continuously drilled him with questions as we devoured our pancakes.

Friday morning Ben and I brought donuts in for my office, and I worked on writing an article while Ben took my car to get the oil changed... Thank you Ben for that. I didn't realize how hard it is to maintain a car and have a "real" job; everything closes before I am off work! Friday evening, after a big dinner with the Gypeses at Texas Roadhouse, we went to a concert at Redrocks! We saw Jack Ingram, Pat Green, and previously known as Hoodie but now all country... Darius Rucker!! It was a great concert; not only did I know all the songs, but we had great seats and we kept easing our way down to the front. Even if the music was awful, I would have been content just sitting in our seats watching the sunset over the red rocks and the city of Denver. It was quite a place for a concert.

I was able to squeeze in a quick run Saturday morning before Ben and I took off to head up North to Estes Park. We left around 10 and took our time getting there, which is something I love about the way Ben and I travel. We stopped in random places, from a farmer's market to starbucks to wave at the hundreds of bikers we were passing. (Sidenote: we saw all these bikers in Boulder, which is apparently the most biker friendly city in the U.S.; there were more bikers than cars, no exaggeration.) We didn't get up to Rocky Mountain National Park until about 4, which ended up working out well because we got a camp site, and set our tent up with plenty of daylight to spare.

After the tent was pitched and we had set up our sleeping bags and piles and piles of blankets I brought along, we went on a hike! As you can see by the pictures, the scenery was gorgeous and Ben and I had a blast exploring a trail. It was nothing like the Wyoming hike, because there wasn't much of a climb, but it was great nonetheless. Once again (I must have some sort of magical luck or something), it started raining right when Ben and I got back in the car, so we opted to head to town for dinner. We walked around in some stores, and dashed through the rain when we had to go outside. We obviously dashed a little too much, because we got yelled at by a police officer for illegally crossing the street. I once again played the "tourist from Indiana" card and we kept running until we made it to another store to continue our browsing. It was a fun night; we ended up eating at a local pizza place. By the time it was done raining, we were done eating and we bought some firewood and headed back to our tent. After I attempted multiple times to get a fire started, Ben took over and had a huge fire blazing within seconds. You would think after all these years of camping, I would be able to start a fire...? I think we would have been cold sleeping, but I literally brought 4 blankets plus a sleeping bag for each of us, so we didn't freeze!

Sunday morning, we met up with my friend from Spain, Chris. You all remember, if you have read my previous blog posts, my running buddy? So of course, we went on a run in Boulder. And again, of course, we ate pancakes for breakfast. I feel so predictable these days. We said goodbye to Chris, who is also traveling to every state in the U.S., but in a car (which was actually just stolen, but that is another story....) We made out way south to Colorado Springs. My magic was lost and it started raining on our hike through Garden of the Gods, but we still had fun! We saw Pike's Peak from a distance, found a Dunkin Donuts (only one in CO), walked around downtown, and made our way back to Bob and Marge's'.

Labor Day morning we got up and went to the Taste of Denver festival downtown. We tried all sorts of things, from cupcakes to crocodile meat. Then Ben got to experience his first major league baseball game... go Rockies! Then I got to experience my first major human fight. We were sitting at the Cheesecake factory (and this is a true story), and these two wanted drug lords happened to walk past the undercover police her were searching for them. A few tables were knocked over, shattering plates and knocking into bystanders, as these two huge guys jumped the criminals. It was crazy to watch, I was so scared. I didn't think that we would get entertainment like that at dinner! They arrested them and we enjoyed the rest of our meal.
Saying goodbye to Ben was hard, as always. Saying goodbye is never fun. This is so much easier than Spain though. So I will admit, we didn't see everything Colorado has to offer, but wouldn't you say we saw a lot?

Medicine Bow Peak

As you all can tell by my lack of blogging (thanks Mom for reminding me), I have been busy. Taking 21 credit hours (I am crazy) and working 40 hours a week (I love my job) is going really well; it's the fact that I squeeze in hiking, running, exploring, and other adventures into every other waking moment of my day that leaves me no time to blog.

Since I have been so busy, I have tons of updates! I have been working on an article for Denver Christian Family Magazine, which will be published in October. I interviewed a family and pretty much stalked them with my camera as they chose things for their shoe box. I will have to copy my article to here once it is published. I have also been working on getting media about OCC published anywhere possible. That is going fairly well, but I know that it will only get better as we get closer to Christmas. Oh, yes, and I have been working on the ridiculous task of organizing these things we call P&A forms. They are the forms each drop off center is required to fill out if they want to work with our organization.... I have been trying my best to complete the missing information, and it took me a full day just to organize them all into a binder!

I love my job though, I really do. It's so encouraging to hear how wide-spread Operation Christmas Child really is. Hannah and I went camping and hiking at Medicine Bow Peak, in Wyoming a couple weekends ago. After a wonderful night of camping, and quite an adventure cooking our breakfast.. well let's just say I accidentally knocked water over and put out our fire... we drove up to where we could start out climb up the peak. We pulled up the car and as we were getting out we noticed that the van next to us had an Operation Christmas Child sticker on it! We started talking to the man driving the van and as fate would have it, or as God would have it really, his wife was an area team volunteer, and both Hannah and I had previously talked with her on the phone. We were encouraged as we started our hike up the mountain, and we ended up running into another group of people who all packed shoe boxes every year! Hannah and I agreed that it is trully wonderful to hear of how many people participate year after year, and how united we are in the project.

We huffed and puffed our way up the mountain, stopping every 100 ft. or so to catch our breath. The scenery was obviously breath taking, and every step I took I realized that I was climbing higher than I had ever been before. Reaching the top was quite a challenge; we actually had to climb up these huge rocks, sometimes getting on our hands and knees so we wouldn't fall. We made it to the very top and realized what a feat it was to climb 12,013 feet.
As we were sitting on the highest rock we could find and eating our lunch, we ran into another couple of people who knew all about the project. It was as if everywhere we turned we were meeting people who were familiar with Operation Christmas Child. We enjoyed sliding down part of the mountain that was covered with snow, and then we continued our 5 mile journey down the mountain. I was really tired at the end, probably due to the extreme elevation change. I don't know how people climb Mt. Everest... hmm maybe I can do that someday. Once we made it to the car, and got our shoes off and jackets back on, it started pouring down rain; perfect end to a great climb.

All this to say, that Operation Christmas Child is huge. It's not even about the number of boxes I pack per year, or the number of boxes you pack per year. It's all about ALL of us coming together and packing 8.2 million shoe boxes. Yes, that is 8.2 million children who will have a smile on their face this Christmas.

: ) Ten weeks until national collection week!