7 Quick Takes...Volume 8

1. Trying to get the blog back on track slowly :) I love the idea of the blog but find it so darn easy to let it slip when I get busy with school, clinicals, church or whatever. I'm hoping to start posting again a little more regularly :)

2. This week will be my last at Valley Children's Therapy which is so hard to believe. I've always had it in my heart that I want to go into pediatrics but I wouldn't know for sure if that's where I was called until I actually worked in the setting. Well, sufficed to say that it only took me a couple of weeks to be sure. The amazing thing is that 10 weeks have gone by and I'm ready to move on to my last clinical internship - crazy, I'm going to miss my kids! Now it's time to prepare to apply for jobs to start this fall!

3. Speaking of my last clinical internship, I move to Portland in two weeks for my last one at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center. Well, technically I'll be moving to Vancouver, just across the river. My friend Br. Matthew's parents, who I visit with my friend Janet every New Year's Day, have graciously offered to let me stay at their place for the couple of months I'm at Emanuel. I drove down with my mom on Friday and it looks like it's a 20 minute commute without traffic - not bad :) I think it'll be a great opportunity and I'm excited to see the light at the end of the tunnel (graduation!)

4. Today is my friend Lou's 30th birthday, and to celebrate, last night his wife Michelle threw him a masquerade ball bash! It was a lot of fun and a great excuse to dress up fancy pants style :) It was great to see everybody dressed up in costumes or formal wear with some pretty fun and creative masks. I didn't have my camera unfortunately so no pics to post, you'll have to take my word for it.

5. I've been helping with the Confirmation program and tomorrow I have to teach a night on Bible 101. I'll probably be spending most of today planning for it :) It's a great chance to dispel some of those "Catholics aren't biblical" myths. Confirmation has been fun but also quite a challenge. At Life Teen, I find that that most of the teens want to be there, and so when you're teaching, for the most part, they're ready to learn. Confirmation kids run the gamut from, "my parents made me come, and I've been really poorly catechized" to "I go to Catholic school and I know all the facts but I don't want to be here" to "I'm really excited about this, and want to learn everything I can". Question is - how do you design a teaching that reaches them all? It's a challenge I love as a catechist and I hope I'm rising to it.

6. Our not so winter-like winter is fading away - the trees are in full bloom and the daffodils are flowering. I've been trying to go outside and play a little more, and picked up a couple of letterboxes in Tukwila to get my find count up to 50! As if that wasn't enough sign that I'm hooked, next weekend the letterboxing crew I usually go out with down here (known in the logbooks as Happily Ever After, Leonheart and The 7th Day) along with a few others are heading to a park just south of Olympia for a letterboxing event! Lots of 'boxers, and boxes and general fun to be had. Yeah, we're nerds but it's cool.

7. My lenten challenge this year, instead of giving something up, was to read a chapter of a book I got on praying the Divine Office every night and actually try to make it happen. It's going pretty well so far - I've only missed a couple of days and am now praying night prayer every night before bed. I'm discovering the beauty of the psalms and hymns in the Office (no not the Michael Scott kind :) ) and am hoping to add Morning and Evening Prayers soon. It's such a beautiful sign of unity to know that around the world thousands are joining in the same prayer with you!