i am a raptor

I felt like I should write a new tateblog, but I'm just not even sure where to start.

I didn't know you could love a job as much as I love mine. Granted, it's technically only a 30-hour a week job so part of the reason I love it is that I can still sleep until like 8:30 or 9. But still, when Sunday evening comes around and I'm thinking about the start of another week, I actually get excited. It's a contrary reaction to every year of my life before now. No joke.

In case you're wondering what I actually do at my job, I'll fill you in.

First off, I plan and run Fusion, our Junior High youth group.

Yep there I am leading the way, wearing my sweet Bayside Tigers t-shirt. That is awesome. We do all kinds of things at Fusion, but this night was old-school game night.

Wait. Let's get a little closer look at Mark there.

Ah yes. There he is. Way to be.

So we obviously played dodgeball that night, which was pretty awesome.

But what everyone should always remember about that Fusion was that it marked the birth of Mega Four Square.

Mega Four Square is a little game I invented for that night. It's essentially four square and volleyball combined, and it is a team sport. Each square is about the size of a normal four square court, with a team of four in each square. I won't give you all the rules here because I can't have everyone stealing my game.

That night at Fusion the game was off to a rocky start, but that weekend was fall retreat for the high school so I decided I should suggest we all play the first night.

It.....was awesome.

This game is weirdly incredibly fun and entertaining. I can't even explain it here, but we played that game multiple times that weekend, and everyone loved it. It was a little stressful for me at times because I had to keep clarifying/making up new rules. But it was fine because I designated my team as the International Mega Four Square Association (IM4SA), with our soul duty being to protect the integrity of the game.

I think I got off track, but I am just really excited about Mega Four Square.

Oh yeah, my job. Another great thing about my job is that "hanging out" is essentially in my job description.

The other day me and these people and some other people got to hang out on a beautiful Colorado afternoon and watch our friends play in the Powderpuff game.

They were so good. Powderpuff is crazy at Ralston Valley. They have eight different teams that play all afternoon a couple days before homecoming. Kirkwood didn't even have Powderpuff, and I'm still a little bitter about it. With all that practice playing with Mark and Ryan and Brendan growing up, I would have dominated.

Speaking of homecoming, Mark and Amanda Stooke and I got to drive a group of kids to dinner and the homecoming dance this past weekend in the church van. Holler!

My little girl is growing up.

Anyway there's more about my job but I'm tired of talking about it.

But I'll tell you about my other job now. I am the new Spanish teacher at Gager Academy. You may ask, what is Gager Academy? Well...it's not actually a school really. More of a big house of people. And two of the boys are home-schooled. And once a weekish I go to their house to help them learn Spanish. Here's my two little students.

Yeah they're not really little at all. They're in high school. Ok, and realistically me being their Spanish teacher means we eat lunch, talk about Spanish for 15 minutes, perhaps throw in playing a musical instrument, and then play Tanks! on the the Wii.

Tanks! Oh man. Best video game ever. Well maybe not best ever, but it's pretty sweet. We also play this at Mark's sometimes, and let me tell you, it is addicting. I love it.

Oh, and Gager Academy Raptors t-shirts are on the way, don't even worry.

Well I'm really hungry and I've been doing nothing at work for last...long time so I think I'm out. I hope you've enjoyed this random assortment of pointless ideas that cannot even compare to Rachel Cavanaugh's incredibly insightful blogs.

OH! And I booked a flight for Kansas today. Booyah.

fun with wheelchairs and video games

Mark's house got so fun this year.

Not that it wasn't fun last year because I did enjoy constantly playing basketball and watching American Idol.

Here are the four reasons Mark's house is awesome: slack line, Wii, guitar hero, wheelchairs.

Now I will educate you on these things. A slack line is this flat rope tied between two trees that people try to walk and balance on. Sort of like a tight rope I guess, but the slack line is only a few feet off the ground.

I remember seeing hippie kids at KU doing slack lines on campus sometimes. But now there's one in my own (not really my own but sort-of) backyard. The thing is, I'm awful at slack line. I can't even really stand on it on my own, much less walk across it. But it's fine because other people like Mark and Max, or Marx and Mack as Rachel Cavanaugh and I call them, are really good at slack lining. Those hippies.

Moving on, one of Mark's new roommates Steve brought his video game systems with him--the Wii and PlayStation 2 with Guitar Hero. I've actually only played the Wii once and I haven't played his Guitar Hero yet, but I forsee myself playing these games a lot in the near future. Especially when it's too cold to play outside.

Finally, my favorite part of Mark's house is the wheelchairs. Mark is storing crutches and wheelchairs for this organization called Crutches for Africa. So naturally, we are constantly playing on the wheelchairs on Mark's back porch. The other night I mastered the wheely, which was an exciting moment in my life. Last night was the best though.

The Gager brothers and Lantz were over so the four of us were wheelchairing together. Then someone had the idea that we should make a train of wheelchairs. Then we decided to take the train out to the street. We escaped out of the fence and headed up the dark street. When we got to a satisfactory spot, we all hooked on to each other and started our train down street.

But then a car came. We all got freaked out and the train broke as we all pulled to the side of the road. Meanwhile the hippie guys that just moved onto the street came out of the house and were all watching us as we tried to get away from all the commotion. It was awesome.

Basically, I never realized how fun playing on wheelchairs could be. I'm not sure if that's wrong or not either. Hmmm... But anyway, they're so fun that playing on them was the highlight of my birthday I think.

Speaking of my birthday, it was sweet. Saturday night we went to dinner with the staff, and Sunday the Wysockis made dinner and dessert and peoples came over.

I love those peoples. It was fun.

So I'm 25 now. That's weird. I feel about 18. Maybe. Also I need to note that one of my favorite birthday presents was a Bayside Tigers t-shirt from Angie. It is awesome. Good work Ang. And thanks to everyone else that gave me cool presents too.

Anyway all that to say this year is going great and I am loving it. But I've already said that probably. I gotta get ready to leave for my birthday dinner at the Gagers now...holla!

the fall: past and present

I'm tired today because I stayed up an extra 45 minutes or so last night looking at my old high school yearbooks. Mostly the one from senior year. This decision is a result of a few recent occurrences.

The first is that I went into Mr. Goodcents the other day (still not the same without Emjo), and I was wearing my Ted Drewes shirt. The guy at the counter says to me, "Oh are you from St. Louis?" So I said yeah and long story short the dude graduated a year behind me at Kirkwood High School. Weird. I didn't recognize him or his name though.

However when I was watching a Jay Leno that Mark had on his DVR the other night I did recognize someone. People from the show went to some comedy festival and had several different comedians tell a joke or say something funny for the camera. One of them turned out to be Nikki Glaser, who also graduated a year behind me at Kirkwood and apparently is making her way as a comedian these days. Weird, because she never struck me as all that funny. Oh, and she went to KU. Oh, and we were in To Kill A Mockingbird together in middle school. Awesome.

But I was mostly looking at my yearbook because I miss high school. I know I wrote about this a few months ago, so I won't really get into it completely. But lately I've been going to sports game after sports game and watching boys ask girls to homecoming and going to youth group and listening to first driving stories and I remember how freaking sweet high school was.

Last night especially hit me because I went to the Ralston Valley football game (on a Thursday night--weird, I know) and they were playing this team mostly made up of black players, which is rare for this area. And as insignificant as it seems, that little detail made me miss high school in St. Louis--especially high school football games in the fall.

I think I miss the simplicity of high school life. We had four years of high school, and when it was over, I knew I'd be in college for another four (or five) years. There were no decisions to really worry about. Well, most people worried about college I guess but I don't think I really did. Anyway I guess since I'm about to turn 25 I feel all these little pressures and worries that normal people don't have in high school. Like, when are you gonna get married? What are you gonna do next year? Why do you only have like 3 friends your own age and is that bad? You know, things like that.

I try to remember though, that those are mostly society pressures and I don't care about this so called "society" and what they think of me.

That being said, let me show you how sweet the beginning of the year has been.

That's me and Smiley, one of our junior boys at Junior High youth group the other night. We called this night banana night, which included an interview with "Banana Boy,"

A couple up front games of kids shoving bananas in their mouths,


as well as "Steal the Banana" and "Ultimate Banana."

Oh man. It was awesome. Especially since we all went to a high school volleyball game after that and Alan was still wearing the banana costume. I think there's like a prerequisite of being sort-of a weirdo in order to be a good youth leader. I'm fine with it.

Wednesday high school youth group was sweet too because it was "Man vs. Wild" night. You should really go watch the video Mark made from the night at www.youtube.com/highpointstuff because it was amazing. My favorite part, which you'll notice in the video, was when the students had to make "shelters" out of cardboard boxes and then see if the shelters could withstand the elements, which basically meant us pouring buckets of water on them and then shooting fans at them. I took great joy in getting them soaked.

I've lived here a little over one year now, and I can't imagine what it would be like to leave. I'm so blessed. And I'll leave it at that for now.

Satisfied Mark?

what in the name of me is going on in here

Yesterday was a sad day for me. Angie headed back to Chicago and Sophie started the first day of school. And you know what that means: the epic summer of 2007 has come to a close.

I wrote a blog in June about how blessed I have been this summer. And that was true for its entirety. Don't get me wrong, I love camp and I did miss working there this summer, but it was so refreshing to just be in Colorado, or on one of many summer trips, because it was a nice changed of pace. Plus, I am pumped for the beginning of the new school year.

But before that, I need to report on the last few weeks of summer. They have been very hectic and stressful at times, but I survived. And I finally got my stupid computer back. He had to spend way too much time in the hospital (aka Mac store).

A few weeks ago, there were some visitors in the CO.

I was way pumped to see my good friends Emjo and Maggles. I always get really excited when a piece of my life in Kansas is in Colorado. Plus, we all got to go to see The Fray.

It was a pretty awesome show. My favorite part was obviously when they covered Hips Don't Lie by Shakira. Who knew what an amazing song that was? Oh wait, Jub did. The only downside was that it poured down rain halfway through The Fray's set.

Well, it was actually pretty fun and sweet and reminded me of playing soccer in the pouring rain in El Salvador. The downside came when we were uncomfortably soaking wet afterward and Emily's phone broke. Sorry Emjo. I think it was still a good time though. My favorite part was how the girls were joking about how they would react when they met the band, but then I told them we're trying to be low-maintenance so we might not see them. At that point Maggie said, "Ok I'll put my low-maintenance face on." Oh I miss the Kansas people.

Unfortunately, my time in Colorado with those two got cut short, as Grandma Tate passed away that week. As most of you know, it was actually sort-of a blessing because she had been in such poor health. But still sad of course. The last time I saw her was in March.

She was a great lady. In all my mission trips and stuff she would write such encouraging notes and talk about how she and her church were praying for me. And she loved Easter. Every year she would make sure I wasn't too old for an Easter basket, and I said no way. I'm never too old for candy.

So Grandma will be missed, that's for sure.

It was cool being in St. Louis again too because I got to see some of my Kirkwood girls I haven't seen in forever. As in Alison, Sarah, Ellen and Kristi. Talking to them and just being with them in person again was great. Oh and I got to hang out with Nic and see his new church.

Even with all that going on, my parents and I still got to head down to the great state of Florida to meet up with Marjorie and the Nunns for a week.

Besides the fact that it was ridiculously hot, I had a good time with the fam. Playing in the ocean with my cousins Joey and Michael, doing crossword puzzles with Gammy (she's not my gammy but I call her that anyway), being treated to dinner every night by Gar and Mel, it was great. Plus how awesome does Gary look in this picture:

Yes. Also, my cousin Michael is pretty much obsessed with me and my dad, so that's always fun. I got him hooked on Scrubs. He's nine...is that wrong? It's fine. Plus I got to meet up with Danielle one day for lunch because she was in Pensacola for the week. Cool.

Oh and what is so exciting is that all the Africa people got home a week ago, safe and sound. I never thought about what the sound means in the phrase "safe and sound" and I don't think I really get it. But anyway, I was happy with their return. Things just feel normal again.

Sunday night I saw the Bourne Ultimatum for the third time. Awesome. I want to marry Jason Bourne.

And now...well now I'm just sitting at church. There's always stuff to do but sometimes I get bored of that stuff. But I'm excited because next week is our staff retreat and the week after that is the beginning of fall programming. Holler.

I think I'll go try to be productive until I have to pick up little Sophie from school. Peace.