can i go to sleep please.

it's almost 1 in the morning. i am not a 1 in the morning kind of gal. unless of course i can sleep in until 3pm. however, we are going wedding dress shopping tomorrow for my sister, so there will be no sleeping in late. 

i have been wanting to print my most favorite pictures from last summer to go in a photo album my nana bought me. i didn't want to get them printed at walmart because i don't think the quality is usually that great, so i decided to save (it's a new technique i'm trying) so that i could get them printed at mpix.com. as you can imagine, i was so delighted to see that they had a 50% off 4x6 prints sale going on today that i decided to just go ahead and order them today. i spent a huge chunk of the day going through 1500 pictures from camp and then editing the 325 i liked. and no, it didn't make me sad at all to look through all those memories... not. i didn't really feel too hot today, so i didn't get it done until like 9:30pm. the deadline for the sale was at 11:59pm. no prob. they will upload in a flash. 

wrong.

it has been 2.5 hours and we are just. now. at halfway. thankfully, i emailed the mpix people and they said the servers were backed up because of the sale and that they would be happy to honor the sale price once i get my photos up. wonderful. i love nice people. 

so, i decided the best way to spend my time waiting was writing a blog post about alaska. surprised? okay, so it's not really about alaska as much as its not about alaska. does that make sense. no. oh well. 

today is the 8th. actually now its the 9th, but for sentimental purposes we are all going to happily pretend like it is still in fact the 8th and i that i don't have to wake up in 6 hours. omg. so, today is the day that i would be flying home from alaska if i would have gone to camp this summer as planned. it was weird thinking about all the counselors leaving camp and sitting in the seattle airport together waiting to say goodbye. i was thankful i didn't have to cry my eyeballs out like they were all probably doing. 

obviously, i still love alaska and camp, and i would really like to go back. but, that just wasn't the plan this summer. and its okay. so, i decided that i should make a list of all the reasons why it sucks is okay that i didn't go. 

i wouldn't have gotten to see my friends like at all. most of them would have gotten home from school and then left again while i was in alaska.

i wouldn't have gotten to spend time with holly.

i wouldn't be staying up til the butt crack of dawn so i could take advantage of this wonderful sale. :)

this picture wouldn't exist:

i wouldn't be making a quilt with aunt cindy. i can't wait to finish it. we are so close!

it would be 9452985 times harder to go back to school. especially since i have an unexpected new RD. i can't imagine trying to adjust to not being in alaska AND trying to adjust to a person i have never met whose name i have only known for a week.

i wouldn't have been able to go to the lake house with my best friend for the fourth. actually, i wouldn't have seen her at all.

i wouldn't haven been able to see laurie and brittany.

i wouldn't have gotten to see the dazzler show.

it would have been so much more difficult to go to the doctor for my recent chest bone issues in juneau.

i wouldn't have seen this sunset:

i wouldn't have made any money. (this isn't really that big of deal to me since being at camp is so worth it to me, but it is nice to fund my spending habits. :))

i wouldn't have had time to read the harry potter books.... which i still haven't finished. oops.

i wouldn't have been able to spend as some good time at home. 

i wouldn't have learned how much i despise the heat. 

i am running out of things. part of me wants to end all of those sentences with "yeah, but you could have ______ in alaska." but i'm glad i got to do the things i got to do this summer. i tried to be grateful for the things i was doing instead of always wishing i was at camp. i didn't always do a good job at that. oh well. i have less than a week left at home, so i will try to make the most of it.

i have less than a hundred pictures left on the upload. praise.the.lawd. now i will venture on over to pinterest so i can covet some stuff. 

cheers.

ko.

365 days.

a year ago i was dragging a 3 foot seafood box full of frozen salmon and sweaters through the juneau airport in my xtra tufs like it was no big deal. 

a year ago i chatted with the TSA guys in juneau like they were my next door neighbors. 

a year ago i almost threw my cell phone across the seattle airport because i was so unused to having one.
a year ago i wanted to walk back onto the plane that brought me from juneau so i could go back.

a year ago i started Jesus Calling.

a year ago i sat with my fish box in front of baggage claim at the chicago airport, crocheting a hat while i waited for my best friend to pick me up after not seeing her for months.

it's been a whole year since i've been in alaska. boy, does that feel weird. 

this summer has been so stinking hot. the exact opposite of last summer. i wore my xtra tufs almost every single day in alaska. i've only worn them once this summer. that makes me so sad. i miss the rain. 

as much as i like looking at this everyday,

i really do miss looking at this:

i've come to realize that i was not made for the heat. i would truly love to move to alaska. i wish that it wasn't quite so expensive to travel there because i feel like no one will come visit me if i do move there. i'm just a rainy, cool weather kinda gal. its my fave. 

anyway. it's been a long year. i am hoping that it will not be another whole year before i make it back to alaska. that would be tragic. 

ko.

let's get serious.

okay. so listen. it is not often that i get real serious on this here blog. because one, i am a firm believer in keeping it light and fluffy. there are lots of serious things in my life. i don't want my blog to be like that. i imagine my blog wearing a nice flowing dress, not a business suit. and two, it's my party and i can cry if i want to. which is another way of saying its my blog and i get to talk about whatever i want. because i am the boss. and i am sassy. BUT. something else that is important to me is that my blog be a place that i can tell the world wide web bits of my story. and as you are probably aware, i am still in fact alive. which means that my story is not over. which means that it can still change. despite the fact that i am the main character in my story, i don't always know what is going to happen. i am taking the story illustration too far and i will stop now. can you tell i'm stalling? i am. it's my favorite tactic to use when avoiding certain topics. okay.

you may remember a few months ago when i announced that i would be returning to alaska to counsel at echo ranch for another summer. well. plans change. i'm not going. insert five minutes of me staring at the computer not knowing what to type here. i bought my plane ticket to alaska in like january. which is fine. except for that i had major reservations about going back. warning sign number 1. i remember finding the cheapest ticket on orbitz and being nervous that i wasn't buying it through southwest incase i needed to cancel my flight. warning sign number 2. also, if you want to chat about my undying love for southwest airlines, you can just let me know. their honey roasted peanuts are deeeelish and their cancellation/change fees (or lack there of) are deeelightful. anyway. fast forward to like march. i tell my besties that i do not want to go. except deep down i don't really feel like that is the best way to describe it. they say helpful things to make my brain confused and i eventually begin to panic. like totally panic. on the way to the airport to come back to school after easter break i tell my aunt cindy that i don't think i'm supposed to go to alaska but i'm going to anyway because i have a plane ticket. because obviously that is a valid reason to get on a plane and fly a few hundred miles. she tells me not to go. i tell her she's crazy. except that is when i really began to consider not going. i mean i had prayed about it and thought about it for months before that, but it was always along the lines of hey Jesus, can you please put a neon flashing light in front of me that says go to alaska so that i will feel some peace about going except for probably i'll go anyway because i have a plane ticket. so i finally got real about it and i could not shake the unsettled feeling i had been experiencing for the past few months. i made a pro/con list on an oven. with a dry erase marker. i am not kidding. and even though i considered what was on each side of that list, the words unsettled feelings were screaming at me from the con side. i tried to figure out the source of that feeling, but i couldn't. i didn't understand where it was coming from and no, that wasn't frustrating at all. ha. at the bottom of my pro/con list i wrote out romans 8:28 and at the top i wrote even when i don't understand i will choose you. (listen to that song right now. do it. now.) i felt like saying no to camp was saying yes to blindly following whatever God had planned. so i called camp, and i cancelled my plane ticekt. scary? um yes. hard? yes. kdghusekgshuthsldsfoir? yes. all of that. it was so hard.

i have been home for two weeks now. which basically seems like eternity. but, i can tell you with great confidence that i made the right choice. i am supposed to be home this summer. i can also tell you that i am going to cry a lot. despite how strongly i felt that i wasn't supposed to be in alaska, i still wanted to go. i still want to go. i would kill a moose to be in alaska. on mother's day i flew to milwaukee. and i almost cried on my flight. it was supposed to be the first leg of my journey to alaska. i was supposed to fly out of milwaukee to seattle and then to alaska. i should be leaving for alaska today. instead my flight is sunday and it's going to kansas, not juneau. i am thrilled to be spending a week with courtney in milwaukee. and that i get to see laura graduate on saturday. and then see maria and amanda graduate the next day at home. but i won't lie to you, i am really sad. it is really hard to spend several months thinking that i am going back to my favorite place in the world and then not go. but, i said all along that i only wanted to go back if i was supposed to go back, not just because i wanted to go back.

so. i'll be in lawrence until august 15th. i get to spend a summer with some really great people. i am excited about that. alaska will be on my mind a lot. but it will be okay. this is so long. i am so sorry about that. except that i'm not. also, expect a few changes to my blogaroo. i literally can't handle having so much alaskainess all over it. ridiculous? yes. true? yes. it makes me cry like an infant. so yeah.

wow. that was a novel. now i'm going to enjoy some freshly baked cookies with my freshly baked friend. i think being baked means that you are high on drugs, but really i just mean that she got tan today. the only thing she is high on is life. ummmmmmm... anyway. bye.

ko.

30 days.

in 30 days i will be done with my sophomore year of college. holy. smokes. 30 days is not that long at all. in fact it seems really soon... until i think about how much will happen between now and then. i have papers to write, people to see, places to be, grades to keep, i don't know how i am going to get it all done. right now i should be writing a paper that is due at midnight. buuuuuuuuuuut blogging sounded like way more fun.

i like to keep track of the days. these are the things i'm currently keep track of:


   4 days until my mommy comes to see me at school
  10 days until i go to kansas for easter.
  17 days until i go to wisconsin with my friend quinn to see our friends, laura and            courtney.
 30 days until my summer officially starts, and i go home for 17 days.
 48 days until i leave kansas for alaska and get to see laura and courtney again.
 51 days until i arrive in alaska.
135 days until i am home from alaska for a week.
142 days until i have to be at school for ra training.

never a dull moment. in order for all of those ^ things to happen successfully, i need to write a paper about basic christian doctrine. joy.

keep it classy.
ko.

guess what.

this... 

and this...

and hopefully this... 

are happening again. this. summer. that's right. the rumors are true. 

i'm going back to alaska for another round of camp.

i am out of my mind excited. there are several counselors from last summer returning, and i am so excited to spend the summer with them again. two of them go to school with me, so i haven't had to miss them too much, but it will be great to be in alaska again where we can wear our xtra tufs without being looked at strangely. it. will. be. great. 

unfortunately, not everyone will be returning to camp, so it is guaranteed to be different than last summer. but hey, that could be a good thing. i am especially going to miss my tweedle twin, laura. 

i just finished writing, printing, folding, stuffing, sealing, and stamping my support letters. you may have noticed that i didn't mention addressing my envelopes. well, that is because i figured out how to print addresses onto envelopes with my printer! i didn't have to address a single one. it was so easy. and now i feel like a grown up. because grown ups do that sort of thing. after i was done printing the envelopes i remembered that i like addressing envelopes. oh well. i guess that is what a summer in alaska with snail mail is for. by the way, if you would like a support letter from me, just let me know. i would love to print a envelope for you. :)

spring break starts the day after tomorrow. i am so pumped. breaks are so good. i had a little preview of a break this past weekend when i went to visit my lovely friends kaitlin and courtney. they were my adoptive roommates before they graduated from iwu last year. they had a fantastic couch which i miss very much. kaitlin got married at the end of last summer, and she lives about an hour from chicago. so, we decided to have a roommate reunion at her house. we went into the city, and it was freezing. kaitlin wanted to take us to some hole-in-the-wall pizza place but that didn't exactly work out, so we ended up going to good old giordano's. which is always fine with me. did you know you can order giordano's pizza online for the low price of $47? ha. right. it probably wouldn't even taste the same, but it is oh. so. tempting. 

here is a lovely photo from last weekend:

aren't we precious? 

now, i must do homework. it is very tempting to start spring break early and do nothing all week, but then i would fail my classes and not be able to graduate on time. which would be terrible. obviously.

i hope you enjoyed all the pictures. i should probably do that more often. 

ko.