BEST. WEDDING. EVER

        Ok, for all you people CLAMORING for a blog post (mostly just my family, I know the rest of you have better things to do), here it is. Finally. I have had the most RIDICULOUSLY busy two weeks, which included moving into a new house, starting a new job, flying to Michigan to see Kevin and Naomi and all of my college friends, saying goodbye to one of our church friends, the Fresno MCC sale, touring Chicago, and making sure that I get enough sleep (which totally has not happened for like 10 days. I am a zombie).

         So, first. New job, new house. More on that later, once I've gotten the hang of things at work and once I have my room organized.

         Second, Aaron Clemmer, one of Ben's VS housemates (and one of his middle-school classmates at Christopher Dock [who knew?]) left San Francisco to go back to his hometown for awhile before starting Teach for America in New York City. So of course we all had to say goodbye to him. The VS house hosted a taco night and we hung out and talked for a nice long time. Aaron is a pretty cool guy, and a pretty active part of our young-adult-FMCSF community, and it's sad to see him go. But he'll give us another reason (besides Allison Schrag, of course!) to visit New York City sometime soon-ish!!

          Third, Fresno MCC Sale. A lot smaller than Kansas, a lot more food. I ate so much food. I also had to get up at 2am to get there. I rode in a van containing one of the guys running in the 10K, which started at 7am. It takes 3 hours to get there. So we had to plan ahead a lot. It was kind of miserable, but I could lay down in the backseat and nap. There was a good-sized contingent of young adults in the 10K run, and it was fun to cheer them on. I also saw Lisa Penner, which was exciting! Then there was the pancake feed, New Year's cookies, verenike, sausage, and borscht. DELICIOUS. I found Larry and Susan Dunn and their boys about halfway through the morning, and stuck with them for most of the day. We spent a lot of time in the quilt auction, watching beautifully handstitched and handquilted quilts going for pennies, which was just the saddest thing ever. The next day, I went to church with them, ate at a delicious taco truck (seriously, the food that weekend was unsurpassed), and then hopped in the van for another 3 hour drive home.

           Ok, now for the bulk of the post. NAOMI AND KEVIN'S WEDDING WHICH WAS THE MOST ADORABLE THING ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH AND IT MADE ME JUST WANT TO EXPLODE WITH HAPPINESS. Seriously, they are the best, and I love them. Also it was a good excuse to see Camp Friedenswald again, and of course, all of my good friends from Bethel, which I have missed more than I can say. Ben and I left stupidly early on Friday, sat on a plane for a four hour flight which crossed two time zones and basically took all day, sat on a bus for another 3 hours and a time zone, and then Peter Graber picked us up and drove us the rest of the way to Friedenswald. I also left my wallet in the SFO airport, which was stupid. But they found it and no one used my debit card to purchase large amounts of embarrassing merchandise, so it's all good. Friday was a long day. But thanks to the 3-time-zone-shuffle, everyone else was winding down and I was like BRING ON THE PARTY. Naomi and Kevin were having their respective parties, but at about eleven they all came over to our cabin, and it was like old times again, hanging out in Eric's basement and playing Celebrity. So much yelling!!

           The wedding was actually on Saturday, so we just sort of hung out, walked around, talked, in the morning, then after dinner, helped set up the dining hall for the reception. That was a lot of fun too, mostly because it reminded me of all the weekends I spent at Friedenswald, tearing down, cleaning, and setting up the dining hall after each camp. Then the wedding itself actually happened. Naomi and all of her attendants were barefoot. No one was surprised. Naomi is chronically shoeless. Nate and Nicky played some beautiful hymns on cello/guitar at the beginning, we all sang some hymns together, and Naomi and Kevin did their vows, which they had written themselves and were ADORABLE. I was bouncing up and down the whole time, I was so excited. It must have driven Ben nuts.  (later edit - he thought I had to go to the ladies' room throughout the entire ceremony).  

           The wedding reception afterward was nice too. I sat with some of my camp friends and we had a good time catching up. The couple left to a sparkler shower (my favorite thing) and then we all hung around and talked some more. Brian and I got in some dancing, of course. It's what we do when we're back together again. After most of the party had died down, a bunch of us hiked out to Allen hill and sat by the fire pit and talked about farts for about 20 minutes. It's what we do.

           The next day, Ben and I drove with Chris into Chicago. Chicago wasn't originally on his route, but he is a very generous person who happened to have Chicago on his bucket list, so we killed two birds with one stone. We were also planning to spend the night with Blaire and Meredith, two friends from Bethel, so we needed some way to get into the city. We had Chicago-style pepperoni and spinach pizza, walked around downtown, saw the Bean, made endless Chicago-San Francisco comparisons, rode a Ferris wheel, and saw Lake Michigan up close. It was a really good spur-of-the-moment decision. Once Chris had to leave, Ben and I tried to navigate the El system. We thought “Hey, we're seasoned BART riders, this should be a cinch!” It wasn't. We felt stupid. We eventually made it, Meredith met us at the station, and we went to get some sushi because “that's what Chicagoans do.” The next day, we headed out for Vietnamese food, then to the airport for another four-hour flight. I napped through most of it. Thanks again to the three-time-zone-shuffle, by the time we landed, it was 8pm, and I hadn't eaten in almost nine hours. Talk about your mood-enhancer.

            Moral of the story – sorry I've been so lax about the blog posting, but I literally have had no time. Sorry this was such a long post, but I've been so busy doing AWESOME THINGS THAT I HAD TO SHARE WITH YOU. And Kevin and Naomi are the cutest thing ever, and I'm so glad they got married this weekend. We all decided that someone from our friend group needs to get married about every nine months so that we can see each other on a regular basis.

I was gonna upload a bunch of photos with this, but I'm so sleep-deprived that the thought of editing down 600 photos from the last week is just too much. You can just go look at Facebook in a few days.