Creepers

Run: 4.25mi /41:20
(1 mile warm up, 2 miles at 9:09 half marathon pace, cool down. I actually hit those paces today! It was only 2 miles, but that felt nice.)

I can't help but post these pictures. As a mission, we do a lot of different things. Our main mission, and the reason we exist, is to provide Christian daycare to children who are mostly from single parent households. Having this daycare means the children get two good meals (breakfast and lunch), a snack, Christian preschool education, and a love environment. The reality is that a lot of these kids would be left at home with (slightly) older brothers and sisters to take care of them, and possibly a pot of beans on the stove. We have a wonderful staff that dotes on these children and treats them like their own. Our staff are absolutely amazing. You can imagine with some of the backgrounds these kids have how much this means to the kids and their families. You could probably also imagine what tough little kiddos these are to deal with sometimes. But, our staff continually loves them, and I have the utmost respect for what they do, day in and day out.

My parents host short term missions groups who come and build houses and/or other structures that benefit the community. We do a lot of building of houses for moms from our daycare, or other especially dire cases. For example, this summer we built a house for a family with a son who had been a burn victim as a baby. He had had (and I think continues to have) many surgeries, and their living situation before was really too dirty for his healing process after surgeries. We use contacts in the community to find these families.

Very often we have people who come to our door and ask for food, which usually means leftovers from our kitchen, as we don't always have extra beans or rice or other staples to hand out. People also come looking for clothes, and we keep a clothing room that sometimes has clothes and sometimes does not. This usually depends on what we have donated from visiting groups.

Now, I don't know if you've ever worked in charity before, but we get a lot of weird stuff donated. We get a lot of really great stuff, but some stuff is weird, and sometimes it can be an adventure going through donations. Well, these glasses ended up on our table the other night. I don't know where they came from, but Stevie and I had a lot of fun with them. Creepy, no?

 They aren't prescription glasses. They aren't sunglasses.

 They're just creeper glasses.

'70s politician?

Stevie was here for four and a half months and went home to Washington on Monday. She pretended not to like me, but I know she did, and I know I liked her back. Good thing I get to see her in 4 weeks!

Hey - I added something to my blog. On the left are "My Favorite Places", the websites I like the most. On top are my three favorite running blogs. Even though Janae (hungry runner girl) hasn't run in 2 months, I still read her blog 'cause I'm nice like that. She just got the okay to run again, and she's super speedy. Actually, all three of those ladies are speedy. They have rocket jet packs. I have a wind-up motor.

Also on the list are:
**Powell's Books, my supplier of used books (Portland, heee--eeyy)
**Slate.com where I get all of my sarcastic news
**The US Track and Field website which I use to map runs when I'm in the States
**Google Earth, which I use to track runs in Mexico
**Switchfoot, my favorite band since I was 14 years old. I can't quit them.

By the way - yesterday, for the third time, someone whistled at me from inside the tortilleria. Mom says I have an admirer. Maybe the tortilleria could sponsor me. I love tortillas.