back to my roots

This tate-blog is coming to you live from Signs of Life bookstore/coffee shop on Mass Street in Lawrence, Kansas. That's right, I'm back in Kansas. I love this place.

Yesterday I had a nice long (about 8 and a half hours) drive. It actually went by pretty fast. I listened to music and the Bible, prayed, talked to Gar-man on the phone about TV shows and the good ole days of the 50s and 60s in St. Louis, and finally listened to some Scrubs and Saturday Night Live DVDs. Then I of course stopped in Topeka to get some Steak 'n Shake, which of course made me feel nasty because I ate it too fast while sitting and driving the last 30 minutes of the drive to Lawrence. Worth it. I love that stuff.

I saw this sign along the way, and it reminded me of Jake (because for example, I'll say something like, Yes, I found my shoe! And he'll say, Jesus is real!), so without looking I tried to take a picture, and I think it turned out pretty sweet. Oh the beautiful plains of Kansas.

The most difficult part of the drive was that I was, and still am, in this awkward in between time. I said some difficult goodbyes for the summer, and I won't really see why that was worth it until camp gets going, if that makes sense. So for a bunch of the drive I had to keep praying for peace because I felt pretty unsettled about coming here.

HOWEVER, once I got to see Emily and Jen and Alan, I felt much better, as well as just merely driving through the KU campus last night. Not that I'll be spending a ton of time in Lawrence, but it just feels like I'm home, and I like that. Not to mention, today I had lunch with Jen and the other supervisor-type people at camp and we talked about my job as cabin leader supervisor. So that got me pumped for camp, which starts Sunday....ahhh!!! Ok, maybe I'm still a little nervous. Whatever, it will be fine.

Today was Ralston Valley's graduation, where some of my favorite students from church walked across the stage and received diplomas. Unfortunately, I missed it. That was one of the hard parts about leaving. I love this senior class, and I will miss them a lot this summer and next year and always. I love the boys, even though they're a little bit creepily in love with me. We've had some fun times leading Fusion and snowboarding and hanging out at Mark's house. And the girls are rad. I've gotten to know all of them a lot just because they come hang out at our house a lot, but especially because we do things like make music videos to Beyonce or do cardioke (see previous post) or just talk life. Anyway, I love the class of '09, especially this one...

Kayanne was one of the student leaders for our small group this year, and she is awesome. We had lots of fun this year debriefing about our small group girls and the crazy things they would do and say. Good times.

Speaking of crazy small group girls, I will miss them mucho this summer.

That's Kelsey, Cori, Beth, Sarah and me on Monday when we took Kesley some fun stuff for her birthday. I feel like people in college or older are not too phased by a 3 month separation, but to high school kids, that seems like forever. Cori keeps telling me she's scared because I'm gone, and Sarah practically wrote me a love poem over text. But we'll be ok. I'm getting excited to hang out with all of them at CHIC again, which is our denominational youth conference. Woot.

Well I think that's all I say for now. I can't stop staring outside at Mass Street, so I think I need to go enjoy it for a bit. You never know what's gonna happen.

the week between

Where has the time gone? Oh I know, it's gone fully to reading, writing papers, preparing presentations, and studying. But my semester officially ended Wednesday, and on a good note too. I mean I had a couple moments in the past month where I got really stressed out while staring at all the work I had to do and the small time I had to do it in, then I would break down for a minute and go, "It's not possible!! I can't do it!!" Just ask Sophie--she was there once. But then I would get a hold of myself by yelling "Get over it Tate!" and move on. All that to say, I wasn't even stressed for the last week of homework, so I feel like I finished well.

27 hours out of 62 done. Booyah. But I have a long way to go still...

I read some pretty sweet books at the end of the semester though, some books that kind-of changed my life, so that's always good. But I won't lie, I use the phrase "change my life" sort-of lightly. Anyway, one was Jesus-Centered Youth Ministry by Rick Lawrence and the other was Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders. I won't go into much detail, but I was reminded by these books how incredibly amazingly awesome Jesus is and how deserving He is of constant devotion. Some of what I read inspired the message I gave in High Impact, which you can check out on our HPSM web site under podcasts. It's the one with my name under it, duh. Anyway, I gotta give God all the credit for any good in that talk, and I was pretty pumped about the message he was helping me to give. Jesus is sweet, like Aslan. I miss Aslan. We haven't hung out in awhile. But I'm gonna read The Horse and his Boy this summer. Woot.

Speaking of summer, it's here. The weather has been so nice here, I love it. And it will continue to be nice until I leave Thursday for camp, when I will enter the beautiful hot and humid weather of Kansas!!! Oh my, I am so excited. So now I have the next few days to get packed and do a number of other random to-do list items before I leave. I can't believe it's here.

However, I am feeling a little sad about leaving for the summer. I will miss all my peeps here, and all the fun that summer in Arvada holds. But, I'll be back. Praise the Lord.

Speaking of people I'll miss, last night I had a sleepover with some of my freshman-sophomore girls, and it was so fun. We played games, laughed a lot, went to my soccer game, watched movies, and most importantly, we did Cardioke.

Cardioke is an excellent workout that can be found on Comcast's free On Demand, under dance workouts. It's led by Billy Blanks Jr., you know, his dad is the Tai Bo guy. Not only do you dance in this workout, but you sing along to the music, words provided at the bottom of the screen. It's pretty much hilarious. Sophie and Kayanne and I did it one night, and I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard. So we obviously had to do it last night. The best part is the cool down because you get to sing along to the incredibly cheesy song that Billy's wife wrote entitled, "You are Enough." Wow. You've just gotta see it for yourself.

Today I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine for the second time.

It was awesome. I just love X-Men so much, I don't even know why. I recently introduced Sophie to all three of the first movies, so she now shares my love for the X-Men. Super powers are sweet. Jesus is sweeter than X-Men though.

Speaking of things I have loved lately, let's add NCIS to that list.

I blame my parents for this obsession because I watched it for the first time over the holidays when I was at home. But now I love it too. I have to have some self-control though, because it's on at least like 3 times a day. I am glad that Kara and Mark also love the show, because it gets a bad rap for being an old person show. If you caught 30 Rock 2 weeks ago, you heard Liz Lemon assuming that Tracy Jordan must be at least 60 because he watches NCIS. Whatever, it's awesome, and I love Tony.

I've been watching too much TV lately. I think it became a coping mechanism to get through the end of the semester. But recently I've had all of these shows on my list to watch each week: Amazing Race, American Idol, NCIS, Scrubs, Parks and Recreation, the Office, and 30 Rock. Too much. Good thing I'll be away from watching so much TV this summer.

Also, this is our newest favorite video to quote. It's from SNL:



You probably won't laugh much at first viewing, but give it some time, and it gets real funny. Or maybe it's just funny to me and all the high school kids. Whatever.

Well I'm pretty much still really tired from that sleepover, which consisted of almost zero sleeping for Tate but was worth it, so I'm gonna go to bed now. Ok love you too bye.

star struck

Once again, school got real busy and tateblog got sacrificed. But not it's spring break, and it's time for another update.

Last weekend I got to travel to Oregon for a sweet reunion with some of my New Orleans people.

That's Jamie, Regan, me and Cait there. We had a great time reminiscing about New Orleans--laughing at some hilarious stories and once again standing in awe of the amazing work God did during our time there. It's amazing how much that time changed all of our lives, and so it's always refreshing to spend time with the people who experienced such a great event with me. In fact, Jamie has decided to work on writing a book about our experiences, which I think is a sweet idea. So sometime in the next 6-8 months we're planning to have a reunion that requires attendance by the whole team of nine: Kevin, Jeremy, Nik, Jacques, Regan, Jamie, Cait, Heather and me. Love those people.

And now I need to talk about the two big highlights of my trip, besides the obvious awesome time with my friends.

First of all, on my way to Oregon I was flying into Eugene, the home of the University of Oregon (and Caitlin Murphy). So on my layover in the Portland airport, I find myself walking behind a tall young black man wearing a backpack with the U of O logo and his last name. Just then we pass by some more very finely dressed and very tall black men, and I realize that this is the Oregon basketball team.

I then go sit down to wait for my flight, and several of these boys start surrounding me in the other seats. It was awesome. The problem was that they all looked really angry and unfriendly, so I looked up what game they had just played. Turns out they lost big the night before and I'm pretty sure their season was over. So I opted not to say anything. But they were on my flight and then waited for our bags in the same area, and I even got to listen in to a mini team meeting with the coach. I was like college basketball star struck, even though I didn't even know who they were. But I do remember that guy from the picture.

Oh and then, about an hour later, Cait and I took a walk around the campus, and as we headed toward the fieldhouse, I made a joke like, "Ha what if I see those guys again?" Sure enough, as we walked by a couple of the guys on the team were on their way out. It was awesome, but I was just hoping they didn't think I was stalking them.

Second awesome thing. Cait and I were getting ready to drive up to Portland to hang out with the others, and I mentioned something about the show Little People Big World (it's on TLC--watch it if you haven't). And Cait says, yeah I think they film that here. I immediately freaked out because I remembered that the Roloff family from the show lives on a farm in Oregon. One thing led to another, and we drove to Hillsboro, OR, just outside of Portland to take a look at the Roloff Farm. Unfortunately, they only allow visitors during pumpkin season, but at least we could do this:

Love it. We didn't see any people though, so that was slightly disappointing. I really wanted to meet the Roloffs! Sophie and I are planning to go back to visit during October so we can take a tour of the farm and meet the family. Because Sophie is destined to be with Jeremy Roloff.

In other news, Melanie Tate joined the Facebook, so that's fun. Also, everyone is whining about the new facebook layout, as they always do. It's so ridiculous. I just want to be like, people, it's a dang web site, get over it! If you are getting really worked up about a new layout on facebook, I would say that's a red flag that you need to get a life.

Not that I'm one to talk, because my life currently revolves around college basketball. I am watching games whenever I can and checking the scores constantly whenever I can't. I love this month!! KU made it past round one, so we'll see how they do tomorrow!

I'm getting really excited for the summer. Why? Because I'm going back to work at YouthFront Camp in Kansas with my BFF Jen. I am way way pumped!!

It was a difficult decision, but in the end I realized God was wanting to bless me by getting to spend the summer in one of my favorite places with one of my favorite people. This year I will be the "Cabin Leader Supervisor," which means I'll be in charge of training and leading those people in charge of the kids. I think it will be a sweet opportunity, so I am really excited. I will miss Colorado and the people here for sure, but I think it will be good to get away for a little while. Afterall, when I moved away from Kansas, I kind-of thought it might just be a year and I'd be back, but God had other plans. So yeah it will be good to be "home" for a summer.

So you may remember that holiday called "Valentines Day" that occurred about a month ago. Well, Sophie was having a girls night, and I came home from babysitting just as they were discussing making a music video. One thing led to another, and this was the result:

Yeah, I think I'll just leave you with that. Check out the facebook for a better quality version. Compare us to Beyonce, you'll be amazed.

mmmmmmarch mmmmmmadness!!!

I love this month. I'm on spring break and snowboarding and watching basketball and praising the Jesus. New blog coming soon...(I'm too tired right now).