New Heights Summer Festival

With New Heights' Summer Festival going on, Jared has been home for the past two weeks. It is so nice to have my husband actually living in the same house! We have hosted little gatherings with old and new friends most evenings, or gone out to Summer Festival events. We have played Settlers more times than I can count, introducing quite a few people to the game. Jared has played it about 95% of the nights that I am at work. It is amazing that he isn't sick of it yet.

Summer Festival is one of the most intense conglomerations of church events I have ever seen. The highlight so far was the dodgeball tournament. There were some teams that dressed to impress on that occasion! My team made it to the semifinals, where having a husband for a referee did not advance us on any further. =)

For the indoor soccer tournament, we were going to be on a killer team with quite a few other MK's from Indo and beyond. Unfortunately we looked a little too intimidating so the teams were set up at random. Somehow Jonathan, Anthony, Kevin Pust, and Alex Lee all ended up on one team. I don't remember the final scores, but they were definitely one of the top teams. After playing the last game with his own team (which dominated), Jared stepped onto my team and played goalie. He was a drastic improvement to any of us that had played goalie prior, yet he let one goal in, thus we lost without scoring a point all tournament! Sad day. After the tournament ended all the MK's and a few other avid soccer players stuck around and we played a "real" game of indoor.

As a break between the nights of the tournaments, we decided to take it easy by going rock climbing. Wow, that is a work out. Jared made it up the two hardest climbs that were set up. I only tried the second to hardest one, but probably an hour after starting, I did eventually conquer the rock. What an amazing sport. Going down stairs was a little tricky and I could barely grip anything at work for the next three days.

Last night Jared was part of the evening show for Summer Festival. Rather than bobbing for apples, he and a few other brave souls bobbed for hot dogs in a trough of watered down baked beans and who knows what else. On of the guys dislike baked beans so much that he didn't actually open his mouth when he bobbed, but instead just plunged his head into the sludge as show of being a very good sport.

Summer Festival is drawing to a close, which means Jared is off on one last trip of the summer. When he comes back he will jump right into the schoolyear with a likely coaching position for Middle School volleyball starting the 23rd and his first orientation day for teaching the 27th. He is super excited, but a little nervous too. There are still a lot of things to figure out before the kids arrive. At this point he doesn't even know all the equipment that will be available. Thankfully Jared is resourceful enough to make due with however much or little equipment there is.

We will keep you posted on Jared's job and coaching news as we find out more.