Cleaning out the Puppet Closet...

It was a long job. Especially since it was a tragic disaster. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we cleaned it the day camp ended, and right after a lock-in. We were all zombies, but it was a lot of fun. I forgot how many puppets we had, plus lights, props, fabric, PVC pipe and random junk. It was a MESS. Mr. Bob even found a mouse (alive) in there. But it ran away and thankfully didn't come back out.  We found a bunch of cool stuff to put in the youth room (that we are about to re-decorate :) like a mini fridge, blow up movie buff, plastic hub caps, disco balls....It was great.

Puff!

Da Moouse

It took a loooong time. But we got everything moved around. I almost got attacked by a giant spider, but Da Moouse killed it for me. And thankfully Daniel was there to kill all the wasps that escaped from the closet before they could try to kill me :) By the time we were finished, we were all exhausted but it was worth it.  

SOS 2011 :))))

So. I haven't blogged in a looooong time. But that's okay because this one is gonna be long. This was pretty much the best week of my life. First of all, I'll explain what we did. SOS = Service Over Self. It's a work camp in Binghampton. We are given a group leader (who just happened to be a guy from my youth group who loved SOS so much the past two years he decided he would work there the entire summer). We are also given a house to work on.  This year it was NASTY. We pulled down the wall, cabinets and the ceiling in the kitchen. There was 50 year old shredded insulation mixed with rat droppings that fell from the wall and ceiling. (Enough that if we didn't keep vacuuming it would have probably filled half the kitchen. )

The wall

The Ceiling

We put up drywall to fix the giant holes, mudded the ceiling, and put in new cabinets. It was a little difficult because the walls were crooked. (And we are not professional drywall cutters). 

    

 

In the bedroom, we mudded, sanded and painted the ceiling. We got to move their bed in and out of the bedroom every day because they still had to sleep there.

 Christian and I washed the dog :) He did NOT want to be washed, but he was a sweet dog and didn't bite or anything. He had ticks all over his back and neck, so we found some flea and tick shampoo (that smelled like men's cologne) and gave him a looooooong bath. I was soaked, but the dog was clean :) Of corse as soon as we were finished he went and rolled in the mud. But at least he got a bath. 

Christian, Blackie and I

We also had a lot of fun on our half day. We went to the Peabody and had a scavenger hunt, went to Huey's downtown for dinner, walked around some and went to the river. It was beautiful and I had such a wonderful time with my youth group.

Somehow, my youth minister got a new nickname. We lovingly call him Da Moouse. I have no clue why Moouse is spelled like that. But that is the correct spelling when referring to Paul. :)

It was altogether just a great week. It is amazing how much of a difference we can make as clumsy, crazy teenagers, who have no idea what we're doing. These people's house was so messed up that they were willing to let us weirdos come into their house all day everyday for a week to work. It was a great experience. Aaaaaand for the record I am very thankful that even though Paul and Ashlie have only been with us for a little over a month, they were willing to come put up with the six girls that went for an entire week. With all the singing and strange things we come up with, we can be a lot to handle. :)