High School Girls

Well, Saturday night was a blast! We had a high school girls' sleepover at the Bloom house, and it was so much fun! We played some games, chatted for a while, ate raw cookie dough and pizza pockets (don't worry... the cookie dough didn't have raw eggs in it), stayed up late, and had an overall fabulous time. I'm more than a decade older than all of the girls, but I thoroughly enjoy every single one of them. It makes me smile just to think about them and all of their various interests, dreams, hopes, struggles, etc. Well, I don't really enjoy their struggles, but I am so glad to be sharing life with these gals. Here's a group photo from the party...



Aren't they GREAT!?! You might look at this picture and say, "Well, their youth girls don't represent much diversity! They're all skinny white girls!" And I'd have to promptly correct you on the first count (they ARE all skinny and white, so I could agree with those comments). The girls do have lots in common, but they have so much to contribute to one another and the rest of the world. I have so much to learn from them. There are three runners, an Irish dancer, an artist, an up-and-coming fashion consultant (or at least for this prom season), two actors, a few geocachers (I just learned about this and I can't wait for them to show me), an accounting apprentice, a birdwatcher, a few classic Star Wars and Star Trek fans (classic is the key), several Jane Austen fanatics, and seven who are well on their way to being amazing women of God. Man, if I could just catch on to the first two talents listed, do you know how buff my calves would be?! And if I had the skills of the geocachers and birdwatcher, I might have been able to find my way to the party a bit faster (as in, I may have avoided wasting an entire hour and a half getting lost) because I would have been able to keep my eyes open and follow directions!

Oh, on the far left is Beth Schakat, the other "older" gal in the group. Her husband is the youth pastor, and she's allowing me to team up with her to hang out with the girls. We're getting ready to start going through Lies Young Women Believe by Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Dannah Gresh. What a great opportunity to walk them through so many of the things that Beth and I wish we had known at that age! I'm seriously having so much fun with them and cannot wait to see how the year unfolds!