Ali Ballweg

 Yes, another picture of my shoes… Skylar laughed at me at Youth Group tonight for taking yet another picture of them.  But it turns out it had a lot to do with the theme of the night- how rich we really all are compared to the rest of the world.    

We watched Rob Bell’s video ‘Rich’ (which is amazing) and he mentioned some crazy high number, that I don’t remember, of people around the world who go without shoes every single day.  Sure I’ve worn this specific pair of shoes for over 4 years, but it’s certainly not my only pair.  I’m not a shoe obsessed girl by any means, but when I opened up my closet tonight, I counted 18 pairs of shoes. 18!  That’s ridiculous, and it’s not even counting the ones in my closet back home.

A mission is going to be starting at CBC in the next few weeks to gather shoes. A a couple missionaries in the church are going to take them down to an orphanage in Jamaica this summer and the youth group has decided to help out as much as they can.  I’m really like the idea and am excited to help out and see the outcome.  

Because I do enjoy taking pictures of shoes (who knows why), I’m going to try to think of some way to help out that way.  Maybe helping get people aware or something… I’m not sure yet.  If you have any ideas please let me know!  

Oh and enjoy this picture of the irreplaceable shoes that have carried me through so much.  I think we all have one pair of shoes like these that hold a special place in our hearts.  Unless I’m just really weird….   

Kyle turned 20 today.  Mike, Eric, and Emily hosted a surprise party for him and the boys made an amazing four layer cake, complete with toy fire truck.  It had been awhile since I had hung out with everyone and it was a really fun night.  I also got some pretty good facial expression pictures AND neither lost nor won to Eric in arm wrestling.  We were in a dead tie for almost 5 minutes, it was crazy. 

I was a chaperone on CBC’s winter youth retreat in Cushing, WI.  We all had a lot of fun, but also ate way too much and hurt our butts tubing… well at least I did…  

I don’t know if any of you remember, but I entered a photo back in January for a show in my town.  I kind of forgot about it and never got anything saying if mine had been chosen or not.  Turns out it did!  So for those of you from Sauk, check it out at The River Arts Center in the Between The Fences display.  For those of who can’t… I’ll post it one more time.  The quality isn’t that good, however it’s the idea that I like.  It’s depicting the “boundary” between Sauk City and Prairie du Sac…. which is actually just their heritage and Oak Street.  

is what we got.  Obviously.  Anyway, here are some pics of people on the flowrider.  And then the last two I didn’t take, obviously, but I really like the one of Mike and I felt I needed to post a group shot.  Enjoy!  PS- one more post to come 

Here’s Post #1 from spring break at the Kalahari…

We had $15 extra after paying for our room so we decided to take a trip down to the arcade.