Of mice and women

Hello all! I miss you all and I hope you are having a great holiday season!
 
Now, what should I start out with? How bout the mice!? Or should I say, little, evil, menacing creatures out to get me! Let me paint this picture for you: It was a cold Iowa morning. The beautiful and innocent Jessica rest in her sleeping bag, listening to the eerie howl of the wind outside. Four of them slept in that room, unaware of the additional company that had joined them. From the silence came the gnawing, crunching sound of tiny teeth within the walls. Then, out of nowhere, a scream! The girl sleeping across from Jessica bolts straight up out of bed, and pins herself on the wall, swearing something was just on her face! Jessica laughs and tells her she was dreaming. As she tilts her head to glance at her clock, two beady little eyes stare down at her from her shoulder, ready to attack!!!! AAAAAHHHHH! Ok, ok…. So that was a bit overdramatic, but I almost died guys, really!!! In addition to deciding I would be fun to walk over, they also enjoy stealing my yarn, eating my bananas, pooping in my shoes, and scaring the living daylights out of me in the shower!
 
Moving on, so we are about done with our job here in Coon Rapids. So far, we have cleared almost 24 acres of woodland, planted 850 flower bulbs, filled and hauled 3 tons of seed, and emptied out most of a large barn. The blizzard prevented us from doing more, but I am proud of how well our team did! Not bad for about a months work. We have about four more days left here and it doesn’t look like we are going to make it out into the woods again because of the weather. We could finish the barn we were clearing, but it holds a lot of hay, mold, and chicken poop which gave me and two others asthma attacks the last time we were in there. Needless to say, we can’t go back there again. So unfortunately we can so some small things around town until we leave, but that’s all.
 
The blizzard we had was fantastic! It got down to about 30 below with the wind chill and dumped over a foot of snow which was exciting for me! Even more for the two women on my team who have never even seen snow before. We couldn’t leave our house for almost 3 days because the plow couldn’t reach our home, but we got to play in it! The snow drifts created these 8 foot mounds of snow which were perfect for making caves out of (see Facebook pics). You really don’t know funny until you have seen grown adults, who look like marshmallows with all their layers on, attempt to run through five feet of snow! It is a lot of falling down and not being able to get back up. I found it was easier just to roll everywhere.
 
Last night, the Whiterock Conservancy (the organization we are working for), threw us a Christmas party! A lot of people came including the editor of the local paper. I ate so much though….blah! The cuisine included pretty much every local animal you could eat like pheasant, chicken, beef, pork, and deer, though to my delight, there was no squirrel. Elizabeth, our sponsor, gave a really nice speech about how thankful everyone was for us coming and it made me really happy. It sometimes doesn’t seem like we are making that big of a difference, so it is always nice to hear that we are.
 
When we leave this town on the 15th, we drive back to Vinton, IA for debriefing with our supervisors and a little break. Then, on the 19th, I fly home to Washington! Just one week away baby, yeah! Here is a list of things I intend to do once my plane lands: hug a large tree, go to 10 different kinds of coffee shops in one day starting with Starbucks, look at a mountain, eat a salmon, say hi to a hippie, listen to Pearl Jam, wear colors… I can’t wait! Look out Washington, here I come! Woohoo!
 
If you are reading this, please respond by letting me know what you guys have been up to! Miss you all!
 
Smooches from Coon Rapids!