once upon a time i lived in a house in northern california called the faulk house. no kidding. that was the historical name of the house. pronounced falk. say it too fast and you have yourself some issues. the best part was that i lived there while i worked for young life, a christian camp. so, it happened often that i would radio to one of my many roommates and ask where they were and more often than not, you'd hear back, "i'm at the faulk house." again, very important to enunciate and speak slowly.

the reason i bring this up now is that i've always thought of myself as someone who wanted to live more by myself than with roommates. growing up i had this goal that before i got married i would live by myself at least once. i wanted to make sure that i knew how to do it. i want to be able to pay bills and manage money and live. i remember when my dad died, i knew i wanted this to be one of my goals because i saw my mom handle everything so well, i wanted to be able to do the same should i need to. it's just always been a goal. so, my senior year of college, i rented a one bedroom apartment off campus in a nice complex and i did it. i accomplished my goal. i've lived by myself for the majority of time since college as well.

during college though when i worked at woodleaf in northern california i lived in a big old house with 10 people. seriously. 10. and we had so much fun. we always had someone there, we could always wrangle someone in to doing something. we had four girls and six boys and we split floors. girls had the upstairs and the boys had the down stairs and we shared the kitchen and living room (which we took the 3 couches they gave us and made stadium seating using simple cinder blocks. camp/ghetto? yes. but i think it was camp/ghetto fabulous!) it was the time of my life. i loved those roommates and i would do it again tomorrow if i could. i was even sharing a room then. that's where i met kat who is now one of my best friends. we were complete opposites but it worked... for the most part...until it came to cleaning but whatever. point is, it was fun and i loved it.

i bring this up because this past week with people here all the time made me feel like i was back there again. you could always find someone to do something, when i came home from work i knew that someone would be up to go someplace and it was a great thing to see clothes everywhere and dishes everywhere because the house looked lived in. it was relaxing and i never thought i'd feel that way. i'm very much someone who needs her personal space but maybe i need less than i thought i did.

to honor those roommates that i lived with once upon a time... here are some fabulous pictures...

on a side note, i think it's funny that when i look at these pictures i think, 'man i was thinner.' and i specifically remember thinking i was fat then. it's funny how that works out.


this is liz and i during our four wheeling adventure in the jeep through a vineyard in northern california.



this is during the kayaking trip we took down the lower truckee river in lake tahoe. i remember being jabbed in the ribs as we were taking this picture.



this is one of my favorite guys and favorite pictures ever. this is joshua donnellan from new jersey. he was my video partner while i was at woodleaf. we pretty much spent every waking minute together and occasionally sleeping moments too when we rotated sleeping on the couch while the other worked. he was the guy who would pick up the slack when i slacked off.. for 'no good reason.' (shut up tim)




this is all my roommates and i at a chinese dinner in grass valley before going go-carting. you know that game where you add, 'in bed' to the end of the fortune? well, we had just finished dinner where we had asked our boss if we could get a dog for the house and he said no, we couldn't have any pets. so instead all of our fortunes were followed by, 'without a dog.'




this is the famous faulk house. remind me to tell you the story about how i shattered the window upstairs. no good, friends!



this is me with all of my roommates minus kat. we just got out of a meeting i think and a group of us were heading to lake tahoe for our day off. i think this was the club room dedication at woodleaf actually. after this, we piled into the jeep and hit the road.



this was our intern trip to san francisco. it was so much fun! we rented those crazy little cart/car things that you can drive on the street but don't go faster than 40mph. they are open topped little cars... i'll post a picture. we developed this little game that when we'd stop at a stop light, we'd pull up to one of the other cars and as the light turned green, we'd reach over and turn off their car, take out the keys and throw them in the lap of the driver. we would then speed off, at around 15 mph, and laugh hysterically while the other cars tried to catch up. it was great. it's incredible to me that that was six years ago. it doesn't seem possible.