Stressed, Refressed, and (unfortunately) Restressed

My slow decent from observation to being the one in charge at my internship recently turned into a mad downhill avalanche. I now, officially, have my first full case load! It includes: 5 individuals, 5 groups, 1 general edu music class, general band, steel drum band, chorus, and teaching trumpet, percussion, and steel drum lessons. The groups happen anywhere from once to three times a week. Needless to say, I'm slightly overwhelmed and stressed. Thankfully, my supervisors and fellow interns are awesome, and I truly enjoy what I do, otherwise I might be going a little nuts. Wait, who am I fooling, I am going a little nuts haha. So, yes, between learning new songs for my sessions, coming up with ways to keep my students engaged, learning how to actually play the instruments I'm giving lessons for, doing paperwork, and sleeping and eating, my life has gotten pretty busy.

Last weekend though, I was able to escape for a couple of days and drive down to South Bend, Indian for my cousin Jenna's wedding. It was SO GREAT to get to be with my family, even if only for roughly 48 hours. There was a ton of great people, food, and ridiculously corny jokes (made by my father of course) that I laughed way to hard at. The wedding was absolutely beautiful!!! It was at the Basilica on the Notre Dame campus. Here are some of my fav pics from the weekend. 

The Basilica ceiling, gorgeous!

My aunt and uncle watching their daughter get married :)

Two very studly men I found outside of the church

Me and my big bro!

The front doors of the Basilica

Our happy little Fort family

 We had a blast the entire weekend. One of the coolest things about the wedding was that the priest who married them, Father Steve Titus is actually our like 3rd cousin or something along those lines. He did an amazing job! He was super down to earth and relaxed and helped to keep the stress level down. One of the many highlights of the weekend was watching him contort his at least 6'4 self into my tiny car and refuse to scoot the seat back. I was laughing to the point of tears. Another highlight was getting to dance to "Super Freak" with my parents and aunt Linda and uncle Scotty at the reception. Now that's not something I could have ever imagined occurring in my lifetime haha, but I won't be forgetting it anytime soon haha. 

Now it's unfortunately back to the grind, planning, and practicing, and replanning. Thankfully, I have a group of friends coming in this weekend so I have some motivation to get things done so I can fully enjoy them being here! Also, I see that they are predicting the first snowfall for this coming Saturday, so there are bright visions of mittens and snowmen and hot coco in my future:)

Praises

Ok, so I had such a crazy great morning I had to write about it. Most of the people that will be reading this are the same people that have been praying for me to find a good church home and community up here. Today marks exactly 2 months of living in Rochester. I've been on the church hunt since my first week here, going off of leads to sister churches to mine back in KC, KCBT, and recommendations of trusted friends and my supervisor at my internship. Last week I went to one that I finally felt could be a good fit. They seemed to have a lot of people around my age, something all the other churches I visited lacked, but first and foremost they preached Jesus in a truthful and relevant way. People brought their bibles, and actually opened them (gasp), and they appear to be all about missions and fellowship. They had a guest speaker, who was excellent, so I decided to go back this week and see how I felt about the senior pastor. Last night Jesus and I had a pretty deep heart to heart. I journaled like 9 pages about all the things that have been on my heart lately, things I'm learning, things I know I need to be learning, questions, doubts, fears, confessions, praises, you name it, it was in the chat :) But one of this things I earnestly asked was for confirmation as to whether or not this is the church he would have me stay at and that I would make some more friends. I said, "Lord, just let one person say hello to me." And I made up my mind that no matter what, I would get some guts and go to the welcome center after service and meet some people. So I'm pulling into the church this morning and I notice that the person in front of me has Nebraska plates. I think to myself, "Hmm, maybe this is another new comer." I basically swerve into oncoming traffic to see if the driver was a male or female, and sure enough, a young looking girl. I hear a tiny little voice inside my head say, "This is it, meet her." So I follow her and park just a couple cars down. This is when I start to doubt myself, I think "What am I gonna do? Tackle her and say- Hey, I was just stalking you in the parking lot, are you from the Midwest? Me too! Do you wanna be my friend?" And I realize that instead of being 10 mins late like I was the week before, I'm 15 mins early. What am I gonna do with these 15 mins? By the time I've thought all of this, she's out of her car and in the building. Way to go me. I saw she was wearing a white coat, so I think maybe I'll try and find her when I go in. I stay in my car and read some proverbs, you know for wisdom, and to kill time haha. I finally head in and find my way through a maze of halls to the sanctuary and plant myself more toward the middle than my usual back row choice, tryin to be bold here. I grab a "New Visitor" card and start to fill it out. Two girls who look around my age come sit right in front of me, and one of them turns and introduces herself, Nicole. She's wearing a white coat. She asks if its my first Sunday, and where I'm from. I say it's my second and that I'm from Kansas, to which she replies, "Oh really! I'm from Nebraska!" So even after my failure to be bold the Lord brings me to her anyway, but that's not all. She introduces me to her friend, Abbie, who just happens to be starting a small group for new people next week. God is too darn good to be sometimes. So we exchange emails, and they invite me to an event for college age people this Friday. After service, I use my new found confidence to go to the welcome center, and who do I see again, Nicole, she's part of the new comers ministry, good at it too I might add. I also meet two other young ladies that are planning to come to the event on Friday. 

Friends, fellowship, community. Ask and you shall recieve.

Sink or Swim

It's 6:45 am last Thursday morning. I'm getting ready, as usual, already on my second cup of coffee. I hear my phone go off, which is quite strange for 6:45 in the morning, and look to see a text from my supervisor telling me she was up all night with a horrible cold and won't be able to make it to school. I'm on my own. For the first time. AHHHHHHH! Now she was very gracious and said that she wanted me to do the first session but that I could cancel the other 4 if I wanted. It was up to me. Seeing as I had only done one hello song so far on my own, that option was very tempting. But I'd just come off a super encouraging time with Jesus that morning, so I decided to go for it :) I finished getting ready in record speed, meaning I forgot to pack nearly everything I needed for the day, and headed to the school. Our Thursday mornings are kinda crazy in the fact that we have 3 groups and 2 individual sessions basically back to back. I had about an hour to write all five plans and tailor them to address as many of the students goals as I possibly could. Seeing as I had very limited repertoire, I had to learn a couple new songs, quickly, and come up with a few on the spot. Man am I glad I do well under pressure. I finished my plan in the first session far to quickly and landed myself 10 mins to fill and a SUPER bouncy autistic teenager staring at me like, "Really, that's all ya got?" My response, thought know it sounds cliche, was, when all else fails, dance. Oh and dance we did. We shimmied and we shaked and we hand jived to our hearts content. The next session waaaaaaas... a little nuts, most def some of my more challenging kiddos, but no one tried to kill me, bite me maybe, squeeze my ever popular chub cheeks, most def, but no attempts on my life. The last 3 went pretty smoothly and included songs with lyrics such as, "A boy says hi, a girl says hi, and a duck says quack quack quack!" and, "Miss Fort's got a duck on her head, and she keeps it there all day." All in all, by the time I lunch hit I felt like I'd been run over by a truck, but was still grinnin. The transition from doing one or two sessions a week in school, to five or six a day in the internship and the real world is a tough one for sure, but it's good. It makes you think on your feet, learn new things, quickly, and realize that it's all about what is going to be best for the client and how to better yourself as a therapist so you can provide it. 

Also, yesterday I got my schedule all set and it looks like I'll be working with ages 6-20 and about 10 different diagnosis, fabulous! Got my work cut out for me. Highlight of my day today? Attempting to teach 3 teenage ASD boys how to do the 'shimmy' part of the chicken dance, HILARIOUS!