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Last night was the last day of a weekend-long anniversary party for Life Teen in Anaheim, California. And all I can say is that I am infinitely grateful right now. We’ve been planning that party for two years, and I am so thankful it came off as well as it did. In the end, God really took care of us.

There is always a fear that people will not come to your birthday party. It was so wonderful to see that convention center filled with 1700 people that traveled from around the country. Their excitement and dedication was worth all the work.

I don’t know if any party or event is worth planning for two years. It’s been very difficult at work because we are expected to do everything we would normally do, and then on top of that, get stuff done for the 20th. Every meeting, every conversation, every decision involved the 20th. Lifeteen.com has been a central figure in promoting the party, and it is such a relief to I don’t have to do any of that anymore. I mean…who wants to work on a single project that long?

I don’t know if we as an organization have ever spent so much time and money on a single event. I know that this was a first for us, and we’ve certainly learned a lot. We stepped out of our comfort zone and dared to do something different. The lessons will come out over the next few years, and it’ll be cool when they do.

Even though I could go back to Phoenix tomorrow and get to work, I am absolutely in no hurry. I have worked so hard this spring, and I can’t stand the thought of sitting at my desk back in Phoenix. So I’ll spend the next couple days out here in San Diego with Candyce and her family. I need to be around people who love me and who will keep me from working.

I think this is the closest I’ve come this year to be absolutely burned out.

This weekend is the much-anticipated 20th Anniversary Party for Life Teen.; It looks like 1700 people will be coming for the party, which is a good number. I’ll be driving out to Anaheim for the party either tonight or tomorrow.

I know this weekend is going to be awesome. We have set the stage so God can do miraculous things. This has been a two-year-long project for our organization, and I am very happy that it’s finally here. We’re already worked to death, and on top of everything we are normally expected to do, we’ve plan and promote this party. I have just had enough of talking about this party. I want it to be here, to be wonderful, and be done.

I think I’ve finally maxed-out my work schedule. I’ve put in 10-11 hour days for the past four months, and I am tired of it. I can’t get in to work at eight and leave and six thirty. By the time I get home, I have no desire to get on my laptop and update this website. If I did get the energy to type a journal, I’d have nothing more to write about than what I did at work. I need a break so bad.

Yesterday was a big day of working my butt off. I started at 10:00 AM hoping to finish the landscaping in my side yard. After a quick trip to Home Depot, I cut landscaping fabric and staked it to the ground to keep weeds from growing. I laid down ten wheelbarrow’s full of dirt and gravel. I mixed and poured concrete to secure the edges of the brick patio. I laid down Mexican tile near the water spicket to help keep the area from getting muddy. Finally, I potted several Aloe Vera plants and put a few other plants in the ground. I took a quick dip in the pool, then drove over to Candyce’s house to help her move to a new house.

Normally you move from to a new house because it has a better floor plan, a bigger yard, or because you just wanted a bigger house. Well Candyce’s new house is the exact floor plan as the one she’s lived in for the past year. The outside looks the same, and so is the inside. There is absolutely no difference except the location.

If it was possible, we could’ve just uprooted the house and flown in five miles west and dropped it into a better neighborhood. Since that’s not possible, we packed up the house one box at a time, then packed it into a huge U-Haul truck. Once we got to the new house, we unloaded everything and put it exactly where we found it. There was no guessing where things should go. Then it was back to the other house to empty it out.

At eleven o’clock at night, the four of us plopped down on the couches and looked around the new house, almost full with furniture. But it didn’t feel that good. Moving; into a new house is usually exciting. You sit down in the same couch from the old house, and you look around a bigger and better living room. You spend hours discussing what new you should buy to fill the blank walls. But we did none of that. We sat down in the sofas and looked at the same room we started out with seven hours before—except we were five miles west.

By the end of the day, my body was so battered and tired. Its not often I get so physically exhausted like that. This morning, I woke up to the birds chirping and the breeze coming through my bright room. I just stayed still underneath the light sheet and enjoyed the moment.

05-07-05 “
Saturday:
Tonight was a perfect date for me and Candyce. She finished up a difficult spring semester this afternoon, and I finished up a long week at the studio. We didn’t make plans to do anything cool, and we ended up having a wonderful night.

I was working at the studio until 7:30. It’s never fun to work that late on any day, especially on a Friday. But I was told I had to finish five new shirts by Monday to be printed in time for the 20th Anniversary party in a few weeks. I designed for eleven hours straight and crafted six cool shirts. It felt great. In the past week, I’ve designed a total of seventeen original shirts.

Candyce and her dad met Johnny and I at a hip new restaurant near the studio. It’s owned by a couple who has three other cool restaurants just down the street. The others have become so popular that it’s nearly impossible to get a seat at night. People adore the atmosphere and they love the good, reasonably-priced food. So this place had a following long before it opened its doors.

The new restaurant is on the canal, which is a first step for business owners in Arizona. The canals have been here since the Native Americans ruled the house. Since Arizona has boomed since the sixties, the canals have; carried water to the far reaches of the desert. Even though they are clean and well-kept, they’ve always been ignored as utilitarian and dirty. This boggles my mind because in any other city, builders would be lining the canal with custom homes and hipster coffee shops.

Even though we waited for an hour and a half to get a seat, it wasn’t torture like every other kind of waiting. People who are waiting for a table hung out on the patio by the canal, snuggled into the comfortable furniture and eating appetizers.; Most of the walls were tolled-up because the weather was perfect.

After dinner, Johnny loaned me his Jeep so Candyce and I could drive around Arcadia and look at houses. This is the neighborhood that I’ve explored almost every day for the past year. So it was fun to share my excitement with my girlfriend because she loves design too. It was the perfect night for a stroll around a cute neighborhood. We had a blast.

It’s interesting how a my idea of a “cool date” changes as I get older. I’ve lived in exciting places all over the country. But now the best thing is a night in my own town with the one girl I love. The glamor I experienced with “The Real World” means so little to me right now.

I’ve spent the past three working days designing T-shirts for our camps this summer. It’s a fun project, because camp shirts are notoriously silly. So I try to keep them fun but at the same time make them slick and exciting.

So I finished my ninth T-shirt design this evening before I left work. Five of the designs are for the camp councilors:

Each of the three camps gets two of their own designs, for a total of six. The final design was based on the theme for the whole summer:; “Giddy-up”. I’ve already designed a retro cowboy shirt a couple of years ago, and it sold very well. And the logo that I designed for a our camp here in Arizona. So there was little material to incorporate into this design. It’s difficult to design a contemporary cowboy T-shirt and have teenagers take it seriously. So I went for a blinged out buckaroo.; I think I pulled it off.

Tomorrow I will make name tags and a banners based on that same design. Every summer is a new theme for camp, and I’m going to responsible for the graphics that bring that theme to life.

The banner is the coolest part of the project because it covers more square feet than my apartment in New York City. It’s the first thing to greet the campers as they drive up for the first day, and it is the backdrop to countless photos. When the summer is over, the banner is retired and hung from the rafters. As the years go by, it’ll be an impressive display that will help tell the story of the camp.

It’s been difficult to take time to design these shirts because it takes away from lifeteen.com. It’s not going to get any better because over the next week, I have to design seven new shirts. The website is a one-man-show, so the whole world knows if I’m off doing some other project. I really hope I get another intern or two by the end of the month. I need relief!