leadership, preparing to leave birmingham, and my battle with raw chicken

Last weekend I had opportunity to accompany some students from Restoration Academy on a leadership retreat at Children's Harbor (an AMAZING facility for children with disabilities and their families - I saw a paraplegic waterskiing!! Incredible!) on Lake Martin.
The RALS (Restoration Academy Leadership Society), a group of 11 RA juniors and seniors spent the weekend looking at leadership - what a Christian leader looks like vs. what the world says a leader looks like. They did lots of team building exercises, enjoyed the pool, lake, karaoke, games, and each other.
I loved my time with them, and it was really cool to see the way the kids TRULY worked together as a team. This is a group of kids that really love each other, and you can see it plainly just after spending one afternoon with them. There's no doubt in my mind at all that this group's leadership and love for one another will positively impact Restoration and its student body for the long term.
On another note, as much as I'm looking forward to spending July in Tallahassee, preparing to leave Birmingham for a month is a lot sadder than I expected. I kind of teared up at my last church service 'till August, I'm dreading saying goodbye to folks here, and let's not even talk about how much I'll miss Pippi. I'm starting to pack up for a Saturday early a.m. departure.

I'll be updating the blog (hopefully) from Tallahassee, so if you're interested in what's going on there, check back!
Good times until I leave Saturday - dear friend Laura came to visit for a couple days, which was great - both of us had to get semi-major work done on our cars, though, which meant empty wallets and confinement to the house. We didn't mind - Laura's one of those friends you have a blast doing nothing with.

And tonight I get to see Kate, Will, & baby Elodie. I'm taking dinner over there tonight, hence the chicken part of this post title. Raw chicken and I don't get along.


So when I got out my mallet to pound the mess out of these chicken breasts, I was braced for disaster. Let's just say I'll be discovering and cleaning up bits of raw chicken all over my kitchen for um, awhile. It's worth it, though, for chicken parmigiana. And especially for Kate & Will.Here I am eating the excess when I got home from Kate's...see? Chicken hates me. It's a general malice and it gets me every time I mess with it. Don't ask how this happened.

Kind of a scattered update here, but check back to keep up with what's going on down at Rebirth International. I can't wait.