Saturday Adventures and the best laughs I've had in a while!

If you have been on any form of social media for the past few weeks you have seen probably about a thousand crazies dump buckets of ice water on top of their heads.  (Personally, my favorite videos are the ones where people fail only because I love a good laugh in the name of a good cause!)  Well anyways with the thousands of videos have come a lot of criticism that these videos and social media craze has turned into just that a social media craze.  

How many of us were truly aware of ALS prior to all these people drenching themselves in the name of research.  How many of use were aware of our friends and loved ones who knew people affected by ALS prior to this...how many people knew what ALS did to your body?

Now don't get me wrong I know that some people did know and that some people are doing this for the wrong reason but think about how many more people now know about ALS, are aware of what it does to the body, will now give to the organization, and people who will benefit from the millions of dollars raised from buckets of ice dumped over peoples heads.

I'm not saying that all people get the gravity of what they are doing by participating but I can tell you that there are so many more people who are now aware of ALS, the people it has affected in their lives, in the lives of people around us and if some progress can be made from this then I think at the end of the day we need to believe that good did come from it!

Now I managed to make it without being nominated until yesterday when I was nominated not once but twice within two hours!  Well being the great sister I am I let my little brother do the honor because I feel like we should turn any experience possible into a family bonding experience...so that being said we had to teach mom how to work the IPad and Drew not only squirted me with water while I was talking but then dumped the bucket on me before I gave him the okay!  That pretty much sums up how we do things at the Kocher household!

So after that nice freezing cold (extremely full) bucket of water...I went home to change for our first Wyld Life event of the year!  We started it off with the messiest event of the year...Paint War!  Mother Nature wanted to throw in a twist and make it rain (literally) on us which added an unexpected twist.  We had so much fun and we made the best of it.  This is the first year we have some solid structure and we really have our high school leaders owning a lot of what we are doing with the kids...it was really nice my job tonight was to guard the wagon that was holding the paint!

It was so much fun to be able to just goof around and be silly!  After a long week it felt good to just let go...but with that came the need to take a freakish long shower because I had paint everywhere!

After all was said and done it was a great day!

With Love Always,

Alex

Silently Screaming

In the past few months I have been told I'm too tough, I'm rude, I come off as dismissive, sarcastic, demeaning etc...for almost a year now I have taken beating after beating of being told how wrong I do everything, I have felt like an outsider in places that I've called home, felt cast aside by people I called friends and family.  For months I've held it in...well tried to hold it in pushed to the breaking point then shoved over without hesitation.

I've been silently screaming, holding back tears, fighting to stay afloat and frankly it sucks.

Now I know this blog is about love and don't get me wrong we are getting there just hang on...we are getting there...I promise.

I am trying to learn who "is sitting around my camp fire and who isn't"  and while I don't know who is sitting around my fire all the time...I can at least figure out who isn't.  

I just find it frustrating to be beat down by so many people everyday and maybe they don't know they are the 10th person to make me feel worthless or lesser or like a complete idiot regardless it can be hard to stand tall when you feel so small.

At the end of the day I realize that being hard, and tough has closed me off to a lot of things...self preservation is key when you feel like you are under attack.  I feel like I laugh a little less and cry a little more but one thing I know for sure is that without a few key friends that are really more like my family I would seriously crumble.  

They are my family, I love them....there are no words beyond thank you for these amazing people in my life.  

I know that these times are tough and dark but after the dark comes the light, because of the rain all things can grow...basically I know things will get better because with these people by my side I can get stronger than I am alone.

With Love Always,

Alex