Since I last wrote in my blog there have been a lot changes going on at the Floyd House as well as in my program. The Floyd Volunteer House is now up to 12 long-term volunteers, which is the most I've ever experienced since living here. And the crazy thing is it all happened so quick. Three out of the four new long-term volunteers came in Labor Day weekend, so we are a pretty full house now, and we also have some more diversity in our house as far as programs. We now have four different programs represented in our house: Housing, Child and Family Development, Elderly Casework and Elderly Housing.  As far as changes in the Housing program we got two new long-terms within the last week which puts us up to 8 volunteers in the Housing program, so there has been a lot of growth within CAP in the last couple of weeks.

Labor Day Weekend I also had the opportunity to make another trip home for my cousin Ryan's wedding. This was really nice because even though I was home just a few weeks earlier I didn't really have time to see my whole extended family so I was able to do that when I was home for the long weekend. It was a really nice wedding I was able to spend a good amount time with family and friends in the short time I was home.

So besides going home for a weekend I know many people always ask me what I do for fun in eastern Kentucky. Well this past Friday my housemate Bethanie and I went up to Camp Shawnee to split some firewood. There were a ton of logs all chopped up from when some of us were up there a few weeks earlier for chainsaw training, so we decided to get a head start on getting them ready for next year's summer camp. It was a great workout and we accomplished a good amount of work. We were also able to play catch while we were up there which was really nice because I haven't thrown a softball in awhile and that is probably one of my favorite things to do. And then after our busy day a bunch of volunteers from Johnson Volunteer House and Floyd Volunteer House got together at Dewey Dam to play some ultimate frisbee. Therefore by the end of Friday night I was pretty exhausted from running around. Also this past weekend we started to build a picnic table for our house that we had planned to build months ago but never got around to it and we were able to get all the pieces cut so hopefully next weekend I'll have pictures on here of the finished product!

Probably my favorite part of the whole weekend was my Sunday afternoon canoe trip. My crew leader Tony has a canoe and he has been talking about taking it out since I first got down here which is over a year ago now, so Tony, Liz (Tony's wife) and I finally took it out to Paintsville Lake. It was a great day for it too, about 80 degrees and sunny out with a nice breeze. We were even able to find some nice quiet spots around the lake where you couldn't hear any other boats or cars, it was really nice and a great way to end the weekend. So even though it may seem like there isn't much to do in eastern Kentucky you can definitely find ways to keep yourself busy!

Kate Stefanowicz is a long-term volunteer in CAP's Housing program. She lives in Floyd Volunteer house.