Monday, April 15, 2013

12 Miles...

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Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
Well, I ran 12 miles this past weekend. Ugg! I am training (training to me means I only run on Saturdays with my best friend...training to most should be doing some training during the week! But YOLO right?)

We ran 12...and we survived! Woohoo! It is comical the motivation we use to push each other! We laugh alot, chat, stop chatting to breath, realize we have to chat or we want to quit, and chat more. It's awesome!

Go get out and grab a friend for a walk, run or even a skip through a park! (a safe park not a sketchy no one can see you park)

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Write it Out...

Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
As I finished my time with Jesus this morning my heart just started writing in my journal...

You are my all.
  You are Savior.
    You are near.
      You are mighty and intimate.
        You hear me.
          You are in control of all things.
            You are good.
              You place desires in me.

the list could have and continues to go on with each morning. I wonder if we all took time to simply write out who God is...his character, his actions towards us, his relationship with us and of us...how differently would we see our God when trials, hardships or just plain bad days come swinging at us.

So go, write it out...

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Who is Ready for Kamp...

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Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
The picture might be weird to some but to most of us Kamp girls we LOVE our Nike Tempos at K2! Now over the years I have tried other shorts and liked them but I must admit my drawers are still mostly filled with the good ole Tempos! I loved last season at the outlet they had some shorts that had spandex lined into them and I'm kind of obsessed with them also...kind of kicked myself I didn't buy them in every color when they were there as I haven't seen them since...but they were just plain colors with a different shade of spandex! Awesome for Triathlete Abdomination time!

But all in all I am still a tempo girl...just scored a pair for $9 the other day from the Outlet! Holler, bargain shopper!

Get the tempos out (or any other shorts for kamp!)...kamp is coming!

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Great Read, Sorry, Still on Social Media Box...

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Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
Well, I'm sorry (sort of) that I have been on the social media kick here lately. I came across this article that is amazingly written that is a great balance in not shutting out social media but how to live healthily (not sure this is a word) in it. I LOVED the article and loved his premise of connecting and not comparing...

Here is the link. Go here but I'm also pasting it below....


I keep having the same conversation over and over. It starts like this: “I gave up Facebook for Lent, and I realized I’m a lot happier without it.” Or like this, “Pinterest makes me hate my house.” Or like this: “I stopped following a friend on Instagram, and now that I don’t see nonstop snapshots of her perfect life, I like her better.”

Yikes. This is a thing. This is coming up in conversation after conversation. The danger of the internet is that it’s very very easy to tell partial truths—to show the fabulous meal but not the mess to clean up afterward. To display the smiling couple-shot, but not the fight you had three days ago. To offer up the sparkly milestones but not the spiraling meltdowns.

I’m not anti-technology or anti-Internet, certainly, but I do think it’s important for us to remind ourselves from time to time that watching other peoples’ post-worthy moments on Facebook is always going to yield a prettier version of life than the one you’re living right now. That’s how it works.

WHEN YOU’RE WAITING FOR YOUR COFFEE TO BREW, THE MAJORITY OF YOUR FRIENDS PROBABLY AREN’T DOING ANYTHING ANY MORE SPECIAL. BUT IT ONLY TAKES ONE FRIEND AT THE EIFFEL TOWER TO MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE A LOSER.

My life looks better on the Internet than it does in real life. Everyone’s life looks better on the internet than it does in real life. The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t. That’s why it’s safer short term. And that’s why it’s much, much more dangerous long term.
Because community—the rich kind, the transforming kind, the valuable and difficult kind—doesn’t happen in partial truths and well-edited photo collections on Instagram. Community happens when we hear each other’s actual voices, when we enter one another’s actual homes, with actual messes, around actual tables telling stories that ramble on beyond 140 pithy characters.

But seeing the best possible, often-unrealistic, half-truth version of other peoples’ lives isn’t the only danger of the Internet. Our envy buttons also get pushed because we rarely check Facebook when we’re having our own peak experiences. We check it when we’re bored and when we’re lonely, and it intensifies that boredom and loneliness.

When you’re laughing at a meal with friends, are you scrolling through Pinterest? When you’re in labor with your much-prayed-for-deeply-loved child, are you checking to see what’s happening on Instagram? Of course not. We check in with our phones when it seems like nothing fun is happening in our own lives—when we’re getting our oil changed or waiting for the coffee to brew.

It makes sense, then, that anyone else’s fun or beauty or sparkle gets under our skin. It magnifies our own dissatisfaction with that moment. When you’re waiting for your coffee to brew, the majority of your friends probably aren’t doing anything any more special.

But it only takes one friend at the Eiffel Tower to make you feel like a loser.

I’m a writer. I use Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and my blog as part of my professional life—as a way to connect with readers and be part of a conversation that we’re creating together, a conversation about creativity and faith and writing and parenting and community and life around the table. It’s a lovely conversation, and part of my work involves reading many blogs and commenting on lots of photos and scrolling through status after status.

Some days it feels rich and multi-faceted. I learn and I’m inspired. I find recipes I want to try and stories I want to live. I feel connected and thankful to be part of such an intelligent and creative internet community.

And then on some days, I feel like I have nothing to offer, like I must be the only one who isn’t a graphic designer and hasn’t yet managed to display her entire darling life online with lots of chevron and mint accents. I feel so certain that my life is a lot less darling than other peoples’ lives.

But that’s the Internet. The nature of it. I so easily fall prey to the seduction of other people’s partial truths and heavily filtered photos, making everything look amazing. And their amazing looking lives make me feel not amazing at all.

Let’s choose community. Let’s stop comparing. Let’s start connecting.

Some days when I sit down at my laptop, instead of choosing to be an observer via Facebook, I choose to be a friend via email. Instead of scrolling through someone else’s carefully curated images, I use those few seconds to send a text to a person I really know and really love and really want to be connected to.

It’s not about technology or not. I’m not suggesting you get all old-school-pen-and-paper about it (unless that’s your thing.) It’s about connecting instead of comparing. Instead of using the computer to watch someone else’s perfectly crafted life, enter into someone’s less-than-perfect life. You can use Facebook if you want, but you might find email, Skype and phone calls work better.

USING TECHNOLOGY TO BUILD COMMUNITY INSTEAD OF BUILDING CAREFULLY-CURATED IMAGES OF OURSELVES IS AN OPTION, AND A WORTHWHILE ONE.

The distinction I’m making is public vs. private, not in person vs. long distance. I have very close, very honest friendships that depend on phone calls and Skype dates and long wandering emails, and I’m thankful that technology allows for those connections. But I don’t think you can build transforming friendships that take place only in a public sphere like Facebook or Instagram.
For many of us, walking away from the Internet isn’t an option. But using it to connect instead of compare is an option, and a life-changing one. Using technology to build community instead of building carefully-curated images of ourselves is an option, and a worthwhile one.

And on the days when you peer into the screen of your laptop and all you see are other people’s peak experiences that highlight your lack in that moment, remember that life isn’t about the story you tell about yourself on the Internet. It’s about a million more beautiful and complex things than that, like love and faith and really listening. It’s about using what you’ve been given to craft a life of gratitude and passion and grace.

Remember that the very best things in life can’t be captured in status updates.

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 


kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Why Tweet?...

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Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
Okay, I am so not on a soap box of social media...I just recently told our leadership team that I am not anti-twitter I just don't know why I would do it. Why would anyone in this world care about my 140 characters about random basic nothings of my day. It's just so odd...and then the pressure to be funny. Oh, man. I am sweating just typing it...

So I told the team that I just like telling the people I'm with when I think of something I would tweet...but I like just telling them and adding hashtags and all of us laughing. It's way more fun! Then the people I'm with, we connect. We laugh, in person. Anyways, the team had a ball with that and have given me the clear that I would do well on twitter...my response. I'm not ready...probably never will be.

If I eat my words, then so be it but for now my 140 characters will just be said out loud to my littles most of the day and dear friends.

p.s. i might not be on twitter but kanakuk is and kanakuktrish is...so follow them!

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Friday, April 5, 2013

I will Fight...

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Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
Well, I feel like sometimes I have a soap box on Social Media and the Effects of "Shallowing" the next generation...and by sometimes I mean I could go off about it all the time.

I am not a hater at all...hence you are reading this on a blog where you possibly clicked over from Facebook. I am a moderation, healthy user of it. My biggest fear each summer is more and more I am seeing teenage girls, YOU, not able to have healthy face to face interaction with your peers or older adults. You overshare through a keyboard but can't have a polite conversation to your elder. You twitter your opinions and heart but yet can't look someone in the eye to TALK to them.

I will always fight this. I don't want facebook to be over or twitter to be gone...I just don't want to have a generation of youth that can't or doesn't know how to function without feeling like their life is a real TV show and they are the STAR. You aren't.

So today check your heart when you add a  picture of yourself in a bikini...why? Check your healthy radar of social media when you are spending more time on twitter than you are on homework or being outside? Realize that something could be a bit off if all during dinner at your home there are beeps, dings, rings and tweet sounds that distract from a dinner table where America was built.

Side note: mommas and daddies create "cell phone free zone" at your house...do it! Maybe for you too...

Social media is not bad...but is it creating something in us that is?

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Awkward Turtle...


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Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
I found this little image above and just died laughing. I might be aging myself or most of your might not even remember but one summer (again I can't remember which) we had a saying through the girls side of K2 called the "awkward turtle." It basically was for when we are all awkward at some point in our lives...some more than others and then there is me who stays in an awkward state.

Anyways, rock on all you awkward moment rockers! Embrace them my turtle friends!

Be awesome & Love Jesus, 

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com

Monday, April 1, 2013

Hello...

Hey K2 Kanakuk Friends,
Well, HELLO I'M BACK...sorry for the absence. I'm sure you were all devastated by your lack of every other day posts here at Kanakuk Ashley. Pick up those kleenexes for your tears shall be no more...a bit dramatic. Yep!

Well, it's just been a crazy month. Why was March crazy? No idea. Any ideas? None from me. Promise I won't leave again...

Be Awesome & Love Jesus,

kanakuk ashley robbins
ashley@kanakuk.com