December is veryyyy cold!

Greetings CKI!

I thought everyone would be interested in checking out a screen shot of what my desktop says it is outside. Feel free to click the image above on the right and see what the lower right hand yellow box says, it's a very chilly ZERO degrees here in New York.

Today I had an excellent conference call with the Wisconsin-Upper Michigan District Board. Congratulations to them for a very successful board meeting and deciding to have it on the phone rather then people driving through dangerous conditions. It's always important to make sure that we are staying safe this holiday/winter season with our travels.

If you are looking for a fun way to get your club involved although when there is very chilly weather I highly recommend having social nights in where your members can enjoy hot chocolate, cookie making, gift wrapping, watching movies, playing board games, or maybe even having a mystery gift swap. You can also try fun activities like ice skating socials or hockey game socials. Above is a picture of myself and my friend Brittany at a hockey game, clearly I went all out to support my Potsdam Bears by painting a bear paw on my cheek! haha! It's always nice to plan fellowship activities not just because it is cold but also because it's a nice opportunity to give members a stress reliever from studying for final exams, we all know how stressful the end of the semester can get!

So thanks for reading my update and keep your eyes peeled for the CKI Board Book being released soon!

Live to Serve -- Love to Serve,

--Kristen

p.s. The International Board is holding a Holiday Mingle in Chicago, Illinois this January! If you want to meet us click here for more details or e-mail me at president@circlek.org. Hope to see you there!

CKI Club helps out Extreme Home Makeover

Greetings CKI!

Below you will find an entry from Lyssa Bergstrom, President of the CKI Club at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. Lyssa's CKI club was lucky enough to have the fantastic opportunity to work with Extreme Home Makeover on a very unique service project and I asked her to be a guest writer for my blog to give you some insight on this SUPER cool project. Congratulations to UW-Oshkosh for their great work and I hope everyone has an excellent week!

Live to Serve -- Love to Serve,
--Kristen

University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Ty Pennington Style
Its 3am and I'm warming up my car, as Meggie DeWild my lieutenant governor drives up and hops in. One would think why in the world are you up at 3am? We have one for you Service. We where traveling to Richland Center, Wisconsin to help a family of 5, that's right we where heading to Extreme Home Makeover: Home Edition. We were not only motivated by the service we would be doing but to see the handsome face of Mr. Ty Pennington. Our long early 4 hour drive included many detours and picking up my secretary, Melissa Winchell, along the way. We traveled across the state which led us to this fabulous city, full of volunteers and workers from all over! It was the race against time, to finish a project that would ordinarily take a company at least four months to achieve. Here we where helping in the cause to finish this project in less than a week! Several hundred volunteers passed through the rolling Wisconsin countryside to help this family. We helped out with many tasks, and where split up: we landscaped, we handed out hardhats, and one of us was put in charge of all the volunteers, yey Leadership! No matter what volunteer project we did, we where happy to be there to serve. Just knowing that this family would be forever changed by us made our adrenalin driven bodies withstand the 99.8 degree weather for 5 hours. This one small service project changed my views on many things, showing there are so many people out that care about others, and our willing to make a change.

Live to Serve, Love to Serve,
Lyssa Bergstrom
UW-Oshkosh Circle K President