The long awaited update...

When people chat it is pretty often the question comes up "what's new?" and most often people (including myself) reply "not much." Well, that may be the answer you get, but it is far from true.

I don't think I can reasonably update my loyal readers in chronological order, so I will instead just ramble on about a few of the things that have been happening lately.

Of course Relay For Life is a big event that recently happened. Our humble little event managed to pull out 16 teams, 200 participants and right now we are hovering right around $35,000 with an expected total of $40,000 when all of the sponsorships come in. This year I was not only on a team, and not only part of the planning committee, I was a co-chair. Cyndie and I worked pretty hard to make it a successful event. Our measure of success was not the number of people or teams or funds, our measure was - did people enjoy the event and will they come back. Overall, I think people enjoyed it and the opinions I have heard said they will be back. This is great news to me! Those of you that are familiar, last year we canceled the event at about 8:30 due to storms containing lightning and tornado warnings. This year we had nearly ideal weather. It was a tad windy for the start, but that died down. We did get a bit of rain for about 2 minutes and then for another 2 minutes right around 10 pm and 10:45. I did stay awake all night. I had speaking rolls in all the ceremonies (6pm, 9:30 pm and 6am) so rather than be groggy and crabby, I just stayed awake. If you are interested, there is still time to donate to our event. Just click HERE.

Nick's family was in town last week. It has been two years since all four of the kids and their parents have been together. (Steph's wedding was the last time - in 07). Of course, now there are three grandkids too. We hadn't seen Aaron for almost a year. It was great to see all of his siblings and their families again. What a blessing we were able to work our schedules to be able to get a little time with them. We got to celebrate our anniversaries (yes, 4 anniversaries 6/30, 7/10, 7/15, 7/19) and the first birthdays of Aaron and Taryn. Lots to celebrate!

In the past four weeks I have been to 4 baby showers. Yes, it does seem that everyone we know is having a baby right now. Crazy. That does bring me to an interesting topic. Nick and I have started the very beginning of the process of adoption. This is much like announcing we're pregnant the day you pee on the stick, but even worse. Basically we have signed the paper and paid the registration fee. That just means we have signed up to be able to fill in the paper work for the application. Once that is approved we will being the home study process. Once we are approved there, we start the process of being approved by the US and the other country to approve us. Then there are more and more steps to follow. There sure are a lot of hoops to jump through to adopt. After a fair amount of research, we are following an international route rather than domestic. Our country of choice at this point is Korea. While the process is long on its own, we are taking our time to try to match up the expected placement date for after Nick is finished with school. Two years to go..... Lots of prayers for all of this would be great!

We are on week two of our "early fall" quarter for school. I am teaching 3 classes this quarter. So far I am enjoying the classes. This quater is shorter (10 weeks rather than 12) because they gave everyone a 3 week summer break. It was great to have 3 weeks off, but some of the classes it is tough to cram into 10 weeks. I am enjoying this teaching thing though. Next quarter I plan to resume taking classes in persuit of my bachelor of science in veterinary technology. Yup, I decided to switch out of the career path towards human medicine and stay working with the furry medicine. It was after much thought, debate, consulting with peers and instructors and of course a pretty good amount of prayer that I decided the veterinary field is where I should stay.

Nick is working hard. He is currently working in a "research assistant" position. He does a lot of different things. Doesn't that just explain it all? He is also working every other weekend at Walgreens.

I think this is where I will end my updating for tonight.