Oh life

After a busy weekend of being in class, Saturday night we decided we needed a date! It has been quite awhile since we've gone out on a date, besides grabbing a bite to eat here and there, which honestly, we haven't done much of lately since we're pinching pennies for the house.

We got a little dolled-up and went out to one of our fave places, Thai Thai, in Deerfield. It was great. Afterward, we went to Starbucks staffed by Trinity students and alum where we were hooked up with some sweet discounts and yummy beverages. We played a fun game of Scrabble and just spent time together. It was wonderful.

Oh yeah...and I won! (The second time ever in our marriage!)

Sunday was very busy. We had many things to do at church. We drove an hour through the crazy spring break blizzard downtown for orchestra rehearsal. After the service, we parted ways to split up our volunteer duties that wound up all on the same Sunday. I went up to make coffee and greet for Sunday school while Marcus manned the Softball Sign-up kiosk. After Sunday school, we split again while Marcus chilled out at the fellowship luncheon and I attended a VBS meeting.

After church and meetings, I went to my sister's house while Marcus and his bandmates went to a recording studio. Check out this insanely cool fold-up man-powered treadmill Dan got!


After a couple hours at my sister's, I picked up Marcus and we headed over to his bro's house. His two younger sisters met up with us and we had a family evening of dinner, games, movies, and hanging out. It was fun!

Today was my first day of spring break. I'm hoping that a week off my feet will heal my poor ankles right up...so far, that's not happening. They are STILL swollen, even though it is less. Marcus was touching them trying to see where the swelling was and I was instantly in tears from the pain. I don't think there's much we can do except wait. I'm icing them now as I type.

After some yummy pizza (I didn't cook today because I spent all afternoon trying out my new sewing machine!!!) we're relaxing and watching a Wal-mart documentary, lol.

I hope to get to see some of you this week over break! :)

Grad Class

Yippee!

I am posting this from grad class. By Saturday at 4:00 PM I will have attended 17 hours of grad class within 36 hours. As you can see, I am being very productive.

Thankfully these weekends only come along a couple times per semester. They are hard to endure, but then, when they're done...they're done!

Next week is spring break!!! :)

I Hate Change...

But I'm working on dealing with it anyway. :)

Not only does change itself not suit me well, logistically, it is just time consuming. Change implies ever-growing to-do lists, faltering emotions, and little quality time with friends and spouses. Change means paperwork, faxing, printing, phone calls, meetings, and teeth grinding. And people wonder why I'm stressed. I don't cope well with this much to do!

The following changes are impending in my life:

1. Residence
2. Job
3. Grad school

The worst part of it all is that I really have no clue when any of these changes will take place, I only know that they are upon me. Well, the grad school one I know. Lord willing, beginning June 1st, I will be in a different grad program. I am transferring from Trinity to Walden University to start their program for Masters of Public Administration and Local Government Management. I am quite excited about this, actually. The program looks great and it's geared directly toward what I want to do with my life.

The house...well, we're waiting on paperwork from the bank and whatnot. Hopefully we'll know next week if we can get it. Our loan was approved at our meeting yesterday with the lender, but nothing's for certain until we sign the dotted line...right? :) We'll see. Marcus is growing weary with the waiting game. Closing the house is scheduled for April 30th.

Job. EEK! Don't even go there with me. I don't want to leave my job- I love it! But, if we move, I obviously need a job there. So, I'm looking. Please pray that asking my current employers for letters of recommendation doesn't result in me losing my current job! :)

By the way, my ankles still hurt BAD!!! The swelling is down, but I still can't walk very well. :)

Ankle Updates

People have been emailing and calling to follow up about my ankles. Thanks for all the care I've been shown!

To update, I have tendonitis. It hurts like nobody's business! The swelling has gone down somewhat, but is still there a bit. The pain has increased. The doctor said that if it is still bad next week, I need to come back for x-rays in case I have stress fractures--which is "unlikely." Hopefully the pain subsides soon. Doctor's orders are no exercise for two weeks, ice twice a day, take Aleve and stay off my feet when I can.

In other news, we're leaving for Moline tonight. Tomorrow we meet with the realtor and make a bid on the house. There are a lot of things in our lives that are up in the air right now. I'm most likely switching grad programs, which could potentially lead to us moving sooner than we thought. But, really, only God knows. Please pray for us during the intense time of major decision-making. I'm trying not to be anxious, but it is hard.

Email me if you want to see a link to the house, but I don't feel safe posting on here for all to see. :)

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

Pain and Suffering

So.

The race was tough. 5 miles, I know. Not too much. Well. It was a bit much for little ole' me!

Saturday night after the race Jodi had me ice my ankles, but they certainly killed. Sunday it was difficult to walk, but better than Saturday. Sunday night at home I slept with some ice on them. Monday during the day was okay, I didn't ice at night.

Today at work was miserable. Especially at the end of the day. I could barely walk. Literally. Thankfully my jr. block observing student could walk me students around for me. I came home and iced for an hour. Driving home was extremely painful- you have no idea how much you use your ankles to accelerate and brake! :)

Tonight at orchestra I was okay, but during the break I stood for about 10 minutes and then was in much pain. I came home, took of my shoes and socks and lo and behold:

(Don't mind the butterfly tattoo- it's fake- from our girls' weekend)

My ankles look HUGE. Normally, my feet are extremely bony and thin (ugly, in my opinion) but now you can see...they look ginormous.

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. Hopefully nothing is wrong, but Marcus wants me to get it checked out just in case. :( The problem that is concerning us is that it's getting worse and not better as the days go on.

3rd Annual Missouri Girls' Weekend!

What a weekend!

Every year over President's Day weekend, Meg and I head down from Chicagoland to visit our roomie and CBF (College Best Friend) Jodi in St. Louis-land. This year, Prez Day Weekend fell on Valentine's Weekend, so in lieu of being romantic, we pushed our girls weekend back by a month. It turned out to be fabulous coming in March because 1. it was super nice out, and 2. it was closer to Jodi's birthday. :)

We got there late Friday night at about 9:30. Even though at every stop on the way Meg reminded me not to lock my keys in the car, as soon as we parked on Jodi's street, it happened!

Here they are on my front seat, as seen through the side window.

Thankfully, one of Jodi's good friends is a cop!! She had just gone on duty for the late shift and came to our rescue. It was her first time getting into a locked car. Lucky for me, it was not my first time, so I was able to guide her through the steps. lol.

Then, just for fun, I got cuffed! She is one tough cop. I got frisked and yelled at a whole bunch too. Those cuffs actually hurt! I never knew.

Bright and early the next morning, we headed down to St. Louis! We were running the St. Patrick's Day 5 mile race! I have only been training for it since I got back from India and even that didn't get intense until a couple of weeks ago. In my training I had only made it to 3 miles, which is by far the longest I've ever run...

ever!

There were over 9,000 runners plus zillions of watchers, so it was totally cool! Here we are before we started...

For those of you who know me it may not surprise you that I needed a bathroom break! lol. Right at about 2.5 miles I couldn't hold it anymore! Keep in mind, I had last gone like 2 hours prior to that point. The line was long, which affected our time, but oh well!

Here we are after we finished! They got a little ahead of me, but we all finished right around an hour (bathroom break taken into account). I did run the whole thing!!!! I couldn't believe I did, but I did! Then afterward we spent about 15-20 minutes looking for each other and I almost started crying/panicking that I was lost and alone in St. Louis amongst like 10,000 people. Thank you God that we found each other!

Jodi had bought us matching bows. I thought they'd help us find each other, lol. But I guess not. They were still adorable nonetheless. :)

Here's Meggie looking adorably "mod" at church the next day.

Since it was nice out, we went to Main Street in St. Charles where there are many darling little cute shops along a brick road. We went into this antique-y button and fabric scrap shop and I got these:

For the past few weeks I've been really wanting to get crafty and Friday before I left for the trip I got an email response to my freecycle ad I posted and I'm getting a sewing machine tomorrow (for free)!!!! I'm soo excited.

It was a fabulous weekend. Getting back to work today was hard! Now it's time to do things I normally do on weekends like grocery shop and laundry...

Have a good week!

New Baby!

My friend had her baby!! I got to visit them yesterday in the hospital. Allie is so cute! There is just nothing like the teeny tiny-ness of newborns!!

Here's big sis Maddie.

Not the best pic, we but had some fun together in the hospital room. :)

Congrats, Jennifer! We just love your daughters! :) We're already looking forward to whenever you and Tom are ready to get out for an evening. :)

Busy Weekend!

I forgot to take any pics of real people this weekend, but that's okay. I was just enjoying myself sans camera!

Friday night we went to Deerfield High School to see a lovely young lady we know perform in the musical, Little Shop of Horrors. It was downright fabulous. I am always a fan of high school musicals and am consistently blown away by the talent at them whenever we go (which isn't frequently, but still). This musical was fantastic!! Way to go, Jade!!

After the musical, we went out with long-time friends (and parents of the actress), Rob and Tricia. They have been many things to both Marcus and me over the years. During college we both spent time (separately) living at their house. We've been mentored by them in many ways (Marcus did his field experience in college with Rob) and they did our premarital counseling and Rob was the pastor at our wedding. Friday night we went out to Denny's for a yummy fries and chocolate milkshake event and talked it up until about 12. I hadn't stayed out that late in a long time!

The next morning we got up bright and early (well, it wasn't bright, it was cloudy) to head downtown to a conference. It was great! We got to see/hear two very famous speakers, Mitch Temple and Howard Dayton (we are big fans!!). Howard Dayton is the author of many books and president (I believe?) and cofounder of Crown Financial Ministries without which we would be financially lost. It was so exciting to be 10 feet away from him listening to money and marriage advice. Wow. The rest of the evening was spent just relaxing and doing our usual Saturday activities (laundry, grocery shopping, etc.)

Sunday we went to church, again very early, because I had to play in the orchestra and plus daylight savings...yikes...it was great. We got to come home early though because there was no Sunday school due to our class being gone on retreat. We ended up not going on the retreat, which was great because we had such a good weekend anyway. Sunday afternoon we took a 3 hour nap! That helped catch us up from the time change and busy weekend. Sunday night Marcus's sis Lindsey came over to hang out a bit and I cut her hair. It was a relaxing Sunday, which I loved.

Now it is becoming crunch time for me for two things:
1. On Saturday I am running a 5 mile race. I am only up to 3 miles in my training. Crazy though, I never thought I could even run a mile straight. Amazing.
2. Homework! I have a bunch to do in the next couple of weeks homework-wise, so pray for me that I can stay balanced in my time management!

Hope you all have a great week! :)

...and the Oscar for Best Hubby Award goes to...

MY hubby!

Every Wednesday Marcus drops me off and picks me up at work due to our schedules. Today when he picked me up (just when I was getting annoyed that he was 10 minutes late), he revealed to me that he had done some grocery shopping for some things we needed (thank goodness, I didn't have to go!) and he gave me a little treat! YUM...just what I needed!

...then, when we got home, he started cooking dinner! His specialty meal, one of my faves (does it taste so good because I don't have to cook it? ;) --some yummy risotto. 

What a great guy!

...in other news...I know I mentioned this in a blog a few days ago...I am still deciding, but it's looking like it's going to work out. If you think of it, please pray that we will know for sure if this is supposed to happen this summer or next. We're hoping for this summer! :)

Fun day!

I had such a fun day off of work!! :)

I got to spend the day with my friend Erica and her three darlings. It was the first day of preschool for Malachi and Kayleigh. It was so fun to be there with them!

Here's Kayliegh with her backpack.

...and Malachi with his. :)

While they were in preschool, Selah was dropped off the play at the playcenter while Erica and I worked our booties off. We ran on the treadmills for awhile and then swam some laps. We got ready leisurely in the locker room and then picked up Selah. We got to just chill and relax, the three of us, until the big kids were done. After school was over, we all went out to a yummy Mediterranean place and the kids got to open some presents I brought them to celebrate their first day. It was all so fun! 

Even though Selah didn't go to school, I got her this cute sparkly headband. It was too big, but cute nonetheless. :) 

After lunch, we went back to their house and Erica and I just got to relax and chat like we tend to do when the kids nap. It was a great day and I love spending my sporadic days off of teaching with the Hangs. I love our friendship and the kids are just so funny. Hope to see you all again soon! Spring break, anyone? 

No news is good news

I realized I haven't updated in awhile...well, for me it's awhile. :) But, I really have no new news! It was a super hectic week. The highlights are as follows:

Monday: Board Meeting for my school district. Highly interesting. I was only able to attend 2.5 hours of the 4 hour meeting. Crazy stuff happening in our district...mainly my school.
Tuesday: Orchestra
Wednesday: NO LESSONS--Thank goodness, I needed a break. My students all did fabulously at solo and ensemble contest though, which was exciting.
Thursday: I ran 2.25 miles!! That might sound like nothing to some of you, but I've been "training" for a 5 mile race (which is in 2 weeks) and that's the farthest I've gotten so far. I jumped up to that from only doing 1.5 the previous run. Woo hoo!!
Friday: Orchestra concert. I am glad it is over. I was not a fan of that music. New music comes this week. Also, my pal Julie who plays horn with me had her two kiddos there. I have not seen them since August! They are so big and cutie-patooties (to use my BFF Joni's word).
Saturday: We babysat for my friend from work. Her baby Maddie is just hilarious. You may remember my posts of her in the past. She was a riot and we had a blast.
Sunday: Church. Then I met up for coffee with my pal Melody out in Arlington Heights while Marcus had band practice. We are rekindling our long-lost friendship. Well...not exactly "lost," but normally we only see each other once a year. So far for 2009, we've gotten together three times! This is a record since college graduation. :)

Also, if you'd like to pray for Marcus and me...we are debating and praying over a few decisions that are upcoming.
1. As part of my grad program, I have two classes to take in France. Summer 2009 or 2010? That is the question.
2. Still working through the whole buying a house thing...meeting with a realtor on 3/21

Now here it is Sunday afternoon and I think I'm going to lay down, read a book, and take a nap. Other items on today's agenda possibly include hitting the gym (like I said, two weeks till that race and I'm only about half way to 5 miles) and going to Target.

Tomorrow is no school and I'm going to hang with my pal Erica and hopefully go workout at her gym. I love to see her on no-school Mondays. :) (Erica, I do not hold it against you that you blew me off on Presidents' Day...haha, jk. You know I love you.)

For the sake of posting a picture, because I know posts are always more interesting with a picture, I am posting one I took of myself on Friday with my French Horn necklace. One of my third-graders gave it to me and I wore it in honor of my concert that night. It is too cute (the necklace, not the pic).
Jodi, the awkward "no-teeth smile" is just for you! :)