classes and reunion

so this past weekend i had my first of three weekend sessions for the leadership course listed in the left sidebar.

12 hours of class broken into three 4-hour sessions across friday afternoon (1-5p) and all day saturday (8-5p). let's just call that part exhausting. combined with the 3-hour tuesday afternoon sessions of the other course i'm taking, i'm finding the actual lecture time to be more challenging than the reading and writing of the courses this semester. well, i really enjoy the subjects so that helps too.

tomorrow afternoon we head out to the nashville area for the weekend to attend my 10-year high school reunion. yup, 10 years. college was fun, but i wouldn't see any kind of reunion of the circles i ran in getting organized any time soon. i'm looking forward to this reunion no matter how many (or how few) end up showing up. it will be fun to see many people that i haven't kept in contact with at all.

fun weekend

my cousin joseph visited us this past weekend after spending the past year studying in england. while he's been away i've talked to him a lot online so it was great to be able to talk at length in person for once in a blue moon. he's done with this master's degree in theology, but he'll be returning to begin working on a ph.d. in 2008 ... Lord willing.

he met us at our church picnic for the public on saturday morning and then we all went home to watch the debacle of the ut - florida game. thus far, lsu and florida look incredible. i hope they don't knock each other off (oct. 6th and then the sec championship rematch) and let the sec get locked out of the national title game.

saturday evening we went to the pub and it was yummy as usual. joseph gave it props for its british authenticity. after dinner, L & jake went home and joseph & I went to see the bourne ultimatum. i love those movies; they're the tops of cia / spy movies these days.

on sunday we went to church and then pf chang's for lunch. home for naps, baseball, and nfl and then we drove over to wilmore and did our daily walking all over the little town. for some reason, we decided to go out to eat yet again and we went for mexican and then bruster's ice cream.

interweaved through all that was a bunch of catching up and church / theology talk. good times!

blog memory lane

my compliments to the wayback machine. does anyone remember when the place looked like this ? (bunch of fun pics in that link!)

daily walking

lindsay and i both decided to try to start walking every day ...

(the idea was in my head from this) and we started on monday. it's been an interesting week for walking. monday was so incredibly humid after days of much-needed rain that it felt like we were walking through hot fog or still rain. since that time, the weather has been absolutely beautiful. mid 50's for the early morning drive (with windows cracked a bit) and highs of mid 70's. was even a touch of a chill last night when our walk was a little shorter. we had (over) eaten at cici's with steph after canceling lifegroup for the week for a couple of reasons. when we got home, it was beginning to get dark so we only walked half. i'm not sure our stuffed selves could have done more. oh and yes, jake goes along too. he walked with us on monday night, but has since ridden in one of his big red cars that we push.

two weekends

alrighty, let's knock both of the past two weekends out in one post. for labor day weekend, we ...

went to nashville for a bit of a family reunion on mom's side. i worked late on friday evening and then we drove from our house to cookeville on saturday morning. it was an awesome off-interstate drive and was quicker than expected. we met a couple of lindsay's college friends for lunch at spankie's and it was still delish. we chatted long after we were done and didn't leave until jake was practically dragging us out of the restaurant out of boredom. we drove on to nashville and hung out at mom's for a bite of dinner. brooke and her "friend" came over and it was great to see her after her summer of working in upstate ny. we then proceeded to dad's to watch the ut game until it got out of hand. on sunday, we slept in like heathens and then went to the rainforest cafe that afternoon for lunch / dinner (linner?). there was still an hour wait even when going between rushes so we bopped around the mall a bit. jake loved the animals and atmosphere and the overpriced food wasn't too bad after all! on monday, we loaded up and went over to uncle danny's and met his new wife and two stepdaughters. all were very cool and welcome additions to the family. it was great to hangout with all the family and aunt jill even put on a little banjo show for us! we left around 4pm and made it home around 9pm after the time change. work the next day!

this past weekend, we went to the cabin with our small group. we had a blast relaxing, watching movies, playing pool, enjoying the quiet, making noise, grilling out, and walking the gatlinburg strip. everyone loved the cabin and the atmosphere and we hope to make the trip a regular occurrence!

first week of class

first class last tuesday went well. the weekly routine is fine thus far because ...

the weekend leadership class is still a couple of weeks away. we have a very large group project in the tuesday discipleship class and we grouped up at the end of class. we had to just look around and find people so that was weird. my group is comprised of 4 other girls who were sitting nearby.

i worked 10 hours on wednesday since i can only work 6 hours on tuesday because of class. because of the labor day off (details in another post?), i wasn't able to work any extra that day and i knew that i had to pick up jake on thursday and get on home on friday so that we could leave for our small group retreat (details in another post ...)