blessings

so i neglected to mention the graduation party and gifts...

i was blessed to receive a few cards with gifts tucked inside, a fun wii game, an asbury diploma frame (for whenever the paper diploma comes), a 38 volume (yes, you read that right!) set of early church fathers writings, and a nikon d40 (a dslr camera finally!). i've had a blast playing with it all already and i'm looking forward to getting a few things from amazon.

I'M DONE!!

graduation finished. finally !! 6 years (3 year program, working full-time, school half-time, etc.). woohoo! now let's find a church....

el finito and a wedding

so i finished my final assignment for seminary (besides walking across a stage) a week ago.

it's hard to believe it's all over and it is still sinking in. i stayed up late last thursday night to wrap up my final paper (a not-so threatening book report) and then we got up early to leave for a big trip to st. louis and kansas city for my cousin josh's wedding. well, the driving was big, but not the time off. we drove to stl on friday and spent the day going up in the arch and visiting the city. we went to the cardinals game vs. the rays and had a really good time. one lesson for wearing braces - don't eat mustard. doh!

on saturday, we pulled a round trip from stl to kc with the wedding and reception all afternoon. we stopped for meals and switched up drivers so it wasn't too bad driving across missouri and back. sadly, we didn't take the time to drive through kc or across the border to kansas so we'll have to make another trip some day for L to cross it off her list of states visited.

on sunday, we hit the road and drove back to lexington. we just stopped for lunch, but with the time zone change we didn't get back til 3:30p and were pretty zonked.

almost done.

with everything. almost.

i'll have to backdate a post or two to catch up about hillbilly days in pikeville, ky and jake's t-ball season so far.

catsup

why do people spell ketchup that way? weird. anyways, this is a backdated post to try to fill some gaps.

on the weekend of april 19, we drove to pikeville, ky to visit 'hillbilly days' with dad and his friend who grew up there. pikeville may be just miles from virginia and west virginia, but it feels like any other small town with all the normal big chains - wal-mart, lowe's, applebee's, etc. the drive was beautiful down a mountain parkway and at the actual festival there was great bluegrass music and all kinds of food everywhere (i had a greek gyro). the main attraction is the plethora of crafts and vendors selling things. i got a real leather belt with my name and some crosses leatherworked into it (that's really what delayed this post - i wanted a picture with a caption 'upping my hillbilly street cred').

the other big thing for over the past month has been t-ball games. with school wrapping up and t-ball, we haven't been able to go to the gym in a while (hopefully things will be back to normal after graduation). jake's team is pretty good! one of the big things in t-ball is a max of 4 runs per inning so any time you can hold your opponent to less than that in an inning, you're doing really good. jake doesn't care about fielding, but he can get his hits and runs fast enough that he always gets on base. sometimes he needs a little help getting to each base, but he's pretty much got that down pat too. his games are really fun and this has been an interesting and good way to get in better touch with our community around us!