update from "home"

being back in Gurnee is nice. sleeping in our own amazing king size bed is great - no more elbows to the head, fists to the neck, and kicking of shins. the cooler weather is so refreshing. i've had my windows open all day each day and we've even started to get a bit chilly at night.

i was going through the shoes in my closet and found 2 pairs with mold on them! what!? i had no idea that humidity made shoes moldy. these are shoes i haven't even worn since last summer - so it's not like they were wet and i left them there to rot. gross. no bugs in our house right now, though. and gurnee has sprayed for mosquito's 3 times this summer, so we're doing pretty well.

getting back on the 3:30am schedule has been a challenge. i've made it a goal of mine to try to get to sleep before 10pm this year. i've done a good job about half of the time so far. it's nice to return to some normalcy. it's nice to return to my co-workers and customers and yummy coffee. i walked into our store and the smell of coffee was so wonderful to me (i had grown to be so sick of it - can you imagine?)
since my return i've been training for a supervisor position at starbucks. that's going pretty well, except for the 8 hour days at the store have me rackin' up the hours as i still have plenty of work to do for ACSI when i get home in the afternoon.

Landon's working a lot at erehwon. he's purchased his books for his classes and will be going to trinity this week to do his final registration. he's been pre-reading some of his material and finishing up some fun summer reading.

Sunday we went to Lakeland - a church that we had visited most during our year of church hunting. This summer we have decided that Lakeland will be our home this next year here. It was so wonderful to go to church and sit there and not be wondering if this was a good fit - and is the preacher teaching biblically, and what is their mission focus, and how to they implement prayer, etc... we had met with the pastor for lunch awhile back after one of the services and got to ask him all of our questions and he told us about how things work at lakeland. it was great to just show up, be greeted by the 2 people there that we know, and join in the body of Christ to worship, pray, and grow. i was so blessed by our time there and i really look forward to this next year as we grow within that family of believers.

after church we took the canoe on the river - it had collected dust with our being gone so long. it was wonderful and relaxing to ride the river together. we brought duvick and landon paddled 10X as much as i did, as usual. it was the perfect day for it: low humidity, clear skies with a slight breeze. so we didn't fight sweat and mosquito's. it was great.

also, my best friend out here, courtney, left for gradschool in PA. I was so sad that my only friend that i see outside of my mornings at starbucks has now joined the ranks with the rest of my friends "i'll call you when i have time and hopefully see you at christmas". yeah, every friend that has ever been dear to me including my family have become phone friends. how precious it was to have a friend in my daily presence, to rattle on about silly things, hug and pray with. i miss her already and find myself on higher guard when it comes to making more friends. i don't like this about myself right now - i tell myself (as i have done so many times before) that we only have 9 months left here. no sense in getting really committed to anything.

i still have a itch to purge and pack. though yesterday i bought cloth napkins for our kitchen table - no more throwing away of paper. not like i'm doing much cooking these days anyway.

today is a quiet morning. i love to wake when the sun has already risen.

we wish we had a tv - would so love to watch the olympics!