BTS 2017

Well, we've survived our first full week of school!  As always seems to be the case, at this point, there is exhaustion and mixed emotions about our grueling new routine.   

 We were all happy and excited on the first day of school!  

 Delia got an amazing teacher again this year!  Mrs. M. is actually the mom of one of Delia's best friends!  She's back to teaching after a long break of being home with her kids.  So far we've been blown away by her communication, attention to detail, fun-loving spirit, and prioritizing spiritual development for her students this year!  Of the three of us, Delia was the most reluctant to start school again.  She had SUCH a great year in 4th grade, she expected 5th to be a let-down in every way.  And so far, it has exceeded her expectations every day!

Ella is my girl who looooves school!  This pic is her on kick-off night, where she is given her schedule and locker and has her yearbook picture taken.  Ella is already finding 7th grade has more challenges, with its many teachers and class switches, than she's run into in the past.  She is a girl who is motivated and sets goals.  She has been to discouraged to learn that keeping her teachers' expectations straight is going to be hard and her goal of getting all A's just might not be possible.  Combine that disappointment with braces discomfort, extra fatigue, and general pre-teen moodiness and she has not been loving school thus far.

And as for me, I am finding the start of this year to be extremely difficult as well.  I compare the first month of teaching preschool to going into labor.  You kinda forget how awful and hard it's going to be!  My students seem especially young and they sure are tiring me out!  And though the new teacher I am training is a natural, she's just not a good friend yet.  Hard days and difficult students I can handle, but it does all seem more stressful this year as I navigate each day without the beloved partner I've had for the past 4 years.  The good news is that God has given me a wonderful gift in this: a built in reminder EVERY DAY that my little students will get there!  After I dismiss my preschool class at 11:15, a Stay and Play class made of 20 Pre-K kids, (18 of whom I had last year) bursts into my classroom, full of enthusiasm and hugs.  They know how to behave, they know how to clean up, they know how to sit attentively through a Circle Time lesson.  I LOVE them!  Right now they are my favorite part of each day!  (The above pic is drawn by one of those Stay and Play sweeties-- "It's me, Teacher Jen, Teacher Briana, and Teacher Liz inside our classroom last year.")

I KNOW it will all get better.  It always does. :)

So Long, Summer of 2017

In between the birthdays and holidays and vacations that I've been posting about, we had another wonderful summer that perfectly balanced activity with rest.  We started the season with a Summer Bucket List, which proved to be a very helpful tool when we had had one too many days cooped up inside and needed creative ideas for spending our precious summer hours.  We made 40 idea pins and were successful in dropping 32 of them into the bucket!

 We picked blueberries.

 We fed the ducks at the canal.

We did lots of bike riding and ice cream eating. Sometimes both!

 We used up many of the gift cards our church family and students generously shower on us.  One night we took Dave out for a fancy dinner for an early Father's Day celebration.

We spent a day at Great America and, with no lines, rode the super fun, super fast Gold Striker wooden roller coaster 4 times in a row! (We then nursed all sorts of aches and sick feelings...wouldn't necessarily recommend for you fellow 40 year olds!)

We enjoyed a busy wedding season-- attending six over the past few months!  We thank our newlywed friends for providing these regular date nights for Dave and I.  We dress up, we get a sitter, we eat a fancy dinner, we dance.  Just costs a wedding gift...and about 12 hours of work if Dave is doing the counseling and ceremony! :)

 We gobbled up all our favorite summer produce: peaches off our tree, tomatoes from our garden, and HUGE artichokes!

We had Baking and Crafting Days!  Frapuccino cupcakes, panda-colored button frames, and artistic gym shoes were the products.

We spent lots of time in our friends' pools.  And, unlike last year, we visited our community pool just one time this season.  But, we did it with some good friends and enjoyed having it pretty much to ourselves.

We've also been hanging out a lot at our new orthodontist's office!  The time has come for Ella to get braces.  We were discouraged to learn that she's got a long, expensive road ahead, with about 27 different steps and stages before her smile is perfect, but she has handled all the new aches and discomfort and awkwardness like a champ!

We headed to SF for a day to take in a Cubs game.  We do love beautiful, bay-side AT&T Park and had a great time watching warm-ups...

 And playing on the Coke slide and cable car.  And also running into school friends who are fellow Cubs fans!!

Good thing we had all this fun beforehand because the game was FREEZING and the Cubs lost.   

With Dave's busy schedule and whole weeks crossed off our calendar for Mount Hermon, VBS and our Midwest Vacation, we never made it camping this summer.  We decided to do a day trip to the lake instead and enjoyed a kind of "Condensed Camping" experience-- swimming, hiking, geocaching, but minus all the hard prep and sleepless nights of 3 days in tent and cooking over the fire!  Are we onto a brilliant idea here???

There is always a bittersweet feeling the night before the First Day of School.  I'm thankful for another superb summer and for the reminder from Ecclesiastes 3:1 "There is is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens."  We praise God for a summer of rest and activity and trust He'll continue to guide, equip, and bless us in this new season of school!

Like Royalty

One last vacation post, folks!  If you couldn't tell from the 9 recaps you've already read, we were S.P.O.I.L.E.D on this trip by every single family member!  They took time off work, planned fun outings, made amazing food, hosted our children for sleepovers, gave up their beds, wrangled tickets to cool places, and treated us to a level of luxury we are not accustomed to.  It was fun to live like royalty for a week!  Here are a few last peeks...

Chris and Karen took us out to several amazingly delicious and super fun restaurants.  Below, you see just the adult siblings...because our children are now old enough to stay home alone together!!!

When we weren't dining at classy restaurants, we were eating insane things at home, like Bananas Foster for breakfast, flambeed by our own nephews!

Or we were being taught by our cousins how to make pico de gallo from scratch.  Don't you love the onion-chopping protective eye wear? ;)

Or we were finding the pantry and fridge stocked with fun treats our hosts knew we'd get a kick out of!

Dave's grandma, who turned 90 this summer!, graciously met up with us two different times so we could catch up with her.  She is a mighty woman of faith and we loved fancy lunching with her at Neiman Marcus while hearing about her vigilant scripture reading one day, and gathering around Chis and Karen's kitchen table to hear about the two husbands she's loved and lost another day.  I'm so thankful the kids know and love this great-grandma!

On a fun ladies shopping trip, Kris bought us all Lush bath bombs for "Farewell Baths" in the newly-remodeled, swimming pool sized bathtub at Chris and Karen's that we'd been enjoying all week!

Our last night was spent feasting on amazing Italian food and taking funny family pictures at Brio.

On that fun ladies shopping day, Kris and I were delighted to find this matching dress looked good on both of us, so now we're twinsies!

And once again we were sent off to the airport in style!  Those tears always start pricking at our eyes as we hug goodbye to everyone...and then the limo rolls up!  Excitement trumps sadness and my girls are just fine!  Such a gift.

We had to be back in CA for a wedding rehearsal that night, so this trip to O'Hare was an early morning one.  I remember leaning back in the limo, watching the sun rise and just thanking God that we have THE BEST family!  I love that a long vacation like this with them is not one we just endure, but one we desperately anticipate and find exceeding our expectations every time.  And not because our family treats us to so many worldly spoils either, but because they are the people in our lives whom we can laugh AND pray with; have deep conversations AND a crazy good time with; learn from AND teach.  I pray my girls always know this kind of family closeness!

Our Days Downtown

Here are a few more fabulous outings we enjoyed while staying with the fam in Chicago-- two different trips downtown!

Our first trip was a whole family affair.  We took the train and walked to Millenium and Maggie Daley Parks.  At Millenium Park we posed with The Bean.

And ate our picnic lunch while listening to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Open Pracitce in the bandshell.  It was so lovely!

(The Originals, as they like to call themselves!)

Then we headed over to Maggie Daley Park, where the kids and Dave rented roller blades for an hour on the famous Skating Ribbon that wound around the skyscrapers.  My girls looooove to skate!  This was a memorable place to do it!

Dave loved teaching Miles and Cole to skate on this day.  It is a lot of hard work and they did great, they did end up switching to scooters, though, which was fun too.

Maggie Daley has one cool playground after the next.  We let the kids run around while we adults found a shady hiding spot from which to spy on and startle them! ;)

The train ride home was full of rounds of Telephone and goofy texts across the train car.  A dinner of Giordano's capped it all off.  This was a great day!

Another night we were all sitting around the fire pit talking about what would be fun to do on our last full day in town.  We mentioned the Willis Tower Skydeck and our brother-in-law Chris said, "Just let me know if you want to do that!  Tonight I'm signing our multi-million dollar contract with the Willis Group!  I can request tickets before I sign!"  Um, yes please!  Once again, Chris and his connections hooking us up on this trip!  So, a group of us headed downtown again to check out the city from 103 stories above it.

(Did you know the Sears Tower is 262 Michael Jordans tall? ;)

The bad news is that this was our one shot to go, so we could do nothing about the fact that this was a zero visibility day.  We got to the top and saw nothing but the white clouds we were suspended in.  The good news is that no one else was on the Skydeck because of this so we had it practically to ourselves and could take as many silly pictures on The Ledge (glass rooms that hang off the side of the building) as we wanted!

Even though you couldn't see a thing, it was still freaky!  It took some people in our group a long time to work up the nerve to step out on that see-through floor.

Every now and then the clouds would break and we'd catch a glimpse of the city.  Years ago we actually saw this when the visibility was phenomenal, so we didn't feel like we were missing too much.  Especially since the tickets were free!

Between the Cubs game and two downtown days, in a mere week, we were excited to have crossed so much off our "Chicago Bucket List"...mostly thanks to Chris!