Hahns... Files... Trips to Waterloo

It has been a while again. Time to play catch up. Not as bad as some other times which is nice. It seems we have become quite popular since moving to Syracuse. We have had quite a bit of company which has been a lot of fun. I guess it helps that we have a bit more space for people to be in our current apartment compared to the little house we were living in in Rochester. Sigh... how I wish we could stay in this apartment...

Anyway, last weekend our friends the Hahns who are friends of ours from our first year at Houghton came up to visit us. It was so great to see them. It had been almost 2 years. They came on Friday evening and enjoyed my birthday dinner of chicken fajitas on navajo fry bread with us (so yummy!) and stayed until Sunday morning after church. On Saturday we all went to the Regional Market (not nearly as cool as the Public Market but OK) to check it out. While there we got to look around at a lot of neat stuff and bought a tomato plant. It was pretty big and already had some flowers on it (it has itty bitty tomatoes on it now, we are very excited!) On Saturday evening we hosted our Domino's American Legend houseparty and got all 6 American Legends pizzas to try and share with our guests. Our neighbors from next door and downstairs came as well as my aunt and uncle and cousin and her little guy and friend. We had a lot of fun and the pizzas were very yummy! It was great to spend time with Sam and Jen, get reacquainted and catch up some on their lives. I guess one benefit of moving a lot is that we get to meet and make new friends everywhere we go. The common bond of Christ helps keep those relationships solid even when it is months or years between visits or talks.

We have been plugging away at school this week. I know that it will be harder for the kids to want to focus on school in the mornings once the neighbors come back from their vacation so I am trying to keep them focused and working now. We have made some progress and have had some fun in the process. Hannah is improving every day in reading and I really think that she will be reading on her own by the end of the summer which is very exciting.

Glenn has been studying hard. He had his first exam on the Wednesday before last and did really well on it. It was a confidence booster for him. After being rejected so many times and by so many schools it was good for him to do so well on his first exam in medical school to help him believe in himself again though he does know that it is all only by God's grace.

On Friday we had another visit from friends from Rochester. Karen, Priscilla and Gabe came for Gabe to be able to spend part of his birthday with Caleb. We had fun visiting with them and hanging out at our house and eating lunch then we headed to the zoo (it is completely reciprocal with Seneca Park Zoo memberships if anyone else wants to come out and go to the zoo with us). We had to dodge some raindrops but it was fun.

The kids and I had to make a couple of trips to Waterloo this week. The first one was unplanned. We got school work done in a hurry on Wednesday morning and headed to Waterloo to sign some paperwork that I had to sign during business hours then spent the afternoon hanging out with my grandparents at their pool. Some cousins and Uncle Russ stopped by to swim too. As we were leaving AmyJo and Ehren stopped by with two puppies. We were already planning on heading to Waterloo yesterday for a party at Phoebe's house. It was fun to see her and other friends while I was there and the 8 kids that came with their moms all played really well together in the backyard while Leah watched them. After the party the kids and I headed up "to meet the puppies" which really meant we went to see Paul and AmyJo and Kyle. We visited with them for a while then moved our little party to Grandma & Grandpa Nelsons' for a pool-side picnic. It always goes this way - feast or famine. We had missed seeing Grandma & Grandpa in all of our trips between Rochester and Syracuse in our moving process because they were never available as we were passing through. It was great to spend 2 afternoons with them and Grandma even made me birthday cupcakes :). It has been years since someone else made me a birthday cake so that was a nice "surprise" :)

This week we also have continued our search for a home. We went to see a couple on Thursday but the first one we weren't even allowed to look at because the landlord "doesn't rent to people with children" (I know, it is illegal, but I don't really want to rent from her if she has a problem with kids, there would just be problems the whole time we lived there) and the other one was slightly larger than our little house on Meadowbrook but pretty gross, smelled of cat pee, and had basically no kitchen. I have been pretty discouraged this week but I have looked back through my blog at where we have been over the last several years and seen how God has faithfully come through over and over again and I am trusting Him to do it again.

So for this coming week we will continue to look for a place to live so we won't be living in a box (I guess it would take several boxes) when August 3rd rolls around and continue to get more school work accomplished while Glenn prepares for his next exam which will be Thursday then he has a 3 day weekend! We don't know yet what we are doing but we are hoping to get away somewhere.

I'll try to keep up better with this so it isn't such a book everytime. No promises though. Until next time.... keep l@@king up :)