Catching Up...Get Ready, It's Gonna Be a Long One!

I know, I know...I've been a blogging slacker (as evidenced by the comments/guilt trips I'm hearing from others) There has been a lot going on in our lives since my last update on our California trip. And because this is a catch-up post, each event will not be given the proper amount of love it might've if I'd written while it was happening. Please don't take offense if your involvement doesn't get much press...it's not personal. Seriously, its been so long I have to look back in my calandar to see what I'm supposed to say!

We got back from Malibu on Monday and left for Chicago that Thursday. Pretty quick laundry turn-around! We went up for a leadership retreat weekend for the Summer Academy. It was a great time. We got to meet the kids from last year that came back to day hello and also spend time with the returners that are coming back to be student leaders this year with us. It was a real encouraging time to see how much the Academy meant to them and really fostered some excitement for this year. It's gonna be sweet to be a part of something so special. We had some classroom brainstorming sessions, played soccer tennis (ugh, the first of many soccer activities for me this summer), went out to eat, played games at the McKinleys, etc. It seems like a great group of college kids and we can't wait for them to get in town! Two weeks from today they'll be here!

The following weekend we had a visit from the Kellers! It was great to get some time with them and play games like we love to do. Unfortuantely I quickly became the most hated member of the family when I won most of the games (Dutch Blitz and Settlers)...and then they all accused me of rediculous things because they were losing. Finally, I started losing (in Family Feud) and all was well in the world again. We got to take them to McAlisters and Sonic, both requests of Amy. They also got to meet the Koontz and the Ross' which was fun to connect the two worlds like that.

Then, a week later, we went to a Carrie Underwood/Keith Urban concert! I must say, as someone that doesn't like country music, I loved it! Keith Urban was amazing and it was a great time. We went with Klotz and the Casey's and Nate.

The day after that my parents came down. And in Dad's true fashion, he did something for our house. We put a screen of the back door! As the Faro kids well know, the gift of cross breeze is unmatched. Aaron basically wanted to keep the back door open continuously until we left for Chicago. Apparently this should've been a present a long time ago. For the guy nobody can buy for, this idea should've hit me earlier I guess. Next on the agenda is to put one on the kitchen door that goes to the garage so we can have that door open when the game room in in action. Sadly, we weren't able to spend much time with my parents because of work and getting ready to leave again...

Aaron and I went to Tampa for the St. Anthony's Triathlon the next weekend. We signed him up for this in December because apparently it's a big deal...and it was! It was unreal. I'll describe a little bit but you won't really get a good enough picture of it. We drove down two days early and stayed with the Faraci grandparents the day or so before. They are adorable. We got many tours of the neighborhood and were VERY well fed. Of course. We drove the rest of the way to Tampa and met up with Buck and Ally the day before the race. Had to check in and drop off your stuff in the transition area. There were 4500 people in this race...it was an unbelievable spectacle. There were vendors all over and so many people walking around in their Lance outfits (good old tri gear). This race had some serious contenders...like the guys that won the olympic trials, and the world championships...so I guess thats why you need to sign up months in advance. He raced with the big boys this time.

There are few groups to register in...professional, elite, and age groups. We took a chance and registered him elite even though the competition was pretty serious. His goal was to prove that he belonged in the elite category and to beat one professional. And he did it! He placed in the middle of the elite group and beat a few pros! He came in 75th place overall out of 4500 and finished in 2 hours and 6 minutes. Buck did well with a personal best time too! I made the mistake of trying to take video insread of pictures for this race so there's not much to show cause I was pretty bad at it. Now, he needs to figure out if this hobby is gonna be around for a while....I'm not sure I'm ready for this...and neither is he (he almost missed the start of his wave of the race cause he took too long to set up in the morning...seriously, he ran to the starting point and just had enough time to take his clothes off and grab the goggles...nothing like preparing for months to almost miss the race!)

And we got back from the race with a week and half to pack up the house and leave for Chicago! It was a whirwind week for sure. My school was finishing up, I had to finish out my clients, I had all my "last hangout" dates, we had to pack up our stuff for three months, and get the house ready for other people to live in it till we get back. Craziness. Aaron had the brilliant idea of going to the mountains for a few days on the way up to relax and catch our breath before the next wave of the summer hits full force.

It was a great time...we had a day or so to relax and get ourselves connected which was apparently very necessary. I didn't even know how worked up I was till we got there and I had time to think. Then Brian, Lani, Andy and Lauren came up for Saturday and Sunday. That was so much fun. We went on hikes, played games, and jumped into freezing cold water :-) Lani has recently broken her ankle was such a trooper the whole weekend!!!! She went on all the outings and crutched her way around, or the boys carried her. She did not let that hot pink cast slow her down! We had a good time of sharing and prayer too before we left which was awesome. It was a really sweet time of getting to know eachother on a deeper level and praying for good friends. I really love our friends!

Highlight of the weekend....no question...Lauren jumping into the base of the waterfall without any warning. We went to this water fall that people jump off of. We talked about jumping and realized we were all too scared cause its high and you can't see where you're jumping to and the water is freezing right now. So we walk down to the base of the water fall and Aaron is talking about want to go swimming. Lauren walks down and says "I think I'll just feel the water". And then she proceeds to jump in with her clothes on! And it took all of 5 seconds for the Aaron, Brian, and I to do the same things after she did it. And the water was FREEZING! Andy and Lani stayed nice and warm on the rocks watching us all act like fools in the cold water. Good times.

After they left Aaron and I had one more night there before the 11.5 hour drive up here. The drive actually wasn't too bad (says the girl that drove less than 3 hours of it). We got up about dinner time, had dinner at Rick's house and then went to our host family's house. They live about 25 minutes from the office here. A bit of a drive but they are awesome people and the set up there is good. They are in their late 60's with all grown kids. We basically have the whole downstairs floor of the house which has our bedroom, bathroom, and den with a tv, and even a tiny kitchen! Not bad considering I was preparing myself to live in a tiny bedroom right next to someone's 3 year old screaming kid. Pleasantly blessed!

So far we've been getting organized here in the office, helped out with the annual golf fundraiser yesterday, and are getting our visa applications out. Please pray for that process as it is never smooth and we are concerned our's won't get back in time. Probably not a good thing to have the leaders stay home without visas for Brazil! We overnighted it today and hope it all works out well!

Other random info...I got all A's in school last semester (not sure its worth it, I might shoot for B's next time), we've had time at night to relax and play tennis and take long bike rides which has been nice. There are tons of nice trails and parks here. Umm, a board member heard me talking about wanting a summer gym membership and bought me one at the auction. How nice is that?!?! He redeemed it at pick up and turned around and gave it right back to me. What a blessing to have that for the summer! What else...I think that's it for now! Thank you for all your prayers for the summer and keep them coming. We have lots ot do and not a lot of time to do it (true Eagles fashion). And for all you blog stalkers out there...there is a new blog to stalk. We made one for the summer for all the families to check so we'll be putting pictures and stories up for the summer. So you can check that one to keep up to date on what we're doing with the Academy! The website is http://chicagoacademy08.blogspot.com/

Things to pray for...

• safe travel for the kids here
  
• visa applications
  
• the boys staying at my house...and hopefully actually cleaning it!

Mali-beautiful!

So its been over a week since we got home but due to other travels (Chicago leadership weekend) the California vacation update is late. The trip was AMAZING. First off....let me just plug Sky Bus Airlines. Not sure who knows about them but the first 10 seats on every flight are 10 bucks and then they go up from there. You basically need to be waiting at your computer for months to get those but you can still get them really cheap if you are only moderately addicted to checking the website....which is what mitch was doing. So we got roundtrip tickets direct from NC to LA for $150. We were pretty happy about that. We went out to visit and stay with Randy a Christie who are at Pepperdine for law school. Geography lesson: Pepperdine campus sits in mountains and on bluffs over looking the beach in Malibu.

So we get there tuesday and actually go sit in on one of randy's classes. And I feel asleep in my first law class. (so probably my last) Law school is not for everyone. But before I fell asleep I noticed a few things that are way different than I remember from college. Nobody uses paper. Everyone had a laptop in class (i mean everyone) and thats how they take notes. And i only saw two or three people on you tube, facebook, etc...there's no way i could be in a boring class and actually only takes notes with my computer in front of me. So the ticking on the laptops was a little hint as to when the professor was saying anything important. Crazy.

We did a bunch of stuff there and I don't really remember what days now thats its been a while so it'll be a summary through pictures including the beach, hikes, beach bocce, beach bike tours, etc...

a little hiking on the bluffs over the beach and the rich people's houses...

and some beach bocce...

randy and mitch had tickets to the anaheim march madness games and christie had work so aaron and i spent some time on the beach and hiked back behind the campus while everone was gone...

this monument was built cause one of the people that dies in the pentagon plane crash in 2001 was a student at pepperdine...it was a neat place with bible verses, flowing water, and flowers up overlooking campus and the mountains and beach. we hiked up to up one morning.

the next day we were all together and went to go do the hollywood hike...it was a pretty lame hike cause you basically walked up a gravel or paved path but it was cool to go there. can't go near hollywood and not go see the sign i guess. that day we also drive down rodeo drive, through beverly hills and saw the stars on the sidewalk. again, things we weren't too interested in to spend a whole day but took some time to drive through. poor randy....they're right when they talk about LA traffic...it took way too long and all he wanted to do was get home to watch the games. :-(

a redeeming factor to that day was diddy reese....my personal heaven. you walk in and pick two homemade cookies, and a flavor of ice cream and they make you a ice cream cookie sandwhich for a dollar fifty!!! yup, we went twice.

this was definately a highlight of the trip. saturday the boys went back to the basketball games and aaron, christie and i took a sweet bike ride. there's this path that runs from the santa monica area all the way down the coast. it is literally a path in the sand on the beaches. so we started near the santa monica pier and rode down about 10 miles to marina del ray and then came back. during thse travels we saw some amazing scenery. the beach of course...

the santa monica pier...

the rowing and sailboats area in marina del ray...

and then....the mayhem also known as venice beach. this picture doesn't even come close to showing the strange things that go on at venice beach. the picture is of a roller skating dance crew. weird but kinda cool. we saw a pogo stick jumper with an audience, lots of burnouts on the lawns, the outdoor gym, etc. There was so much going on and so many people milling around it was incredible. we didn't stop so i don't have many pictures because i don't think we qualify as being strange enough to be there.

one night we went to eat dinner at a place called dukes. dukes has half price entrees between four and six so we hit that up and sat out on the deck looking at the water. it was kinda cod outside for me but it was better than being inside with the random hula dancers.

and sunday morning we had a sweet easter service. we walked from campus across the street to the church. they lost their building in the fire and set up a huge tent to hold easter service overlooking the ocean. it was beautiful and a gorgeous day.

and we had this nice idea of going on a hike sunday after gorging ourselves on easter dinner. christie cooked up a storm (and had been all week) and we ate a lot of good food. then we went on a fabulous, yet terrifying hike. we hiked for a while and reached a waterfall. but there were other, better waterfalls higher up so we kept hiking higher. the hike got harder and even got pretty scary at the top. i hope my mother doesn't read this cause she will never stop worrying. there was a point that if you slipped on the gravel) like we had been doing on the way up) you could fall off the side of the mountain. and die. seriously. we were trying to hold on to bushes and brush to give ourselves more stability. there were points where it was not as bad and then times i really as nervous. poor aaron...he had his running flats on with no tread left s he was sliding all over the place. obviously we didn't exactly have hands free to capture these life changing moments but mitch caught a picture from behind us on one of the more stable travels down.

all in all...this trip was amazing! as aaron mentioned one time during the week. "best three hundred dollars we ever spent". and he was right. it was a great time of being active out in nice weather with friends we haven't seen in a while. love it.

next update to come...chicago leadership update from last weekend....and then the keller visit this coming weekend!

playing catch-up

FIRST OFF.....I'M 27 NOW! :-)

once again, its been a while since i've updated the blog. that should give you a clue as to how much homeowrk i've been doing :-( too much. but its been a good few weeks. my parents were here in february and we got the tile floor down in the kitchen! good times. i love it!





we celebrated our birthdays a little early while they were here too. went to maggiano's for dinner and then back to their house for presents. i got some clothes and movies and aaron got socks (of course) and an odometer for his bike.

then on my actual birthday aaron and i went out for dinner and then he had friends show up at our house for dessert. the harveys, the koontzs, the caseys, and mitch. we seriously celebrated my birthday for days. with my parents being here early and then celebrating late with the ross', i've been eating "birthday dessert" for an entire week. i'll be paying for that in the gym for a while. but its worth it i think.

we also had a bridal shower for molly at our house last weekend. molly and ross are moving back to dallas this week and are getting married in may. we're sad but it was a really nice way to say goodbye and get her "ready" for married life. we had a lot of good discussion and encouragement for her and it was a really nice time. of course we played some scandalous games...the pictures from which are not blog safe so they will not appear here. but it was good to have a girls night like that.

then the ross' were nice enough to take us out to dinner for our birthdays saturday. we went to a nice place called brio (thanks to charlotte christian coaching) :-) and as you can see below....i ordered a whole chicken, thats right a whole one. didn't really know what i was getting myself into. i've already eaten three full meals out of it and i'm not done.



and then on the flip side for dessert the ross' shared something so small they couldn't even get both their spoons in it at once. who was the pig at the table??? yup, the birthday girl! :-)


and on another surpise note...T-Money came into town saturday morning! josh had a game down here and they were staying close to the mall so i drove out and got to see her for breakfast. what a sweet surpirse visit that was!!! the only problem was that it didn't seem long enough...gotta plan some longer visits soon!

aaron had another race last weekend too. this was a duathlon. run 5 miles, bike 33 miles, run another 5 miles. this was the longest bike race he's done yet. he did pretty well of course. he came in fifth overall and won his age group! (and got the cheesiest medal i've ever seen)


then on sunday we went on a little hike with mitch and sarah. sarah's up from atlanta since her school is out for spring break. its been so fun to have her here! imagine how much fun mitch thinks it is :-) sunday was a gorgeous day so we took advantage and got some outdoor activity.




well, i think that about covers it for now! next on the agenda is our trip to california later this month and then the leadership weekend in chicago right after, and then a visit from the kellers after that! more good times to come!

School Woes

so i'm in full swing with school these days....let me give you more of a mental picture of what that means. i get up and go to work at 7:30 and get out about 1:00 each day. at that point, i work out and then come home and sit on the couch doing homework until i go back for more clients at dinner time. thats basically every day except friday which has more time devoted to homework.

doesn't sounds that bad does it? well, some days it is. i'm taking three classes and two of the three are very manageable. i would really only have to devote one full day to get it all done for those two. but my third class is a nightmare. its about managing non-profit organizations...i know, you can imagine how boring that is because it sounds insanely boring. well, it is.

i do not have a business or corporate background at all and thats making this class harder. i'm acting as a consultant for the YMCA for our project, doing all this analysis. well, i don't even know what all the business terms are and i definately don't know how to do anything with them. this is the first time i'm hearing things like swot anlysis, internal and external environmental scans, strategic planning, capacity building, etc. and i don't care. i'm not interested in managing a non-profit organization...i don't want to manage anyone or anything. i rather be the one doing the hands on work.

all that to say...i'm spending hours a day trying to figure all this out...post 3 page papers about it on our discussion boards, and then write 8 page papers about it each week. ugh. not to worry though...if you even have questions about managing non-profit organization, oh, i'm your girl!

if it wasn't for this class, i'd think getting your masters was easy!

Heck Yeah!

this post is purely to express my joy on the giants underdog extravaganza! there's some sweet satisfaction in the upset and sweet justice that the team caught cheating did not win it all in the end. love my giants :-)