Class of 99

The weekend before we moved to Indianapolis, Brian and I got to attend our ten year class reunion. Since we never dated each other in high school, our marriage was definitely a surprise to a few people!

My friend Kristin (our senior class president) and I had been planning the event for more than a year, but even with a lot of planning, you can never be too sure how things like that will go. Thankfully, we were pleasantly surprised - the day could not have gone more smoothly!

We had 50 people in our graduating class and about half of our class made it to the reunion. A lot of our class still lives in Kansas, but people also traveled in from Arkansas, Nebraska, Washington state and even Connecticut!

We started the day at Trinity with an open house and lunch. We had encouraged people to bring their whole families, so it was super fun to meet not only spouses, but all of the kiddos (some as old as 5 or 6)! A few teachers also attended, which was great. Nu-Way (a local favorite that serves "crumbly" hamburgers) catered the meal and the entire building was open so everyone could roam around and discover everything that has changed during the last ten years.

That evening, we met for dinner at Yia Yia's. We got to use their beautiful back room and it turned out to be the perfect venue. After dinner, we played a couple of cheezy, but really funny, games, and then watched a pretty hilarious video of old high school pics.

We wrapped everything up around 9:30, but half of the group stayed and talked until midnight when the restaurant closed. It truly was a great day of catching up with old friends and reminiscing about the good old days. We were blessed with such a great class, and it was neat to see that even after ten years, our common bond in Christ is as strong as ever.

If you're interested in seeing more pictures, here's a gallery with quite a few more!

Four weeks later...

I am finally posting pictures of the inside of our house! We're still not completely unpacked, but I don't know if we ever will be, so I decided today that enough is enough and it's time to share some pictures! Our poor families have been waiting weeks to see this - sorry everyone!

I uploaded a gallery of images if you'd like to take a peek! If you click on the first one, it will open up to be a full-screen slideshow. And then if you click the little "i" in the circle, you can read a little caption so you'll know what you are looking at.

I really can't believe that I didn't take pictures before we started attacking everything - I'm just kicking myself now. It wasn't completely awful, but it definitely wasn't pretty. In the past four weeks we (with the gracious help of my mom and Brian's dad) have, among other things:

- painted the master bedroom

- painted my office

- painted the guest room

- painted woodwork and trim

- turned a basement room infested with cobwebs, spiders and mice into a pleasant, non-scary laundry room

- cleared the garage of a HEAP of junk that hadn't seen daylight for years, such as rusty skis, old ski boots, coca-cola lamps and street lights (random? yes!) We now call the garage our barn. We fell in love with barns while living in Pennsylvania last summer, and since this garage is detached from the house, it might be the closest thing we ever have to a real barn!

- fixed all of the doorknobs in the entire house (the adorable vintage knobs were locking us inside - definitely a fire hazard!)

- installed a gate in the backyard - now Stryder has a completely fenced-in yard

- planted a garden, killed some serious weeds and accomplished a lot of other yard work

- installed closet shelving in the basement guest room

We also got to host our first out-of-town guests last weekend, which was so fun! Brian's aunt, uncle and cousins (the Betchers) were driving from a family reunion in Kansas City back to their home in Virginia. Our house was the perfect halfway stopping point, so they got to spend the night with us and break in our guest room.

Since we've been here, we've been running out of hot water about 3 minutes into our showers - yikes! Today, our landlord had a new hot water heater installed. You better believe I'll be in the shower at least 20 minutes tonight! We're also getting a new refrigerator because most of the shelving in ours has broken. But other than that, and a few more boxes left to unpack, we're pretty much finished.

For 24 months, at least. :)

A house of hope

I'm sure most of you have heard about the tragic loss that Steven Curtis Chapman and his family experienced a little more than a year ago. What you may not have heard yet is specifically how God is already using their situation to bring Chinese children to Himself!

After Maria's death, donations of love poured into the Chapmans from people all over the world. They have chosen to use this money to build Maria's Big House of Hope (Maria loved the song "Big House" by Audio Adrenaline). The six story building is located in Luoyang, which is one of the poorest provinces in all of China. It is equipped with everything needed to care for orphans who are in need of surgeries or other specialized medical attention.

My brother, Austin, has been in China for the past two weeks with the entire Chapman family, documenting with photos and video the groundbreaking of this amazing facility. Here's a super neat post with some powerful images and video taken the day they officially opened the doors to MBHOH.

If you'd like to follow the rest of their trip (they've been all over China, including giving a concert to people affected by the huge earthquake a year ago), check out Austin's blog. As Brian and I would love to adopt from China someday, we are so excited by the way the Lord is working there. It's always encouraging for us to see believers on the other side of the world, living and doing the Lord's will in the midst of sometimes extraordinary odds. I hope you are as uplifted, and challenged, by these pictures and stories as we are!

This has to be one of my favorites! Wow.

Good news for the dependent

I was particularly pleased to read this article, following three weeks where my caffeine intake has been, um, slightly upped.

If you don't want to read it, here's the jist:

Three large cups of coffee a day could help to slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease and even reverse the condition, researchers say.

Did you get that? Three large cups of coffee actually helps your brain (I'm sure the same goes for Diet Dr. Pepper, my other caffeine-infused favorite)! Rejoice with me!

My goal is to have pictures of our house up soon, hopefully by the end of the week. And then, maybe, just maybe if I drink enough caffeine, I can also get back into a regular blogging routine.