Our weekend in a nutshell... a really big nutshell.

So, my dad was home from Iraq for 2 weeks, which was great! Chris and I wanted to spend as much time with him as we could, so this is what our lives looked like from last Tuesday to today:

Tuesday night: drive to Council Bluffs to visit
Wednesday morning (early): Drive back to DSM for work
Thursday night: Drive to Council bluffs
Saturday afternoon: Drive back to DSM
Monday morning/early afternoon: Drive to Omaha to visit the Victors, then to CB to visit the Rinaldi's
This morning: Drive back to DSM for work
(for a more detailed look at our weekend, skip to the bottom part in square brackets)

That's a lot of driving... but it was worth it :) And after all that you'd think, "Man, they probably won't want to drive at all for a month!" But... we're actually driving to Kentucky on Thursday night to visit our friend Brent, from college.

We are pretty excited about our little mini vacation this weekend to Kentucky. We've only been there once, for Brent's wedding, and we didn't get to spend much time there. Brent said there are some waterfalls near where they live, so we are planning on checking those out. Not sure what else we'll do, but I'm sure it will be fun! Plus, we really enjoy road tripping together, and we're renting a car so we don't have to worry about the miles building up on our own :)

Other things of note: We're keeping busy with youth events and road trips this summer. Between June 5 and August 7, we have virtually no free weekends. I take that back, I get back from a mission trip July 24 and we have nothing scheduled for that weekend. Unfortunately, the youth events I have planned depend on youth signing up for them, and I haven't had anyone sign up yet :( Hopefully that starts to happen soon so I can get some plans finalized.

Chris is still hard at work doing his two-jobs-for-the-price-of-one. Sometimes he gets pretty stressed, but I think he deals with it pretty well. We're just thankful he has a job. Went to lunch with one of my high schoolers (except she graduated so now she's not a high schooler!) and the waitress divulged that she was being laid off from her night job. No one is immune, and we are so grateful to have the jobs we do.

Welp, thanks for reading. Keep in touch and stuff.




[The last post talked a bit about the first two days (Thursday and Friday). Saturday morning we went with my parents to have breakfast at my favorite cafe ever (Mia Latte in downtown Omaha). We arrived to a sign which read "Closed until further notice." Sad!! I loved that place. There food was delicious, they had a billion kinds of tea, and the people were really nice. :( Stupid economy. Anyway, we skipped the breakfast thing since it was actually about 11:00 by that point and headed down to the Old Market for the Farmer's Market. Omaha's is really good, and there is always a ton of people there. We bought a couple pastries for "brunch," and then mosied on through the different tents of produce. After the market we went to a Mediterranean and an Indian food market shop thing (two separate stores, same strip mall), to get some stuff for my next book club meeting. We're reading "The Bookseller of Kabul." It's pretty interesting. Next we went to have a delicious lunch and then we headed home. My parents came out to DSM too, to visit my aunt.

That evening we went to a dance recital in which one of my 8th graders was performing, and it was pretty fun. Lots of neat dances. We left there around 9 and headed to my aunts for a bit of visiting before bed. Sunday was church/work as usual, followed by 3 grad parties. Then we went to my aunt's again and walked with her, my cousins and my parents around Saylorville Lake. Got in the pool after that (Chris did, I did not), and roasted hot dogs for dinner. Then we left my aunt's for youth group, after which we returned to my aunts for a bit more visiting. Monday morning my parents took us to breakfast/lunch at the Machine Shed (mmmm), and then we all headed back toward Omaha, at which point Chris and I went to his dad's for a little cookout. We were happy to see his family, as we hadn't in a while, and were happily surprised to find his grandpa there when we pulled up.

Later that evening we went to Chris's grandparents' house to retreive a disc his granpa had made for us. The disc contains some pictures and info for a family tree which Chris has been wondering about for a while. We haven't gotten to look at it yet, but we are excited to. We've already learned some interesting things about his family... Turns out, Chris's great grandpa invented the first road sander (truck that throws sand in winter)!

Spent last night at my parents, said goodbye to my dad who is heading back to Iraq tomorrow, and then went to bed. Headed home early this morning and now here we are...]