Read ahead!

I've just spent the last hour and a half updating our blog..... finally. Read ahead to find out what we've been up to this month!

Summerfest 2009

This evening was our second annual "Summerfest" at Five Oaks Church. Here are a few pictures from the event!

The first hour, we volunteered...

Melissa helped roast marshmallows at the firepit.

While David took pictures of his shadow (and other things as well).

After that we enjoyed burgers and brats with our friends and finished the evening with a little improv comedy with Comedy Sportz. It was a fun time and we were blessed with beautiful weather for the event!

Garden update

Well, some things in our vegetable garden seem to be doing very well, while other things gave up quite a while ago. On Friday we were able to harvest our first fruits of the garden. I'd never grown broccoli before so I wasn't real sure what I was getting into. It was looking like it was ready to harvest, so I did a little research online first just to be sure. After cutting the heads off (that sounds bad, doesn't it?), I brought them inside and gave them a warm bath in water with vinegar because I'd read online that would help rid the broccoli of any stowaways. Post bath, there were a few at the bottom of the sink so I assumed we were good to go, chopped up the broccoli and proceeded to steam away. As I was plating up the broccoli, I noticed a slightly pale looking caterpillar on one of my pieces and nearly lost my appetite altogether. We spent the next 5 minutes meticulously inspecting every piece of broccoli for more caterpillars and found 2 more and some kind of egg sack (eek!). We traded plates and double inspected each other's broccoli. Finally, we worked up the courage to still eat it, even though it was mostly cold by that point. The verdict: in spite of the uneasy feeling we had eating food that we'd just picked caterpillars out of, it was better than any broccoli we'd ever eaten from the grocery store. I just learned a lesson that day. Next time I will inspect my broccoli MUCH more thoroughly before ever considering cooking it. It makes me think a little about how carelessly I "wash" the broccoli I bring home from the store..... hmmmm.

To Indiana and Back

Two weeks ago we made a spontaneous trip down to Indiana and back. David's dad ended up in the hospital in Ft. Wayne for a couple of days and we thought he was going to require some pretty serious surgery for a while. He broke his nose in a few places and had several ruptured/bulged discs in his neck from a fall. Thankfully the Lord healed him enough that surgery didn't look necessary and the doctors have decided to see how things heal on their own. By the time David and I arrived and saw him, he was doing so much better we teased David's mom that it was all just some big elaborate (expensive) hoax just to get us down there. Once we were down there, we decided to just make a vacation out of it and stayed for several days. It was good to be able to visit with some family and see our nieces again. On our last night there we were able to pop on over to Ivanhoes for some ice cream and strawberry shortcake.

David's cup raneth over and made a very big mess!

Instead of driving straight home (about an 11 hour drive), we decided to split up the trip and spend the night in Chicago. We pricelined a hotel in Schaumburg for $35. Though my family lived in the Chicago area for 10 years, it was all after I graduated from high school so I've come to discover that I had somehow missed out on some Chicago staples. So we made a point to stay in the area long enough for 3 meals. We had lunch at Portillos so I could enjoy my Chicago style hotdog....



We had dinner at our favorite restraunt Rosebuds on Rush after watching Cirque Shanghii on Navy Pier. (no pictures of dinner or the show...)

And we had lunch the next day at Giordannos for my first authentic Chicago style deep dish pizza.


This post makes it look like we live for food. Well, when we're on vacation.... we kind of do!

Small Group Twins game

A few weeks ago, a small group of our "small" group went to the Twins v. Yankees game in Minneapolis. Our seats were really good (not really)! This should give you an idea of what I mean...

The Yankees smoked us pretty bad and most of the fans left the stadium long before the end of the game. You can see here how we were pretty much the only ones left in the last inning.

That was ok though; we had fun anyway!