Fall 2017

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We hadn't done much and then school started up again and I was so focused on my thesis novel and other schoolwork that I didn't give any thought to the blog. August passed by in somewhat of a blur, and since we had no more money after our busy summer, we didn't do much other than watch anything we could think of on Netflix and AmazonPrime. We did, however, go check out the Chicago Air and Water show and got a little sunburned.

After so many years of living here and skating up to the lagoons, we finally went canoeing there over Labor Day weekend. I haven't been in years, but I ended up being the one giving Lawrence a lesson on how to paddle. I also discovered how weak I am in the arms. We were out there for less than an hour and my arms were exhausted.

We went apple picking again, because we can and we like apples. We had lunch at the homestyle restaurant at the orchard before we picked apples, and then it poured rain on us through the entirety of our apple picking, but it was kind of fun. We ate as many as we could before they started to turn and then I turned them into bourbon applesauce in our slow cooker.

I did end up getting a pretty bad head cold on the way home from the orchard, but when it finally cleared up like 2 weeks later, some friends of ours had a tiny baby that we got to meet and snuggle for a bit. She is honestly the smallest baby I've ever seen, not quite 7lbs when she was born. I guess everyone I know just makes big babies.

I got promoted to Branch Manager at my office because my coworker (and former manager) moved to Paris, France. So I got to transition to being the boss and experience hiring someone. I did find someone and she's working out well. Also, the uptick in funds is big plus--it's given us the freedom to finally buy a new mattress. We had been on a crappy IKEA full-size mattress, and upgraded to a much nicer queen-size (it's actually kind of amazing what an extra six inches of space can do for you.)

I managed to finish my thesis novel--all 325 pages of it--before the submission due date, which was the day after Halloween. So we didn't do anything really for Halloween other than attend a church party for an hour or so. But it was like a huge weight lifted off me to get the thesis done and turned in. It's not all that helpful that I still have a few weeks of classes and other assignments though, because now I have no motivation to do them, but Graduation is coming, just around the corner now, another month or so and I will officially have a Master's degree.

In celebration, I bought myself a fancy new camera, one that I've been wanting for a decade--a Canon Rebel EOS. It's pretty nifty, and we've had fun playing around with it.

Thanksgiving was quiet and relaxing. It was just us two at home, I made a decent spread complete with a turkey breast, candied yams, stuffing and green bean casserole. I didn't cook the whole rest of the 4 day weekend and it took us over a week to eat all the Turkey Day leftovers. We had to go on several walks over the weekend to dislodge all the food sitting in our guts.


We went out that Saturday with some friends and their toddler to a neighborhood tree lighting and we picked up another little tree. So now Autumn is heading behind us and we are barreling into winter, from the end of one chapter and into another!

P.S!!!! I have decided to change our Blog website, as I prefer the interface of a different website as opposed to this one, so be on the lookout for that!