'tis the season

what's black, red, and itchy all over?

matt's sweater!

this past weekend we went to an ugly sweater bunko party and i think we did a pretty good job with the ugly part. you can't see it from the picture, but my sweater came complete with puff balls on the christmas tree, courtesy of the 8th grade social studies teacher who wears a different ugly sweater every day of school from december 1 until christmas vacation. matt wore this same sweater to school on friday for their ugly sweater competition and came home with the "itchiest sweater" award.


we have another ugly sweater party coming up with our small group from our church, and i'm going to wear pam's sweater for that party. there are more beads on this sweater than lights on a christmas tree!


the rest of our evenings are usually filled in the gym (big surprise, huh?) between practices and games, we are definitely getting our fill of basketball this winter. my team is tons of fun to coach, which is what really makes the season enjoyable...an undefeated record helps things out a little bit too :). but please don't think i'm being cocky...these girls are the ones making me look pretty good!

well, christmas break starts friday! we are heading out to minnesota, then dropping down to the farm for a couple days and finishing off our travels in michigan for christmas day. it will be a busy break with lots of great time with family and friends! so for the few days we will be home around the holidays we did a little bit of decorating in our apartment, and even got a tree this year to put our presents under.

end and begin

today i am officially 1/4 of the way to getting my teaching certificate....all the papers are handed in and i just gave my last presentation today. now i'm on break until january 12 and loving the idea of this big thanksgiving and christmas break! the quarter went by really fast so if the rest of it goes this quickly...student teaching will be here before i know it!

we also had our first basketball game tonight. i'm coaching the freshmen girls team - we are small in numbers but big in talent. it's going to be fun...and when you only have 7 girls, you definitely don't have to worry about playing time questions!

i hope everyone has a very safe and happy Thanksgiving!

fall fun

here's a little look at our fall....

the volleyball team went to Feed My Starving Children. it's a place that assembles dry food packs and sends them out to starving children all over the world. it's a great organization and we had a great time working there as a team...and i must say, look pretty good in our hair nets.

our volleyball team is now in regional playoffs. we won our first 2 games thursday night against chicago dyett and lisle high school. we are now in the regional championship and our next game is saturday against westmont. the girls are playing well so i'm hoping the game outcome matches what we can do.


last weekend we went to pam's birthday party. since we don't dress up to go out at night that often, i figured i better take a picture of the event. :)

and fall would not be complete without pumpkin carving! i will fully admit that matt was the master artist of our pumpkin....my contribution was cleaning out all the gunk.

metrodome magic

for those of you watching the twins vs. tigers game and know my husband's extreme dedication to the minnesota twins, you could probably imagine what it was like in the van schepen apartment at about 8:45 pm tonight. picture this....matt running around the living room screaming, getting 5 consecutive phone calls and 2 texts....by the end he collapses in his lazy boy, out of breath from the excitement. it was a good thing i came home from my volleyball game when i did or i fear he would not have eaten supper until the game was over. it's like we had the metrodome magic right here in willowbrook illinois. go twins!

busy bee

when people ask me what i'm up to these days, i feel like i need 5 minutes to explain myself, so i usually end up saying "oh a bunch of things." and that's really why i haven't had time to write anything in quite a while. the short answer is, it's a mix of the condo association, school, volleyball, and observation hours for school.....my planner and i are best friends.

volleyball is going really well. right now we are 12-5 and just getting into the conference games of our season, but the regular season is also just about 1/2 over - it's crazy how fast it's been going. here's a picture of the team...

let the season begin

tomorrow is the official start to my first varsity volleyball coaching season. i am expecting as many as 20 girls to tryout, and with only 15 uniforms in my posession (and wanting to only have a 12-14 person team), i have my work cut out for me. i already forewarned matt that he may need to have an super listening ear and extra amount of patience for me in the next 3 days. and to his credit, he has been a wonderful husband so far as i throw out scenarios and volleyball jargon that probably interests him about as much as i understand his twins strategy talks.

school meetings start for matt next monday with school starting next wednesday. so before our lives get really busy once again, we decided to go to a kane county cougars game. the game was a great and it was a beautiful summer night, complete with a magic show and fireworks after the game. but only at a minor league game will an ottoman empire band be featured as the pre-game show......wouldn't this get you excited for a baseball game?

christoffels camping

about 1 1/2 weeks ago, matt and i headed out to minnesota/south dakota for a little summer vacation for the christoffels family camping in yankton, sd and then made a short visit to edgerton. i never grew up doing much camping - we were always the family that visited those who were camping, sat around the campfire for a good long time, and then headed back to our own beds. but i thouroughly enjoyed being outside for 3 straight days and managed to come away with only 10 bug bites, a peeling nose, and probably a few extra pounds from all the great food.

i don't have many pictures, but here's matt trying to get tucker to play baseball with him.

and donna and i showing off our bean bag tournament trophy. you can't see it, but there's a spinning elephant on top that lights up - it's quite the trophy.

before camping we made a stop in sioux falls to visit tim, chels, jeremiah, and my south dakota parents, jerry and glady gerdes. it's so nice that we can still meet up, since chicago and zuni are quite a few miles apart! we also got to meet up with a bj and jill and kyle and bri for supper - it's always good to catch up with old friends.

and even before we got to sioux falls, we made a stop that i've been waiting to make for 6 years now. if you've ever taken interstate 680 west, you know what i'm talking about. it's that scenic view that always seems to be open when i'm not driving past or the weather's too bad to make it worthwhile. but this time it was open and the weather was beautiful and we made a little visit to the top of the tower. it was just a small pleasure to break up our trip a little....

all in all it was a great trip - very relaxing and exactly what i needed! life is back to norm in chicagoland now and volleyball tryouts start in less than 2 weeks!

happy birthday to matt

matt's birthday was on thursday + i didn't work on friday = a birthday trip to the field of dreams

matt couldn't believe that i had lived in iowa my whole life and never been to the field of dreams. actually, no one in our family has. so we all piled into the car and took a leisurely drive to dyersville. it was an absolutely beautiful day to play ball. while we were there we also saw a bride a groom come take pictures...needless to say, once matt saw that, he was a little jealous.


i couldn't believe how tall the corn was already - i don't have it as my gauge of seasons passing anymore.

one thing in particular stuck out to me this weekend....color. after spending so much time surrounded by buildings and cars, i forget how beautiful the country is. miles and miles of the deepest green fields and trees, flowing up and down the hills and valleys....bright blue skys after finally making it out of a huge storm....a full sunset with only a barn or tree in the background. God's beauty truly amazes me.


and on a totally random note....as i was coming back from the grocery store today, i was about to pull onto our street when a momma duck jetted into the intersection, lagging behind her babies that had already crossed (i always thought she lead...but who knows). anyway, i found it so ironic that this small bird held up 4 lanes of impatient traffic for quite some time.......and they say tractors cause traffic jams. :)

summer time

with the 4th of july, i guess summer has officially reached it's midpoint. it's hard to believe but we've definitely kept ourselves busy! after nate and nicole's wedding, we had minnesota visitors the past 3 weekends. it was so great to see everyone spend time together again. we love to have visitors!



one of those weekends we met up with friends and family at the twins vs. brewers game. it was a great game...pretty entertaining....but so were a few twins fans a couple rows up with a sign that read "thanks, wisconsin, for brent farve." now i know that favre can be easily misspelled but c'mon now, if you're going to talk smack about wisconsin IN wisconsin, at least get your grammar correct.

my summer nights have gotten a little bit more busy - i am now the varsity volleyball coach at timothy christian and i'm hurrying to try to get open gyms and league games arranged before the season starts. but i'm flying solo right now....we currently do not have a jv, freshman, or assistant varsity coach. so if anyone knows of someone in the western suburbs that would like to coach volleyball, call me! at least the numbers for my team won't be lacking - i think i have around 20 girls trying out for varsity alone in the fall. all in all, i'm really excited about it and hopefully my first season goes well.

i also decided to go back to school full time starting in september. i transferred schools and they had an opening for their full time schedule, so i'm excited to be able to get my teaching certificate even sooner. it may mean some changes with the job scene, but i'm still working those details out and praying everything works out well.

i hope everyone's having a great summer!

love and family

we're back home after a whirlwind wedding weekend and i'm finally getting the chance to sit down and write after getting a few friendly reminders that i haven't updated in quite some time. so first, congratulations nate and nicole! few things are so beautiful as a love that is true and it was an honor to be a part of your special day. here are just a few pictures of the day...




and the day after the wedding, matt and i celebrated our 1 year anniversary! the year went so fast and i'm even more blessed today than yesterday to have matt as my husband. sorry, no pictures from that...we celebrated by having nate and nicole's leftover cake (ours was a little too freezer burned to enjoy more than i finger lick of frosting!) and driving back to chicago.

so june was weddings but may was all babies. congratulations to all our friends and family whose families have now grown from 2 to 3 :) - welcome to the world benjamin lewicki, jeremiah eisenga, cole van drunen, ethan landon, kylee wielenga, james van wyk, and avalene vander plas!

we also moved into our new apartment at the end of may. we're pretty much all settled in...we don't forget where things are, so that's a good sign. nothing's really on the walls, but here's a few pictures of our new place...visitors welcome any time!!



well that's about it with us. i'll leave you with a tribute to bruiser, so affectionately named by nicole...

some pictures from the twins game

in the last month...

it's a rainy sunday here and i thought i'd finally take some time to write again....if anyone checks this at all anymore. quite a bit has happened in the last month and i really can't believe it's nearing the end of april....because the end of april means summer is almost here....and summer means...weddings, friends having babies, moving to a new apartment, matt being home more, and probably lots of baseball :).

we have been on the search for a new place to live b/c the owners of the condo we live in now want to put it back on the market. in the beginning it was fun to look with a friend of ours that also needs a new place to live. but i've decided that this is a perfect example of too many options makes everything more complicated. and then of course being dutch doesn't help....always gotta see if there's a little better deal out there.

matt's down to 6 weeks left of his first year and i'm down to 3 weeks left of my first semester. i'm actually in the process of applying to a different school...one that's a little closer to where we live and i like how they run their masters program a little better too. plus, they offer morning classes on tuesday and thursday, which would be great for coaching in the fall. hopefully this new school accepts my transfer credits and i can continue on my way to teaching....eventually.

and kudos to my wonderful husband who pulled off a great birthday surprise for me last weekend. saturday morning i get a phone call from my dad. he's calling to say happy birthday a day early b/c he doesn't want to forget, and asks what we have going on for the day. i say, the twins are in town playing the white sox so we're going to the game. he says, man i wish i could go with you. i say, me too! he says, well why don't you open up your door cause i'm really sick of standing outside! i was surprised...stumped...shocked. up until this point i think matt had yet to pull off a complete surprise on me...i usually am too nosy and spoil at least a little bit of it....not on purpose of course...but this time i had no clue at all. so off we went to the sox/twins game, sitting in the 8th row down the 1st base line. freezing cold but totally worth it. it was a great birthday weekend.

well, i thought i would have more to write about....but i also have a self-nagging reminder that i should probably be working on my end of the year projects instead of blogging. i hope everyone is enjoying the start to a long awaited spring!

moon dance

i have seen a dog that can moon dance. i'm not even lying, even though i didn't believe it myself until i saw it. a couple weeks ago at work, a resident brought her dog into the office....it was just a little one named "lady" (sorry i'm not good at all with types of dogs). and when you tell her to dance, she really can slide her little legs back and wiggle her little butt to something that resembles a moon dance...or at least as much of a moon dance that a dog would be able to do. she can even do other fun tricks like walk on her back legs and kiss your foot if told to "love" you. my job is interesting....at the oak brook club, you just never know what you're going to see.

starting last week i picked up some more part time employment at a printing/paper company. a teacher at timothy has a husband who has a big project there and needed a little extra help assembling the packets. so yet again, i add a random job to the resume of part-time, short-term employment. i enjoy it though.....especially when i say i get to work at dunder mifflin :).

i am really looking forward to this weekend. brother ben is coming for the last weekend of his spring break. brother nate and soon to be sister nicole are flying back into chicago from their break in florida. and friend kelsie is coming to interview at timothy! a full house - i love it! now the only problem is i have to go clean up the house and make sure we have enough food.

square root day

oh, and happy square root day!

field museum

i'm taking a break from researching in the library for a big paper that's due in only a couple weeks. getting back into writing papers has also resulted in getting back to procrastination. it's probably a good thing that we don't have internet at our place, otherwise i would be way too distracted to get anything done. anyway, classes are still going well and after this week, i think i'll be about 1/2 way done with the semester.

this weekend we went to the field museum downtown. we had to scope out the place because joy (friend and timothy kindergarten teacher) is going on a field trip this week with all the kindergarteners and their 5th grade buddies. we saw a lot of dinosaur fossils and stuffed animals. all very cool....especially when you get in for free :).

for me, going to museums is a lot like shopping. i'm really excited to go and completely enjoy myself for the first hour or two. and then when i start getting sluggish and my legs start getting a little heavy, i need to find something to eat....fast. luckily the field museum is equipped with a McDonalds!

here's a few pictures of our weekend.....

oh what a beautiful day

right now i'm sitting in my living room, listening to some music and finishing up my homework....with the windows wide open - my favorite way to welcome spring. ok, so spring really isn't here yet but a day like today is an absolute blessing for the winter blues.

this weekend i was able to go to baby shower for Tori, a long time friend. i must admit that it's still an adjustment to see my friends pregnant, and with more friends' babies on the way, i'm starting the transition from buying off the wedding registries to putting onesies and diapers on the gift lists. but it's all been lots of fun...and i guess it is getting to that stage of life. matt tells me not to feel any pressure :).

the rest of the weekend was celebrating dad's birthday, getting a bridesmaid dress, and going to grandma's for sunday lunch, complete with getting stocked up on applesauce and paring knifes...oh, good times :). i wish i had a few pictures to show for the weekend or really anything that's been happening the past while (which usually isn't much more than work and class), but i've been slacking in that department a little bit. the only one i do have is nicole trying wedding dresses on (which obviously can't go on here for nate's little eyes) and the results of nate, jake, and matt's fishing trip. so here you go....

randomness

i love the random happenings of life. the things that break up your day and make you realize that the world is small and life can be crazy.

on my second week of classes, i sat next to someone new and tried to start up some friendly conversation. not only do i find out that this girl is an athletic trainer (very similar to my undergraduate degree) and played volleyball, basketball, and softball in high school....but she also lives just one block from matt and i. we've gone by her complex tons of times, but it's just too bad that her job doesn't allow us to carpool.

in this very same class i have a professor that likes wholistic teaching which goes on tangents every which way......has no problem taking 2 hours to do class introductions in a class of about 20.....and a huge fan of the 10 second pause after everything she says. 3 1/2 hours of this at a time makes for a veeery interesting evening.

today i drug myself to the fitness center, feeling very unmotivated to work out by myself, doing the same old same old. i'm just about to push the start button on the treadmill and drown out the background noise with my headphones when i hear "lindsey?" behind me. instinctively i turn around and see....andrea van steenis walking towards me - a grade school and high school teammate and friend who lives very close to us but i've never seen since moving here. she just happen to recently get a membership to the same small, cheap fitness place and we just happen to be there at the same time of day. it was SO nice to have a work out buddy to pass the time away!!

ok...i have the full permission of my husband for this next one....

one of the students i tutor comes to our place. today when his mom picked him up, she noticed my newest crocheting project laying on the floor. she is a fellow yarn lover, in the knitting form. she then noticed the other blanket on the floor (property of my husband's working hands.) well, she was shocked that i would be working on 2 at once......i tried so hard to lie and protect matt from one of his students knowing of his new found habit.....but it slipped. the best part - i was totally redeemed when the mom told me that her son actually picked up knitting a while ago and made himself a scarf. we had a good time cracking jokes about the boys in our life taking a liking to yarn needle-work.

well that's about all. classes and work are going great and keeping me busy. i've been braving the world of trying new recipes, oh, once a week if i'm lucky. matt's still living, so we're all good! and it's still plenty cold for me to want spring to come more and more every day!

the haircut

i finally decided that it was time to bite the bullet and find someone to cut my hair. after depending on friends that are professionals and even friends that aren't technically professionals for so many years i was at a loss to know exactly where to go. so with coupon in hand, i decided on a quick, cheap trim from great clips. my stylist was phyllis - a greek woman probably in her upper 40's with a thick accent.....and brutally honest. it started when she combed through my hair and there was some left in her comb. "you don't rinse. just like my kids. you must rinse. this hair...this is because you don't rinse." like an obedient child i nodded and promised i would rinse better. five seconds later she got a look of awful disgust on her face. "who cut your hair last?! you see this? very uneven." lying through my teeth i said it was a friend. the truth? during my unemployed stint this fall i got bored one morning and decided to see how hard it would be to give myself a trim. i knew it wasn't salon worthy but i didn't think that it was that uneven. apparently it was. (tori...i'm so sorry. :) please do not be totally appalled.) i got the hint that a stylist is not my calling, and definitely not on myself, when she continued to mutter under her breath how uneven my hair was for the rest of the time i was in the chair. and to top it all off, i asked phyllis to give me some side bangs at the end, to which she replied "this short?! no no. it will not blend. you come back next time and we will cut shorter. trust me. i do not lie to you." i decided not to fight it. i was only paying $9 and the whole experience was actually quite entertaining. now my only fear is that if i don't go back in 4-6 weeks as instructed, another phyllis scolding awaits me. :)

happy new year!

new years eve was also our last christmas party for matt and i. being so busy with family and friends, we almost forgot about making time for it. but never fear....our lack of social options for the night allowed us to actually go out to eat for a date night, watch some great episodes of planet earth and the office (our gifts to each other), and enjoy greeting the new year together which really only involved watching a poorly hosted chicago station and then a rerun of the ball dropping. but here you have it, our first family christmas picture :).

we have also been enjoying the company of our guests since we returned from christmas travels. my sister kelli stayed with us for a few days after we returned. friday night nate and nicole stayed between their flight and driving home. and last night, my cousin justin stayed with us. it was so nice to see him and spend some quality time together.....since the last time that happened was the summer of '07.


a little update on my job. i'm starting to get the hang of what i'm doing, where things are, and what the procedures are at the oak brook club. although i'm still taking a lot of messages for the other two people in the office cause no one knows me and is probably still not sure if i know what i'm doing....but hey, i can totally handle that.....cause that also means that i don't have to deal with most problems either :). other than that i type up meeting minutes, sort out the mail, make the newsletter, and do some other organization project or whatever else is needed for the day. the days go by quickly and i'm enjoying it so far.

happy new year everyone!