blessed

friendships can reach many different levels, but nothing is quite as rich or valuable as the ones that can withstand  hundreds of miles, years apart, and all the crazy things life throws at us.  and how sweet it is when we have the opportunity to drop everything, even for a few short days to come together again.  to laugh until my mouth is cemented into a permanent smile, my stomach hurts, and it looks like i'm really crying.  to meld back into memories and feel carefree with the whole world before us.  to see how much we've changed, where we've been, and just enjoy the fact that some things in life don't seem to change at that much after all.  to stay up past midnight talking but somehow feeling so refreshed when the weekend is over.  friendship is a blessing.

eyes to the sky

we had a crazy attempt to see the air and water show downtown this weekend. when we left the train station with partly cloudy skies, we never expected to step out of union station to a full out thunderstorm. (so much for the hour by hour forecast!) we puddle jumped from subway to garrett's popcorn to old navy and finally to millennium park. after cramming more people than an umbrella is made to cover one more time, we were about ready to pack it in and go home when just like that -- blue skies. so after walking 3 miles with soggy feet, we got to see a shortened but still impressive air show. it was definitely a fun afternoon to remember!

sonja, joy, and i at the bean

i wish we took a video - the sound is just as impressive!

back to reality

in a funny way, summer has flown by...yet door county seems like ages ago. so what has taken up our time during the whirlwind we called our summer? it went a little like this....

our summer began in the timothy christian gym and/or baseball field, sweating out hours in summer camps and, naturally, eating our fair share of freeze pops. one baseball camp, one basketball camp, a trip to door county, and three volleyball camps later....and june is over.

we waste no time over here in the van schepen home. the hour my last volleyball camp was done, we hit the road for iowa to embark on our month of travel. welcome to july.

in typical summer fashion, we put on more miles than we prefer to count. and praise God that they were all safe and smooth going. we started heading north to emo, ontario. with a little careful planning for our bathroom stops (with thanks to minnesota's government shutdown) and a successful border crossing, we started our travels off with a fun weekend celebrating jake and jolene's wedding.

thankfully, we had a twins game scheduled for july 4, otherwise i'm not so sure i was going to be able to convince my husband to come back out of north country. it was a battle of two loves for him, but the twins always win. :) it was a hot afternoon but a great game to watch with some pretty amazing company...and the twins won! moving on to edgerton, i had the privilege of experiencing my first dutch festival. a highlight of the trip, no doubt. from there it was back to iowa for a few days for a good bondfires and four wheeler rides.

moving on...cause we don't sit still very well...matt went on a fishing trip to minnesota and i went to michigan for calvin volleyball camp. i got to catch up with some college friends, all of whom are coaching their own vball teams. thankfully, we had A/C in the gyms to combat the record temperatures. but i could only escape the heat for so long. i think we will always reference the heat to...."at least it's not as hot as it was on the weekend of ben and bailey's wedding!" but the heat can't stop a good party and the wedding was absolutely beautiful with perfect evening temperatures to dance the night away. congrats ben and bailey!!

and that brings us back home....kinda. we are currently dog/house sitting so sleeping in my own bed is still a few days away. after that, the summer ends where it began....back in the TC gym. volleyball tryouts are a week away - the true sign of summer's end for me.

so there you have our summer in a nutshell. we plan on fully utilizing every last drop of summer in the coming weeks and hope you do the same!

door county

there's something refreshing about wide open spaces. it's amazing to be in God's beautiful creation, especially when you get to spend it with people you love. matt and i were able to spend time with his family in door county this past week.

we had perfect weather to kayak 5 miles to see caves and part of a shipwreck (i don't have pictures of that) and go hiking at a couple different state parks. here's a few other highlights of the trip...

the water was pretty cold yet, so it was only ankle deep for me.




we went to a fish boil one night. i guess the fish boil master wasn't kidding when he asked everyone to step back 15 more feet before they burn the fat off the top of their boil! it may not seem like it from this picture, but that was some of the best fish i've had in a long time!


skipping rocks and beautiful sunsets - doesn't get much better!


we also saw many of the lighthouses on the peninsula. this one is the eagle bluff light house, and we saw at least 5 more.



matt and i also celebrated our 3rd anniversary this past week. God has taught us, stretched us, and showered His love on us these past 3 years, and i can't wait to see what he has in store for us this coming year! just a little walk down memory lane for that special day...

summer projects

the graduation song is probably playing at the timothy christian 8th grade graduation as i type, so that means.....summer is officially here! tutoring and subbing have wrapped up until summer tutoring kicks off, so i've being doing other things to keep busy. here's my latest project....

all i needed was 3 yards of fabric...

...3 art canvases we had hanging around (the brown one is from a painting experiment gone wrong)

...a scissors, glue gun, and some HGTV on in the background - for great inspiration, of course - and ta-da! wall hangings for our bare bedroom walls. (the closest one is really more of a sage green color, but i couldn't get a picture to show it quite right)

everything went pretty smoothly, except this little bugger. pleating this fabric proved a little harder than i thought it would. otherwise, this was totally my kind of project - cheap, quick , and easy!

it's only taken me 3 years to get some decoration on our bedroom walls....that's a lot of HGTV just to give me a little inspiration :).

running and baseball

a few weeks ago, i went up to michigan to run the calvin classic 5K with kelli. we strategically matched our running outfits so that the photographers around the course would take our picture.....

success! i think the photographer must have known i wasn't a calvin grad. but it was very nice of him to take the picture when we were close to the finish line - it appears as if we were cruising at this pace for the whole race. :)

a couple weeks later - the elim eagle's wings 5K. timothy christian represented quite well in this inaugural race. it was a little chilly before the race but perfect running weather.

finished! and i think this concludes my running season for the spring. i will admit i'm not the most motivated runner....i think i need a running buddy.

matt's baseball season also ended last week. they had a great year, finishing 15-9. i was very appreciative that we finally got some baseball weather the last week of the season and i am in short sleeves and not my winter coat!

the team - i was very proud of the fact that i knew everyone's name by the end of the season. i even had high school students asking me who people were during the games. :)

pe teacher for a day

friday, may 13, 2011

8:15 am

i take my first pe class outside for a rousing game of speedball, ignoring all whines and begs to stay inside out of the heat. as expected, my sweat glands did not let me down and by just standing in the middle of the field as the ref, i successfully started sweating far more than the group of girls who refused to walk more than 10 steps without a little stern encouragement.

11:15 am

the rowdy freshmen bunch bounded outside with more enthusiasm than i came to expect for a high school pe class. i was also surprised at the spring temperatures that decided to grace our presence...a mere 3 hours after i was ready to resign myself to the fact that we were jumping right from winter to summer. now this is the type of weather i would like from now until september, please.

1:15 pm

on to a class of middle schoolers, who are both complaining and rejoicing that today is the last day to run the mile. i'm giving them a pep talk that the weather is beautiful and it's a great day to run. i take no more than two steps outside and i'm made into a liar. now i'm just trying to cover myself and come up with reasons why a brisk wind and temperatures that are a solid 25-30 degrees cooler than this morning are still prime running conditions. i don't think they believed me...especially when i couldn't hide the goosebumps on my arms.

someone please help me....what season are we in again???

color

i didn't make it to tulip time this year but was very excited to get my tulip fix at the cantigny gardens. the only thing missing was a poffertjes and stroopwaffle stand! :)

we had a great weekend - marlin, karen, brent, and becca came to visit. saturday was a great day for baseball (aka - finally not raining!) and matt came away with 2 decisive wins. sunday was absolutely gorgeous and we had a beautiful day visiting the war museum and gardens at cantigny.

i love the color that is blooming all around us. the trees are now starting to lose their blooms, but the beautiful color is a welcome sign of spring to balance all the rain! now with warmer temperatures this week - ahh...i think we've finally brushed off the last taste of winter.

reading

without student teaching and classes, i have more time on my hands. so i'm taking advantage of not having to read textbooks anymore and have become a little library worm. here are my recent reads (all in the past couple weeks - i wasn't lying about the book worm part!). they are all different genres and for a range of age levels, but i highly recommend all of them...

• Same Kind of Different as Me (Ron Hall and Denver Moore)
• Candle in the Darkness (Lynn Austin)
• The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)
• Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins)
• Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)
• Crazy Love (Francis Chan)
• Among the Imposters (Margaret Peterson Haddix)
• Among the Betrayed (Margaret Peterson Haddix)
  

i love a good book suggestion, so if you have a favorite, please pass it along!

spring!

i figured since the view outside our window has slightly changed since my last post, i better write again....

a few weeks ago nate and nicole spent a weekend of their spring break with us. nicole treated nate to a wrigley field tour and we tagged along, which was also my first time in the stadium. i think i'd like to go back when it's a little warmer!




fast forward a few weeks and it was spring break for matt and i. so we hopped in the car and drove 15 hours to denver with two other teachers from timothy. we survived western nebraska and eastern colorado with a rousing game of "my cows" and several bags of starburst jelly beans. we were able to catch up with family, some people matt got to know during his time student teaching, and enjoy the beautiful weather. only in denver can you wake up to snow and then enjoy 65 degrees in the afternoon! we went to red rocks on a beautiful sunday afternoon...



...went snow shoeing in rocky mountain national park. (the views were well worth the shortage of oxygen and these plain dwellers weren't used to!)



...and just enjoyed the view of majestic mountains!


in other news....student teaching is done! i was at timothy christian for 11 weeks in the 3rd grade and absolutely loved it. but my last day of student teaching also meant getting on the job hunt. i've been sending out my application a lot of places and had a few interviews since the beginning of the new year, but nothing has worked out. to be honest, it's really been a struggle for me. i'm starting to feel that matt belongs right where we are, but nothing is opening up for me...leaving me feeling a little confused as to what i should do or where i should look. filling out those applications and anxiously waiting by my phone and email is teaching me a lesson in patience and trust....but i'm not so good at it all the time. so as i wait, i trust that God will provide again in His timing, as he has so many times before. :)

well, that's about all from illinois. here's to ever warming temperatures and a sun-filled spring!

double snow day

we already knew on tuesday afternoon that school was cancelled for wednesday, so we hunkered down for "blizzard 2011." this is what we woke up to on wednesday morning...

15+ inches on top of our picnic table

just as i was going to take matt's picture, the wind picked up and blew snow right in his face :)

in our section of the parking lot, we pull right up to a retaining wall. this van had snow that was level from the back of the van to the top of that retaining wall. when he dug out the van and pulled it out of the spot, we could read his license plate from an imprint in the snow drift!

our car just a couple spaces away from that van...the whole front end covered.

a weird drift next to the sonata.

matt digging out the front of the car.

so what do you do when 15"+ fall in less than 24 hours? well, we started off with a blizzard brunch with our neighbors...complete with scones, omlettes, and bacon. then we (or i should really say matt did most all of it) dug out our cars and our friends' cars, plus a couple other neighbors that were attempting to dig that much snow with anything from swiffers, ice cream buckets, rubbermaid lids, and ice scrapers. and that night we played some great rounds of wii bowling. i had the game of my life, bowling a 275 with 10 strikes and 1 spare....too bad i can't do that in real life!

that afternoon we got the news that we have snow day #2 today! apparently the side streets weren't plowed and we have very cold temperatures today, so we get to relax at home for another day. double snow days call for blizzard brunch #2....and the school work i put off from yesterday! i hope everyone stayed warm and safe this week!