'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!