My Most Recent Attempt at Creativity

I love trying new ideas out of magazines. First it was the wheat grass and now it is the pumpkin address. I thought it turned out pretty good. The idea is to put Christmas lights inside the carved out pumpkin. We tried that... but our pumpkins are too thick to be able to see the light. I love Fall!!

Tomorrow Night

Dan asked me to his High School dance tomorrow night. I am so excited!

We're actually just going to be chaperones... but I still think it's pretty fun that we get to go to a High School dance together.

Our Neighborhood

I know I promised Dan would be the next to write... but he's taking his usual afternoon nap... so I thought I would sit down a write. I have about five minutes before my cornbread comes out of the oven (there's just nothing like smelling your mom's cornbread in the kitchen several thousand miles from home).
We are heading out to Bible Study in about an hour. Our church has small groups that you are assigned to geographically. That way you can really focus on meeting the same people in your community. We love it because we can walk since the leaders live just two blocks from us! Being so close to everything reminds me so much of Chico! We share a car... which can be a pain sometimes... but it forces me to walk to the 1/2 mile work every day (with our cats George and Eddie who have started following me about half the way there).
There is also a small park two blocks away that has bands playing once a month. You can actually see the Arch from this park... since we live on one of the higher parts of the very flat city of St. Louis. We're going to walk down for a couple minutes tonight to hear the last group of the summer play... unfortunatley it really does still feel like summer here.
Anyways... I was in the kitchen cooking and I could hear the band playing just now... so I thought I would just mention how great it is to be living in such a great part of St. Louis!

Dan really will be the next to write!

September

We have been unbelievably busy lately. I keep telling Dan that we need to try and keep our blog updated... even if it's only a sentence. We have actually had family in town on and off for the last month... either that or we have been out of town. My sister Cari and her husband Scott spent two weeks with us at the beginning of the month. It was great! It was their first time out to St. Louis and we made sure they saw as much of it as possible. St. Louis can't really compare to San Francisco or Seattle... but there are still some neat areas here. This our famous arch picture that we take of anyone who comes to visit. You have to lay down on the ground so you can get the entire arch in the picture. Scott and Cari are now in New Orleans helping organize teams to help with the hurricane clean up. They process hundreds of work orders and then send out surveyors and teams to different locations. They'll be heading back to St. Louis in a couple weeks to pick up their dog Ranger here at our house before they start the long trek back West.

My Dad and Mom were with us for about a week after that. My Dad always finds out about great little day trips whenever they come out. A week ago Saturday we went to an apple farm in Illinois.

We road a "tractor train" out into an apple orchard and picked a couple bags of apples. It was great! After that we visited the arch...

and then took a river boat ride on the great... dirty... Mississippi...

It was definitely not the prettiest boat ride I have ever taken... but it did have some interesting views... a sunken barge for example.

Dan has been super busy with school. He loves teaching... but it does have its challenges. He has had two lockdowns in the month that he has been teaching (one of which I found out about on the morning news!!). We would have never thought at this time last year that he would be teaching at an inner city school here in St. Louis... but it's great to see how the Lord moves you in new directions! We miss California tons... but love St. Louis at the same time.

Well... that's it for the month of September. I promise to make Dan write next time!!