Big day for the Browns

For Josh: The beginning of college football. Granted, the bigger day is Saturday when Michigan plays. Still exciting to see LSU play Mississippi State.



For Riley: His first bath. He did quite well and is presently trying to lick all of the water off of his body. Good luck, buddy.






For Jessica: A new job! Yes, I accepted a job with The Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce doing some communications/committee/event/who knows? type work for them. I interviewed there twice and really got a great feeling from them both times. This week was actually a bit stressful as I was trying to decide between two different jobs. A blessing to have options, but in a way I wish I would have only been offered one of the jobs! In the end I knew that I would enjoy going to work more with the Chamber job and was able to negotiate some details. They seem great and I'm super excited to start on Tuesday. From here on out I'll be working for Zondervan 20 hours per week and the Chamber the other 20. It should keep things interesting around here! I'm so thankful to have two great, interesting jobs!

Off to bed for me as I have a marathon 11 hour babysitting job tomorrow!

We're Official

Yes, its true. We're now officially Indiana residents. Although that isn't too weird for Josh - this is the 5th state is has resided in - it is for me. I've always been a Michigander! Is it weird to miss the old driver's license - the one with the Mackinac Bridge? The Indiana one is ugly.



So we went to the BMV today (think Secretary of State) and purposely brought along our entire box of important files. I ALWAYS seem to not have the correct documents on me when I go there and THIS TIME I was going to be prepared. We needed to come home with 6 things:



Josh driver's license
Jessica driver's license
Corolla title
Corolla plates
Saturn title
Saturn plates


What percent did we achieve, after lugging a large box of files there and spending well over an hour? Just 33%. Just for future reference, you actually need to drive all cars to the BMV that you want to get stuff for. We just had our little Corolla with us at the time so we figured we'd get at least that one taken care of. Could we? Nope. When we paid off the car we never had the bank sign off on the Michigan title. Such is life with the BMVs of the world. At least we got a couple of things accomplished. Two passed written tests and two driver's licenses.


On a completely unrelated note, I have two new favorite books:

I got this one from Z before I left town. A wonderfully simple, honest book about walking with God. It delves into the imperfection, the lopsidedness, and the unfinishedness that is characteristic of anyone's walk with God. As one Amazon.com reviewer puts it, "If you're a perfect, upstanding, respectable, fully mature Christian, you may not identify with very much in this book. If you're like the other 99.9% of us, this book is a capital-G Godsend."







And this one is fiction my in-laws kindly sent after enjoying it themselves. A widower haunted by past mistakes meets a child with an all-too-familiar heart condition. Thoroughly solid Christian fiction. A redemption story. Excellent.

More on life and the little guy

I looked back at my planner and noticed that exactly 1 month ago we packed up the moving truck (with help from both sets of parents) and made the journey down to Indiana. One month ago we gave back our Woodland Creek Apartment keys and kept right on going. Then that very next day we met Riles for the first time at the farmer's market. Hard to believe! Things have gone so fast and they've just been... good. God has been so good in providing for us! So many things have fallen into place so quickly and easily and we're so thankful. School stuff, our apartments jobs, friends, and finances. Blessings. I think we're also getting close to deciding on a church... that will also be nice.

We miss our Michigan friends tons (and hope they visit soon) but have enjoyed getting to know some new folks. We even had a couple couples over Saturday night for our special recipe spaghetti sauce, Guitar Hero, and some Settlers of Catan (you know you're sad to have missed that, Julie and Kara!)

Josh started school today and I was oh so tempted to take his picture out in the front yard with his backpack - I mean computer case - on. Do you remember when your mom used to do that?

Riley-boy had a checkup on his bum leg and they said he was doing so well that they took his cast off early! He is still weak on the leg and often limps, but is doing quite well. He has another few weeks of taking it easy, and then we'll get to do more walking/playing/obedience training with him after that. We're looking forward to it. The picture above is of him watching me work this morning.

Josh is taking me on a date tonight... just us. Woo hoo! Then tomorrow already Nana and Poppa Brown are coming to visit. Should be fun. We're also excited for:

1. the Logozzos to visit on Saturday

2. college football starting (also on Saturday)

3. visiting Ann Arbor next weekend

4. the semester to be in full swing. We know Josh will be incredibly busy this semester (at least everyone keeps telling us that) but he is really ready to get into the thick of it. Two weeks of orientation was a little overkill-ish, I think.

The homemaker in me...

I love crafts. I haven't thought of myself as a "crafty" person until fairly recently, but now must admit that I am.

The new endeavor:

Crocheting.

For some reason that word makes me think of cute little white haired ladies sitting in a rocking chair making doilys. And hey, that may be me someday. But I went to a craft night with some of the other wives/girlfriends last night and was inspired by the beautiful blankets others were making. Adorable. So today I went with my friend to Hobby Lobby and Borders and came home with a hook, some yarn, and a book called The Happy Hooker. I have made but a couple of random braid-type-things, and am looking forward to future crochet adventures. Let me add that to my list of other crafty things I'm into/want to learn: sewing, quilting, and scrapbooking. But hey, why not learn a new skill?

Sweet

"How unutterably sweet is the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows us completely. No talebearer can inform on us; no enemy can make an accusation stick; no forgotten skeleton can come tumbling out of some hidden closet to abash us and expose our past; no unsuspected weakness in our characters can come to light to turn God away from us, since He knew us utterly before we knew him and called us to Himself in the full knowledge of everything that was against us. "

I came across this today while reading Messy Spirituality. It is a quote from A. W. Tozer's The Knowledge Of The Holy (both excellent reads).

Little Hoosier

Neighbors

For the first time in my married/adult life, I'm getting to know neighbors. We have been married now for two years and lived in a couple of different apartment complexes. We've said the occasionaly "hi" but never moved past that to anything remotely resembling friendships.

In our first place we had those older people with the really nice car - were they building a new place? Did they lose their home in some kind of bad financial deal but managed to keep the sportscar? Don't know. And the young family whose kids jumped up and down in the apartment right above us. Names? Stories? No idea.

Our second place was in GR, and we had the same thing going on... this time a row of single folks who kept to themselves. We introduced ourselves to some of them, but never heard they were even leaving until new people popped up.

I've always felt like we were missing good opportunties to make friends.

But here we are... and already things are different. We know Sarah and Brian, 3 doors down. Brian is a year ahead of Josh in B-School. Mike and Eulia live next door with their cute little red-headed boy. He is in a doctoral program at IU and the kid likes to catch frogs. Both of those families have a dog like we do. We had Lisa and her little daughter stopped by yesterday to hang out for a little while. Lisa's husband just started school with Josh and the little girl enjoyed playing with Riley. We've also met people walking him in the evenings. I must say that I really like having neighbors that feel neighborly.

So what is the difference? Is is that we have our own little entry and even a front lawn to sit on? Does the dog help? Are people just friendlier here in Bloomington? Is it just Josh's school connections? I'm not so sure what it is... perhaps a combination of factors. I just hope this continues throughout our next 2 years here.