What’s Been Going On

A little update on our life…

Can’t believe we are like 2/3 the way through August already! Dan and I keep telling ourselves that just because the kids go back to school, doesn’t mean our summer is over! September can bring THE most beautiful weather (though we’ve been blessed with a gorgeous August!) We are getting excited for fall though – so many things to look forward to! Plus, the thought of sitting in a sweatshirt outside sounds kinda nice and putting the down comforter back on our bed. Ah…pure Michigan.

Dan has been CRAZY busy lately! Dan is not a morning person, but he has been to work at either 6 or 7 the past week, works til 5, then almost every night, we’ve had something else with youth group. Part of the job, but he is tired :). He has just not been able to catch up since being back from the mission trip. He is getting somewhere with the youth group lessons for the year, which is a huge plus! We are really excited for the year too because of that. For Impact (middle school), Dan is doing the lessons based off of some Pauline Epistles. Then for Roots (high school), we are studying faith and culture, and how to intermix the two. We are using Walt Mueller’s 3-D process while looking at movies, music, tv commercials, magazine ads, etc. I myself am really excited about this too! Some kids had mentioned to us that we should study movies, so we kind of ran with that and Dan came up with a great lesson plan!

We just finished up with our college group for the summer, last night. It makes me sad to think it’s done only because it means the college kids aren’t going to be around anymore. They have been a huge blessing to us! We always looked forward to Sunday nights (since we play beach volleyball with the youth group during the day) and college group! We will have a 2 week Sunday night break before youth group starts back up again. Hopefully we will play beach volleyball though for a few more weeks :).

Come September, we have a LOT to look forward to! Me and Katie are going to the first Michigan football game of the year vs. Western Michigan! We BOTH are SO PUMPED ALREADY! The first game of the year brings to much excitement in general b/c it means it’s football season, but it’s the first game with the new coach! Go blue!

Dan leaves the next weekend for a fishing trip with the VanLente’s in Cadillac. The next week we celebrate Dan’s 30th birthday (he’s not looking real forward to it :)) and then I leave for a scrapbooking weekend. Then we are hoping to go to a Tiger’s game, then a LeCrae/Trip Lee concert, and then Art Prize. Meanwhile, our kids are starting sports already, so we will hopefully be going to many games of theirs! It’s SO EXCITING to think about what we have to look forward to!

On a health note, I have my heart monitor for a full month now – for some reason they changed it to 4 weeks, but that I am okay with! It’s not that big of a pain and thankfully for the past week, I haven’t had to use it much at all. I am starting to think that some of my symptoms were caused by my meds, which I am SO thankful for! I have been able to jog more, which I haven’t been able to do in quite some time! The other day I came back from a jog and was just PUMPED in talking with Dan about how good I felt! Granted it helps that it’s a whole lot cooler outside – I think that’s part of it. But I haven’t gotten near as lightheaded and the headaches have diminished! PRAISE GOD! I still have heart palpitations and shortness of breath sometimes, but those are the results of the valve, and I am so okay with that! And so far, all my recordings I have done, the docs say everything looks normal :). I tell ya, that makes my day! I can deal with the heart valve issue if I can live a relatively “normal” life. For awhile there, I felt I couldn’t do much b/c I just plain didn’t feel good. But now, I feel I can semi-do more stuff. Of course I have to be careful, stop when I feel out of breath, but this is all stuff I’ve been doing for the past 10 years – that I can handle. So PRAISE GOD!!!!!

I think that about cuts it with updates…tomorrow we are hoping to head up to the Hudsonville Fairgrounds to watch the off-road derby! We’ve been going every year since we’ve been married and have always taken a few of our friends or youth group kids, which we are hoping to do again! Hopefully it doesn’t rain on us though :).

Until next time…