Despite the rain (that just keeps coming back), we were blessed with another great time this weekend.
Date night ::
Friday night, Laurie and I enjoyed our weekly date night with some Red Robin burgers and Couples Retreat.
The movie was funny, but not quite as funny as we had hoped. Also, whoever did the boom mics in the movie did a pretty poor job — or the director, Peter Billingsley (from The Christmas Story) did a poor job of noticing them. It seemed like every other scene scene had a random mic floating down from above. At first we thought it was something falling in front of the movie projector, but other times you could see the actual microphone and boom pole clearly. It was somewhat distracting, but not enough to ruin the movie.
Friends forever ::
On Saturday, we had a pretty relaxing day at home and then spent the evening catching up with old friends.
Erica (our favorite Spanish Scots(wo)man) came to spend the week with the Lehmanns. Erica came as a foreign exchange student, from Spain, in the mid-90’s and stayed with Keri’s family at the time. She came back in 1999 with her Scottish husband Mike and hasn’t been back to the U.S. since. So it was great to get to see her and introduce her to Laurie.
Although, she’s been apparently been stalking me/us for years via my blog and Flickr, it was great for her to get to know Laurie in person.
Saturday night, Keri and Aaron put together a great meal and get together for Erica after her 13 hr flight from the UK. We had a great time eating, catching up and general tom-foolery.
Waiting on the food with Aaron…
Some of us had more fun than others…
Amelia trying on her new kilt from Erica…
We (as in the 4 guys) even enjoyed some stout single malt Scottish Scotch (one sniff, and that stuff will burn the hairs out of your nose). AWESOME!
I only wish we had more time to hang with Erica during her visit, but hopefully we’ll make it over to the UK next year and get to see her, her family and our other great friends across the pond.
On Sunday we continued our time with friends, hanging with the Whitmires, Kiefers and Rasmussens, watching some football, talking adoption, playing with kids and sharing life together.
We are so blessed to have all our friends in our lives — both online and offline.
Helping our friends beat foreclosure ::
As you may have noticed, we passed the $3000k mark on Saturday. That’s amazing! We still have 3 full weeks before the original deadline so I’m certain we’ll be able to meet our goal for sure! Thanks to everyone who’s donated so far.
Books I’m reading ::
I’m currently still working through #B90X (and will be till mid-December). Today is day 28 – working through 2 Kings. I’m really enjoying this way of reading through the Bible. It’s not Lectio Divina by any means, but its a great way to read larger chunks of the story at at time, which in turn helps me grasp the entire story.
I’m also reading Live Sent: you are a letter, but Jason Dukes. A great book that shares a lot of the same ideas we try to stress at encounter. I’m using the book as a guideline for our Wednesday morning discussions as well.
Building a family ::
While there’s nothing new to report on the baby making side of things, we did finally sit down and fill out our first packet of paperwork for the foster-to-adopt process. We go to our first orientation next week and then start several months worth of classes before we can be certified. We’re looking forward to beginning the process.
We’re also planning on taking part in the Tapestry Conference at Irving Bible on Oct 24th. If you’re going let us know so we can meet up during the day.
Selling our house ::
Also, nothing new to report on the selling of our house. We had an offer a couple weeks ago, that was $12k less than our asking price. We were able to get him to $10k less, but that was all he was going to offer. He ended up buying a home in Allen instead (40 miles north of us). At least we know he didn’t find a better house/deal in our neighborhood.
We’re planning on having an Open House this Sunday — so be sure and tell all your friends that might be interested in moving to Ellis County. It’s a great neighborhood, great house and a great place to live — just not close enough to our families :-).
NaNoWriMo ::
So last November, I wrote my first novel – St Peter’s Brewery. I was hoping to have it ready to print this summer. I’m still in the correcting phase…. argh – nothing creative about that at all :-). But next month is another NaNoWriMo month — write a novel in a month. I’m starting to get an itch to write another book, but I know I’m gonna get some looks from a few folks if I’m starting another novel, when my other one isn’t finished/published yet. So we’ll see. I’ve got 3 weeks to decide.
What about you?
So that’s a “brief” if I ever saw one.
How are you doing? What did you do this weekend?
