a year in review

every year seems to be punctuated by a new move, home, daily life. I don't know yet if this coming year will be any different. But as of yet, (drum roll please) there are no concrete plans to continue the pattern. There are, however, also no plans to live in the delta for the rest (or even a considerable amount of the rest) of our lives. The jobs just don't pan out for either of us. Sad, but true.

So here we are: renovating a house, spending time with family, helping dorothy out with the kids and her cleaning (she's going to a hire a maid, deborah! soon i will only help her with her kids, jk), and living the basic day to day.

Today's church. I love our church! Sundays are wonderful like that. I get to be a part of a vibrant & diverse (something you don't see much of in memphis) congregation and listen to the word of God delved deeply into in a church where the pastor has not forgotten that the point of Scripture is to impact lives. This church doesn't want you to stop at simply hearing the word, learning great systems and doctrines, but knows that you can study the word directly and God has something to show you... right there in that very passage. I feel so blessed to have found a happy medium. It's like I can breath again. No silly proof-texting. No heady intellectualism. For awhile I settled for the latter. At least then we were hearing the Word of God instead of cute stories with a verse thrown in here or there. But praise God for showing us Fellowship (and thank you, mom, for insisting that we try it out). I can't wait to get more involved! The next step is on the 27th when we go to the discovery dinner and learn more about the church personally. We'll see what follows that.

Tomorrow begins the new semester at University of Memphis. It took quite a bit of finagling to get walter squared away for classes but we did it and tomorrow walter starts three undergrad classes that qualify him for grad courses in the fall.
1. mechanics of materials
2. mechanics of fluids (i think...)
3. heat transfer (again, think i'm remembering this correctly)
basically it's the weeding out class from sophomore, junior, and senior years of mechanical engineering... then he's qualified to be a grad student! :) So yeah, it'll be a trying semester but I'm confident that he can do it (now just to convince him ;) ) It only took faxing records from Cedarville & Wheaton, meeting with the head of the engineering department, signing up for undergrad classes as a grad student, getting another MMR shot, and lots of calls to the help desk. All this while sending out resumes to every company that excites walter. It's been a busy couple of days. But it's done! (hooray!)

On Monday we're going to figure out if we (ourselves) will push the wall back into our garage giving us room for a laundry room and a larger kitchen and living room or if a contractor will do it for us within the next few weeks. This all while we wait for the windows to come in... the windows home depot promised us two weeks ago. Alas, the shell for our sun room looks beautiful. I absolutely can't wait for all the light that's going to shine into our home and the plants I'll be able to grow.

I'm sorting through things (both physically and mentally), figuring out the best next move (not to a new state or anything... I know, with us, this statement could be confusing), and honing some skills. More on that to come, I think.

But for now it's time to get on with today. My goals for this year (as of right now) are to develop a daily routine and to stick to it and to do the exercises that my chiropractor's assigned. Should be doable. We'll see how it goes.