April, Come and Gone

I can't believe this is the last day of April. This month has really flown by. Lots has happened. Let's do a quick recap:

April 1-3: Finished up the last work week before spring break.

April 4: Spring Break begins! Woohoo!

April 5-11: Josh and I flew to Chicago for our SB trip. We spent a day in Chicago, went to Wheaton for a few days, came back to Chicago for a few days. A truly fantastic trip. It was so good to see so many friends, and we had a LOT of really challenging, stretching, and even guiding conversations.

April 12: Easter! We hosted a brunch at our house... a brunch that was really a lunch... that turned into a board game afternoon... needless to say, we had people at our house from about 10:30am-5:30pm. Definitely a good day.

April 13: One last day off before returning to work. Lots of housework. And hanging out. Happy "We're newlyweds!" day.

April 14-15: Return to work. Life as normal.

April 16-20: We took an emergency trip out to Seattle. My gramma's health suddenly plunged, and they weren't sure she'd make it... but after a few days in the hospital and lots of visits from family members for "Gramma's Birthday!" she came home and we got to have a fun last couple days. We even had two birthday parties -- one for Gramma, and one for my little brother, Jacob, who's now 15!

April 21: Recovering from our red-eye flight back from Seattle (we left my parents' house in Seattle at 10pm... and got back to our house in Philly at 1pm the next day). It was miserable and we were tired. Enough said.

April 22-30: Real real life resumes. Back to the normal hub-bub of life in Philly. Work. Growth cell. Alpha. Learning Teams. Youth group. Worship team. School concerts. Sunday lunches. Frisbee. Obama's 100th Day. And so on and so forth. My school's big annual fund-raiser is coming up, so there's a lot of planning to do at work. Josh and our pastor also started planning out what his internship looks like for next year... and we realized we'll probably be in Philly for more than just the next year or two. Life, huh?


And that's April for you! I can't believe tomorrow will really be the first day of May. The spring I have so longed for has finally come (though we got a glimpse of summer this past weekend when we had 4 days in the low 90s!). And even though it was REALLY cold this winter, the past month has been a real season of joy in regards to our friendships. Not only did we get to see friends in Chicago and Seattle, we got to spend time with my family in Seattle (I really needed that), we had some good hangout time with friends in Philly (mostly over fabulous food), we got to see Robin and Jason briefly when they were here in Philly leading a Spring Break missions trip for Jason's youth group, this weekend some of my Wheaton friends are going to be here staying with us (one of them is running away for a wedding, but we get to kidnap the other three and take them on a tour of Philly), and next weekend (after the big benefit dinner and learning teams) we're heading up to Syracuse for Connie's college graduation (Josh's sister). It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but it's been good, and really helping me get through some tough stuff in the rest of life. What a reminder that I can't go it alone, huh? Just when I want to start freaking out I get a big slap in the face that I have amazing communities of friends literally across the nation.

Alrighty. That's all for now. Look for a post on RAINBOW CAKE soon. You won't want to miss it - I PROMISE.