Ludington

On Saturday we drove to Ludington State Park. The weather wasn't so great--very cloudy, gray, drizzly, and windy--but we had a great time. Anna is happy playing in the sand on the beach no matter what the weather.



The reason we were in Ludington, though, was because Matt had to preach at a church plant there that had a Saturday evening service. He did a little of his sermon review on the beach. We enjoyed dinner out with a couple from the church afterwards. It was a wonderful day!

ArtPrize

Grand Rapids is hosting ArtPrize--a contest for artists to display their talents with the goal of winning the grand prize of $250,000. We headed downtown on Friday evening to take in some of the fun. We walked around to check out the art at a few venues before it got dark. The artwork covers a 3 square mile area. It was really very amazing!


This afternoon we went back downtown to check out a most impressive display of performance art. A young man (who's name escapes me at the moment) made 100,000 paper airplanes and with the help of several friends flew them off 6 tall buildings along Monroe Ave. It was very fun to be among about 20,000 people watching. Anna was excited to come home with 2 purple airplanes!

Neighborhood Activity

Several trees in our neighborhood were growing too close to some power/phone lines and poles and were slated for trimming. This big one across the street from us was growing too close to a pole and was actually starting to push it over, so the whole tree had to come down. We got to watch the excitement all morning.
This is how the tree looked last night.

Crews showed up this morning at 8:00 and got working.



By 5:00 pm this is what is left.

Matt Update

I thought it was time to give a little update on Matt's activities. Let's see...where to start...pastor, student, tutor, professor...think Matt has enough jobs? Matt's internship at our church is almost over. He's winding down and getting ready to hand back the reigns to our pastor next week. It's been an incredible experience for him in so many ways. He's had great mentors along the way and we've been overwhelmed at how gracious and encouraging people in the congregation have been. It's been really wonderful to have his calling to ministry affirmed in such a huge way. He'll go back to "just" being the worship coordinator at church next week until a more permanent person is hired for the job. Matt did some Hebrew tutoring over the summer and will continue that during this school year as well. In addition to that, he is a TA (teacher's assistant) for one of the Greek profs at the seminary. That means he'll be grading papers, leading weekly Greek review sessions, and occasionally teaching Greek.
School started last week. Matt's taking Apologetics, NT Narratives, Psalms, and an advanced preaching class. The seminary has changed to a semester system this year, so we'll see how it goes to have 12 weeks of class instead of 9. So far, he's enjoying his classes and hasn't been too overloaded with work yet. That will come I'm sure!
Matt's additional job this semester is as a Spanish prof at Calvin College. One of his former classmates (who graduated in May)had the job last year and had recommended Matt for it. They called at the end of the summer to ask Matt if he'd be interested. After getting all the paperwork in and going through a few interviews, he was offered the job. He's teaching one class of Spanish 201 this semester. He'll know in late October if the numbers are high enough for them to need him next semester.





I should have taken a picture of Matt's classroom to put in here, too. When we stopped in one day before school started Anna asked, "Is this where Papi is going to preach to the kids?" She was a little confused. One other day we needed to leave a restaurant to drop Matt off at school for a meeting. I pulled up in front of the college library (close to his office) and Matt got out. As I was pulling away, she said, "This isn't Papi's school."

Yes, Anna and I do get to see Matt once in awhile. We're back to our schedule of going over to the seminary for lunch several times a week and make very good use of our time when Matt's home and able to be with us! It's hard to believe we're in the final year of our seminary experience. I'm sure this year will fly by! We don't know where we'll end up after graduation, but we know God is preparing a place for us while Matt--and Anna and I--are being prepared as well.

Binder Park Zoo

It's been a busy week! (I'll try to take some pictures of Matt at work and give an update on his activities this week.) We decided to make today a family day and head out to Binder Park Zoo. I'd been wanting to go there for quite some time, but it just hasn't worked in the schedule until now. The weather was beautiful today and the crowd was light, so it was a great day to go to the zoo.

We headed over to the Wild Africa area first. The giraffes are obviously used to guests and came right up to the observation deck. Of course, it helped that they got fed there, too.


I had a blast feeding the giraffes--Anna not so much. She was a little afraid of them.


We even got to see the baby giraffe!


These animals are the kind that Anna loves!


We headed over to the Children's area later. Anna was excited to go in to see some goats--until it was actually time to go in and see them. She was holding onto Matt very tightly while he fed the animals.


Another animal Anna would get close to!


We had a wonderful day enjoying the animals..and the togetherness..and the weather! We've been to quite a few zoos this summer. This has been my favorite by far and I'm glad we were finally able to go today. The next zoo on my list will be one that has elephants. We've been to five zoos this year and Anna hasn't seen a real elephant yet!

The BIG Milestone

Back in January when we conquered two of the big three growing-up milestones--getting a big girl bed and potty training--we predicted that the big one of the three--giving up the pacifier--would be the hardest challenge for Anna...AND WE WERE RIGHT! She'd been chewing on her pacifier and I told her if she chewed a hole in it we'd have to get rid of it and that was the only one we had. Exactly two weeks ago now, when she woke up in the morning she showed Matt her pacifier with the hole in it. He asked if she wanted to be the one to throw it away and she did. We told her she wouldn't have it at night anymore and she was ok with that...until bedtime. Going cold turkey was quite traumatic for all of us. Anna cried herself to sleep for an entire week! Bedtime this summer has been a little irregular anyway, so that didn't help. She's no longer sobbing that she "can't sleep without her pacifier" which is wonderful, but now we have to work on getting a better bedtime routine. Sometimes it's so hard to grow up! We are very proud of her, though, for winning this challenge. We know there are more to come, and we love watching her and helping her grow up and learn and experience new things! We sure love her very, very much!!

Summer Activities

I feel like I haven't blogged much this summer, but we've been keeping quite busy. I thought I'd give a quick summer-in-review.

We went to Frederick Meijer Gardens quite often this summer. There are so many activities for kids there! Anna really loves the water activities, tree house, and sand area. We've recently been walking over to the farm area as well. Last week when we went with Grandma we took the tram ride for the 1st time. It was very interesting, but Anna didn't get much out of it. Of course, that doesn't mean she won't want to do it again!

In August, we were able to get into the Children's Museum for free with our zoo membership. We went several afternoons which turned out to be a really wonderful time to go. I think many of the regulars go in the morning and then head home for lunch and naps. Since naps for us are a thing of the past, afternoons are a great time for us to get out. One day we were there, we had a few of the play areas all to ourselves! I'm thinking we'll be heading over there more often this year.

Anna spent a lot of time in the water this summer. We had a few vacations which allowed her to swim in a pool. We also went to Lake Michigan and Grandma's lake (Barlow Lake) several times. She is quite a confident "swimmer" and really did a great job in the water. Playing in the sand still continues to be a favorite activity as well. She loves to build sand castles and no trip to the beach is complete until she's rolled around in the sand and gotten herself covered in it!

We try to take all our visitors over to Calvin's new Fieldhouse Complex. It's quite an impressive building. Anna loves going over to the pool to see if anyone's swimming. When we took my mom there we really hit the jackpot! We got to see tons of people swimming laps and there were people on both the low and high diving boards! (I think the high school was having swim practice that day.) Anna also loves to go sit on the big hand seats in the lobby. I'm sure we'll be making many more trips there this year.

One of Anna's favorite things to do is go to a park or playground. We go to one near our church (often when we have to either drop off or pick up Matt from church), the mall play area, or the playground near the library. She bounces from one piece of equipment to another. She keeps really busy and burns lots of energy!

So we have been keeping quite busy and having lots of fun this summer! Now I think we're ready for our school-time activities to start up. Anna's excited for regular Children's Worship and Care Kids (group for seminary kids) to begin so she can see lots of her friends again.

Grandma

My mom has been in Michigan for the last 2 weeks. She split up her time between us and my two sisters and their families. We kept her pretty busy, but I didn't take many pictures! (OK, so we did a lot of shopping and that's just not a real picture worthy activity!) We had a great time with her, though. Anna loved the attention from Grandma and showing Grandma all her things. Having Grandma read books to her was a nice treat, too. Grandma's on her way back to Chicago for a class reunion and will head back to Arizona this weekend. (Anna and I are hoping to visit her in January. Yeah, Arizona in January!!)