From now until the end of October we are just basically booked solid!  So exciting!  First on the list…. 

Chase and Julie are coming to NYC today!  Mostly to see Chase’s brother and sister-in-law, but since they work, and I don’t, I get to hang out with them a bunch!  We’re so excited to see some dear friends from Norman.  We love our new friends and relish every moment getting to know them, but what a blessing to get to relax in an old friendship and marvel at how wide the body of Christ is.  Here’s a cute picture of Julie at the young couples’ Christmas party this past year.

Following shortly behind the Russells….my brother Scott leaves for his semester abroad in a week and will take a few days here in NYC to hang out with us before flying on to England.  He’ll be the first of my family members to make the trip, and I can’t wait to see him!  I also can’t wait to see how much stuff he’ll be taking with him.  I’ve heard he has a goal of no carry-on luggage.  This is one of my favorite pictures of Scott….as I’m helping Chloe unwrap her cheerleading dress-up outfit from Eleanor, Scott clearly disapproves. 

Just a few days after Scott leaves, Anna and David are scheduled to arrive for their visit!  Anna and I have more planned than we’ll ever actually be able to do, I think.  I have missed her every day since I left, and am just now getting used to the feeling that we aren’t just a phone call or a Panera date away anymore.  After she leaves, I think I’ll have another hard few months until Christmas.  But it’s all worth it!  Here’s Anna and I with Chloe at Build-A-Bear for her 6th birthday.  Sorry, David–couldn’t find you in any of my pictures.  We’ll fix that during your visit.

After Anna and David go home, we have a couple weeks to prepare for our fall visit to see our families.  We’re flying in to OKC where I’ll stay while Daniel makes a trip to Dallas to see the Kenworthys.  Here are a couple family pics.

Then….Mom, Katie, and Eleanor are spending Katie’s fall break out here with us!  New York shopping, here we come.  Here’s Mom, Eleanor, me, and the newly-graduated Katie.

OK, I’m pumped!  And that’s not all….Brandon and Julie might be in the vicinity before the end of the year, and my dad has mentioned a possible business trip in the area.  And I believe the wonderful and amazing Ken Stephenson will also be here on business in October!  Who knows what’ll happen in November, but of course we’ll be making the rounds at Christmas.  Here’s to the flying of time between now and then!

Gotta love that M&M’s store!  I was really tired.

Here are my baby sisters on Jillian’s birthday all decked out in J’s girly headbands and beads.  So cute.  I’m missing so much in the lives of these two-Jillian (left) had a birthday and Chloe (right) lost another tooth!

Why did there have to be a display on rats at the Museum of Natural History?

I was excited to see that best-selling author and respected pastor Rick Warren would converse with each of our presidential candidates to help the public, especially the Christian public, to not only gauge the candidates’ positions on important issues, but also get a sense of the general sincerity of each of those men.  I’ve read a couple of Pastor Warren’s books, and I think he’s a great person to host this forum since he has been influential in the lives of so many people-Christians and non-Christians-and has taken a keen interest in social, environmental, and political issues not directly related to the church and been invited to speak on these issues in many secular settings.  He is also included on Time Magazine, U.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek’s lists of influential world leaders.  

Prior to watching this forum, I was quite sure I wouldn’t vote for Obama for a few specific reasons, but I didn’t think McCain was such a strong candidate either.  So although I won’t say I had a completely open mind, I was anxious to hear each of these men answer the pointed, specific questions I knew Pastor Warren would ask.  And based on the answers I heard to questions I consider pivotal to the election, I believe McCain to be a much stronger candidate than I had originally estimated him to be, and while I agree with some of the things Obama hopes to accomplish in the presidency, I cannot support him in any way. 

For instance, Obama cited America’s greatest moral failure as our continued lack of attention to “the least of these,” a reference to Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 25.  I really expected this answer as I know that he is concerned with America’s responsibilities to the poor, and this I respect.  However, I don’t believe “the least of these” to be the poverty-stricken in America.  This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel compassion for the many homeless people I see every single day, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t think America has an obligation to address it at a certain level.  It’s just that for me, the over 40 million children who have been aborted since Roe v. Wade, are much more qualified to fit the bill as “the least of these” than the poor.  And how did Obama respond to the question regarding when a baby was afforded rights as a human?  By making a little joke about how a specific answer to that question was above his pay grade.  And McCain’s answer:  “at conception”.  In all fairness, I realize that neither man’s answer was meant to be an exhaustive response, and while I certainly concur with McCain’s answer, I do not think that it makes every ensuing question as easy as pie.  I just feel that if Obama doesn’t define “the least of these” as those in our society who are not even given rights as human beings, and then avoids a direct response regarding that issue with a joke, he will obviously not be an advocate for the unborn in Washington and therefore cannot win my support no matter how much I also want “hope and change” for America. 

I could go on and on about the other issues I heard addressed in this forum on international policy, the war in Iraq, the existence of evil and America’s response to it, the same-sex marriage agenda, others, where each candidate falls on the issue of abortion is all the information I need to decide how to vote.  And while this may seem narrow and like I’m just not paying attention to the wide array of decisions facing America in the immediate future, I believe that a pro-life position is absolutely central to a right understanding of the world and the responsibilities we have to the international community as the most blessed nation in the world.

Sand in my feet and salt in my hair!  What a fun weekend.

Apparently summer is over in Manhattan.  When we left for the beach on Friday, it was warm, and when we got off the train back in the city, it was cold.  No one told us that the seasons would change this early, but I have to say, it’s delightful.  Usually when I see all the stores start putting out their fall fashions, it just feels wrong because it’s still so hot outside!  Who wants to look at rich sweaters and tweed pants when it’s still over a 100 degrees outside?  But when it’s 60 degrees in the evenings, it just feels so festive to be welcoming fall!

We had such a fun time this past weekend on our little anniversary weekend getaway.  The beach was fairly populated, but it didn’t feel crowded.  We spent a couple hours just reading our books and magazines in the sun and munching on M&Ms.  Of course, no matter how cold the water is, it never keeps us out.  Last year we were swimming in the Pacific in the middle of March.  There’s just no feeling like playing in the waves, and we can’t resist it!  At first the water felt really cold on my feet, but after we got in, it was so refreshing.

We have been on a quest since we got here to find the perfect burger, and it has been a harder process than I expected.  Jackson Hole’s burgers are just too huge–8 ounces of meat is just too much for one person.  Sassy’s Sliders….gross.  We probably took a few years of our lives by eating those.  GoodBurger was delicious, but at $10 each, they could have been better.  Speaking of a better burger, BetterBurger had a great specimen also.  I thought that theirs was the one, but then we discovered the Shake Shack.  Shake Shack is a little place in the middle of Madison Square Park and just had the most delicious burger ever.  I thought that for the money, it was one of the best I’ve ever had.  And the fries were outstanding.  And the chocolate shake was wonderful.  OK, but here’s the deal.  While we were eating, Daniel says, “Oh look Babe, a huge rat just ran across the sidewalk over there.”  Just when I think I’m conquering the fear and revulsion every time I see one, I’m caught off guard and find myself on the verge of freaking out!  I don’t think Daniel meant to scare me–he was surprised too.  But I of course asked how big it was, and just as he was showing me with his hands, we saw 2 more rats chasing each other across the other sidewalk.  So at first I thought, “We have to leave now and can never come back here,” but after recalling how wonderful the food was, I think we just won’t go back at night.  Problem solved. 

Well it’s 10am up here in the northwest northeast part of the country, I’ve had my coffee and cinnamon-raisin bagel, and I owe you, my dear friends and faithful readers, a new post. 

This past weekend was really fun since our friend Chris who we’ve known since our freshman year in college came to visit!  Daniel took off Friday and Monday, and we just went all over the city discovering it together in a way.  We had saved a lot of things that we wanted to do until he got here just so we could do them for the first time together.  We went to the top of the Rockefeller Center for the best views of the city, and it was just fabulous.  I almost cried as I was looking out over the tops of the buildings as we could see the whole city.  When I’m walking around doing all the things I do whether that’s walking to get groceries or going to lunch or coffee with new friends or going downtown to meet Daniel, this place just feels so huge to me.  But being able to see Manhattan’s boundaries and realizing that it’s just a little place packed full of people and buildings somehow just made me love it even more.  It felt a little like we were getting God’s view of the city!  I get reflective at the oddest times, I know, but I just thought about life and how, no matter what happens in the rest of our lives, we’ll always be able to say that we lived in New York City and be able to draw on these experiences and memories.  The rest of the weekend was a blur of sight-seeing and eating.  We were super honored that Chris came to visit and so excited to be familiar enough with the city to be able to show him around!

I have largely stopped the job search as I was going about it.  I’m so blessed that I can be picky about a job and that it isn’t an absolute necessity that I get one.  So as I started looking at our calendar and saw the number of days that people have scheduled to come see us, I realized that a “real” job would be so prohibitive to being able to spend time with our visitors!  Combined with the fact that I haven’t heard a thing regarding my various applications, I think that once again, teaching proves to be just what I’m looking for.  So I’m pursuing starting up my violin studio again.  I’ve had a couple of inquiries, but,  I’m being very selective and holding out for just the kind of students I feel I would be the best fit for me.

Daniel and I will celebrate our third anniversary next Wednesday, so we have a little getaway planned for this weekend.  We heard that the beach at Long Island was one of the best around here, so tomorrow night we’re taking the train to the Long Beach, Long Island and we’ll be back on Sunday sometime.  We’re so looking forward to getting out of the city and seeing the open ocean!

OK guys, I posted too many pictures to fit on one page of my blog, so if you want to see pictures of Coney Island, you’ll have to scroll to the bottom and look at the previous page.  Enjoy!

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This place was super, super cool.

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Panda bears remind me of my 2 little China-doll sisters. Love you, Chloe and Jill!

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Originally uploaded by JenvlnOU

I just love him. The boy, not the rhino.