Where are the DeGroots?

She's Here!

2011-03-08T21:00:00.017-05:00

Belated post yet again, I know. It's hard to keep up with facebook and blog and everything now that we are the proud parents of Anneka Faith DeGroot! Hard to believe that she is 8 weeks old already. I was induced on January 10th and on 1/11/11 at 1:09 a.m. (we tell people 1:11 because no one knew the time for sure), Anneka was born at 5 lbs. 10 oz. She had gained more in the last 3 weeks that I was on bedrest than they thought she would. She was and is very healthy and gaining weight like a champ! At 6 weeks, she was already 10 lbs., 1 oz! She is eating well and sleeping 5-6 hours at night. The first 8 weeks were really rough for me, as I have gone through 6 different infections having to do with breastfeeding, 1 of which landed me in the hospital for 2 days on IV antibiotics. I have said many times, I wish I could just focus on being a new mom instead of all of the medications and creams and everything else we've dealt with! Hopefully those are all behind us. I have to go back to work for 2 weeks full-time starting next Tuesday, and then will be going 1-3 days per week. We are very blessed with CJ's new job that it allows me to not have to work full-time! Below are some pictures of the first 2 months with our dear daughter. She is learning to smile and coo and hold her head up. She has numerous hilarious facial expressions that keep us laughing. What a blessing!

Baby's Room and Pregnancy

2011-01-07T11:09:00.010-05:00

Wow. So I've neglected the blog throughout this whole pregnancy! The last 8 months has definitely had its ups and downs and this pregnancy has not been without its troubles. We had to go to the doctor 6 different times with the possibility of miscarriage or pre-term labor. For those that don't know, am now 36 weeks and 4 days and on Monday, they will be inducing labor. She is a little peanut in the 7th percentile and they think the placenta may not be doing its job and allowing her to grow normally. Our faith has definitely been tested and refined throughout this process as we place our little girl in HIS hands (as if we ever had control anyways). In preparation for her coming, we had someone paint the third floor, and the third floor bathroom is about 1/2 way done with a complete remodel (pictures to come after we paint!). Below are some pictures of the baby's room on the 2nd floor and a few of the growing belly pictures that those of you not on facebook haven't seen. Please pray for a quick delivery once they induce and a healthy baby girl!

Baby's room

Crib, rocking chair, changing table

Closet and more drawers

Blanket

Mobile and bedding

20 Weeks

26.5 Weeks

34 Weeks

36 weeks and 3 days, last belly shot!

News!

2010-08-07T13:57:00.002-04:00

Wow...last post was April 8th. Unacceptable. However, I have a very good reason for not posting from early June until now. I was not feeling great because...I AM PREGNANT! I am 14 weeks along now and due January 30th. Weeks 9-14 were especially rough with the nausea, but hopefully I'm on the upswing now that I'm out of the first trimester! We are very very excited. In other news, please pray for a job for C.J. His structural/civil program at WashU is disintegrating, so he graduated with a Master's in May, and has been looking for a job here in St. Louis since. We've had lots of disappointments and we are wondering what this means for our lives! We would love to stay in St. Louis, but need to be open to the possibility that God has something else in store for us since a LOT of doors have closed here so far. So, I guess..rejoice with us and pray for us!

Spring!

2010-04-08T18:57:00.008-04:00

We are definitely getting an early spring here in St. Louis! With the exception being today, most days have been in the 70's and 80's over the last few weeks. We have been loving it! Here are some pictures of a walk we took in the park on Easter!

Mani and Keri walking under the pear blossom trees

Forsythia and Redbud

C.J. and Keri under the magnolia tree

Magnolia blossoms

Keri and Mani by orange tulips

Love the color combination in the front garden down the street!

Mani and Michigan

2010-04-03T19:21:00.007-04:00

First of all, I am fully aware that by posting this many pictures of my dog, I have become one of "those people" although I tried so hard not to be. We went to Michigan to visit my (Keri's) parents for a weekend and we also got a new camera. What else to do on a 7 hour car ride? Take pictures of your cute dog, of course! So here they are:

He has decided he prefers to be under the hammock so he can be as close to us as possible

His nose really isn't this big :)

His favorite way to ride in the car

Keri and her parents on a hike in the woods

Mani loves to be free for walks in the woods!

Keri and CJ overlooking Lake Michigan in Grand Haven

Mani in the hammock on the way home--sacked out!

We are doing well! Spring has sprung in St. Louis and we are enjoying all of the bright green, flip-flop wearing, and blossoming trees and flowers. We continue to pray about CJ's future job. There are some possibilities on the horizon...

New Art

2010-03-11T19:38:00.005-05:00

C.J. here. I've been on spring break this week, so I decided to finally act on a painting idea that I've had for a while. We have this massive wall above our piano, and I thought that my painting would fit in with our decor perfectly. It's on a 4'x4' piece of plywood, and I used cheap acrylic paint mixed with some stuff to thicken it up. I really dig paintings that have texture--I always want to touch them in the museums. I painted the sky and black for the buildings first, then cut it into 6" strips. After cutting it, I offset the pieces so the sky has a cool effect (at least I think so) and the buildings form a skyline. Last painted were the Arch and the windows. It was about a four day process, but it has been really fun!

Original idea planned in Paint on the computer

On the wall

On the wall in context

2nd Floor Bathroom!

2010-03-01T19:59:00.026-05:00

The second floor bathroom is....drumroll please....DONE! Our friends, Bill and Becca, started on the demo on January 11, and finished about 8 days later after a gut rehab of it. They got all of the big stuff finished and we have been working hard since then to get every detail (paint, lighting, cabinets, etc) done so that we can just enjoy it and not have it in process! Pretty much everything you see is new! First are some pictures of the middle of the work, followed by some before and after pictures. We tried to do a video tour, but it wouldn't upload, so we will post that when we figure it out in case you are the type of person who wants to see it all put together. We love it and love progress!!

Before from hallway

After from hallway

Before vanity and mirror

After vanity and mirror (yay for double sink!)

Before tub

After tub

Before toilet

After toilet and towel bars

Before laundry

After laundry

New shower curtain

New blinds on window

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2009-12-02T19:21:00.003-05:00

I know you all can hardly believe I'm blogging twice in a week, but here it is! Our first real Christmas tree together! It's an 8-footer and completely brings me back to my childhood (all except for the fact that we picked it out at Lowe's in the cold instead of cutting it down ourselves on a tree farm in the middle of Southern CA in short sleeves...hmmmm..) Our biggest challenge is now keeping Mani from eating it.

Condo Progress Continued

2009-11-30T19:44:00.009-05:00

Okay, it's been a while since I have updated on condo progress. We still have to paint the 3rd floor and redo the entire 2nd floor bathroom, but we are making some progress. It helps me to see that if I blog about it :) The first is a picture of our new dining room table. This table turns into an 5X5 ft. square with the leaf that's in it and we have 8 chairs. Much more helpful for having game nights at our house than our tiny little Walmart table. It's also counter-height, so Mani can't put his nose on the table during dinner.
Next is a picture of our new couch for the 3rd floor, bought this summer. Much nicer for movies than two chairs! Note the mini-fridge. Thanks to good friends who donated that to our cause, we no longer have to walk down 36 stairs to get a drink when watching TV.
Next is the finished downstairs bathroom! Thanks to a good friend who helped rip the old vanity out, move the plumbing, re-drywall the wall, and put in a smaller vanity, it looks great! (lesson learned in home improvement...nothing is as simple as it seems!) I included a before picture for you from right when we bought the place.

The next two pictures are the fruits of a trip to an antique row a few miles from our house on my birthday. We needed a mantle and were looking for a stained glass window to hang on one of our massive walls. A guy gave us an awesome deal on these two together. The wood and the build of the mantle match our table almost exactly! We still have some tile work to do around the fireplace and replacing of the masonry on the hearth, but we were happy to find this!

And finally, as we close in on the first floor being done, here is a before and after picture to enjoy.

Happy 1st Birthday Mani!

2009-10-31T17:31:00.004-04:00

Mani turned 1 year old this week. When did this:

Turn into this?

100th post! MI/Race

2009-10-01T19:03:00.012-04:00

It's been a while again! Since our last blog post, our two biggest pieces of news were that we took our annual trip to the cottage with Keri's family and Keri ran a 1/2 marathon. We spent a week in August with Keri's whole family (including new nephew Arie!). It was a wonderful week with time at Keri's grandma's cottage and at Keri's parent's house. We'll include just a few pictures since it was so long ago!! Mani, again, had a blast at the cottage swimming, running up and down the dune, and getting puppy energy out!!

Dexter (2) and Nate (4) in the kayak

Paddle-boating on Spring Lake

Beautiful sunset-not taken in black and white!

Running down the dune at the cottage

What a trusting dog!

Picking blueberries

Kerri Walsh at Muskegon AVP tournament

Our Family

Uncle C.J. and Aunt Keri with nephews

Lots of Arie time sleeping on stomachs!

Dexter and Keri

Ryan, Kelly, and Arie after his baptism

On September 26th in Columbia, MO, Keri also ran a half marathon with 3 of her accountability friends. It was designed to challenge us spiritually and physically this summer, and that it did. We are all greatful it is over, but all in all, it was a cool experience. It rained for the first 8 miles and was very hilly, but the last 4 miles, we rocked it! Here are the before and afters:

What are we doing?!?!

So happy to be done!

The Condo Work Resumes/Continues

2009-07-28T20:50:00.008-04:00

We have re-started work on the condo after another break! C.J. had a few weeks where work in the lab was slow, so he got a lot done around the condo. Though many of them were smaller projects, it feels SO good to have progress! This past Saturday, we spend 5 1/2 hours cleaning out our basement for the first time. I'm convinced it hasn't been done since the building was built (108 years ago). There were literally piles of dust and dirt to be shop-vacced out and cobwebs that must have come from 100s of spiders (I don't even want to think about that part!) We filled our huge dumpster with all kinds of things left behind by previous owners. It was long, dirty job, but it felt good to get it done! Here are some pictures and some of other projects completed.

C.J. getting the cobwebs

The chaos of the basement before cleaning

Some semblance of organization after cleaning

Shelves C.J. installed to help wtih organization

Us with our dust masks on!

New hooks on the landing to the basement

Shelves/hooks C.J. installed in the front closet

The ledge is finished!!!

Downstairs bathroom waiting to be painted after old vanity ripped out, plumbing moved, and new vanity installed

Cruise 2009!

2009-07-15T17:41:00.020-04:00

We are readjusting to everyday life after being on a 7-night cruise with Royal Carribean leaving from San Juan, Puerto Rico and going to Aruba, Curacao, Dominica, and St. Thomas! This cruise has seriously been in the works for about 5 years. Of Keri's 5 housemates from Calvin and her, 3 got married in 2004 and 3 in 2005. We agreed that on the first batch's 5 year anniversary summer, we would go on a cruise to celebrate! Two couples were unable to make it (and were missed!), but 4 could go. The guys also all lived in the same dorm during college, so they all knew each other beforehand. It was an amazing time! We have never been on a vacation with so many different things to do and a complete lack of responsibility (meaning no dishes, cooking, etc. to do). We loved it! We'll let the pictures do most of the talking. Lots of activities and lots of laughs. If you have facebook, the same pictures are posted on there, so if you've seen those, you've seen these!

Dancing on the ship deck

The eight of us at our dinner table...the food was incredible!

Captain's champagne welcome reception

Us on formal night

DeGroots and Sportels on Aruba during a city tour-the others went sailing and snorkling

We snorkled too with some borrowed equipment on a secluded beach. We saw squid, urchins, and awesome colorful fish on coral!

C.J. enjoying the water at Boca Catalina on Aruba

Sportels and DeGroots after kayaking on Curacao

Dancin' it up at the 70's party on board

The girls with the village people

We hit the casino one night with $6.75 in change and lost it within about 10 minutes

The boys karyoke-ing "Under the Bridge"

Roots made our path on part of our jungle hike on Dominica

All 8 of us on the hike!

C.J. being Tarzan

Our guide jumping into the pool of a 300 ft. waterfall. We got to swim and jump from smaller rocks on the other side.

Rum punch after the hike! :)

Semi-formal night for lobster and steak dinner with free refills on lobster tails...yum!

Our cruise ship docked on St. Thomas

Us after a day on the beach and more snorkeling on St. Thomas

Magen's Bay on St. Thomas where we spent 4th of July

The four girls on the last night

Mud Run

2009-06-07T16:44:00.004-04:00

My friends are crazy. About a month ago, I got a text from my friend Beth saying "Save June 6 at 9am...details later." I thought maybe a girls' morning out, or a pray walk, but oh no....she had signed us up for a 5 person team USO (army) mud 5k. That's right....a 5k running race in the mud. Beth's brother was killed in action in Iraq a few years ago, so this was to honor him. We were told to wear wool socks and duct tape our shoes to our pants so we wouldn't lose them. It was actually really fun! There were many mudpits that were knee deep, and others that you had to crawl through (hence the mud on the hands in pictures below). The running portion was in hay, gravel, and tall grass most of the time. My favorite thing I heard from one of the other runners during the race was "Wait a minute, we're running through mud, then hay, then mud, then hay...hello! That's how you make bricks!" Our feet certainly felt like bricks! The race ended with a run through a huge water spray from a firehose. All in all, not a bad way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning!

Team "Muddy Buddy" and our duct-taped shoes

Katie and Keri running

Our and Beth's sister's team's shoes after the run

We did it!

The Cottage and Mani

2009-06-03T19:17:00.008-04:00

First of all, we have another nephew!! Keri's sister went into labor 3 weeks early and our nephew Arie was born in Cambridge on June 1st! It is killing us not to be there to see him, but we are very excited for our siblings and pumped to meet their new kiddo in August.

For Memorial Day weekend, Keri got 4 days off of work and we headed up to the cottage. The weather was absolutely gorgeous for that time of year up there. We had fun playing games inside and on the beach and dipping in the cold water twice. One of the really fun parts for us was taking Mani to see how he'd do with a little beach and freedom. He had never seen sand before and freaked out at first when his paw touched, but then became quite the digger! He also wouldn't go in the water for the first 2 days, but something clicked on the last day and we couldn't keep him out of it! He also slept in our tent with us (just curled up at the foot of our sleeping bags and didn't bother us till morning!) and did really well off the leash on the beach. Do we need a kid or what? All of our pictures are of him from that trip! Here are a few shots and a before and after video with Lake Michigan.

Mani loving the sand

Cousin Stacey and boyfriend Tim, Mom, Dad, C.J. and dogs on the pier

Family!

C.J. and Mani walking on the beach

Mani after hearding all of his toys-our puppy is growing up!

Mani scared of the water

Keri's Mom and Grandma's Visit

2009-04-29T19:53:00.006-04:00

Keri's mom and grandma came to St. Louis for the weekend! We had great weather and had tons of fun! Because we keep moving every year, my grandma comes down to see each new place :). We went to the Botanical Gardens, took several walks, and ate some great food!

C.J. and Keri at the botanical gardens

Keri with a pink dogwood

Gorgeous azaleas in the Japanese gravel garden

Dogwood bloom

Mom, Grandma, and Keri

Family Photo

Mani and His Treat Ball

2009-04-18T20:08:00.003-04:00

Our dog continues to grow both bigger and more clever. We give him a hollow ball that he has to work to get treats out of when we need to occupy him for a while, and In the past it has taken him a long time. Recently, though, he figured out a new technique. The video's a bit long, but we think it's pretty funny. The more frustrated he gets, the higher up the stairs he goes. The last clip is him checking each stair to make sure he didn't miss any treats that may have fallen out.

This and that

2009-04-15T14:40:00.006-04:00

So not too much interesting going on here...Spring has sprung! Below is a picture of the lilac bush in front of our house in full bloom! Keri is trying her hand at small-scale gardening. Lots of work!

Two weekends ago, we took a quick trip up to Michigan to see Keri's parents, grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousins. We were a little bit apprehensive about taking our 5 1/2 month old puppy on a 7 hour car ride, but he did great! He slept most of the time or just hung out and played with toys. At one point, he was completely sacked out!: The other news is that the church plant we have been on the leadership team launched on Easter Sunday! Everything went really well and we're really looking forward to continuing to see what God has in store for City Church!

New addition

2009-03-26T19:27:00.005-04:00

We added a piano to our condo! We were in some friends' place in downtown St. Louis and they had a great piano that looked awesome. They told us they got a deal on craigslist and we checked and found a great one with a person willing to help deliver! Mani is continuing to grow and learn more tricks!

New Piano

Mani snoozing

His favorite place to be is as close to us as possible

Condo Work Resumes

2009-03-07T10:47:00.009-05:00

After a lovely 2-month hiatus of work on the condo after our move-in, the work resumed this week. Keri's parents came down from Michigan to help us get jump-started yet again and motivated to finish the first floor. We got some big things done! The first floor is not done yet, but shelves and trim got painted, shoe was put down on the floors, windows were caulked, Keri's dad yet again worked on plumbing issues, and he built a ledge between the kitchen and dining area. It is exciting to work on the place again, but also overwhelming as we're reminded of everything that needs to be done which we were happily oblivious to for a while. My parents also brought their dog and Keri's sister's dog down, so we had some chaotic times with Mani wanting to constantly play with the other two dogs. They worked it all out, but sometimes it was crazy! It was so good to have Keri's parents here. Mani is sleeping through the night (Thank goodness!) and besides a small case of worms is doing well. He's still such a people dog and loves to snuggle up to us when we're hanging out in the evenings. If only we could get "come," "settle" and "heel" down, we'd be doing awesome. He has doubled his weight since we got him (about 12 lbs when we got him and about 25 now) and sometimes we swear he's grown another inch over night. He's going to be a big dog! We're not sure why he has devil green eyes in most of his pictures, but overlook that...he's cute.

A growing puppy-almost knee height on Keri!

Mani with his biggest squeaky dog (none of the four have ears anymore!)

Almost too big to snuggle like this with C.J.

Keri's Mom priming and painting shelves on the 10 ft. ladder

Keri's Dad with the hammer working on the ledge

Dad Ballast with all of the dogs

Mani snuggling after the nail gun went off and scared him

Puppy Update

2009-02-15T14:31:00.006-05:00

It's been just over two weeks now, and despite only sleeping through the night twice and having to be continuously vigilant about his whereabouts, we're really enjoying Mani. We're very ready for his puppy teeth to fall out (as is our furniture). He's definitely grown a lot in the last two weeks, though not quite enough for him not to fit behind our couch or under the bed when he's trying to hide from us. We've been trying to socialize him with other dogs whenever we can. In addition, let us present Exibit A for his reign as the smartest puppy ever:

I'm sure his intelligence is going to wreak havoc eventually, but for now it's just fun. Shake took him about three times to learn, and roll over took about two days! Any suggestions for tricks we should challenge him with now would be welcome. Here are some more pictures!

Fearless Mani trying to steal a stick from 90 lb. Hudson

Snuggling and kisses for C.J.

The DeGroot Family Grows

2009-02-01T12:53:00.004-05:00

The DeGroot family is growing by 1.....!!

We got a 3 month old puppy yesterday! For those of you who know that we have been saying all along that we didn't want a puppy (instead we wanted a house-trained, more than 1 year old dog), just let the pictures do the talking....This one stole our hearts! He is a german shepherd/collie mix (I know, I know...HAIR!) and we have named him Mani (which means peanut in Peruvian Spanish). Our first night with him went reasonably well, and we've only had 3 small accidents on carpet. We'll get there! He is a total snuggler and we're going to have a lot of fun!

RIP Mazda

2009-01-24T09:22:00.009-05:00

The Mazda is kaput. For those of you who never had the pleasure of meeting "La Maz", as we used to call her, she was a 1986 Mazda 323 that we've driven for the last 5 years. Keri's dad found it in CA with only 76,000 miles on it (and no rust!) for a mere $1400. Even though most of the stories many of you have heard about it involve break downs of some sort (wheels falling off in Southern Indiana, not starting after it rained overnight, the battery dieing on us continually for a year), it really has been a great car. We drove it from CA to MI with semi trucks passing us through the Rockies, and we took it on several trips after that, but a 23 year old car can only last so long. Though it had only 105,000 miles on it, things were starting to go wrong more and more consistently--exhaust, tires, and the death knell...brakes. This was not a great time financially for us to get a new car, and it always is cheaper to fix a car then to buy a new one, but we really felt like this was it for the Mazda. La Maz has earned her rest, and we got the $199 processing fee on our new car waived to trade her in for wholesale.

After a long search, we got a 2004 Hyundai Santa Fe Monday night. We wanted something a bit bigger than our Honda Accord for hauling things like C.J.'s drums and a dog (we're planning on getting a big one!). We are hoping this will be a reliable car! We hope we're done with major expenses for a while!

Ely

2009-01-10T20:04:00.007-05:00

For the last of the England blogs, we did a day trip to Ely from Cambridge via train on New Year's Day. The two big attractions there were a tea house voted the best tea in England (which was closed because it was New Year's) and a cathedral started in 1020 A.D. It was very cold, but a cool day!

Stopping to play at a playground

The whole family at Starbucks

Dexter being a ham

The family outside of Ely Cathedral

The side of the cathedral

A picture from the inside of the church

C.J. and Dexter on the swings

London

2009-01-10T19:39:00.018-05:00

While in England, the whole family took a 2 hour busride to London. We stayed overnight, so we had two days to see the city! The most striking thing was the age of the buildings! We think a 100 year old building is old here in the states, but we saw several buildings there over 1000 years old! We got to go to an evensong service in Westminster Abby, where it said that worship had been offered in that building every day for over 1000 years. What an incredible experience! We also got to see Big Ben, the changing of the guard, Trafalgar Square, the British Museum and lots more! It was a great trip and our nephews were such troopers. Nate (3) walked most of what we walked and was only carried towards the end of the day.

The London Eye (Ferris Wheel)

The fam in front of Big Ben

Dexter sacked out

Big Ben and a double-decker bus

Nate and Keri in the underground

Us in front of a huge lion in Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

Westminster Abbey at night

One of the tables at the Dutch Panacuken restaurant

Changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and a ticked off policeman

The guard

Us in front of the palace

Buckingham Palace

Sisters! Back in Trafalgar Square

C.J. with a picture of the Chelsea Football club at their stadium

Haley, Kel, and Mom on Portobello Road on our way the market

Cambridge and Family Time!

2009-01-09T18:51:00.017-05:00

Okay, we're going to break up the trip to England as well. Fulfilling a dream of our family's (we've been planning the trip since summer of '07 when we found out Keri's sister Kelli and her husband were moving to England for 3 years for Kelli to do a post-doctorate project at Cambridge University), Keri's whole family and we went to England together for 8 days from Dec. 26-Jan. 2. Pictures of our 2-day trip to London and a side trip to Ely are to follow, but the first few days while we recovered from jet-lag, we hung out in Cambridge. What a cool and quaint city! It was also so good to be together and see Nate and Dexter (nephews). We're so glad Keri's brother and sister-in-law took on the challenge of changing 8 hours time and flying 8 hour flights with a 1 year old and 3 year old. It was an incredible trip! I'll let the pictures do most of the talking!

C.J. excited about the personal video screens (that didn't work the whole way to London)

On a walk in Cambridge the first day

The family in Cambridge on a bridge over the river Cam

Cathedral in Cambridge

Street in Cambridge

Nate on a bear near a museum

Us with our wooden shoe slippers we got from Kel and Ryan for Christmas from Amsterdam

The whole family at church!

Grandma and Grandpa with the kiddos

Aunt Keri, Nate, Uncle C.J. and Dexter

Dexter learned to say "Uncle" after we had been tickling Nate all week and telling him to say it

Move-in Day

2009-01-09T18:18:00.011-05:00

Because it has been so long since our last post (and so much has happened!) I'm going to break it up. We'll start with move in day to the new condo. Besides 2 hurt backs, one case of pink eye, and 5 separate leaks in the condo, the day went well. We really like it now that we're a bit more settled. Although there is much more to do, we like it and are glad to be done with the huge step of moving in! Now we can be a little bit more relaxed about the work left. On an unrelated note, the Mazda (1986 for anyone who doesn't know) may be finally declared dead, as the brakes went out and will cost over $500 to fix. If anyone knows of anyone selling a car cheap, please let us know as this is not the greatest timing to have to make another huge purchase! (Too bad one can't drive brand new refridgerators to work!) Here are some pictures of the condo as far as we have gotten it:

Cleaned out and ready for move-in

C.J. installing the stove, cupboard doors back on

New refridgerator and dishwasher

Living room

Dining room with the overflow of stuff that wouldn't fit in the 2nd bedroom

3rd floor (still unpainted, but quite homey!)

We're in England

2008-12-27T04:30:00.002-05:00

Hi Everyone! I'm sorry we haven't posted in so long! We have moved! We moved into our new condo last Saturday (THANK YOU to everyone who helped!), unpacked Sunday, cleaned the apartment after work for 4 hours Monday, had a Christmas party Tues. night, and left to drive to Chicago on Wed. We flew out on Christmas and everyone (Keri's whole family) has arrived to England safely! We are jet lagged, but very very glad to be together! We will post more pictures of the move and of course of England when we return after the new year!

More work

2008-12-08T20:53:00.007-05:00

We had a good weekend (a three day weekend for Keri!) that included more work on the condo and a birthday party for Ellie Torgerson, the 1-year old of our friends Joey and Kim. It was a great time!

Joey, C.J., and Jeff with their party hats

Ellie opening presents

Eating chocolate cake!

On Saturday, we had a total of 11 people come and help us on the condo throughout the day. LOTS of work got done and we are closing in on being done with the first floor! Thank you to all who helped! There still seems to be an endless list that we would like completed before our target move-in date, but I guess the life of a home owner is always having a list of projects, so this will induct us into the club well. Keri has been fighting a cold/sinus infection all week, which has not helped progress! The end is in sight, though. We're getting there!

C.J. and Jon installing countertops

Jackie painting trim

Countertops installed!

Cupboard doors with first coat of paint

Thanksgiving

2008-12-03T18:44:00.010-05:00

Thanksgiving was strange for us this year, as it was the first year we didn't go anywhere for the holiday. Throughout undergraduate school, we went to Keri's grandma's house in Michigan. For 3 Thanksgivings after that, we drove up to Michigan from St. Louis, and last year at this time, we were in Peru! We did, however, have C.J.'s brother Kevin drive in from Dordt College in Iowa and stay with us from the Tues. before Thanksgiving to this past Monday morning. We had a great time with him! He shadowed some physical therapists at Keri's work, helped on the condo, got to see a Fundamental Elements show (our friend Russ's band), got to see a baptism service for the church plant leadership team, and got to go to a Ram's game. One of Keri's former patients had sent her some of his season tickets for the Rams vs. Dolphins game on Sunday. When we got to the game, her patient was sitting there too! It was really fun for her to get to see how he was doing and catch up. As you will see from the pictures, we had great seats! Work on the condo is coming along. We're hoping to have lots of help this Saturday and get most of the first floor done and our bedroom a long ways into started.

Green kitchen!

Pantry area painted tan

Tan entryway

Rams vs. Dolphins

Brothers!

The three of us on the metrolink home from the game

Feeling Better

2008-11-23T09:03:00.007-05:00

As suspected, after C.J. worked hard yesterday with help from Jeff Schipper and Terry Rassier and got a ton done, we are feeling better about the condo. The large wall on the left of the stairwell is now green (tricky cutting in happened and C.J. says it was a good thing I wasn't there...I'm glad you're okay, Jeff!). I put a second coat on the red bathroom after work and C.J. and Terry cut in and started the kitchen. Finally, it feels like some progress is being made. There is still lots to go, but we're getting there!

RED bathroom!

Keri painting a second coat

The kitchen

Green stairwell

Terry-who has helped 3 Saturdays in a row! What a trooper!

Oh Condo will you ever be finished?

2008-11-21T19:50:00.008-05:00

Hi Everyone,
As promised, I will continue to post pictures of progress. Honestly, though, this week C.J. and I have kind of hit a wall and are really sick of working on the condo. We are feeling bad about continuing to try to call on friends in the area to help us, but are completely overwhelmed by trying to finish everything that needs to be done by our target move-in date of Dec. 20. There is seriously, still, SO MUCH left. We've been spending nights after work there and are pretty much exhausted. I (Keri) am also tired of how inward focused this makes us for this season of life and am wanting to be able to think about and help others for a while. If you could pray for perserverance, dilligence, and people who know how to do things in the condo that we don't to come around us, we would appreciate it. Sorry to be Debbie-downer. I know it's only a season and that this condo is an incredible blessing. We just aren't enjoying the rehab currently as much as we'd like to. Anyone who knows me well will also know that after a long day today and starring down working a Saturday tomorrow, I could feel much better by Sunday. But for now, please pray for sleep that isn't interuppted by dreams of painting 13 ft. walls and some peace. We're taking nights off and just hanging out, but that gets frustrating too because you don't see progress as quickly. Anyways, the pictures below are after Keri's friends Gina (and her husband Mike) and Jackie came over one Wed. night to help paint. That night saw the onset of color on our walls! Yay! Last Saturday, a few people also came to help continue the painting and prep other walls for their turn at the paint. Keri put the first coat of bright red in the bathroom downstairs yesterday, which was fun (pictures to follow soon). Thanks to all who have helped us so far and please don't stop being friends with us just because you get e-mails every week asking for help! :)

Mike-you paint that harvest brown, boy!

Jackie and Gina sanding and taping

The crew-thanks guys!

Cupboards off in the kitchen-we've decided to paint them white

The second wall completed-good job, Jeff Schipper!

Continued work on the condo

2008-11-09T17:20:00.008-05:00

As promised, I will post new pictures after major work days on the condo. This weekend we decided that for our sanity, we would only work 9am-6pm on Saturday and rest on Sunday. I'm not sure if I mentioned or not, but one of our fellow church plant leadership team members, Mike, bought the condo right next door to us. He is also fixing his up and is hoping to move in soon, so we had a force of about 12 people decend upon our condos to help out. Thanks to all who showed up! In our condo, we got walls spackled and primed, baseboards and 1 ceiling painted, and C.J. finished the laminate wood flooring! Katie Mohr also put some appreciated time in scrubbing down the bathrooms. Even little Eliot helped out! As Katie and Russ said, it's about the least child-proof thing they could've done on a Saturday (at one point I caught Eliot right before he slammed a mallot into one of our walls), but once we gave him a sander, he sanded walls, ladders, people, you know...all of the helpful stuff :). He did great! The only accident of the day happened when everyone was gone and I (Keri) had 1 more foot to cut in on ceiling. I had been taking down the 2 gal bucket of celing paint every time I had to move the 10 ft ladder all day. I thought I had taken it down and moved the ladder for the last time and what was left of the bucket came down all over the floor, camping chairs, and 1 wall. Thank goodness the carpet was covered in plastic. Not the way I would have chosen to end a long day, but it could've been worse! Enjoy the pictures! This week/next weekend we put COLOR on those walls!!!

Eliot stopping his hard work for a snack

Joey painting baseboards

The crew stopping for lunch

Eliot and a paintbrush

C.J's finished kitchen floor

Finished wood flooring in hall and 1st floor bathroom

Condo work and visit from Keri's parents

2008-11-05T18:12:00.006-05:00

The work has begun on the condo... Keri's parents came down for the weekend and we had a marathon of projects. As it turned out, all 3 toilets had rusted out inner parts, so my dad (who's only home project he despises is plumbing) spent lots of time replacing parts and checking leaks. C.J. and Dad finished the entry-way laminate wood flooring, started the kitchen/bathroom flooring, replaced faucets, and cut new countertops so that they are ready to be installed. Keri and her mom assembled a table saw (with cuts to prove it!), pulled up the kitchen linoleum (and cleaned up the mouse turds we found underneath it), and prepared the walls for painting. We also removed all of the nasty appliances that were in the kitchen. We did have time to hang out and it was fun to work on the condo together, but we are all tired and sore! :) We are excited for the day we can be "done" for a while and just live in it!

C.J. working under the kitchen sink

The entry way flooring going in

Mom and the table saw

Mom and Keri cleaning the floor/ripping out linoleum

Dad and my annual pumpkin (our attempt at the Grinch)

Fall Harvest Party

2008-10-22T19:29:00.010-04:00

Last weekend the Schippers, Torgersons and we decided it was time to celebrate fall! We had candy corns and pumpkin dip to start, then ate chili, and had a pumpkin spice roll for dessert. We also carved pumpkins (don't worry, dad, C.J. did most of ours, and I'm waiting for you to carve ours! :) It was a good time and little Ellie is getting so fun and interactive! Enjoy some pictures!

Sweet Baby Ellie!

Friends!

Our "Asian" pictures for Joe

Crazy pic

How cute is she?!!?

Getting the gook out

C.J. hard at work making Bob the Tomato

The finished projects

The carvers

Exciting News!

2008-10-20T18:49:00.013-04:00

So it's time for an update....especially because we have exciting news for those of you who don't know! No, we are not pregnant (and aren't getting a dog yet either), but we are buying a condo! We weren't really even looking, but an opportunity popped up we couldn't say no to. We got an AMAZING deal on a 3 story, 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 1700 ft. condo just on the other side of Lafayette Square. It's a big-time fixer-upper, so we are a little bit nervous about the time, money, and energy that will need to go into this, but we really felt like this was a good decision! We close next Monday, Oct. 27, and we are in a lease in our apt. until Dec. 31, so we have a good amount of time to work on the condo while we can come home to a put-together apt. at night. See the pictures below! Notice the dirty walls and carpet! :) We are having all new carpet installed this week and every square inch of the place will be painted. We have to buy 5 appliances and hope to redo the kitchen as well! Please pray for good communication in our marriage in this endeavor and trust that God will provide financially. And most importantly, pray that God will use our apt to minister to his people in Lafayette Square!

Our front door (the one on the right)

Our living room looking into the kitchen on the 1st floor

The other side of the living room

The LONG stairwell to the 2nd floor when you walk in the front door

The hallway on the 2nd floor-two bedrooms on the right, bathroom straight ahead, stairwell on right

Window in the 2nd floor bathroom

3rd floor bathroom

3rd floor

Looking down into stairwell from 3rd floor

Apple Picking with the Mohrs

2008-09-28T15:07:00.009-04:00

This weekend we got to partake in another wonderful fall tradition--apple picking! We headed out to Eckert's (a local farm) with the Mohrs on Saturday on a gorgeous sunny day. We had a great time watching Eliot enjoy what we were doing! We now have plenty of apples for making yummy fall treats!

On the wagon heading out to the pickable apples

Keri with one of the few apples she could reach

Eliot testing what we had picked so far

Keri looking for more apples she could reach

The Mohr Family

Weekend Fun

2008-09-21T17:25:00.009-04:00

Though weekday life continues to be tiring for Keri and largely unknown yet for C.J. (he has yet to start his research lab rotation and teaching for his GK 12 program, so we still don't know what a normal week looks like), we have had some chances to have some fun on the weekends. Last weekend we drove up to MI to see Keri's parents and other family. We spent a rainy day Saturday at the cottage, but still managed to have fun! We put on rain gear and took a long walk in the rain, and even got to swim in the lake. It was warmer than when we were there in August!

This weekend we were able to take advantage of a few of St. Louis' fun, free things to do. Every year they have a hot air balloon festival at Forest Park. They do a "Balloon Glow" on Friday night and light up all of the balloons, and then they have a race on Saturday. We didn't attend on Friday night due to C.J's dislike of the parking situation and large crowds, but we went with our friend Katie Mohr and her son Eliot to see the beginning of the race.

C.J. and Eliot playing before the launch

Even though we were just standing in a random field to see the balloons, two of the balloons actually had something go wrong after take-off and landed right in front of us!

After the balloons, we headed over to the Loop. Our friend Russ Mohr's band, The Fundamental Elements, was playing in "Play STL," an event where 99 bands come to the Loop to play. He played on the free outdoor stage. Great music, good friends, and a great way to spend a Saturday!

Tour de Lafayette

2008-09-01T15:50:00.006-04:00

Friday night, our community got some excitement when the Tour de Lafayette came to Lafayette Square. The Gateway Cup is an all-weekend series of road bike races in the St. Louis area. Friday night was the Tour de Lafayette, a bike race around our 1-mile Lafayette Park. It was crazy! There were several different races for different speeds and levels of racers. It all ended with a 60-minute + 5 lap race of professional cyclists (the 2nd place winner was on Tour de France). Though there were several crashes, on the corner C.J. and I sat, the biggest excitement was when one of the biker's water bottle flew off him and skidded and hit C.J. in the foot :) It was a fun time and so fun that with how crowded it was down here, we could just walk the block up to the park to watch! Oh, and I forgot to post two of the family pictures we took on vacation, so those are below.

The best picture we could get of racers flying by

Sunset and the motorcyle light with racers coming towards our corner

Uncle C.J. and Aunt Keri with the boys

The family (minus Ryan and Kelly)

Vacation to Michigan

2008-08-23T17:14:00.031-04:00

August 8-17, we got a much needed break from the routine of life to go to Michigan with Keri's family (minus Kelly and Ryan who are in England and were very much missed). We spent most of the week at Keri's grandma's cottage on Lake Michigan which her grandpa built over 20 years ago. We had beautiful weather all week, but unfourtunately, a cold spell came for the lake. The week before and after we were there, the water temp was around 75 degrees. Our week ranged from 48-55. We had so much fun, though, playing with our nephews (Dexter-11 mo., Nate-3 years) and relaxing! Some of the highlights of the week were seeing all 5 of Keri's college housemates and their husbands, riding bikes in Grand Haven, eating lots of ice cream, picking blueberries (19 lbs!), kayaking on Spring Lake, kayak-surfing on Lake Michigan, playing Pit, Scrabble, Bola, and Bocce, and staying up late to watch Olympics. We'll let the pictures do the talking about what a great time it was!

Keri and her college housemates

The whole gang

Nate boogie boarding on the "waves" of Lake Michigan

Nate jumping off of his "diving board" in to his "hot tub"

Dexter enjoying his hot tub

Blueberry picking!

Dad and Keri on a walk down the beach

Jon, Haley, and the boys

Dexter in his sand playpen

Dad and Dexter with the kayaks

C.J. kayaking

Scout in the dune grass-this one's for you Kel and Ryan

Bocce!!

Mom playing tennis

Victory for Keri and Jon

Jon and C.J. squaring up against the old-timers

CUTEST NEPHEWS EVER!!

What would vacation be without ice cream and sugar highs?

Mom kayak-surfing...this one did not end well!

Keri giving it a shot...this one did not end well either.

Keri getting C.J. with cold water

C.J. getting Keri back

Keri and Nate

"Dexter, show me all of your teeth"

Dad kayak surfing

Dexter saying "cheese" and "C.J."

Trip to Minnesota

2008-07-08T20:48:00.010-04:00

The latest excitement in our lives came in the form of a trip to Minnesota. C.J.'s parents first drove from CA to St. Louis and spent 4 days with us here. We went to Ted Drewes for ice cream, took the Anheiser Busch Brewery tour, and had a good time hanging out! After that, C.J. and his parents drove to Iowa to visit family on the DeGroot side, and then up to Minnesota to have a family reunion with C.J.'s mom's side of the family and celebrate his grandpa's 80th birthday. Keri flew up on Thursday night and the whole family minus 3 cousins (making about 40 people!) got together in Prinsburg (pop. 450) for some good small-town fun. We saw a kiddy tractor pull and a parade where each street makes its own float--good times.

We're now back to work again. Keri has good days and bad days at work, and is still exhausted by it at times, but is pushing through. C.J. is really looking forward to ending his time at his job, but just found out that his mentor for his PhD is leaving WashU for a dean position at another school. That's put a damper on his excitement about going back to school, and we are waiting to hear what that means for C.J. (he definitely will still be able to go, but was really excited about working with that professor, so it's a bummer). Enjoy the pictures below!

Us in Prinsburg-new haircut for Keri!

DeGroot kids on the hike to Redwood Falls

Cody with his crawdad he found in the pool above the falls

Redwood Falls

How many guys does it take to get bola balls down from a tree branch? This many plus several onlookers plus an hour and a half!!

Grandpa and most of the grandchildren

The DeGroot (and See) Family

Overdue Update

2008-06-07T18:48:00.002-04:00

Hello to all if you're still reading our blog :) My goodness, I just looked at the date of the last blog and it has been about a full month since our last post! Life has gotten crazy now that we are both working full-time! I (Keri) really enjoyed the last days of my free schedule, but am now fully into the working world. I'm tired, but it's going better than I would have expected. I got my first 3 patients on my third day of work and I've been at a full caseload for about a week now. This kind of job is exhausting, because not only am I on my feet all day running around and physically transferring my patients, but I'm dealing emotionally with what they're each going through and what it must be like for their families. I have a tough time sometimes leaving work at work, and often I come home and think about my patients in the evenings or dream about them during the night. I know that I'll learn not to take it home with me eventually, but for now, it's hard not to! There are days that brain injury/stroke is absolutely fascinating, and there are other days that I feel very overwhelmed with how much I don't know about these populations and feel bad for them that they have me as their OT. I like the work atmosphere and my co-workers so far, which is a blessing.

C.J. continues to work full-time and looks forward to returning to school. The highlight of the last month for him was that he got to play percussion during the CD release party of our friend's band, the Fundamental Elements. They're an amazing band, and C.J. had so much fun playing with them for a night! The church plant is going well. We are enjoying living in this community and getting to know new people in the area. At this point, we're all just serving the community and making relationships so that whenever in the future we actually launch, we'll hopefully have people lined up to get in! :) In this community, it's very important that they know us, as they are very protective of their community. Many peope have lived here for 15+ years and really made this area what it is today, so they have a vested interest in everything that goes on here.

That's about all I have as an update. Our lives are not quite as interesting as they once were, but in many ways, that is a blessing.

To the Workin' World I Go

2008-05-09T10:31:00.002-04:00

I (Keri) have officially accepted a full-time position at The Rehabilitation Institute of St. Louis on their inpatient stroke and brain injury floor. Though I was a little bit hesitant to accept due to my passion for spinal cord injuries and becaue I don't have a lot of experience with these two populations, I really feel like I can learn a lot and may end up loving it. The bottom line is that I need experience right now, and I will learn valuable lessons in OT no matter where I work for my first job. I'm sure I will have some great stories working with these populations :) I start already on Monday, May 19, so I would appreciate prayers for this upcoming time of transition. I have REALLY enjoyed my freedom and flexible schedule in the last 3 months, so I will be mourning it, but this is what I was made to do and I have been wanting to be an OT since I was in 5th grade! So working world, here I come....

Botanical Gardens

2008-05-01T12:55:00.008-04:00

Hello! Keri here again. My mom and grandma drove down from Michigan this week to visit for a few days. We have been having beautiful spring weather, so yesterday we headed out to the Missouri Botanical Gardens (another free St. Louis thing if you're a resident-plus they let Mom and Grandma in for free because they were my guests!). The flowers and flowering trees were absolutely stunning. I had fun with C.J.'s good camera. Enjoy the pictures below! My job search continues, but I do have an interview this week. We'll see how it goes! C.J. continues to look forward to returning to school and is trying not to check out of his work before then. Please pray for him in that. Other than that, we're enjoying spring in St. Louis and I'm enjoying the volunteer activities I can do as a result of not finding a job yet ;)

Grandma, Me, and Mom (See the family resemblance?)

Tulips!

More Tulips!

Lilac (they smelled even better than they looked!)

Pink Dogwood Flowers

Tastefully done Tuplip and Pansy display

St. Louis Earthquake!!

2008-04-18T10:24:00.004-04:00

Keri here. You may have already heard, but early this morning at around 4:35am, St. Louis all the way up to Wisconsin felt a 5.4 earthquake. It was a gentle, rumbling one, not rolling or a sudden jolt. Now, having grown up in southern CA, anything under a 6.0 normally doesn't faze me. I was scared of earthquakes when I was younger, but by the time I was 17, I had a routine with middle-of-the-night earthquakes of waking up and thinking, "Is it getting worse or better?....Good...better...I can go back to sleep" Or "Oh crap, worse...I have to get out of bed now." Well last night's quake shook me up for several reasons, though it was a small one and I'm used to that feeling. Here are some reasons...

1. A little history for you. St. Louis is on the New Madrid fault line, which is acutally a bigger fault line than the San Andreas fault (the one I lived on in CA which is much more active). However, the last big earthquake that St. Louis had was in the 1800's, and the earthquake this morning was the biggest felt in the whole midwest region in the last 40 years. It's not all that comforting to hear that a fault line is once again active in your area.

2. This is especially concerning as the entire town is made out of brick. As I was lying in bed, hoping that the quake wasn't a pre-shock (which happened quite often in CA...a littler one before a big one), I realized that the original construction of our apartment building was 1884. That does NOT give me a whole lot of confidence in its ability to withstand seismic activity. I was suddenly glad that our door to our back deck and backyard is in our bedroom so we can peace out of the building if we ever really do get a big one. This city will be a MESS if we ever have a large earthquake.

3. This was the first night earthquake that I haven't been in my parent's house for. After an earthquake was over, my parents would always come down the hall to my room and make sure I was okay. Now, don't get me wrong...I love my husband dearly. However, when it comes to middle-of-the-night happenings, he is sometimes less than comforting (He slept for the first part of the quake and when I woke him up and told him we were having an earthquake, he said, "huh." and promptly went right back to sleep. In the morning, he didn't even believe me that we had had an earthquake and had no recollection of me waking him up and talking to him...nothing like marital comfort in the scary times! :)

Anyways, I was up for a good 45 minutes afterwards and then went back to sleep and dreamed that our building had structural damage and we had to evacuate and then CJ went back to get something and the building collapsed on him and he died. Rough night!

A REAL OT!

2008-04-15T13:41:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone (this is Keri),
Just letting you know that I passed my OT boards and that I'm a real OT now! I just found out today. I've started the job search, and things aren't looking incredibly promising for the exact kind of job that I want. I am applying to a couple of places this week to see what they have, but you can be in prayer about that. I know God has a job for me somewhere, I just need his wisdom and guidance to figure out what that is. No matter what, it's a tough transition to go from student-mode to full-time worker. My whole class has been struggling with it whether they're in jobs or still looking like me. I guess the grass is always greener because in grad school we would always talk about how much we wanted a normal 8-5 schedule with no homework at night. Now that we're all facing that or already in it, we all are missing the flexibility and vacation time that a student schedule offers. I just need to pray for contentment in whatever stage of life I am. Thank you for your prayers and support while I studied for my test! They paid off!

Another DeGroot Update

2008-04-08T17:11:00.005-04:00

Time for another update...this time from Keri. Spring has sprung in St. Louis! We'll have to post some pictures soon of the daffodils, magnolias, and forsythia that are blooming! I'm done with my certification exam, but won't find out for a while how I did. It was a tough test and I didn't leave feeling all that confident because the way the test is set up, you can flag answers you're not sure about to go back to at the end of the test. I flagged probably 30 or 40 out of 200, but then you leave the test after just having gone through all of the answers you're not confident about. You kind of forget that you answered the other 170 pretty confidently, and just kind of feel like you knew nothing! Anyways, we'll see how it turns out. I am starting a job search, but because I'm pretty sure of the type of job I want (full-time, inpatient rehab with spinal cord injury patients), the positions are limited, and none of the places I want to work are currently hiring for those positions. I'm filling my time, though, babysitting for good friends, helping out some people in the community, and coming up: volunteering at the local stray dog shelter. I REALLY enjoy having a flexible schedule and being able to help people.

C.J. has officially decided to go back to grad school in the fall. We are both excited about this opportunity for him.

The church plant we are a part of is going well and while we've had to be patient with some things getting pushed back, we are learning to love on each other as a leadership team and community of believers and have all started serving the community of Lafayette Square in some capacity.

I'll leave you with some pictures of our trip up to Michigan to see my parents two weeks ago. We were only there for the weekend, but it was great to spend time with them. We spent a chunk of Saturday digging post holes (C.J. did that) and mixing/pouring cement so that my parents can get a fence built and be able to let the dogs run freely in the backyard. My siblings have joked since C.J. and I were 17 and dating and my dad had him help tear off the old roof on our CA house that C.J., like Jacob in the bible, was having to do hard labor to earn his wife. Now they joke that although we've been married almost 4 years, C.J. still seems to get roped into home improvement projects :) All jokes aside, we were glad to help my parents get that done and it was actually a pleasant sunny day in MI to do it.

Keri mixing concrete

C.J. helping fill the concrete into the post holes with Keri's parents

Update

2008-03-24T19:25:00.006-04:00

C.J. here this time--it's been a while! Keri's big board certification exam for OT is drawing nearer, so things like this come my way. She's not too stressed about the exam, but some changes in our schedule have recently taken some time away from her studying.

To update on my situation, my visit to Washington University last Friday went really well. The GK12 program would make my time there even more valuable, in my estimation, and would really free me up to pursue what I want as far as my research is concerned. Because the GK12 program is independently funded through a National Science Foundation grant, I wouldn't be restricted to whatever project the professors currently have going. So, as long as I would be somewhere within the realm of my adviser's interests/experience (which turns out are quite broad), I can really define my own research. I also learned that the new focus of the GK12 program is the globalization of engineering. This definitely fits well with my experiences, and the GK12 fellows may be taking a trip to Peru and Chile next summer!

As you can probably tell, I'm definitely leaning towards accepting the offer! I told them that I would decide by the end of this week, and I'll probably take all that time to let God convince me otherwise if that's His will, but as of now I'd say that I'm headed back to school! I'd definitely appreciate your continued prayers as I finish making this decision.

We continue to decorate our apartment. Though this is a continual process, I think we're about finished for now. I hung another 8 pictures and a mirror in our bedroom--I'm DEFINITELY finished with hanging pictures!--and we bought an entry-way table for our living room. I'm still looking to get a Foosball table for the basement, but Craigslist.com has not yet proven fruitful.

Other than that, life's pretty much the same. Thanks for hanging with the blog through the slow times!

New pictures (all from the cottage) in our bedroom

Table with stools in the living room--match our coffee/end tables

Good News!

2008-03-11T12:13:00.002-04:00

We have some good news to update! C.J. was accepted into the PhD program for structural engineering at Washington University in St. Louis (where he finished his undergrad). Not only that, but he was offered a fellowship that requires 10 hours of teaching per week of applied math and science in a middle school. He was very excited about this program, and it pays both his entire tuition and a generous stipend. He also would be assigned the professor that he wanted as his advisor through this program. This was a blessing to hear about this week! C.J. is going to an informational meeting about the program on March 21st to learn more about it so that he can make his final decision by the week after. Please pray for us as we seek God's will for C.J.'s life and as he tries to figure out if this is going to get him to where God wants him to be in his career. The next 5 years of our lives could be very affected by this decision!

Trip to Seattle

2008-02-28T19:37:00.024-05:00

We're back in St. Louis after a great trip to Seattle to see family. The trip didn't start out so great because St. Louis had an ice storm last Thursday, the day we were flying there. Our bad luck with air travel as of late is becoming legendary. It took an hour an a half to get the airport (should be 20 minutes) through about 10 accidents and a major freeway shut-down. At that point, our flight was still on time. We boarded at 8:45am and then sat on the airplane for 3 hours...they showed an entire movie while we went nowhere...too bad it was Jane Austin Book Club. At one point, the pilot came on and said that it had to be 1 degree warmer for the plane to fly. It was -6 and it had to be -5. Can't they just breathe on the thermometer and pretend?!? Later, we taxied out and they de-iced us and we were told to "fasten your seat belts for take-off and enjoy your flight to Seattle." Yeah, not so much. Two minutes later, they told us the airport was shutting down because weather had deteriorated. When they finally cancelled the flight C.J. was able to get through to someone at American Airlines (while we were still on the plane) and get us on a flight going through Dallas at 5:45pm.

We were really disappointed to have to wait that long and seriously considered just moving our whole trip to a different weekend. We decided to move our return flight to Monday (instead of Sunday) and sucked it up and waited. In the mean time, we saw every flight to Dallas (and everywhere else in the country!) before ours get cancelled because of the weather. The weather cleared up at about 4:30 and it was looking like we were going to be able to go, but then our flight got delayed until 7. Thankfully, the flight from Dallas to Seattle was also delayed.

We made it to Dallas, but had to RUN through the Dallas airport to catch our flight. They had already closed the gate, but because there were about 8 of us running to catch that flight, they let us on...and then told us that the plane was still at the gate because it was having a minor maintenance issue. It was minor, but after we ran, we sat on that plane for an hour before it took off. After all was said and done, our quick trip to Seattle ended up taking us about 20 hours.

On Friday in Seattle, we drove up to Mount Vernon to have lunch with C.J.'s Grandpa, Grandma, and two sets of uncles/aunts and cousins. It was so great to see them, even if for only a little while! We were blessed all three days we were there with beautiful, sunny weather. Keri has been to Seattle 4 times now and has gotten good weather every time. If it weren't for how green everything was (that has to come from somewhere), she wouldn't believe it rains there all the time!

Saturday, we got to go out to Haley's (our sister-in-law) parents' cabin on Vashon Island. We took a ferry there and spent a relaxing day watching our nephew Nate throw rocks in the water. We saw two bald eagles very close up, a sea lion, and some otters. We also had a gorgeous view of Mt. Rainier the whole time. There are some pictures of our time at the cabin below.

Olympic mountains from the ferry

Nate and Aunt Keri on the ferry

Bald Eagle #1

Picnic lunch in the sun

Excuse the "graphic nature" of this picture, but Nate is potty training and it's just so cute!

Mt. Rainier

Uncle C.J. and Nate throwing rocks in the water

Bald Eagle Number 2

It was SO fun to play with our nephews! Nate is 2 1/2 but has a very advanced vocabulary! This is the first time we got to see Dexter (5 months old), and he is adorable as well. We feel so blessed to have seen them and Jon and Haley, and it was very hard to say goodbye. We miss seeing those little boys--they change so much between visits! Nate didn't make it any easier when we got to the airport. He just turned away from us when we had to leave with sad eyes and a pouty lip. When Keri asked him to give her a kiss goodbye, he said, "Ummm, not right now." Thankfully, kids get over stuff like that. It's the aunts and uncles that have to deal with that guilt! :)

Dexter and Aunt Keri

Uncle C.J. and Dexter

Nate playing

Dexter in the car

Dexter

Aunt Keri and Nate playing soccer in the backyard

Nate playing soccer--he's got a good left foot already!

Apartment Continued

2008-02-20T17:01:00.010-05:00

Here are some more pictures of the outside of the apartment and some updates from the last time we posted pictures. We had a blast picking which pictures from our trips around the world to frame and hanging them up. Down the hall we have 7 8X10 pictures of cathedrals in Nova Scotia, Ecuador, and Peru (see picture below). Our bedroom is going to have 8 4x6 and 5x7 pictures of my Grandma's cottage in Michigan. Another photo collage of scenery from our trips is also shown below. Tomorrow we get to fly to Seattle to see Keri's brother, sister-in-law, 2 1/2 year old nephew Nate, and 5 month old nephew Dexter whom we haven't even seen yet! We are so excited to get to spend some time with them all, having missed them at Christmas. We also get to spend a little bit of time with CJ's Grandparents and some extended family north of Seattle. Plus, we are flying direct flights for FREE (well, $5 each). God knew money would be tight around now and that we needed to see them all, so he had us get stuck in Ecuador for 30 hours on our way to Peru. Because of that whole fiasco, we got 20,000 frequent flyer miles each, more than enough to put us both over free tickets! Thanks, God! We'll take a day in Ecuador to get to go on this trip! Anyways, enjoy the pictures, and we will report on our trip with pictures when we get back.

Cathedrals down the hallway

Trips photo collage in kitchen/dining room

Updated basement with 9x9 rug and ottoman

View down the street from front porch

The other way down the street

The front of our apartment (our door is on the right and our window is on the 1st floor)

Our back porch (shared with other tennants, but still pretty sweet!)

New Apartment

2008-02-11T19:39:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are some pictures of our new apartment! We are really enjoying it so far and were relieved to have our first weekend in the apartment this past weekend. We had a big shopping trip (8 home decor/improvement stores in one day...don't try this at home!), and a frenzy of putting things on the walls and setting the place up. The biggest project was completed last night by C.J. That was putting our couch back together. Our apartment's original construction was in 1884, and the doorway to the basement shows it. It's a small nook with a tight turn to get down there and two very narrow doorways. Because our TV room is in our own private basement, we needed a couch down there. In the chaos of moving day, 6 guys ripped the back off of our couch-fabric, wood, and all to get it down there. My genius husband spent hours last night cutting new pieces of wood for the ones that had splintered and painstakingly piecing our couch back together. Our apartment has a private entry and 1 unit above us. We'll take some outside pictures this week of our street and our back deck, but for now, it's dark, cold, and snowy out. Here are the pictures of the inside:

The Living Room (ignore the glass-less coffee table)

Mantle and fake fireplace

Other side of living room

The Kitchen

Dining room and view of shot-gun style apartment (Straight back and narrow)

Bathroom

Basement/TV Room

More basement-look at that couch! Can't even tell! :)

Bedroom

More bedroom with his/her closets

We're still here!

2008-02-03T17:39:00.000-05:00

I promise we're still alive and well! I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since our last post! Life has been crazy, but we'll try not to let that happen again. We have to go to a superbowl party right now, but wanted to tell you that we made it in to our new apartment and we really like it. We'll hopefully put some pictures up this week. There is still a lot to do to make it feel like home, but we're getting there and VERY thankful to be in our own place together after 8 months of living with people or at least in someone else's home. The church plant is going very well. We are blessed by what has all happened in the last 4 weeks of meeting as a leadership team and will update more on that this week as well. St. Louis got more snow than we've seen in 3 years of living here this week....it felt like we were back in Michigan! We felt very thankful to be safe in all the driving we did around here during the crazy weather! On Wednesday, we hit a record high of 71 degrees and then it snowed that evening...you've gotta love living in the midwest. I hope some people are still reading this blog and promise we'll do better in the future!

We got one!

2008-01-18T12:46:00.000-05:00

No....not a dog....we finally chose an apartment! We are very excited now that the big decision is over with (what an exhausting process!). We were leaning towards living in a huge catholic school that has been rehabbed into 30 apartments, but decided to go with a homier (is that a word?) apartment with a private entrance very close to Lafayette Park. We will have our own full basement and laundry room downstairs and it has 2 bedrooms and a deck. We will be moving in next Saturday (on CJ's birthday-the 26th). For any of you in St. Louis reading this: if you want to carry a few boxes, we'd love help! Even if you can't help us move, we're going to have pizza to celebrate CJ's birthday at our new apartment in the evening. Give me a call or e-mail me if you're interested! We really are excited about getting in there and making it our home. The only downside is that no pets are allowed. This is the only apartment we looked at that doesn't allow dogs, but it fit all of our other needs much better than the others. We're sad to have to wait at least a year to have that addition to our family, but we were also having a reality check of what life would be like for a young dog once Keri goes to work full-time in April or May. Eight straight hours in a cage every day of the week doesn't sound very fun. So we will try to be patient and wait until it's the right time for a dog! Thanks for all of the prayers about an apartment. We head out to a wedding in Louisville tomorrow and then work for another week before moving in! We'll post pictures as soon as we are able.

Home but Homeless

2008-01-16T09:40:00.000-05:00

Hello from St. Louis! It has been a crazy time since we got back. We drove down Thursday and had an hour at our friends' house where we're staying before taking off to the church office to practice for being part of the worship band in both services on Sunday. Nothing like jumpin' back in with both feet! It was a blessing to be a part of that again, though. Friday, Saturday, and Monday were all filled with apartment hunting. After 15 apartment viewings, we still are not settled on one and don't really know what to do! Keri has 3 more viewings tonight, but we are a little bit discouraged. We are blessed by the generosity of the Gilberts (good friends we're living with), but are also VERY ready after 7 months of living out of a suitcase to be in our own apartment. One of the best possibilities of an apartment won't be ready to move in for 3 more weeks. Yikes! C.J. has returned to work and is finding it a little bit hard to adjust to 8 hour work days after 7 months of irregular schedules! Keri starts teaching tomorrow. So we are doing well, just exhausted from the apartment search and feeling like it's GREAT to be home and see everyone, but we're not really home yet.... Pray for us!

Back to St. Louis

2008-01-09T22:52:00.000-05:00

Well folks, tomorrow we leave for our final leg of travel in this crazy adventure. We are driving from Keri's parents' house in Michigan to St. Louis. It was supposed to be a trip made with both of our cars, but unfortunately, our 1986 Mazda died today and is going to cost $500 to fix. This is NOT very good timing. It stinks to put that much money into a car that isn't worth that much, but we really don't have many options at the moment since we need 2 cars right away in St. Louis, and we can't afford to buy a new car after our 3 months of unemployment :) Keri's parents are letting us take their 2nd car down to St. Louis tomorrow, though. We'll trade in a few weeks when the Mazda is fixed, but we are blessed that they offered this because it won't delay our travel plans. We are very excited to be going to what we really feel is home. At times, we're a little bit overwhelmed with all of the big decisions and running around ahead of us as we look for a new apartment, dog, and start working again. We did find out that Keri will be able to teach a lab for her OT school 1 day a week and work part time for her research lab as well while she studies for her board exam for a few months. That is a blessing. Thank you all for your support through all of this! We loved this adventure, but are also very much looking forward to being SETTLED! Please pray us through the 7 hour trip tomorrow!

Cross Country Skiing

2008-01-04T08:58:00.000-05:00

Hello Everyone! We made it safely to Michigan on Wednesday after a red eye flight from California to Chicago. Keri's sister and brother-in-law picked us up from Midway and drove us on icy roads to Keri's parents' house in Spring Lake, Michigan. We are thankful to be here safely! We had Christmas-take 2 on Wednesday, and yesterday, conditions were right for some cross-country skiing. Anyone who knows Keri may know the story of her traumatic, one-time experience with downhill skiing when she was 8 (we'll just say there was a double black diamond involved), so she was a little bit aprehensive about trying cross country skiing. It was COLD outside, but Keri's parents now own 5 sets of skis (thanks to Craig's List and Mom not having a job right now), and they have beautiful trails through the woods about 20 minutes from their house. The beginning was a little rough for Keri--her mom decided it would be a good idea for her to have the short, new, racing skis for her first time out...yeah...not so much a good idea. After several falls, they switched skiis and it went much better! C.J. did fine and had fun with Ryan (brother-in-law) going down the biggest hills they could find.

Church Plant

2007-12-30T21:49:00.000-05:00

It has been wonderful to be at home in California with C.J.'s family for the last week. We're looking forward to flying to Michigan in a few days where we'll spend a week with Keri's family before moving back to St. Louis! We mentioned a few times in our blogging what the main reason for our return to St. Louis is, but we have not had a chance to elaborate...

We are going to be part of a church plant. A core group of about 13 people, many of whom are some of our best friends in St. Louis, began talking about starting a church before we left for our fieldwork adventures. Conversations continued while we were gone and many of us were affirmed that we were being called to plant a church. A proposal was made to our home church, Greentree Community Church (Evangelical Presbyterian), and it was accepted.

An area of St. Louis was also placed on our hearts. Lafayette Square is an area of St. Louis just south of downtown. This area was very affluent at one time, but after "white flight" and the aging of the city, it became very rundown. This small historical area (www.lafayettesquare.org is a good website about the area) is now being restored and is being looked at as the start of restoration for the whole city of St. Louis. Many people are investing in this area, and Greentree and our church plant want to be a part of this restoration.

All the people of our core group have committed to moving into Lafayette Square, and we hope to have a church which will also be a site for many community activities. This church is very much in its infancy, and we will not be meeting formally for several months, but please keep us in your prayers. We are very excited about returning from our adventures around the world and returning to this new and different adventure in St. Louis!

Merry Christmas

2007-12-25T12:43:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post to say "Merry Christmas", and that we made it to C.J.'s parents' house in CA without complications (and after a quick stop at In-N-Out!). We hope you all have a great day!

Reflections

2007-12-23T15:00:00.000-05:00

We´re all packed and ready to come home! It took a bit of time and some creativity, but all our stuff is in four large suitcases, two smaller (carry-on size) suitcases, and two backpacks. We leave from the house tomorrow at 5:15am to begin our 15-hour travel day. If all goes as planned, we´ll be landing at LAX at about 7pm!

Before we leave Peru (and because we have the rest of the day to relax), we want to share some reflections on our experiences over the last 6+ months of travel.

We are incredibly blessed to have had this opportunity! How many people get to put their "normal" lives on hold for 7 months to travel all over the world as a couple? We are amazed at the financial resources God provided for us and have learned that He not only travels with us, but goes ahead of us to prepare the way. The two places that we´ve ended up living could not have been more perfect for us! We´re also so thankful to C.J.´s boss for giving him the time off and letting him keep his health insurance (and it looks like letting him come back to work in January!).

We´ve learned that Americans need to smile more. It was incredibly uplifting to be greeted every day by the people at CASP with smiles and (MANY) kisses on the cheek. Every time they say hello and goodbye (to pretty much EVERYONE), a hug and kiss on one cheek ensue. Peruvians have an amazingly friendly culture, and it really takes the akwardness out of meeting new people. No more having to pull out akwardly when one person tries to shake and one person goes in for the hug...you´ve all been there!

Pisco anyone? Three CASP administrators at the end of the year party

Trying new food has been fun (as long as our stomachs were up for it). We know it´s a big surprise to those of you who know him well, but C.J. has actually been really good with all the different foods--he tends to be quite particular with his food! We´re hoping that when we return home we can continue this trend. One recent food we tried was chicherones, which is fried pork and sweet potato on a bun (usually with chopped onions). Traditionally, this is a breakfast food!

C.J. with his chicherones

Somewhat related to the previous paragraph is that we´ve learned to be more flexible, mostly by necessity. Our schedules didn´t always go as planned, we´ve been thrown into situations where we didn´t know exactly what was going on, sometimes we just couldn´t understand what someone was saying, and we´ve rarely been in control of where we´re going and when (planes, trains, and automobiles--all three!).

We have missed creating music! Being a part of the Damascus Road worship band was a huge blessing in our lives, and it has been really tough to not have this. We recently heard that we get to be a part of the praise team at our church the first Sunday we get back to St. Louis, so we are incredibly excited! Creating music really touches our hearts and helps us experience God in amazing ways.

Community is very important to us. We have truly enjoyed the people we have met and spent time with in Halifax and Lima and thank God for letting our paths cross. However, we have often felt our hearts yearning to once again be a part of the community we´ve found in St. Louis. Things are going to be really different when we return (new church plant, new apartment in a different part of St. Louis, new job for Keri, new babies for friends there), but the people are going to be the same, and that´s what makes all the difference.

Marie (housekeeper), Elena, and Leise (Marie´s daughter) with Keri´s graduation cake

We really like each other (good news after being together for 7 years and married for 3)! The vast majority of days, we were together the entire day, but we´ve really enjoyed it. There have been times where one of us has looked at the other and said, "I like you!" This has felt really good, because our love doesn´t necessarily mean we always like each other! All of our time together has also helped us to mature in our relationship. Petty arguing just isn´t worth it when we´re always together. We´ve been forced to sit down, talk out our feelings, and be done with it. Though it hasn´t always been perfect, we are really hopeful that this trend continues in our "normal" lives.

We can´t thank you all enough for all your prayers and support through these times. Thanks for taking the time to read our blog. Now that our travels are pretty much over (we do plan make a few posts from CA and MI), we´re not sure what this blog will become, but we are hoping to keep it up. We´ll have lots of new things to update you all on once we´re back in St. Louis, especially on the future newest member of our family...no, we´re not pregnant...our Christmas present to each other is going to be a puppy! We hope you´ll keep reading. For now, signing off from Peru...

Centro Ann Sullivan del Peru (CASP)

2007-12-19T18:39:00.000-05:00

This is from Keri again. I graduated yesterday! I am officially done with OT school! It´s little bit anticlimactic but still a very good feeling. The family we live with here was so sweet and bought a cake to celebrate at dinner. I´ll include a picture of that later.

Now that we've shown you pictures of where we live, I figure it's high time to tell you what we've been doing here! I promise it hasn't been all fun and games like some of our blogs might suggest. We have worked HARD here. Most days were between 9 and 11 hours of work, including many Saturdays. Part of the reason I haven't yet blogged about CASP is the overwhelming task of painting an accurate picture of all this incredible center does in a blog that doesn´t bore all of you!

CASP, or the Centro Ann Sullivan del Peru, is a school for kids with developmental disabilities, but it is so much more than that. The center mostly serves kids with diangoses like Down's Syndrome, Autism, or other developmental disorders. The students served by the center range from about 6 months old to 55 years old. They have a family model, which means that they fully include and support the families of the students. Most students only come to the center for 2-4 hours a day. They have a morning and an afternoon session. Because they spend so little time at the school, the families are expected to provide the rest of the training at home. Each student has goals they work on, much like an IEP in the States. However, each parent also has goals to work on in order to better support and teach their children. The families come to the "School of families" every other week where they support each other and get training and encouragement from the staff. Every student in this center (about 400 total) lives with their family.

The center also has a complete community focus. The students don't just learn math or writing, they learn it in functional ways to support their ability to work in the community (for example, learning to count money to buy food at the market). For the older students (14 and up), half of their time at CASP is spent in the community, learning to follow directions and be good workers with tasks like cleaning, making beds, etc. CASP has over 100 alumni working in supportive employment (at various levels) in the community. Some additional examples of the activities of the center include:

Providing English classes, dance classes, and other activities for the parents during the school day (many come from far away to bring their children and wait at the center until they are finished)

Providing consultation to a nearby orphanage on how they can improve how they handle behaviors

Having the students put on bake sales and spa days for the students to practice money changing and appropriate work behavior

Because OT is rare down here, CASP has never had an OT come to the center. Many of Liliana´s (the director of CASP) contacts in the US who are OTs have expressed an interest in sending OT doctorate students down for fieldwork, but because no OT has been there, they did not know what the students could do. Therefore, my main job here has been to evaluate all of the programs and to write a report about where OT could enhance what the center is doing and what projects OT students could work on. Besides that, I have made adaptations in the classrooms, visited students´ homes to answer questions and make recommendations to parents, created low tech adaptive technology, and visited an orphanage twice to give them suggestions for their kids with physical disabilities.

My schedule has been nuts, but it has been rewarding, and I have learned a LOT about how to work with kids who have developmental diabilities. I am glad to be done with fieldwork, but I will not be forgetting this place anytime soon! C.J. has actually been really busy here too and did everything here from filming to making cardboard adaptations for me to editing my protocols I´ve written to giving suggestions on CASP´s building.

We have only 1 day left here in Peru! We will try to blog quickly tomorrow, but please pray for a smooth trip on Monday home to CA for Christmas (with no unexpected stops in other countries, please!)

Peru Home

2007-12-19T08:07:00.000-05:00

We realized, now only 5 days(!) from the end of our time here, that we haven't put any pictures up of where we've been living. We've talked a bit about our everyday lives here in some past posts, but no pictures. The video at the end is of the family dog, Max. Max found himself a home by following one of the daughters home one day. He's a dog that is likable in spite of himself. If nothing else, he gives us a laugh every day when we return home to that! Also notice his gimpy leg--he's had surgery, but it was unsuccessful...it just adds more character.

Our home in Peru (the electric fence is very typical)

The view down the street--lots of walls!

Max

Weekend and Islas Palminos

2007-12-16T19:19:00.000-05:00

Hello! This one is from Keri. We had a full weekend again. On Saturday, from 8-2, we helped at CASP with a free screening of about 1,300 babies. We had pediatricians, dentists, ophthalmologists, nutritionists, and specialists from CASP screening for developmental delays. At night we went with Elena and Santiago, the family we live with, to Barranco, a popular place to go out to eat and dance. We ate at a restaurant and had Pisco Sours (their STRONG national drink) and tried Anticuchos (skewered beef hearts). What made the night more exciting was the power going out in the middle of our meal. It stayed off for over an hour. This is the second time that´s happened to us here (Katie, Beth, and Heather, I thought of you and our time in Guatemala!). We also had a small earthquake last week (only 5. something), so we´ve been told we´ve now had a full Peruvian experience!

Yesterday, one of my lifelong dreams came true. No, I didn´t ride on a Zamboni (see ¨Hockey¨ blog from October). We swam with sea lions. Between the ages of about 7 and 16, I had a fascination (okay, some would call it an obsession) with seals and sea lions. I collected figurines, read about them, and did reports on them. And I have ALWAYS wanted to swim with them. There is a small company with a yacht that does 4 hour tours around the small islands that are close to Lima. One of the islands has become a natural harbour for thousands of sea lions. It was incredible! Because there are not predators around those parts (at least that´s what they told us), the tour guides let us get wet suits on and swim with them! The water was COLD because even though we´re in Peru and it´s summer, there is a current called the Humboldt current which keeps the water cold all year. We weren´t allowed to touch them, and the sea lions kept out of reach, but they were very curious about us and very playful, jumping all around us. What an experience! I will never forget it! What a blessing to be able to fulfill dreams like this during our time away from home!

Cuzco Day 3 - The Sacred Valley

2007-12-11T16:25:00.003-05:00

The third day in Cuzco didn't start quite as early as the second, but we still had to be at our tourist agency pretty early. We had slept much better the after our exhausting day at Machu Picchu, so we felt a lot better. From the agency, we got in a van with about 10 other people for our Sacred Valley tour. The other people on our tour were from all over the world and most of them were about our age, so it fun to share the tour with them. In our three days of touring, we met people from Australia, Ireland, England, Germany, France, and Hawaii.

The Sacred Valley is a very fertile valley near Cuzco. The valley and the mountains on either side were home to a lot of really important Incan cities. The weather was amazing, our tour guide was really knowledgeable, and the people we were with were a lot of fun, so it was a really fun day.

Once again, we stopped on our way out of Cuzco to take some pictures overlooking the city. Cuzco currently has about 300,000 inhabitants, but this is just over half of what it had in Incan times. It's pretty hard to imagine an ancient city that large!

We were gone pretty much all day on the tour (until 7:00pm) and saw a lot, but the highlights of the tour were Ollantaytambo and Chinchero.

Ollantaytambo, like Machu Picchu, was the site of both a city and huge temple. There is still a small town there that is built almost completely on top of the old foundations of Incan buildings. Because they did build on Incan foundations, a lot of the roads between the houses were only about 2 meters wide.

The Incas built a lot of their cities to in the shapes of their sacred animals (Cuzco = puma, Machu Picchu = condor) and the temple at Ollantaytambo was built in the shape of a giant llama. One other amazing fact about Ollantaytambo is that the first place the sunrise of the summer solstice falls on the temple is the eye of the llama--incredible! You have to be on top of one of the adjacent mountains to see the entire shape, but we did get some good pictures of parts of the temple.

Chinchero was our last stop of the day and the highest place we visited in our three days at about 4000 meters above sea level. Even though we had gotten much more used to the altitude during our stay, we were still out of breath by the time we got to the colonial church at the top of the hill (again built over top of an Incan temple). Chinchero was the hometown of our tour guide, and it is home to a lot of people that are still pure descendants of the Incans. Our tour guide was pretty proud to tell us that he is pure Incan. We stopped to take some pictures of some snow capped mountains before we got to Chinchero and took some great sunset pictures on our way back to Cuzco.

When we got back to Cuzco we decided that we should head out for at least one night on the town. We asked some of the people from our tour if they would like to join us for dinner and ended up going out with a couple from Ireland (his name was Fergus...how perfect is that!?!) and two people from Hawaii. We were craving some more "American" food, so we ended up going out for pizza. It was a great end to another great day.

Cuzco Day 2 - Machu Picchu!

2007-12-11T16:25:00.001-05:00

The second day of our trip was Machu Picchu! Machu Picchu is a huge city of the Incas in the Andes Mountains that was "rediscovered" in 1911 and is one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Our day started at about 5:15am to catch a 4-hour train ride from Cuzco to the base of the mountain that contains Machu Picchu. C.J. slept through most of the trip, but Keri got to see some amazing views as we rode through the valley between some HUGE mountains.

When we arrived, it had started to rain (summer=rainy season in the Cuzco area). We then had to take a half hour bus ride straight up the side of a mountain to Machu Picchu. The roads were barely wide enough for one bus, and there were no guardrails to keep us from plunging down the mountainside into the swirling Urubamba river below, but that didn't seem to stop the bus drivers from going as fast as they could around the curves!

Once at Machu Picchu, our guided tour started. We took a few pictures, but after about 45 minutes of our guide repeating himself and us really not understanding much of what he was saying, we overheard that the Waynapicchu hike closed at 1pm. Since we didn't have time in our schedule to hike the 4-day Inca trail, we really wanted to hike Waynapicchu (the mountain overlooking Machu Picchu where there are MORE ruins), so we left our tour and literally ran to the trail head.

We were 10 minutes late, but after some pleading the man at the gate allowed us to climb. It was HARD. The hike took us straight up the mountainside with stone steps the whole way that were slippery from the rain. Those of you who have a fear of heights should not schedule that hike if you ever make it to Machu Picchu. We were very tired when we got to the top after about an hour of stair climbing, but the view was AMAZING! It's impossible to capture in pictures what it felt like to be standing among many the mountain peaks surrounded by a swirling mist and overlooking a city that was built hundreds of years ago. This was definitely the highlight of the trip!

Waynapicchu

We made it!

The view

Keri was a little nervous about going down this way!

C.J. on one of the terraces

After being wet from rain and sweat all day, riding the bus down the mountain, and a having a 4 hour train ride home, we were good and ready for a hot shower and BED! What an amazing day!

Here are some more pictures from the day:

Cuzco Day 1

2007-12-11T16:14:00.000-05:00

As we said in our quick update, we had a great vacation in Cuzco starting last Friday and ending Monday morning. It was the experience of a lifetime! We're going to break it up into each main day of touring so we can include more pictures and you can pace yourselves!

On Friday morning, we flew from Lima to Cuzco, Peru after we fixed a tiny mishap because the travel agency booked us on separate flights for the way there. Keri's flight was what we expected, but C.J. was supposed to be on one that had left 2 hours before we arrived to the airport! Thankfully, we're in Peru, and all we had to do was pay $14 to change the ticket to the right flight. Our boarding passes were handwritten anyways, so it really wasn't a big problem, but it made us quite nervous for a little while.

Cuzco is a city in the Andes mountains at an altitude of about 11,500 ft and is famous for being the capital of the Incas. Everyone here warned us over and over about altitude sickness--a huge problem for tourists. We did okay with the altitude until later the first night, when we both had headaches. As suggested, we arrived to our hotel and slept for an hour. Then we went with Jean, a friend of someone at CASP to the travel agency to pay for our tours in Cuzco and start the city tour. The city tour lasted from about 1:30 in the afternoon until 6:30pm.

The first place we went was Qorikancha, which is a convent that was built by the Spanish conquistadors on top of a sacred Inca site. To show their dominance (and because the Incan construction was very solid), the Spanish built this and a lot of other Cathedrals right over top of the Incan temples as you can see below.

After Qorikancha and on other extremely huge and impressive cathedral with tons of beautiful artwork and colonial architecture (no pictures allowed), we headed out of the city a little bit to 3 different sites of ruins. Since you're going to be seeing a LOT of Incan ruins over the next few days (and they do start all looking very similar) we'll only talk about one today.

Saqsaywaman was the first ruins we visited. It is a huge site on some of the hills overlooking the city. One of the most impressive parts about this particular site was the HUGE rocks that were used to build the temple. The rock that C.J. is standing in front of in the picture below is over 100 tons, but we were told that it was dragged by hundreds of Incans from a quarry many miles away.

We look pretty small standing by 20 foot+ walls!

After the tour, we ate in our hotel restaurant and walked around the main square to buy some groceries and necessities for our trip to Machu Picchu the next day. We were TIRED and went to bed early in a haze from altitude sickness (we got up to about 3800 meters or almost 12,500ft that day), coca tea, and Dramamine for the headache. We're not really sure how strong (or narcotic) the coca tea was, but our eyes were really dilated...

Here are some additional pictures from the day:

Keri with one of the "locals". Only 1 sola per picture!

We were HIGH!

View of the city on our way back from the ruins

Quick update

2007-12-11T12:01:00.000-05:00

We just wanted to let you know that we are safely back to Lima. No crazy delays in other countries this time, but we've really hit the ground (literally...sorry for the pun...) running at work again. We had a great vacation in Cuzco and will post pictures when we have time, but we've been getting emails wondering if we're back and wanted to update everyone. Below is one picture to whet your collective appetites a bit.

A bit of Machu Picchu

Back to Work

2007-12-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

We're back at work today and feeling much better--thanks for all your prayers!

After being at home Thursday and Friday, we were ready to get out of the house on Saturday. We were both feeling much better and decided to head to Plaza San Miguel for a few hours in the morning. Plaza San Miguel is a decent sized mall about a 10 minute walk away.

After lunch, we went back to the Corner Bar to watch some more college football. We watched two games and had dinner but left before #1 and #2 both got upset. This season has been ridiculous, and it's going to be tough rooting for LSU... We both ate more "American" food at the bar, and my (C.J.) cheeseburger turned out to be a big mistake. I quickly reverted to the soup and bread diet but felt pretty bad again on Sunday.

It's a short week for us--we're really excited about leaving for Cuzco and Machu Picchu on Friday. I'm also excited that I'm going to get to play soccer twice this week. Santiago (the husband of the family we're living with) is going to take me to play futsal (very similar to indoor soccer) on Wednesday night and back to San Marcos University to play outdoors again. I mentioned that I played soccer in the last post, but I guess didn't say where I've been playing--Santiago is a professor at San Marcos and plays with other professors every Thursday. I guess I didn't mention that I went surfing either...I did...it was fun...I need to keep better track of what I've put on here!

So, it should be a really fun week. Please continue to pray for our health. We're really starting to miss all of the good food that we had the first couple of weeks--soup is getting pretty old. Also pray for our safety as we travel to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. This will be the first time that we're really alone in Peru! Get ready for lots of pictures again!

The picture below is us having ice cream at Larcomar, a mall built into the cliffs over the ocean in Mira Flores (probably the nicest part of Lima). As you can tell by the ice cream, this was before we got sick, but for the sake of a picture and to remember better gastrointestinal days...

Plumbing...

2007-11-30T08:39:00.000-05:00

We're sick. It came on fairly slowly, but it's here with a vengeance. We're not quite sure what set it off, because we were completely fine for the first couple of weeks!?! I (C.J.) was worse at the beginning of the week and ended up staying home for a morning, but yesterday Keri woke up having spent a good bit of time in the bathroom the previous evening. She obviously needed to stay home for the day, and I stayed home to keep her company, though I did feel well enough to play soccer in the afternoon (actually a real answer to prayer for me!).

Keri's home again today, and I'll be returning there before lunch. It's been especially frustrating for Keri, because she was supposed to do some home visits yesterday and today where her skills were going to be really put to use with some adaptations.

Our diet has obviously changed (soup, tea, toast, jello, not much else), and we both started an antibiotic regimen (along with A LOT of Imodium), but we're pretty sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sorry for the depressing post, but we really feel like we need your prayers right now!

Another Week

2007-11-25T11:03:00.001-05:00

Hello again, friends. It´s Keri. It has been another week in Peru, already. We are doing well, although the merciful time of no stomach problems has ended. We both have had combinations of that and colds. It´s kind of hard to concentrate on speaking another language and fulfilling your job duties when you don´t feel well! I thought I would take this blog to give you some glimpses into what life is like in Peru for us right now.

-We have a maid/cook. No, we don´t live with incredibly rich people. Having live-in help (as well as a driver, often times) is part of living in middle-class in Peru. We have breakfast and dinner cooked for us every day (as well as VERY good lunch at CASP in the afternoons). She does our laundry, makes our bed, washes our towels, buys us bottled water, etc. It´s a very odd feeling to not even have to clear out plates off the table when we´re done! But that´s all part of the culture.

-Speaking of food...the food here is amazing! Lots of rice, meat, and potatoes, but they use really yummy spices. We have enjoyed eating (even with the above-mentioned problems that started this week). We also have a fresh-made smoothie every morning with breakfast, and fresh mango or papaya with strawberry yogurt most evenings. All of their fruit, bread, and meat is incredibly fresh (in fact, Elena, our host, told us at the grocery store that most of the fresh meats she bought were probably walking around yet that morning).

-We walk to work (only 3 blocks), and it´s not a bad neighborhood, but the other day I was about to leave CASP alone (CJ had already gone home to take a nap--he wasn´t feeeling well) with our computer bag, and 4 people from CASP stopped me and told me that was really dangerous. Pray for our safety.

-And speaking of safety...pray that the taxis we get in don´t get in accidents! Driving here is CRAZY!!! I don´t think I´ll ever again complain about CJ´s driving. Last night our taxi from the mall home made 3 lanes out of a 2 lane road several times. I was sure we were gonners! Taxis are incredibly cheap here. For a 30 minute ride, it cost us about 15 soles ($5 USD). Nothing like in the U.S.!

-There is only one place that we know of in Lima to watch college football. It´s a sports bar about 20 min. from our house. We were there last night with tons of other Americans watching Kentucky go into 4 overtimes with Tennessee. We looked around at all of the people yelling at the TV in English and had to remind ourselves that we are in fact in Lima, Peru. Pretty much all of the people were Gators fans, too, so they weren´t too happy that their game was being missed because of all the overtimes!

-The pollution here is aweful. Most days we´re okay, but every time we take a taxi somewhere, we come home with our eyes, noses, and throats hurting and irritated.

-The people of CASP work HARD!! Most days we work from 7:45am to around 6:15pm. We are the first ones to leave many times. Again, I´ll have to talk more about the center in another blog.

-I had some humbling and frustrating moments this week trying to be an OT here. The resources and materials we have in the US are just not attainable here because of cost or unavailability. They recycle so many materials at the center, but a simple velcro strap for someone´s wheelchair, or cyclindrical foam on a pen so a kid can grab it are luxuries. It´s frustrating for me to know how much we take for granted in the US and how much the technology we have available to us there could help these kids. CASP is doing amazing things with them, but I know that many of them could benefit so much from things they can´t even dream of.

-And finally, it´s been tough to balance feelings of being REALLY ready to be home in STL (after we see our families at Christmas!!!) and in a stable life and routine with wanting to experience this time to the fullest. We are glad we are here and experiencing another culture, and very excited to see more of Peru (We fly to Cusco to see Macchu Picchu on Dec. 7), but we are also very ready to be home. We are going to be part of a church plant in STL when we get back (we can go more into that later too), and we are yearning to be a part of the preparations for it with some of our dearest friends! So that can be tough sometimes. The 4 weeks left here will go fast, and we are so thankful for this opportunity, but home sounds really good too.

That´s all for now. Love you all!

Pictures!

2007-11-19T16:53:00.001-05:00

We got some time at work on their fast(er than where we're living) internet connection. Since you should all have read the previous posts, we'll just include the pictures this time (with some brief captions). We've done a lot in this past week, so there are going to be a lot of pictures. Enjoy!

In the park in Guayaquil, Ecuador with the iguanas--there were at least 100 in this tiny park

The cathedral in Guayaquil across from the park

Our first stop in our tourism day--El parque del amor (the park of love for gringos). We're not sure if it was named because of the statue below, but it fits...

The statue in El parque del amor

Ruins at Pachacamac--We think these were probably restored a bit

The Temple of the Sun at Patchacamac--we were told this was probably just the bottom section

Keri in the entrance to the Temple of the Sun

The temple had quite the view--nice work Incas

Really interesting to see really poor areas right next to the ruins

The people that found this named this temple "Temple with the ramp"

The big cathedral in downtown Lima

The presidents palace (in the same sqare as the cathedral)--it was originally Pisarro's

Another cathedral where we toured the catacombs--it was originally a Franciscan monastery

Toasting with the pisco sours (a traditional Peruvian drink) at dinner before the dance show (Keri, Joy from UIC, Jose from CASP, Liliana the head of CASP, and Yolanda from UIC).

Traditional dance

Another traditional dance

Week one in Peru

2007-11-18T12:54:00.000-05:00

Hola amigos y familia! What a first week this has been! We have packed much into a little time. On Thursday, we went to some other houses of students with disabilities to be introduced to some of the specific cases that Keri will be working on. Friday was a day of tourism with the OT profs that were here.

We first went to Pachacamac, some Incan ruins about 45 minutes away from Lima. Then we toured downtown Lima, including a cathedral and its catacombs (in which all of the bones of the people buried there were still in the catacombs and separated out into the type of bone they were to make more room since there were about 25,000 bodies found...yeah...grisly). After there, we went to the Indian markets, which are huge places filled with all kinds of artisan crafts. That night, we went to a Peruvian dance show where we danced to live music, but then took breaks to watch different traditional dances. They have these shows every night and were doing dances traditional to the North of Peru on this particular night. It was very colorful, very loud, and FUN! We went at 10:30 pm and we left early...at 1 am. The dance goes until 6am. These Peruvians know how to party!

The next morning, Saturday, we had to wake up early to go to CASP (the school we work at) because it was sibling training day. The siblings of 1/2 of the students that have developmental disabilities (the other 1/2 will be next Saturday) came for 4 hours. The first 2 hours, they were there by themselves with other siblings, and they talked together and did training and role playing in fun ways about how to best communicate and participate with their siblings with disabilities. Then, their siblings with disabilities came, and they all did fun activities together. It was a fun day! We in the US have so much to learn from this school and how they support the entire family! We got to sleep a few hours in the afternoon, and then we went with some of the administrators at CASP to ¨The Secret Garden¨( or el jardín secreto) the musical. Even though it was all in Spanish, we pretty much understood what was going on. Music is certainly a universal language! We enjoyed it a lot!

Today, we are taking a taxi alone for the first time to the house of an American teacher at CASP, because her husband surfs and she said he´d be happy to take CJ sometime! We´re just going to meet him today. We also found out that Santiago, the man of the house we´re living in, plays soccer most Sundays and Tuesdays or Thursdays. He was very happy to find out CJ plays and he´s going to take CJ with him sometime this week! We were very happy to make those connections within a week! The woman that we live with, Elena, is wonderful. We´re really enjoying getting to know her!

So we are doing well. A little bit homesick at times, but we´re mostly healthy and doing okay. We will try to put some pictures of our touring up tomorrow as a separate blog because we have dial-up at the house and that would take forever!

We made it!

2007-11-14T19:46:00.001-05:00

We made it to Peru! However, not until 4am this morning. After the long wait in Ecuador (see last post), we were all bussed to the airport where we found out that they couldn´t fix our plane and had to send us a new one from Miami. We didn´t leave Ecuador until 1am. That makes almost 24 hours spent in Ecuador! Three planes for 1 flight. Crazy.

Mercifully, we had no problems in immigration, and we pushed a green light for baggage customs! (In the Lima airport, you line up with your bags and push a button which randomly turns green or red. Red means all of your luggage gets checked through by a customs agent, green means you can go!) Our taxi driver from CASP (Centro de Ann Sullivan in Peru, or the Anne Sullivan Center in Peru-where we are working), bless his heart, was waiting for us even though we were very late. We were brought to the house where we are staying (with a family) and passed out in bed from 4am to 10am.

We then went to CASP to meet everyone and get a tour. Keri was doing okay with the Spanish, CJ would like the understanding to come a little bit faster! The school we are working at is for kids with developmental disabilities and the programs it offers and their philosophy on the education of these kids is incredible. We´ll go into that more another time. Two profs from the University of Illinois Chicago Occupational Therapy school are here from now until Saturday, so we got to talk a lot with them. It was great for Keri to brainstorm with them some of the projects she might work on while we´re here. We also went with them to visit two of the poorest families that send their children to CASP, but have great success stories that were heart-warming. Keri didn´t get to see much of the slums of Lima last time she was here, so it was good for her to realize that not all of Lima is like Miraflores or San Isidro (very rich areas).

So that is today. Our heads are swimming and we are very tired, so we are going to relax tonight. We are supposed to go with the OT profs to a Peruvian dance show on Friday night, so we´re hititng the ground running with getting to know the culture! Thank you all for your prayers. We are very glad to be here safely.

Not quite there yet...

2007-11-13T20:27:00.000-05:00

Hi. We´re in Ecuador. No, we don`t have our South American countries confused. It`s been quite the adventure, and we`re less than 48 hours in. We made it to Miami fine, but that`s where the fine ended.

Our first plane pulled back from the gate on time, but people on the ground noticed a hydraulic leak in the nose. 2 hours later, after they determined it couldn´t be fixed, we deplaned and waited another 2 hours in the airport for another plane.

We finally boarded the new, supposedly fine, plane around 9pm and took off for Peru. Part way through our flight, our pilot announced that there was an electrical problem somewhere in the plane and that we would be landing in Guayaquil, Ecuador. That was 4am this morning.

And that´s where we´ve been ever since. All 300 of us have now been in numerous hotels around the city, we´re on our second of the day. While fixing the plane, another problem was found, so we´re supposed to leave this second hotel and go back to the airport at 9pm for an 11pm flight.

If everything now goes as planned, we`ll have been travelling over 40 hours. We got to walk around a bit and took some pictures, so we hope to get those up sometime. Please pray. We`re doing okay, but ready to be where we`re supposed to be!

Back in the USA!

2007-11-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

We made it. They were L...O...N...G days, but we successfully made it back to Grand Rapids from Halifax in TWO days!

We got up, packed the car, and left Halifax by 8am on Wednesday morning. The ferries don't run after mid-October, so we had to drive up through New Brunswick to get back into Maine. We were out in the middle of nowhere for quite a while, but we did make it back into the country after having to dig out our proof of registration for our car. One of the first things we saw when we got back into Maine was a guy walking out of his front door with a huge shotgun over his shoulder. We both got really wide eyed, but it is hunting season, and he did have an orange vest on, so we were able to stop ourselves from dialing that second 1...

A quick stop at Tim Horton's, a popular Canadian coffee place

Our final destination on day 1 was Boston. We met up with some of Keri's former classmates from grad school and went out to dinner and dessert for Keri's birthday. It was really fun to see those girls again, but we decided that we definitely preferred driving out in the middle of nowhere to the traffic in Boston--it's absolutely crazy.

Vietnamese food for dinner with Laurey, Bethany, and Anne

Dessert with Molly and Laurey

Keri's birthday pineapple upside down cake

We set out early again in the morning and first went to Arlington (a suburb of Boston) before getting back on the freeway. Keri's family lived in Boston for 6 months in 1991 while Keri's dad studied at Harvard during a sabbatical, so we stopped by the house she lived in and the school she went to for the second half of second grade. It was fun to see.

13 Thorndike Street (Keri's family lived on the top 1/2 of this duplex)

Hardy School--perfect for a Boston accent

Over 800 miles, 14 hours, two border crossings, and about $25 in tolls in one day later, we pulled into Grandma's driveway...very happy to be there. Two provinces and 5 states in two days was plenty.

We've got two days to get everything ready to go to Peru, so we're a bit stressed right now. We're glad that we get to be back in Grand Rapids and be with Keri's parents for this time, even though it's really short. Back to packing...

Final Weekend in Nova Scotia

2007-11-04T15:56:00.000-05:00

It is our final weekend here. That is very hard to believe! We had planned to go for a 5-hour hike yesterday out near the Bay of Fundy, but as many of you might know, what was left of Hurricane Noel struck us at about 3pm yesterday bringing with it high winds and lots of rain. Our power was out for a few hours overnight and this morning, but we got it back fairly quickly compared to others in the area. The trail we were going to hike apparently gets slippery, muddy, and dangerous after rain, so we stayed in the city for the first weekend in a while! (Sorry, Uncle Doug! That was going to be when we got your Bay of Fundy rock!!).

Yesterday we went to the Halifax farmer's market in the morning down by the harbour before the storm came and enjoyed some apple cider, crepes, and shops along the boardwalk. Last night, Lynn and Peter, the people we live with, made us a full-blown Nova Scotian meal including steamed mussels, scallops, salmon, some crazy rice stuff that we can't remember the name of, and a dessert made of Nova Scotian apples and blueberries. It was a wonderfully relaxing and enjoyable evening!

We were supposed to have dinner tonight at Cher and Laura's, two members of the Wheelchair Research Team (pictured in another post below in the Halloween costumes).. However, their power's still out, and with that comes no water for them! So we're doing some packing tonight. We're getting a little bit nervous about Peru-mostly because of the language barrier. We really haven't felt homesick here, because we can have great conversations with people, but it might get lonely in Peru. We stood in line for crepes behind two native Spanish speakers and our eyes got wide as we looked at each other and said, "We're in trouble!" Hopefully, it will come fast there! We leave on Wednesday morning to drive to Boston, and Thursday we will be attempting to drive from Boston to Grand Rapids, MI in one day. Please pray for safety!

Happy Halloween

2007-11-01T21:58:00.000-04:00

We are already in our final days in Halifax. It's definitely hard to believe! While most of our time has been pretty laid back, this last week we have become quite social! We have met some great people here and are enjoying hanging out with them towards the end of our time. Work has been busy in a good way lately too. Here's a picture of yesterday at the lab. Cher and Laura are sisters and work in the lab together. We've had a blast with both of them! In this picture, Laura is the princess kissing her prince charming, and Cher is part of the "fashion police." She and another OT went around the entire hospital yesterday writing up fashion violations such as socks with sandals or underwear of any kind showing. They wrote Dr. Kirby up for "impersonating a celebrity--Mr. Rogers." He was dressed normally... Keri was dressed as a Where's Waldo decoy. You know, not the actual Waldo, but the one in the picture that everyone sees and says "Hey that's...oh wait...it's not him." Yesterday we also had the privalege of handing out trick-or-treat candy while the people we live with took their two 3 year-old daugthers (dressed as little spiders) to trick or treat. Good times! By the way, C.J. was dressed as a three-hole punch version of himself with a black shirt and white dots (like Jim from The Office), but he got mistaken for a domino...

Prince Edward Island

2007-10-28T19:18:00.000-04:00

This is from Keri. Alright all you Anne of Green Gables fans out there. It's time to be jealous! Yesterday we drove the 3 1/2 hours to Prince Edward Island to go see the setting for Anne of Green Gables. Growing up, my best childhood friend, Casey Bryant, and I watched Anne of Green Gables or Anne of Avonlea almost every day of the summers. We swooned over Gilbert and memorized most of the movies. Yesterday morning before we went, I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face! I was so excited! It was a long drive, but so fun to see the island and see the places that inspired Lucy Maud Montgomery to write the Anne novels.

Once on the island, we drove through farmland to reach Cavendish, on the opposite side of the island. We found the farmhouse that LMM's cousins lived in, which was the house that inspired "Green Gables." They've restored the grounds to look like the descriptions in the novels, and have created trails through the woods around that inspired some other parts of the novels such as "Lovers' Lane" and "The Haunted Wood Trail." Some of you may remember Anne and Gilbert's rambles down Lover's Lane, and the time that Anne fainted in the woods when she heard the trees creaking and her imagination took over. It was windy when we were there, and the trees on the Haunted Wood Trail were creaking! The house itself was fun to see, but it was based on the novel, not the movie, so it was slightly disappointing to those of us who obsessed over the movies in our childhood.

After the Green Gables house, we went down to the beach to see the dunes and red sandstone cliffs. Then we drove all the way back to Halifax! So worth it, though!

The LONG bridge over to PEI. We're not happy because we just found out about the $40 toll.

Keri pretending to be Matthew milking the cow in the barn on the Green Gables property

Green Gables

Scared before the Haunted Wood Trail

Dunes and Sandstone Cliffs. Can't you just see Anne's story papers blowing in the wind?

C.J. skipping stones

The Valley

2007-10-26T19:19:00.000-04:00

Keri had a big presentation for Grand Rounds this morning in front of several rehab staff and medical school personnel. The presentation went well. Afterwards, we headed out to "The Valley," meaning the Annapolis Valley, about an hour away from Halifax. Our wheelchair skills research team was doing an all day conference with two presentations, so we drove out on a beautiful fall day to see it. Before we went to the conference site, we headed up to a look off point overlooking the valley and the Bay of Fundy. For those of you who don't know, the Bay of Fundy has the largest tides in the world. During extreme tides, it can vary up to 50 feet between high and low tides!

After the presentation, we met a delightful elderly couple through the two wheelchair skills team members we were with. The man is an artist, and gave Keri a tiny sculpture of puffins sitting on an actual piece of whale bone that he found down on the beach by the Bay of Fundy! We went out to eat at the local hot spot, which is known for their pie. Good pie, good company, good weather. Another good day.

The view of the valley and Bay of Fundy

More beautiful fall colors

Cape Breton Island

2007-10-22T18:27:00.001-04:00

Last Friday after work we headed out for the Cabot Trail (a scenic road that winds along the coast and through Cape Breton Highlands National Park) on Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton is the northernmost part of Nova Scotia. We'd been told by numerous people that this was a "must see" for any visitors to Nova Scotia. We drove a few hours after work and stayed in Antigonish (we're not sure what they have against gonish) which is about half an hour off the island itself. We planned to drive the entire Cabot Trail and get back to Halifax all in one day, so we set out fairly early on Saturday morning.

We'd been praying that the weather would be good, and it rained for most of the morning, but we did end up having decent enough weather in the afternoon to get in a 4 mile hike. It was absolutely beautiful. Though it was rainy, the volume and brilliance of the fall colors was amazing! Cape Breton Islands is home to moose, bears, whales, bald eagles, and deer, but our repertoire of wildlife sightings was sadly limited to a squirrel, 2 bats (that nearly ate our faces on our hike), and a frog (while we were driving...may it R.I.P.) Overall, it was a great day and definitely worth getting up early and not getting back to Halifax until 10 pm.

Waterfall right off the road

The Cabot Trail

At our trailhead

The end of our trail

Moose sign every 5 miles does NOT equal moose sighting

What the "H"?

2007-10-18T17:14:00.000-04:00

Why, oh why can't people leave our cars alone?! We found our "H" stolen off the back of our new Honda Accord. I guess it's doing better than our last new car. The last one got hit in the church parking lot 3 days after we got it. At least this one lasted 4 weeks before something happened to it...Sigh...If I believed in luck, I'd sure say we have bad luck with cars. I guess it could have been worse.

You'll never walk alone by Nate Ballast

2007-10-14T18:39:00.000-04:00

(This one is from Keri). We're home sick from work today, but still wanted to share this post! Whenever we would cry as babies or kids growing up, my dad would sing the song, "You'll Never Walk Alone" to us. Now that he is a grandpa, he has continued the tradition with his two grandsons. My parents just got back from a trip to Seattle to spend time with our nephews, and obviously, this song came out a few times. We received this video the other day of Nate and can't stop playing it! He gets almost all the words and most of the pitch changes in the song too! Keep in mind that this little boy is not yet 2 and half years old! The words to the song are below.

"When you walk through a storm hold your head up high. And don't be afraid of the dark. At the end of a storm is a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lark. Walk on through the wind,walk on through the rain, tho' your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone. You'll never walk alone."

The Pumpkin Regatta

2007-10-14T17:57:00.000-04:00

As promised....the story of floating vegetables! Apparently, every year in Windsor, Nova Scotia (about an hour west of Halifax), they have a pumpkin regatta. This involves a pumpkin weigh off (this year's winner came in at a whopping 1202 lbs) and lots of fair-like activities. There's a picture of the winner and his pumpkin below from the website since we weren't there for the weigh-off.

Not only do they do crazy things like grow ridiculously large pumpkins, but they actually paint their huge pumpkins and race them by paddling them across a lake! See the video and pictures below. Although it rained most of the time, we had a little bit of sun just for the race. Can't get much more unique than that for a Sunday afternoon, eh?

Peggy's Cove and Sailing

2007-10-13T19:46:00.000-04:00

We headed out to Peggy's Cove this morning. For those of you who don't know what Peggy's Cove is, it's pretty much a tiny little fishing village (population = 40...seriously), but definitely a tourism hot spot for its lighthouse and scenery. It was about a 40 minute drive, and we saw beautiful fall colors pretty much the whole time. We're planning on heading to Cape Breton Island next weekend and hope that the leaves aren't gone already. After lunch in one of the two places in town, we went out to see the lighthouse and the waves crashing on the rocks (check out the video below). It was pretty spectacular.

After Peggy's Cove, we drove to Dr. Kirby's cottage (we work for Dr. Kirby in the lab). Dr. Kirby invited us to sail with him this afternoon on his boat. Though we've been on lots of boats, this was the first time either of us had sailed. Dr. Kirby was gracious enough to explain all that goes into sailing a boat and had us help with different parts of it during the trip. It was so peaceful out on the water, and we had with Dr. Kirby's dog, Jake, too. A little preview on tomorrow...we're not going to give it away, but it involves floating vegetables. Check back tomorrow for more...

Keri and Jake (1st mate) on the sailboat

C.J. and Dr. Kirby putting the cover on the sail

Hockey

2007-10-12T20:32:00.000-04:00

This one goes out to Mike Werkheiser and Kim Torgerson (our hockey playing friends from STL).

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do." When in Canada, go watch hockey. Tonight we tried to be as Canadian as possible and went to support the Dalhousie (pronounced Dal-how-zee) Tigers men's hockey team. Dalhousie is the university we're working at right now. Unfortunately, they lost, but it was a close game, and we had a good time. The funniest moment of the night was the very beginning when we all rose for the national anthem, and Keri immediately put her hand over her heart expecting to hear, "Oh say can you see". Hmmm... We looked at each other and laughed when a different song started! Keri started to sing along to "Oh Canada" (Ruth-remember rehearsing it in our dorm room for our Canadian friend freshman year at Calvin?!), but CJ promptly told her that it's "treasonous" to sing along to another country's anthem. The other highlight of the evening for Keri was the Zamboni as it's one of her life aspirations to ride/drive one someday (you always taught me to aim high mom and dad!).

REALLY excited about the Zamboni