Revived

The Spiritual Emphasis Week at Hill-n-Dale was great this week. Elizabeth had a lot of fun playing with her friends every night and they had some great activities planned for them - they even got to see a fire truck up close! The adults had a lot of fun too. The speakers were all wonderful - especially our minister on the last night. But, I think the best part was how much the church grew through the process. It took so much cooperation and commitment by everyone to get it all done, and it was amazing seeing everyone step up and work together. David and I even managed to make it through our night on the Praise Team. I guess we did alright, because they've already asked us to do it again! Of course, I think the Praise Team was easier than our night volunteering in the 2-year-old room. We were really tired after that one!

I've finally wrapped up my grueling month at work also. To give you some idea of how much I had going on, I ended up billing an average of ~60 hours/week for the month - which doesn't even account for the administrative time I put in! But, the good news is that they have hired a new manager for my office, who starts on November 5, which means there should finally be an end in sight.

After all of that, I decided I needed a little break. So, believe it or not, I actually took a DAY OFF today. David, Elizabeth and I took advantage of it by heading to Raven Run Nature Sanctuary and going hiking. It was the first time in a long time that we'd tried putting her in the backpack and, once we learned to tune out her never-ending requests to get down and walk, it was very enjoyable. The leaves were starting to turn and fall off the trees and there was a slight nip in the air, so we feel confident that we may actually make it out of this incessant heat wave we've been dealing with for over 2 months now.

Here are some pictures from our excursion:







And, our hopeless attempt at using the camera timer to get a group picture involving a 2-year-old:



Now, before you all fall over in shock at the idea of me actually being able to take a vacation day, I'll have to admit that I ended up working most of the afternoon because I got a big new project in involving a collapsed roof of a building under construction. But, hey - at least I tried!