a whirlwind september

What a month this has been! It was kicked off by the rouleau's staying with us for a while. That was a treat! It was amazing to be able to relax and just spend time together. A couple days after they left, I say goodbye to Owen and Ry, and flew to France. I was away for 8 days, helping my boss put on a workshop. It was a good experience, and super enjoyable to have personal relationships become a part of my job (rather than it just being me and the copier). Erin was there with me, and we had a lot of fun together. Her fiance, ben, came on the scene at the end of the week, and we had good time with him and exploring the beautiful city of Beaune. On the final day of the conference, a sinus cold settled in on me; i felt terrible, but i was so grateful that the cold held off until my work was over. the next day i flew home. And WOW was it ever wonderful to be with ry and owen again! I missed them so. But we weren't home for long! We all hoped on a plane in a couple of days, to fly to St Stephen for a week. It was really great to be with our friends there. We miss it out there! We never made it to ocean, but we were able to reconnect with a lot of people, as well as see some of what we love about New Brunswick. Now it is the last week of September. My job for the week is done, and Ry has some hours to put in tomorrow, but then we'll be able to relax. It is so nice to go through mail and paperwork here and feel organized again. Travel is fun, but i certainly do feel scattered around and thinly spread at the end of it all.
Our church retreat is this weekend, but we're only going for one day. We are excited to get to know more people at our church; it's a slow processes, getting acquainted and establish relationship, but there are amazing young families that we foresee future friendship.






Here are some photos from my time in Beaune, France:





Here was our 'station', the "SCC Initiation Workshop" registration desk.



One of the reasons that I'm happy to be home:

vive la france

well i am currently sitting at my registration desk at the mercure hotel, in beaune, france. i thought I would take some time (now that i finally have some!) to post some pictures and to write about my time thus far.



We departed Minneapolis at 3pm on Friday. There is a 7 hour time difference with France, it is earlier here, as it is East and the sun rises on French ground before Minnesota. So we basically flew and fastforwarded time so instead of landing at 11pm, we landed at 6am. We had planned to sleep on the plane so we'd 'wake refreshed' and ready to play in Paris. Well, we didn't sleep on the plane. Our little France jaunt was fun because we were in Paris and we stopped and the Louvre, walked along Rivere Seine, and we could the see the Eiffel Tower close by. Our TGV (fast train) ride into Beaune from Paris was 2 hours, and finally arrived at our hotel at 7pm. We met up with the other meeting organizers for supper at 9pm and we got into bed at 11. It was a super long long day(s), so we slept hard that night. On Sunday we put in a 13 hour day. And yet, with all that said we could not, for the life of us, fall asleep. We were up until 5:30 am. no joke. We slept in, didn't hear the alarm at all, and woke up to Roger's phone call. He was wondering where we were. We shot out of bed so fast and got into work mode but have felt crazy all day. But we're in good spirits. Tonight is a 'free' night, meaning there are no evening events planned. We aren't going out for supper, but we're going grocery shopping to bring some food and wine to our hotel room. We'll watch a movie and call it an early night. We're excited to have a quiet night. and HOPEFULLY sleep. I'm afraid that we're going to get sick, with all this sleep-loss.

Our spirits are high though our sleep levels are low. We miss our families like CRAZY but we have each other.

So I'll leave you with pictures of Paris.