Re-emerging...

It's been nice being off from school for the past couple of weeks. The first quarter was very intense. It was one of those times when it takes all your time and energy just to keep up with the daily agenda. So it's easy in that kind of environment to lose focus and forget about everything else. This is especially true in business school, where the environment is very competitive and it's all about getting a job, making the grade and building your network. It can be pretty high pressure. And, if you aren't very grounded in who you are and very committed to staying true to that, your identity will be redefined for you, very quickly. It's been great over the past few weeks to get back into the spiritual disciplines and re-acquaint myself with the message in the Bible about who God is, who I am, what this life means, what the next is all about, and what truly matters. In a time and place when everybody's worried about the future - what career they'll have, if they'll be successful, how they will come to have meaning in their lives - I've been very comforted by God's promises for this life and the next. They are all that can provide true meaning. All the other stuff is meaningless in comparison.

Holiday Baking!

The pictures say it all. My neighborhood friends and I had a holiday baking party hosted by me at our house this week while Josh was in Boston and New York. We made lots of treats and had a lot of fun! Missed you though, Mandy, as this was our little tradition every year.... Heidi

Rockin' the Stock

I went back to my hometown of Woodstock, IL this weekend with my friend Lisa from high school. We went to the Madrigal dinner at good old Woostock High School, where we were in the Madrigal choir ourselves back in the day. It brought back lots of fun memories and we made some new ones. Before the choral performance and dinner at the school, we drove around and saw our old houses and went shopping at the town square. Very quaint. The trip back to our old stomping grounds was a great success!

Home Pics

Some of you mentioned you wanted to see our living space... So, from the bottom up, the office, living room, kitchen, and another view of the living room/kitchen area. Not bad for city living! Actually we feel like we have plenty of space and are very grateful for our place.

Chi-town Weekend

The weekend is always a welcome time of the week... time for me to catch up on chores and Josh to maybe get a decent night's sleep. He stayed up all night Thursday and didn't get to go to bed until Friday night at midnight. He was getting a stock pitch ready for a recruiting event. The good news is that it went well...

Friday night, I caught up with a friend of mine, Shannon, who was a nurse with me at St. Joseph Hospital in Denver. We went to a German Christmas market and then out to dinner. It was so cold out that we were literally running around the city. We weren't the only ones either. This am, my friend Keyla and I went out for breakfast at Yolk. It is an adorable breakfast joint that was packed with people for good reason. It was delicious.

Then I grabbed 4 bags of groceries from Jewel and it was too cold to wait at a stop for the bus, so I started walking. However, my annual tri-colored popcorn tin was quite a burden to schlep 6 blocks (you know those big ones with puppies on the side of the tin?). Now that it's home though, I can't wait to dig in.

So this was kind of long, but I am trying to make up for the 2 months where we weren't very good at keeping people up to date. Josh may get on here again in a couple weeks, but he's in the home stretch of finishing his first quarter with finals next week.

Heidi