We joined the gym!

Well, today, we bit the bullet and signed up for a gym membership. I am very excited to be back in the gym and working toward getting in better shape and making my clothes fit a little better. Part of my New Year's resolution was to finish what I start and this is definetly something that I have never finished. I am even more excited because the location closest to our house now has ZUMBA classes 2 nights a week. For those of you who havent heard of ZUMBA, it is basically cardio salsa/hip hop...Aka SO MUCH FUN! John seems to be looking forward to it as well, he is going to a doc to get his knee looked at so he can start running again.

Tonight, we are going to Nate and Danielles for games. As always, it should be a great time. Their baby is due in 4 weeks. I am SO excited to meet the baby.

The weather is finally starting to look up. School was cancelled on Thursday and Friday due to the extreme cold temps. That makes for a long 5 day weekend. Good, but bad that we not dont get out of school until June 3rd (3 snow days)...so far.

Winter, winter, where for art thou winter....

Well, winter is upon us and Chicago hasn't let us down. Over the past few days, we have accumulated approx. 12 inches of snow. The weather man is reporting a few more inches tomorrow. It cames at a good time since tomorrow at the preschool is "SNOW DAY" and we are playing in the snow all day, watching a movie, and drinking hot cocoa. Now...if I could only find a pair of snowpants and John some snow boots. :)

Things around our place have been pretty quiet and status quo. John began another grad class this week and he is excited about it and thinks it will be a good class. He is also volunteering on Saturdays for an organization that prepare tax returns for those who fall below the povery line. It should be a great experience.

Happy New Year!!!

Wow, it is finally 2009 and we couldn't be more excited about it. Jenna and I are glad 2008 is over and are looking forward to some exciting changes in the new year. We spent New Year's eve with some friends. We had a wonderfully relaxing evening of great food and games.

Congratulations to Cy. Today he was named the winner of the Capital One mascot challenge. Cy really is the best college mascot.

Finally, we would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2009.

- John

Christmas

So, it has been a long time since we updated out blog. I guess we have been kinda busy. Last week we were in Missouri to celebrate Christmas with Jenna's family. We had a great time seeing everybody including our nieces.

While we were there we visited several wineries in the area. We drank some good wine and brought several bottles home with us. We are looking forward to the new year and would like to wish all our friends and families a happy and healthy New Year!

End of Summer Update

Well, summer if about over and it's almost time to head back to school. I have to say, I am looking forward to it. I miss the kiddos and all my fun co-workers.

My grad classes have begun and are actually about half over for the summer. It is unreal how fast summer classes go by. I really didn;t expect grad school to be so hard, but I guess that is the nature of the program. I have been busy reading chapter upon chapter and writing paper after paper. I will be glad when it is over and I will have my 8 credits to get the next pay raise. (p.s. John's class is over and he got an A)

I worked at Old Navy for a whooping 3 weeks. I couldnt take it, when I was 16, it was one thing, but now I just want to say "Fold your own dang shirt!" haha, oh well, at least I got a few extra hundred bucks.

I am also volunteering at the Anti-Crulty society. I love being able to help all the animals. Everyone should totally adobt their pets from there. Its a great cause.

In just a few weeks, work will begin on our kitchen remodel. We are excited to finally have a better arranged kitchen that will hopefully have more potential to bring in buyers when we list the house on the market. Cross your fingers!

Hawaii Pictures

Hawaii

Well, its back to the real world. Hawaii was great, even more beautiful than we expected. John and I were able to do so much sightseeing in the 8 days we were there, but soon realized 8 days was not enough, we needed just a few more to really see everything the Big Island had to offer.

We started off the week by doing a lot of sightseeing. We spent one day traving south via the west side of the island and went to a black sand beach, the southern most point in the United States (where we saw the biggest, most destructive waves we had ever seen; see above)and explored a Lava tube that was on the side of the highway.

The next day, we went to Volcano National Park via the nothern and eastern side of the island. Along the way, we stopped at almost every waterfall and scenic point our little guide book suggested. We spent a few hours at the park (which is not near enough time, but part of the park was closed due to toxic fumes), and then traveled to the ocean to see the current lava flowing into te ocean. It was a really neat experience; probably something we will never see again.

We spent the next few days relaxing buy the Lagoon at out hotel. We took a sunset cruise (AWESOME VIEWS) and went snorkling several times.

Hawaii is definetly a great place and I want to go back badly (we lost about 300 of the 600 pictures we took so we need to go re-take them!)

.....I cant beleive June is almost over.