My Week in Pictures

We've been crazy busy since last weekend. When my mom & stepdad were here we went to my gym, went grocery shopping with my mom {loveeee this, wish she was here all the time!}, took a 13 mile bike ride {and despite the heat, the breeze really made it nice}, sorted through our mold/mildew problem, took a bunch of stuff to Good Will, dumped a bunch of trash, went to a couple nearby restaurants, walked around a bookstore, went to church together, walked around a nearby park and our city's river, napped, played Dutch Blitz, sat outside on lawn chairs and the hammock, picked mulberries from our tree, and I cooked meals with my mom.

Oh and I made a record on my Wii bowling score!!! 203, which is really great! I got my first ever 4 strikes in a row!!!!

It was a busy week of lunches with dear friends. For one, I got to have lunch with my friend and former coworker Heather, who has been in a country overseas for several years. It was really great to catch up with her! She made me some fabulous Pad Thai!

And bless her heart, she even had the spices on the side!!! {which is a must for this Fibro gal... me and spices do not mix!}

Thank you Heather for a wonderful lunch break!

Wednesday night I had a total blast hanging out with my sisters {in Christ} at church! We had our first Sister Summit of the summer and it was phenomenal! We shared, laughed, ate, laughed, learned a lot, sang powerful worship together like only women can, opened God's Word together, and laughed some more! The pictures are blurry from my phone, but you get the idea! I look forward to the next 2 weeks of these! I love the ladies at my church!!!

Thursday's jury duty experience was quite interesting. I am thankful for the experience and I learned a lot from it. I still intend to {hopefully soon} do a post about it. I couldn't take pictures inside, but here's a scene on the road. The 1 hour 15 minute drive. Ughhh. We are barely moving here. The second picture is of O'Hare. Just because I knew you'd want to see it. Right? Right.

Friday I spontaneously had lunch with my coworker Annemarie who is becoming a very near and dear friend. I love this girl to death and we had great conversation. After work I popped in on my friends Brian, Monica, and Parker! Of course, that is always a highlight to see them. Despite that we'd had lunch together twice earlier in the week. Ahem. That's right, I just can't get enough of them! Sure wish I had thought to pull out my phone to take pics on Tuesday. It was the first time in a long time where we had lunch out together. Seeing Parker's face light up across the restaurant when he saw me walk in the door is something I will not soon forget. It brightened my year! Here are a few of the faces he was showing me on Friday night. :) He is sooo funny and at that age where he is mimicking noises. It's so neat to watch him grow week-by-week. I love this age and can't wait to see what he does next! And I get to see them again tomorrow, yay!

After that we spontaneously decided to go on a date night Friday and went to see The Sorcerer's Apprentice. See my review here. We really enjoyed our night, and I'm ever-increasingly thankful for my husband! We are continuing to learn and grow together, and he continues to put up with me after 10 years!

Saturday we had a relaxing, slow morning getting up and getting ready. Our waterproofing expert was due to arrive around 1 but had a cancellation and came around 11:30 or so instead. It was really nice to get someone in to assess our situation and get an expert's opinion. We are still thinking over everything he said, but the biggest deal is that he believes it's more like mildew, not mold, and that we don't need to panic. We may not even have to do nearly as much on the room as we expected. But... he's one person from one company we found on Google. We have 3 more people coming this week. So we'll see. After he advised us to get some items from Home Depot, Tim came with me to our nearest store where I was meeting up with my friend/coworker Katie anyway. So I got to introduce Tim to Katie & her husband Leif {you may remember them from this post} which made me really happy! Leif helped Tim find some stuff {he works there} while Katie & I left to meet up with our other friend/coworker Annemarie. The 3 of us gals hit the mall for several hours and had. a. total. ridiculous. blast!!!! :)

These girls are some of the best shoppers I've ever hung out with. They are perfect shoppers for me, quite frankly. They are, no joke, just like the angel {Katie} and devil {Annemarie} on my shoulders! Katie is extremely decisive and blunt. Annemarie is the one encouraging you that you're making an investment and it's 'perfect' for you! They are a hoot! 

Yes, I sniffed all these t-shirts. It was too funny not to. The grape jelly bread one is my favorite.

We got our pictures taken in one of those booths. It was stinkin' hilarious. It barely fit all 3 of us, but we did it! 

These girls can talk me into things I would never buy for myself. Ever. These sandals included. They are lucky they're only $8. But yes, I'm going to wear them. Because they're hip. And I want to be hip. Yeah.

Very proud of themselves.

Katie was bound and determined to find stuff, no matter what she had to do.

At 6:30 we met Annemarie's hubby Brandon and my hubby Tim at a restaurant in the mall. It was nice to have us together {you were missed Leif!}, and we had a lot of fun! It was the first time Brandon & Tim met too, and it was really neat to see them get along well! Afterward we drove Katie back home... and laughed harder than some of us have laughed in a long time. It was so great! Then A, B, T, and I drove back to the mall where we spontaneously went to another showing of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. It was even better the second time! {No, seriously!} We got home about 11:30, but we had so much fun and laughed so hard. It was really great.

I think we helped contribute to it coming in at #3 in the weekend's box office. :)

On Sunday at church I ran into a friend I met a couple years ago on a women's ministry retreat at our church camp. Arianne is really delightful and I love every chance I get to catch up with her!

Sunday afternoon we really wanted to go to our local county fair. I really wanted a funnel cake. I wanted to experience fair-ness and soak up the summer.

But oh my gosh, I was so exhausted after we got home from church, serving, and shopping. So we rested. Did some laundry. Rested some more. And never went back out. And I'm okay with that. I'm dealing with some things that are making me on edge, and I'm really trying not to let things get to me or stress me out.

This looks to be another busy week, but next weekend is going to be slow and relaxing other than getting more opinions/estimates on our basement situation. Yay! Hope you all had a good weekend!