ExSchutz

A Legitimate Question

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:00:00 +0000

I have a question for all of you who are married and both have full-time jobs and packed social calendars. This is a real question. How do you find time to go to the grocery store? No, seriously. I need to go to the grocery store and I don't know when it's going to happen.

I started a new job almost three weeks ago and it has totally thrown me for a loop, schedule wise. Suddenly, I feel like I have no ability to operate my life properly. When do I go to the gym? When do I plan our meals? What about errands? Forget about the piles of leaves in our back yard that came off the trees a month ago!

I work 40+ hours a week. Adam works 50+ hours a week. We usually have at least 5 evening commitments per week. I know that everyone is busy and some people would roll their eyes at our schedule, but I'm needing some coping tips! I want to stay healthy and eat well while maintaining some sort of weekly down time along with spending quality time with Adam. So please, wow me with your wisdom and let me know what works for you.

Happy Thanksgiving

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Via dooce.

Snapshots of a Bygone Era

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:52:00 +0000

As I set about the task of deleting old numbers from my cellphone, I suddenly realized that I was getting emotional. It wasn't just that I was deleting unused numbers from my address book, but I was acknowledging that people who used to be near and dear to my heart and activities I used to do are no longer a part of my life.

The phone number from the summer job where I worked from when I was 16 until I was 19. I worked at a local ice cream and candy shop in my very small Connecticut town. The owners were friends of the family and my Mom basically got me the interview. I can still remember what The Hillside Sweet Shop smelled like; a mix of bleach cleaner, chocolate and freezers.
The boy from high school who I really liked and then found out he was gay.
Acting friends from high school.
The people I used to work with at Zola, a fine dining restaurant in Nashville. The pace was frenetic and exhilarating and the people were characters you could not have made up.
The girl from college who I though was so cool. I was so excited when I realized she wanted to be my friend too!
My supervisors from the five (yes five!) internships I had in college.
Friends from our church in Nashville. The one that changed our lives and is probably the reason we're church planters in North America.
Friend/Acquaintances who I would probably still hang out with if I still lived in Nashville.

Maybe the hardest part of deleting phone numbers is acknowledging that you're never going back to the place in your life where you need or even want to call the person whose number your having a hard time deleting.

A San Francisco Treat

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:27:00 +0000

I have always wanted to visit San Francisco. This is a fact I have reminded Adam of for the last five years. I wasn't nagging, per se, just reminding! Finally a few weeks ago, we had an opportunity to go.

To me, San Francisco always seemed like such a vibrant cultural center! An artist's haven! a geek's delight! A architect's excitement! A seismologist's dream! Ok, so the earthquakes didn't exactly draw me, but good food and the pace of city life do. Ok, honestly I was mostly excited about the food. Before we left I did my homework and scoured the Internet for recommendations. We only had three days and I wanted to see and do EVERYTHING.

When people ask me what we saw, I don't even know where to begin. We saw EVERYTHING.

We perhaps unwisely didn't account for the three hours of jetlag we would be experiencing and did silly things like make dinner reservations at 10pm at night (that's 1am EST!) so we could pack as much as possible into each day.

We shopped in Union Square, walked Lombard Street, rode the trolly cars, ate chocolate in Gihardelli square, watched wind surfers in Crissy field, walked the Golden Gate bridge, looked at flowers in Golden Gate park, dodged hippies in the Haight, wandered through the Palace of Fine Arts, bought fortune cookies and dim sum in Chinatown, shopped at the Ferry Plaza, smelled the pungent sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf, laughed at the wonders of the Musee Mechanique, viewed the Painted Ladies from Alamo Square, sampled cappuccino and focaccia in North Beach, rested our sore feet in Golden Gate Park's Japanese tea garden, savored Burmese food, sat in the redwood park next to the Trans-America building, wandered through the Embarcadero... and that's just the beginning. If you are a chill traveler, you probably don't want to be travel buddies with me.

We stayed in Union Square at the Hilton Hotel (many thanks to my in-laws for letting us use their travel points!), which was very nice and we had a fabulous view of the city from our room.

As you can imagine, we had a lot of fun...

but we were exhausted.

We probably packed a week's worth of activity into three days. We rode buses, trolleys and walked up monster hills. Adam was incredibly gracious by allowing me to plan this power-trip (pun intended?) even though he has visited San Francisco a few times and he wasn't as excited as I was about EVERYTHING! We had a really great trip, but were seriously ready for another vacation by the end our our time in the city. Fortunately, we had a week in wine country ahead of us!

Given that we did so much, I thought I would recommend our favorite things to you, in case you're ever in the same situation where you finally get to visit San Francisco and you only have three days!

Bourbon and Branch- This is an old-fashioned speak-easy bar and you must have reservations (a word to the wise: book more than a week in advance!) and a password to get in. Everything is decorated in prohibition-era decor. The drinks are all unique and their drink menu is dizzying long, even before you have a smack-you-in-the-face drink. It was only two blocks from our hotel, but man, those Internet people who warned that it was in a sketchy part of town were right!

Liguria Bakery- I am already having nightmares about this place. The nightmare goes like this: I had the most amazing focaccia I have ever tasted at Liguria Bakery and I don't live in San Francisco. Then I wake up and it's still true. We got the garlic and rosemary and the raisin, but the raisin will haunt my dreams for a long time.

Honey Honey Cafe and Crepery- This was a truly great breakfast place that was within walking distance from our hotel (if you don't mind the hills, that is) in Union Square. I had the freshly squeezed orange juice and eggs benedict.

Burma Superstar- This is a Burmese restaurant, which was sort of like a blending of Indian and Chinese cuisine. They don't take reservations and I had heard that it would take about an hour to get a table, so we were prepared to wait. But it was worth the wait. The green tea leaf salad was amazing as was the coconut rice.

It was so great to get a taste of the west coast and to experience a great city that I've always wanted to see.

Sharing is Caring

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:22:00 +0000

I thought I would share my favorite brand of yogurt with you today. It's a Canadian brand that I discovered at Super Target, but their website assures me I can find their yogurt at upscale stores like Whole Foods too. Their line (yogurt is like fashion) of Méditerranée yogurts are my favorite. They have normal flavors like strawberry and blackberry, but also more fun flavors like coconut, lemon and plum and fig. It's seriously creamy and the fruit at the bottom contains actual fruit. It's also sweetened with sugar and not Splenda, which I detest.

Lest this devolve into a serious discussion of yogurt, there's also this.

I Do it For the Health

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:31:00 +0000

Recently, I've been trying to get my health in order. Not that I have bad health mind you! My health is great! My health is fab! My health is better than your health. But... I have finally realized that now is the time to make good life choices that will stick with me for the rest of my life. I need to eat less sweets and eat more veggies. I need to do a yearly checkup once a year instead of once every five years. And perhaps most of all, I realized I needed to exercise. Let's just say Grad school isn't the best for your bottom. Too many books!

This summer we joined a gym. I figured that if I was paying to exercise I probably would drag myself out of the house to go torture my body. I knew that my aversion to spending money would be my primary motivator. Since July I have been at the gym at least three days a week. At first I tried group fitness classes like yoga (so many old people!), Zumba (so many screaming women!), and step aerobics (so much pain!). Finally I realized I would need to find a routine that worked for me. When my friend challenged me to run a marathon, I laughed heartily and said, "Well maybe I can do a 5k."

Let me preface this by saying I am not the sporty type. AT ALL. Let me say it again. AT ALL. When I was in fifth grade I suddenly decided I wanted to play soccer. My bemused parents were skeptical at my new found interest in team sports, but they got me fitted with some new cleats and my Dad tried to teach me the basic rules of the game. I was horrified. Rules!? I just wanted to, like kick a ball around with some other kids! When I showed up for practice, it was painfully obvious that I was the worst kid on the team. All of my teammates had been playing soccer since they could walk, and most of them played more than two sports. Strangely enough, my teammates were not thrilled by my lack of skill. I was made fun of so badly that my Mom finally made me call my coach and tell him how awful it was. Today, that probably would have been called "bullying" and those 10-year-old soccer-playing hooligans would have gone to jail. But this was the 90s and back then, the coach just told the other kids to stop making fun of me, which they did. We all moved on with our lives but I never could find it within me to pretend to be athletic again. Until now.

This summer, I started the "Couch to 5K" program and quickly learned why I have avoided running for so long. Firstly, there is pain involved. There is heaving breathing and there is sweating. Oh the sweating! The program is more of a walk/run program than a running program at first, to give wusses like me a chance to catch up with the rest of you. It's supposed to be a 10-week program, but I think I'll be lucky if I do it in 20 weeks. As my loving husband said, "Heather, I think you're base level for cardio is much lower than most other people's." In other words, "Man, girl! You sure are out of shape!"

On Hosting

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:05:00 +0000

"I do tend to keep things fairly tidy, which helps, and I do have a monthly visit from a housecleaner for the deep cleaning. But I have books and papers in piles. Who cares? This is who I am. I’m inviting people to come have a meal with ME, not some other person who is more austere than I."

-Jennifer Ward as quoted on Tea and Cookies

Here and There and Everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 17:22:00 +0000

I just got all the pictures off my camera from the beginning of the summer. What fun things I did in the last three months!

My summer began with one of my best friends re-locating back up North. Sometimes I think about calling Laura and asking her if she wants to come over for dinner. Then I remember she lives 600 miles away. Then I cry. Here we are at her good-bye dinner. It is quite possibly one of the best pictures of us because both of us look reasonably cute and not strangely demented.

In August, I want to visit my family and friends in New York and Connecticut. My Bubby was turning 101, so you know, it was no big deal. First I want to New York.

I took practically no pictures, except of my Mom and I in the Village drinking margaritas and of a croissant and cappuccino from Patisserie Claude. We saw Anything Goes on Broadway and it was really great.

Then we went to Connecticut! My Mom and sister and I tried to go to a tea shop, but it was more like a cute lunch place. So we made due. Then we tried to go to a vineyard, but they were all closed. So we made due with a fruit-wine tasting at an orchard's grocery store. The things we have to do...

Here's me and my Bubby on her birthday. We were at a restaurant and my sister and I got carded. We laughed and told the waitress she would probably rather see our grandmother's ID.

Labor Day weekend Adam and I drove down to south Georgia for a wedding. I cannot emphasize the SOUTH part enough. It's like a whole different world down there. We had heard about the "gnat line" that separates those of us who are sane and live where there are not a million gnats trying to attack your face, and those of us who don't, but I didn't realize the INTENSITY of these gnats. I spent the whole wedding trying to fan away the million flies bent on my destruction. What? Our friends Paul and Laura got married? Who knew!

The reception was at a River Aquarium. I couldn't decide if it was the coolest thing or the strangest thing ever. The food was spread out through the maze-like aquarium and you had to hunt it down and gather it. My friend April and I were so focused on finding the grits bar that we totally missed the alligators.

Here are my beautiful friends Lea and April and my exuberant husband.

Despite the gnats, I think we all had a good time.

For now, I'm happily back in North Carolina where I'll only be for another week until we leave for San Francisco. We are total jet setters.

The voice as an Instrument

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:57:00 +0000

Stages of Life

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 16:11:00 +0000

I always enjoy talking to my grandmother (Bubby) on the phone. Since she lives in Connecticut and I live in North Carolina, I don't get to see her often enough. She never fails to lift my spirits with her quick wit and captivating stories. My grandmother is 75 years older than me, which means that she lived the majority of her life before I was even born. As an adult, I am constantly learning things about her and from her that I didn't realize or understand as a child. For instance, in her younger years, Bubby was a terrific gardener and a wonderful cook. She thinks back very fondly on the years she spent with her husband before he passed away when my mother was only 13.

This is me with my Bubby on my wedding day, five years ago in 2006.

This is my Mother with her brother and my Bubby (her mother) on her wedding day in 1980.

And finally, here is my Bubby on her wedding day in 1931.

At one time, we were all brides, looking forward to our lives ahead of us. Right now, I get the joy of being young and having much to learn while my Bubby has the joy of fondly remembering the time when she was my age and reflecting on her fully-lived life.

You Can Free the Nations

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:03:00 +0000

Do you have friends who always inspire you? Friends who are so excited and persistent about their ideas, causes and interests that you can't help but want them to succeed? That's my friend Sarah. She's an entrepreneur at heart. She also looked gorgeous on her wedding day (almost two years ago!)

Sarah and some of her friends just launched Free the Nations, an online boutique focused on fashion to help others in need. Sarah wanted to find ways that women could use their purchasing power to not only look good, but make a world-wide impact too.

I've got my eye on this Agate Glass pendant and on these Danica earrings.

Congratulations, Sarah!

Giving a Hand-Up Starts With Community

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:27:00 +0000

Family Independence Initiative is a fascinating social program that aims to help people independently set goals and get out of poverty.

"Lim Miller had come to believe that the American social welfare system focused too much on poor people’s needs and deficits, while overlooking — and even inhibiting — their strengths. A safety net is crucial when people are in crisis, he said. But most poor families are not in free fall. They don’t need nets to catch them so much as they need springboards to jump higher."

via the New York Times

Smitten Kitchen Love

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:27:00 +0000

It's no secret the my favorite food blog is Smitten Kitchen. But it's not the photography or the recipes that makes me wish that Deb's cookbook would hurry up and be finished soon. It's her conversational manner and her extreme perfectionism in the kitchen that make me feel like we are soul sisters. Here's a great piece of advice from this interview that is sticking with me today:

"The less time you spend trying to figure out why things aren't in balance, the clearer your head will be. Life will not neatly balance."

Amen.

Not Settling Down

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:26:00 +0000

In all of the transition that's going on in our lives (graduating, moving, starting a church...) I've been feeling a bit nostalgic lately. Part of me misses my family in Connecticut and part of me misses my college and post-college year in Nashville, Tennessee. I almost almost miss the three years we spent at Seminary, as I realize that soon most of our seminary friends will no longer be within easy driving distance.

Getting old is the sudden realization that you remember when things were distinctly different. No longer is your life broken up by only a few periods (childhood, college), but suddenly you look back fondly on all of the firsts you have already accomplished (first car, first house, your wedding, graduation(s), anniversaries etc.).

I'm beginning to see what people mean when they talk about the monotony of daily life. You get up, go to the gym, go to work, maybe do some weekly volunteer work, go to bed and do it all over again. Right now I'm trying to figure out my goals for the next few years and figure out how to achieve them. I don't want to get stuck and I most certainly don't want to get complacent. In a few years, I want to look back and see that I made good decisions about how I spent my time, the ways I fostered growth and discipleship. I want to travel! I want to serve others! I want to have the best marriage possible! I may be getting older, but that doesn't mean I have to get boring.

Thoughts From

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:46:00 +0000

The Gym:

Streaming Netflix to your phone while exercising is like cheating!
The lady in front of me would really benefit from a size Medium instead of a size small pair of yoga pants.
I am perhaps the most awkward person in this Zumba class, right after the 50-year old lady in the back who is just standing there looking dumbfounded.

The Mirror in the Bathroom:

I need to stop pretending I'm too young to wear lipstick.
Why is my hair more frizzy when I use product? They sold me a bill of lies!

The Car:

I used to be the one who insisted that all strange noises be checked out by the mechanic. Now I'm the one promoting "let's just wait and see if it dies first."

The House:

Of course there would be a storm with 50mph winds the same day that I raked up the pine needles in our front yard.

French Fries Are As Bad As They Warned Us

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:48:00 +0000

Facinating.

Different foods have a different effect on the body. "You can't just say a calorie is a calorie. It doesn't address your feelings of fullness, your blood glucose levels, your blood insulin levels and the other biological responses in your body,"

Hey, Old Friend

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:25:00 +0000

Let's catch up.

Adam and I joined a gym last week. They have group fitness classes, and so far, I have done yoga and pilates. This is why I can no longer stand up.
We took a day trip to the beach with our previous neighbors. I applied sunscreen repeatedly, but still got sunburn. I am a delicate flower who wilts in the sun.
We will be going to San Francisco and wine country with my in-laws in the fall. I was really hesitant about spending so much money on a trip after recently buying a house, but I found some plane tickets that were $200 cheaper than what I had been seeing for the last two months. We'll be in San Francisco for three days and wine country for six days. San Francisco is one of my dream vacations and I am so excited about visiting the west coast for the first time! Please recommend places for us to go!
I've decided that working on a house while you are also starting a church is pretty much hilariously impossible. I feel incredibly relieved that we didn't buy fixer-upper, but I'm starting to feel like there will be painter's tape on our walls for the next year.
Life without homework and papers is a beautiful, but slightly disorienting thing. When we're hanging out with friends I start to get a little anxious after 9pm, like, "Don't we need to go home now? Don't we still have 3 more hours of work to do?"
That said, we've been hanging out with people A LOT. The introvert in me is whimpering a bit, but at the same time enthralled by the idea that when you're not in school you could hang out with friends EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. The freedom is kind of intoxicating.
We're also starting to admit (ok, maybe it's just me who's in denial) that we need a second car. Groan. I like only having one car to fix and one car to pay insurance on. But I also don't like being a prisoner in my own house. So there's that. Fortunately, we now live really close to the airport and our friends have been using our driveway as a parking lot. This means that for two months, we basically have a free second car!

We've All Been There

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:10:00 +0000

Holly is making me laugh today:

"I'm not sure what those mythical boys would have found more irresistible, really: my aggressive hair flip? My high-waisted baggy jeans? My five-sizes-too-big plaid shirt, which almost certainly belonged not to Beth, but actually to Beth's dad?"

Masters; Two Of Us

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:33:00 +0000

After three years, many papers, midterms and finals, Adam became a Master of Divinity with Advanced Biblical Studies. I'm so proud of him for his hard work and how he's grown as an academic. He's become a better critical thinker, a Greek and Hebrew scholar (can I use that word?!), and a great explainer of complex theological concepts. Even though I graduated with a Master of Arts in Intercultural Studies, it's really his accomplishment that I'm most proud of. And now that I have a Master's I can end sentences in prepositions.

End of an Era

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:26:00 +0000

Today I finished the last final of my Master's degree. You would think I would feel excited, right? Elated? Relieved? Not quite. I don't know whose bright idea it was to put graduation the week before our move (hmmm, wait, was that mine?), but I am officially stressed out.

Instead of being all, "HOORAY! No more school!" I'm all, "MUST MOVE INTO HOUSE! MUST NOT DIE!" The end of finals merely seems like a stepping stone in right direction. I'm pretty sure I'll wake up in a month and go, "Hey wait a minute! I don't have anything to study for!" But for now, my mind is racing with all the things to do for our move and for our parents' graduation visits. My hope was that I could worry about the move next week when our families aren't in town to celebrate graduation, but at this point, that seems like best laid plans.

I Need Your Help

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:18:00 +0000

Seriously. While this isn't a major life problem, I feel compelled to get your opinion on something.

This is our new kitchen. Does it remind you of anything? Any particular color schemes? No?

The yellow must go. And it must go quickly. The problem is, what color should take its place? While green countertops wouldn't have been my first choice, they're what I have and I have to find some way to make them look good. I have painted FOUR test colors on the walls already and I haven't liked any of them. I have tried this pink, this cream, this neutral and this neutral. I was hoping for a neutral (can you tell?) But they all looked so bland.

Here are some stipulations:

The new color can't be dark. The kitchen doesn’t get any direct sunlight and it is always a little dark in there. I don't want the kitchen to feel any cozier than it has to.
I'm really hesitant to go with a shade of green. I don't want the kitchen to start feeling like a forest, you know?

Here are some terrible close-up photos of the kitchen cabinets and the countertop. The photos of the cabinets don't really do them justice. The cabinets are a luminous carmely wood and they really shine in the kitchen. I'm showing you this photo to show you that the wood is kind of shiny.

I show you this photo, to show you how the counters can look grey in a certain light (top left) and green in other light (bottom right). The counters are speckled with green, white and blue, but green is definitely the most dominant color.

What do you think? What color should the kitchen be? Leave a comment and help me solve this dilemma!

Most Awesome Bachelor Pad

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:42:00 +0000

Home Ownership (Part 1 of many)

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Mon, 09 May 2011 18:34:00 +0000

Look at what I did this weekend!

Good bye green living room that looks kind of sickly when the light is just right. Hello cool Silver Mist that makes me feel like I'm walking in a cloud. My friends Kevin and Lin came over to help Adam and I on Saturday and they were fabulous! They brought us a huge basket of freshly picked strawberries and they helped us change the locks, tape and paint. If you're like us and you don't know much about home improvement, that probably sounds like something you could do in an hour or two. If you're not so fortunately to be as blithely ignorant as we are, you know that that was an all-day project.

Our guest bed was also delivered and we spent our first night in our new home. I hope the bed is comfortable, because after a long day of labor I could have slept on the floor and would have thought it was a plush pillow-top.

On Sunday we started to feel pretty accomplished. our friend Christian came over and helped Adam finish changing the locks, Adam installed track lighting in the kitchen and mowed the lawn. I pulled up ivy that is currently consuming a tree, trimmed the hedges, gave the living room a second coat of paint, and danced a jig.

While this laundry list of chores might sound awful to you, I was giddy with excitement both days. I get to PAINT! I am so fortunate! I get to rip up ivy! SO COOL! I can go to the hardware store and almost all of the aisles apply to me now! Watch out, world. I'm about to get domestically dangerous!

We Own A House

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:34:00 +0000

Yes. We do.

Every time I walk in the house I feel so incredibly blessed. I look around and I can't believe it. It's an amazing feeling to know you'll be living somewhere for longer than 3 years. And it's yours.

Last night Adam and I went to the house to get it ready for our move-in at the end of May. This gave me the opportunity to test out some paint colors, do a load of dishes in our dishwasher (yes, I came about this close to making out with the dishwasher), sweep the deck and sidewalk and measured the windows to later hang blinds. Adam took on the task of mowing our gigantic lawn. It took him an hour and 45 minutes and the lawn mower ran out of gas halfway through.

As I prepare to live in our new house, I simultaneously feel like I'm preparing to start a new life. A life full of new adventures. There could be mystery, intrigue, action, adventure, comedy and hopefully romance. I can't wait to see what happens!

Ah, Nashville

noreply@blogger.com (exschutz@gmail.com) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:35:00 +0000

I miss Nashville. It's a great city and there's always new places to go or fun things to do. But that's nothing compared to the great friends we have there. Two weeks ago, I took a trip to visit some college friends and have some relaxed fun. My friend Becky was also going to be in town and she and my friend Sarah convinced me to meet up for a girls weekend of sorts.

Sarah thought her husband Jesse was going to be out of town touring with his band, but he ended up crashing our girls weekend instead. Or maybe we ended up crashing his home...? Jesse was a good sport and held it together while us girls laughed and made jokes we might not have in mixed company.

Sarah and Becky and I paid a visit to our alma matter, Belmont University. We are totally rocking the alumna look, don't you think? We marveled at how our campus has changed and pretended we still look young enough to be college students when the 18-year olds walked by.

Later, I met up with some other friends whom I am so excited to see this summer at a wedding! Jessie and Tyler are on the left and Justin and Molly are on the right.

Here's some wedding-interwovenness for you: Jessie and Tyler are getting married. Tyler was a groomsman in our wedding (almost 5 years ago!). Justin and Molly will be there too, because Justin and Jessie are brother and sister. Tyler and Jessie met at Justin and Molly's wedding four years ago. Like woah.