what's new...

so here's a few random things that are going on in my life right now....

i just finished scrubbing the basement walls down with mr. clean. next will be the floors, then we can start painting and turn 1/2 of the basement into a spare bedroom. mind you, this spare room will be a bit smaller than our room and alena's rooms together. our guests will have the biggest room in the house, second to the living room... the catch is that we only have 1 bathroom, and it's on the 2nd floor.

we're 95% sure we're going to change churches in the very near future. this will mean leaving the church we currently walk 2 blocks to, to going to a church we'll drive 35 minutes to. we kind of randomly picked this new church and it's a good fit so far. not sure what's holding us up on that last 5%..maybe the fact that we desperately wanted this withing-walking-distance church to work out. there's nothing really wrong with our current church, per se. they're very nice people, very generous people and i've never heard a negative, condemning sermon from the pulpit. but after 3+ years, we still feel like visitors. we need to feel like family, and what makes it worse, is that we have been a part of a congregation where you're truly family, so settling for this is just too hard to swallow any longer. nashville's a strange place to try to find a church (being the buckle of the Bible belt and all) which is why we went way out of the metropolitan area...and we seem to have found normalcy in this next town.

we have friends coming in from chattanooga for a wedding on sat and they'll spend a couple hours at our house (shout out, moses family) another friend coming to town for work training and will be spending the night at our house next weekend (shout out, jenn cooper) then alena's 2nd birthday party is on the 18th and my mom will be staying here. then we'll be traveling to the west-of-atlanta area to have a friend take alena's 2yr pics. so all this to say i'm really trying hard to get the house nice and clean before this busy fall starts!

sept. goes straight into october. the a cappella chorus jared and i sang with in college will be having a little reunion concert for a fund raiser dinner for a missions ministry. here's the awesome part--we get to sing on the stage of the schermerhorn symphony center! if you don't know what that is, take a moment to look it up. you will be impressed. after that..... we and some friends (shout out, fitzgeralds) are taking a cruise to key west and cozumel. ooohhhh yeah! and no soda nightmares, alena will be with my parents in ohio, who totally back me on my parenting choices.

i guess that's about it. there's my life for the next couple months. it's busy..which i never understand how that happens. i have made a choice to simplify my life..to not get so caught up in activities to do (or clutter in my house) and yet, sometimes i look around and feel so busy and like my house has so much STUFF in it! i can't imagine how people must feel who are fully in the rat race and love buying crap all the time. i think i would have an anxiety attack.

hope it's not too cold yet where you're at! :)