I'm torn between using twitter frequently enough to timeline what I'm doing, and posting here on the blog to flesh out more details. Oh well. This weekend has been packed enough to warrant a blog post I think.
Friday evening, Don & Jackie Shuler invited me over to Middlebury for dinner along w/ Todd and Sara. We had a wonderful dinner followed by my first chance to play Settlers of Cattan with them, except that I had to tear myself away halfway into it. It was very relaxing and enjoyable to spend a few hours with some longtime friends. Then I headed over to Elkhart where Allesha was hosting a bonfire at her parents' house, and even though I got there about 2.5 hrs late, there was still a full circle of about 15 people gathered around a massive fire. It lasted an hour longer and then I headed home w/ Dan to get some sleep before the big day.
Saturday morning, Dan & I walked through our neighborhood to get to the Montessori School where the Fall Frolic was starting at. We registered, met up with a bunch of friends including Pete G, Pete T, Ricky, Todd, Dan B, Nick, Marcus, Kyle, Liz, Bridget, Sheila, Sarah, Mary Claire, and Christine L. We also ran into the Zusi's, Cathy F, and the Behrens'. Then the 10k and 5k took place, which many of us ran in. Afterwards, there was something of an awards ceremony, and Todd roughly documents his experience of that in his post, A New Pace. Oh by the way, Todd had never run a 10k before and he beat all of us. We had a broad range of finishes, from 4th place to last place!
Around lunchtime I met with Fred Smith to walk him through the act of blogging. He hopes to start doing that at some point, on an occasional basis. Then I came home and started preparing for Lord's Day. It was a bit topsy-turvy but all in all I'm happy with how it went. A lot of the cooking and leading it was more than I've ever done before so it was quite a sigh of relief when it went ok, and I think I could say it went more than ok! David, Jeremy, Brian, and Kevin also joined us from the work college, as well as Sarah and Laura, along w/ the Havards mixed in too. We had bacon-wrapped bbq chicken - secretly in honor of my Dad who was having bacon-wrapped steak filets with many many more people at the exact same time down at Mary Gray Bird Sanctuary! Afterward, we all split up between a fire in the backyard (marshmallows came out later), and the game room in the basement w/ ping pong, pool, and Wii. Brian showed us how to juggle hot coals! Wicked cool. I was particularly happy to have the mix of friends from the young adults group mingling w/ some awesome work college dudes as well as my household. What a great opportunity for me to see people from different areas of my life all together and loving each other! Just the slightest glimpse of when He will be all in all!