My Summer in Summary

My trip to Ethiopia was definitely the highlight of my summer. If you want to catch up on our trip you can start here.

I started my summer home not sleeping in my own room but a tent. A wonderfully fashioned sheet served as a wall and a futon for a bed. It's fort-like essence and tent like qualities gave it the endearing nickname of the Tert. Needless to say it was hard to part with when I was able to move back into my room a month later.

Eric happily modeled the tert for me :-)

I was able to catch up with some friends from high school as well. I've been spending a lot of time at the office making DVD's for CCI to send out to families which I've really enjoyed :-). But when the fun ended I felt as if I'd had a textbook titled "Abnormal Psychology" constantly lingering over my head over the summer. I've had an online class that I was trying to finish that kept me pretty busy. It's been very interesting and I would pour my new knowledge about the crazy disorder i learned about on my family in the evenings. I'm pretty sure they tuned me out after awhile. I've mostly been struggling with the battle every morning of either staying home that day to do homework or go to work and make money for the upcoming year. Lately I've been going to work in the morning and coming home to work on my class that afternoon. Excellent solution I found.

One of the highlights of my summer was our trip up north for the CCI Reunion at Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. My trip started a little earlier then the rest of my families because I took a quick trip to Indiana first. I spend a few days visiting friends from school which was great! I picked up my roommate Christy who would spend the weekend in Chicago with us. I was really exciting to see a lot of the kids we had known in

Ethiopia home with their new families in America. It was surreal to remember where the kids came from and to see all they have now. It was indescribably great to see.

But our weekend didn't stop after the reunion. We have lots of family in the Chicago area so we experienced our long time craved

Chicago Nancy's pizza with our family. On our last day in Chicago, almost on a whim we decided to take a quick trip downtown to see the city again. We were startled when we heard loud explosions coming from downtown only to realize that they were fimling a movie. Transformers 3 of course! And I'll forever tell people that I saw them making 3 seconds of the movie. Why do we enjoy our small claims to fame so much?

(I'm slowly realizing that my summer seems far more exciting when I leave out the boring parts, hah)

Another pick me up that still hasn't worn off yet was going to a Something Corporate concert!! Eric and I went last week and I still can't get over that I get to hear some of my favorite songs live! Was a lot of fun.

And finally to top off my summer, mom and I went to Kentucky for an adoption conference luncheon. We made it through the long but surprisingly bearable 14 hour drive and the reward on the other end was worth it. Chick-fil-e!! The conference was hosted by one of our favorite chicken chains and we got to see many of our adoptive families at the same time. And yes, all the kids below belonged to the same family!

(A shot I took on the flight home from Kentucky)

My wonderful summer ended with a beautiful reminder of everything that God's been doing in my life. I'm constantly reminded of his love and faithfulness and hope to not forget it as I go back to school in a few days. There will be good times as well as hard times but God didn't promise us that our life would be easy. But we can always count on Him to be there when we need Him. And even though we can't see it all the time He finds little ways of reminding us He's still there :-)