Today we had a picnic for the counseling department at the house of one of my professors. It's usually a good time hanging out with friends, relaxing, and eating good food. Joshua was one of the skilled grillers.(Like the Starbucks aprons? Haha!)

And this is Hana, my co-counselor for this semester. She is from South Korea. I only have one more week with her until she gets a new co-counselor and I leave to do my internship. Exciting happenings.

Okay, back to homework!

the light

The end is so close I can almost taste it!

Joshua graduates very soon. Before he can, however, he has a project, a presentation, and a final. He'll be ready.

My semester ends even sooner. But before I'm home-free I've got two papers (one of which is a book review for a book I still have to finish reading) and a comprehensive final. And by comprehensive, I mean comprehensive over my whole counseling career. Yikes.

Almost...there...keep...going...

running

I've started running again. Last Friday I did about 2 miles (with some walking in the middle) and about the same over the next few days. Today I did 2.5 miles with no walking. Yes!

I haven't run in a while. I'm really not a runner. In the Fall of 2003 I was convinced by a friend to train for a half marathon. Before that time I hadn't run over a mile. Around the time that I was up to 10 miles in my training, a couple weeks before the race, I got tendinitis in my ankle and had to stop. I was really disappointed. I've tried to run off and on since then. Recently my knees hurt afterwards and I'm almost crippled if I don't ice them. Like I said, I'm not really a runner.

But I'm trying again. So we'll see how it goes.

Funny Disgusting Story

I totally forgot to tell you about this disgusting story. It happened several weeks ago.

On a Sunday night Josh and I had gotten back from our Perspectives class, so it was about 10pm. Josh went to check the mail (why on a Sunday night?). Our mailbox is right outside our front door on the wall. So he was leaning out the door checking the mail. All of a sudden I heard breaking branches and crashing noises and thought "Oh no, what is falling?"

Joshua jerks back inside as a loud "thump" hits the front sidewalk. I was thinking some branches were falling. But when Josh slammed the front door I knew it was something else. We cautiously opened the front door and there on the front walk, maybe 3 feet from us, are two possums tangled together. Nasty! One was biting at the neck of the other, both lying on their sides. I can see its nasty little face even now. I wanted to shut the door, but of course Joshua wanted to keep looking. We couldn't tell if they had been fighting and fell from the trees or if they were mating. But neither one was moving very much. And with the sound of the thump with which they hit the ground, I figured they were goners.

We did shut the door and turned off the porch light (so they wouldn't be attracted to it?) and finished getting stuff together downstairs. All the time I was wondering what we were going to do with two dead possums. Or, if they really were fighting, what are we going to do with the one that loses? Josh couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if they had fallen on his head!

Before heading upstairs to bed we checked outside one more time. Both possums were gone! The only trace of this disgusting encounter was a small tuft of fur that had come out of one of them. Unsolved Mystery.

(I guess it could be solved if we find baby possums soon)

almost there

Once again we are in the final throws of the semester. And in more ways than one do I mean final. Joshua graduates in about 3 weeks! And I finish classwork in 3 weeks. The light is there...

But as everyone knows, that means that right now we are swamped getting everything done. Joshua is currently attending some architectural meeting in Dallas as an assignment for one of his classes. Then he has to head straight to his night class (late, of course) until 10pm. Long night. I am currently working on completing my professional portfolio. It's pretty much finished, but I'm being picky and re-doing parts to make it better.
I'm writing about things like:

• an assessment of my development as a counselor
• the relationship between theology and behavioral science
• my mission statement for counseling
• core assumptions (like how humans know what they know, what influences lack of well-being, etc)
• and my overall view of counseling

It's a lot. And it feels good to have it almost finished.

Of course, I still have to read another book for theology and write a book review. And finish my paper on salvation. And prepare for my counseling session on Tuesday night.

Whew!

It will be good to have the semester behind us.

Weather Woes

More crazy weather in the Metroplex. Yesterday American Airlines canceled something like 1000 flights. And this morning they canceled another 900. We have had massive wind and rainstorms the past couple of days.

Well, Josh was supposed to fly out to Monterrey, Mexico with the pastor and some guys from our church. But that didn't happen. One flight was canceled and they tried to get on another, only to have that one delayed and delayed and finally canceled. There are no other available flights this weekend.

So that's a disappointment. Now instead of being in Mexico eat tamales Josh is sitting in his Thursday night class. =(

But we trust that God has other plans and reasons why they did not need to go to Mexico.

discovery

Last week had been a pretty busy week and then Friday I went to a ladies retreat while Joshua went on a boys camp-out. So by Sunday afternoon we decided it was time to do something fun together. I decided I wanted to make oatmeal raisin cookies. As we pulled out our baking ingredients, we realized that we didn't have any eggs. Not one to be deterred so quickly, I searched online for a vegan recipe (since they don't use dairy products) and found some for oatmeal raisin cookies. It turns out you can substitute mashed bananas for eggs. How cool is that?

And the result? Absolutely delicious! Couldn't tell!

Now, we didn't follow the vegan recipe exactly because we used butter (the recipe called for applesauce). But I think it was a pretty cool discovery.

Hailstorm

We had a HUGE hailstorm last night. The weather reports had been saying there would be rain in the evening, but we didn't see anything for a while. A little after 11pm (yes, we were still up) it started pouring and then we could hear what sounded like little hail. Then all of a sudden it sounded like rocks were being thrown against our window and covered parking area. When we looked outside, the street was covered in hail!
I tried to take some pictures, but I could get any through the window, since it was dark, and when I opened the door I got wet. So no pictures. But trust me when I say there was a lot of hail and big pieces!
And then just as suddenly it all stopped and we went to sleep.

Pictures

Look! We found a new place to live and really spread out!Haha! Just kidding! These are really pictures from our camping trip. This is from the Historical Penn Farm that we visited at the State Park.

We tried to blaze our own trail through the woods. We only ended up with scratches on our legs and a muddy dog. Josh washed him off. Aw, what a cute family! Now, before I start getting any comments and remarks, let me make a few things clear.
1. Yes, we really like our dog and enjoy having him with us.
2. No, we do not think he's our kid nor is he serving as a child substitute.
3. Yes, we do buy toys for him and play with him.
4. No, we do not dress him up nor let him sleep on any bed.
5. Yes, he is a wonder-dog.
6. No, you cannot have him. =)

Let the countdown begin! Josh graduates on May 9th! Whooohooo!

Spring Break

The rest of our Spring Break was spent right around here. We had a kind of 'lay-low' week, watched a couple of movies, tried to do homework. On Friday we went camping out at Ceder Hill state park. I had not ever been camping at a location like this - it was more like "park-and-camp" than what I imagine as camping. And there was a burn-ban in effect but there was a lot of rain Tuesday night so the hiking trails were closed due to mud. Talk about caught in the middle. So it wasn't necessarily a fantastic camping trip, but it was a nice time out of the house, enjoying the sun and no distractions.

On Saturday after we got back from camping we dyed Easter eggs with a lady from our church and two Taiwanese boys she knows. They are Buddhist, but their mom let them come to church for Easter Sunday to get to experience Easter. Pretty cool.

We spent Easter lunch with friends of mine from seminary. I have been in classes with the wife since coming to seminary and they invited us over for lunch. It was nice to get to share the holiday with someone.

And then Spring Break was over.