Less than 3 months

It is hard to believe that we have less than three months before we move back to Chicago! We have continued to make tactical progress towards moving, including having our house officially sold (to close late July after we fix one or two items), reserving the moving truck, starting to pack up our belonging in boxes, looking into a one month rental to cover from July to August, etc. If you just LOVE moving furniture, let me know and I'll recruit you for the moving truck load in July. I've joked with my friends at work that I can probably get 20 something guys from Cap One over to the house easy enough - but a) They would probably demolish my furniture while carrying it and b) none of us young whipper snappers would know how to pack the moving truck. It is common knowledge that you don't attain packing greatness until you get past 45 (my two packing mentors are currently my father and John Scott). Christy will be heading back around August 20th to prepare to teach her class at Wheaton College and I will follow sometime in early September (my last day at Capital One is September 1st and I will probably need a day or two to close things out here).

God has continued to show provision and love to our family as we have met with others about our trip including folks coming to our home, meeting people at Church, and general conversations at work and beyond. We have had so many encouraging conversations with folks in the Richmond area and have started making some progress towards financial support, and more importantly, a prayer team. I was especially encouraged by West End Presbyterian Church's missions team commitment to consistently pray for our family and the ministry in Costa Rica. I know that we will have hiccups along the way and it will be so important to have that support. We have more information sessions at our house scheduled and will be speaking in a couple weeks during the service at WEPC, so if you would like more information, just shoot me a note and I can provide more details on times.

Now...onto some important details. My question of the day is, if I have 26' moving truck I'm driving from Richmond to Chicago, do I have to stop at truck moving stations? The consensus among friends is about 80% no and 20% yes. I'm thinking I can just stop at the first weigh station and ask someone there...this will satisfy two things for me: 1) I'll know if I need to stop the rest of trip and 2) I can tell everyone that I've been to a weigh station before (how many people can say that?!?!).

Elizabeth and Sammy continue to get big so fast. Sammy can stand on his own now and has started taking a step or two on his own. However, he much prefers to crawl as quickly as possible towards Lizzy and bite her feet. Thats right, he's is a biter. Luckily he only has a few teeth AND Elizabeth has kept a reasonably cool head and hasn't clubbed him too hard yet (although I've joked with Christy that if she is going to do it now is the time, because in a couple years he will probably be bigger than her). This new development of the kids going after each other makes things more *interesting* (aka - tiring and frustrating) at home for Christy, so if you see her dragging, give her a hug and tell the kids to obey mama.

Anyway...thats the update for now. I'll try to be better about posting a little more often. Also, I'll commit to getting a few more pictures up on the site of the kids. Until next time...