We're decorating the nursery in an underwater theme. Veronica enjoyed studying ocean science as a kid, and we decided it would be a fun theme for the room. Some of the decorations are from Veronica's room growing up - a stuffed animal rainbow trout and a coral reef rug. On the wall, we have stickers with lots of tropical fish, sea turtles, and whales for the baby to enjoy looking at! We also shopped around on Etsy for some things. The handmade stuffed seal was just too cute, and we also found a lighthouse-shaped nightlight. We were also glad to find these adorable prints to hang on the wall as a reminder for the baby of both God's love and ours. It has been a lot of fun transforming the room into an underwater world!

One of the fun parts of our neighborhood is that more and more families with young kids are moving in. At Halloween, we get to see a lot of creative costumes and enjoy handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. This year, we handed out Airheads, which the neighborhood kids seemed to really enjoy! The weather was cold and windy but there were still kids who came by. 

Last year, our church put on a Trunk-or-Treat event, and Veronica decorated our car for it. She dressed up as Rosie the Riveter - true to her engineering background. It was a great event and the kids who came had a lot of fun!

Even with the weather getting colder, we love to go outside when we can. Breathing the crisp air and going for a walk is a lot of fun for us! We have good conversations and are able to relax. We're grateful to live close to some really nice state parks and forest preserves.

Last weekend, we took some time to get out and enjoy the fall colors. We found a state park in Wisconsin with trails that went through the woods and along a lake with some rock formations. It was a little bit past the peak color but still beautiful, and there were a lot of crunchy leaves to step on! 

We are very blessed to live near family and friends. Our community is good at helping each other out with home repairs, meal deliveries, babysitting, or whatever anyone happens to need. When we were first renovating our house, we got a lot of help with putting in flooring, painting walls, and doing yard work. When we can return the favor, we're glad to!

Andrew's brother needed some help with yard work that he couldn't do because of an injury, so a couple of weeks ago a bunch of us helped take out a dead tree in his yard. Last weekend, we repaired his shed roof since it had some damage and wasn't going to make it through the winter. Veronica grew up working on roofs with her dad, and this was a fun opportunity for her to get to work on a roof again. Andrew enjoyed learning how to put shingles on, and it turned out quite well!

Andrew's grandparents and a couple of his cousins came to visit us last weekend, and we got to have a lot of fun catching up with them! They live in Tennessee, so we only get to see them a couple of times a year. 

While they were here, we ate a lot of good food, including home-smoked brisket and Chicago style pizza. The kids played in the park by our house and decorated pumpkins for Halloween. Some of them had never been to Chicago before, so we also went to the city to see the sites which we all really enjoyed! We said goodbye to them after church and brunch on Sunday, so it was a fast visit, but we made a lot of great memories.

The weather has been absolutely wonderful the past week, so we've been out enjoying it! Both of us get to spend some time outside while we're at work which we love. In the evenings, Veronica has gone for runs at different forest preserves in the area. Andrew has been taking care of yard work, and spent one day out in the driveway helping his sister replace the brakes on her car. 

With all this good weather, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to eat lunch outside! We enjoy eating out on the deck, especially when we have friends or family over. Today it was just us, but it was still great having our pulled pork sandwiches out in the fresh air.

This past weekend was cloudy and rainy, so we spent more time indoors. On days like this, we enjoy getting out games or puzzles. This weekend, we got out a couple of 500 piece Disney-themed puzzles to enjoy.

Puzzles are also a common activity when Veronica's family gets together. If we're there for a longer weekend, she and her mom and sisters will get out a bigger 1000-1500 piece puzzle to work on slowly over a few days. They enjoy talking and listening to music while they work on it, and our nieces and nephews will join in sometimes also. It's a nice relaxing family activity!

When we have free time, we both enjoy reading books. For Andrew, it's usually about history. He especially enjoys reading biographies. Veronica usually reads either adventure novels or mysteries. She's read most of Agatha Christie's books.

Our time commuting to and from work has recently become our most common time to "read" by listening to audiobooks. Veronica is reading three at once right now (it's hard to stick to just one sometimes!). She's listening to a fantasy novel by Brandon Sanderson, a book about going through life with God, and a Spanish language-learning audiobook. Andrew just finished up listening to a biography about the Vanderbilts, and now he's listening to one of our favorite novels by C.S. Lewis.

We like to have a lot of books around the house, and we have a few libraries close by and apps on our phone that provide a lot more. We're excited to start stocking our shelves with childrens books!

One of our favorite things to do to relax after work is play the piano. Andrew took piano lessons as a kid, so he's definitely the better piano player of the two of us. He also enjoys figuring out how to play songs by ear (without the sheet music). He likes a lot of different music types, so there's always a fun variety that he'll play. It's really nice having his music fill the house in the evenings!

Recently, Andrew has helped me (Veronica) learn some scales and chords. I've been getting much better and have been able to start to play some songs from having the chords. Sometimes we'll also try playing some duets together. I definitely need more practice, so it doesn't always sound amazing, but we have a lot of fun trying!

Most of the time, we cook dinner at home. After a busy day at work, we're fans of simple meals. Andrew does enjoy making some fancier dishes, but we save that for special occasions. Cooking isn't one of Veronica's favorite activities (though eating is!), but we have some nice easy meals that we go to when we're tired after work.

One of our favorite meals to make is stir-fry bowls. We can have some variety by changing up the type of meat or vegetables or sauce, so even though we eat them a lot we don't get sick of them. It's also a meal that's easy to eat while sitting on the couch, which is nice for relaxing at the end of the day. Last night's dinner had ground pork, sweet potatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, and sweet soy sauce. It was very satisfying, especially with ice cream for dessert!

Every year, Andrew's extended family competes in a fantasy football league. At the beginning of the season is the big event where they do a draft and all get on a Zoom call together. They have a great time catching up for the first few rounds of the draft, talking about the latest vacations, new jobs, and how their kids are doing. The conversation gets more serious as they work out their strategies and try to get their top picks ahead of everyone else. We'll see if Andrew makes it to the playoffs this year - the picks went well but we're always bad about remembering to set our lineups before the games each week.

We enjoy watching pro football when we can. Veronica is a Lions fan. She's hopeful that they'll make it to the Superbowl this year after they made it so far last year. Andrew is a Bears fan, and while they probably won't do as well, he still has fun watching the games with family and friends. Whatever team you cheer for, we hope you enjoy the games!

We hope everyone had a great weekend celebrating Independence Day! This year, we didn't end up going to see fireworks but we did get to spend it with family. Both Veronica's uncle and one of our nieces had birthdays this weekend, so we got to celebrate their birthdays along with our country's birthday. The celebrations have included ice cream sundaes and birthday cake, going to the playground with our niece and nephew, and seeing our uncle's newest art pieces - he makes really nice sculptures from scrap metal. We were also able to spend some time with Veronica's parents and help out with some yard work.

We are thankful for the freedom that we have and for those who fight to protect it. Happy birthday, USA!

During the month of June, we've been blessed with a lot of time with family. Here are some highlights from the month:

- We went to a family reunion (Andrew's dad's family) in northern Indiana. It was a day of perfect weather, catching up with family members we hadn't seen in a long time, and eating delicious smoked chicken.

- One of Andrew's sisters had a birthday recently, so we took her out for a special dinner. We went to a new ramen restaurant, which we really enjoyed!

-  For Father's Day, we went with Andrew's dad to one of our favorite barbecue places for brisket and pulled pork. We went with Veronica's dad to one of our favorite restaurants that has really crispy Korean BBQ wings.

- We visited another of Andrew's sisters in downtown Chicago. There was a free day at the Shedd Aquarium, so we got to see a lot of fish and dolphins and belugas (see the picture), and even pet a starfish!

- Veronica's parents came to visit for a long weekend. We did puzzles, watched episodes of Top Chef, went to garage sales, and they helped us put together some storage cabinets for the garage.

- While visiting garage sales, we found a 3D printer. Andrew and his brother had a great time setting it up and making things with it.

- Andrew's oldest sister came over to help us replace the shocks on our car. She's in training to be an auto mechanic, and we're really proud of her hard work!

It has been a busy month, but a good month. We're very thankful for family who live close by and can come to visit!

For a couple of months, we've been seeing news articles saying that there will be a large number of cicadas this year, and will make for an interesting summer. Cicadas are bugs that are a bit over an inch long, but perfectly harmless. In this area, they come out in large numbers every 17 years. They can fly but they are slow, and they are very, very loud. 

Well, the news articles were right! For the past two weeks, more and more cicadas have been coming out of the ground, and it has definitely changed our summer activities. The noise level in our backyard has been around 60-70 decibels for a couple of weeks (think about the noise of a vacuum cleaner), sometimes getting over 80 decibels (like being in a crowded restaurant). In the park the other day, it was at 95-100 decibels - like having someone operate a power tool right next to you all the time!

This has changed how we enjoy the outdoors a bit. While we're not sitting out in the yard for long periods of time, we still get out for runs and bike rides and pickleball with friends. There aren't as many out in the mornings or later in the evenings, so it's nicer to be outside at those times. We're also careful to check to not bring cicadas into the house when we come inside, especially after we accidentally brought a couple into church last week.

While this has been a unique experience, and we've learned a lot of interesting things, we won't be sad to see the cicadas go. They usually only last 4-6 weeks, so likely they'll be gone by the end of June, and then we get 17 years of nice, quiet summers to enjoy before they come back again!

Two weekends ago, we enjoyed getting away and spending time with family being out in nature. This past weekend, we also enjoyed the nice weather and time with people we care about while staying close to home.

The weather was beautiful and not quite too hot, so we got some good yard work done. There was plenty of weeding to do in the garden and we're preparing a spot to transplant some tall grass that our neighbor is generously giving to us. The peonies are in full bloom and the roses are starting to blossom, and adding some wonderful color to the landscape! These were both plants that the previous owner had planted and are continuing to thrive. We're not great at gardening, but we're making some good progress as we learn. Veronica is very excited that the hostas she transplanted last fall are coming in again this spring!

After working up a sweat in the heat, we got to enjoy a relaxing evening. Some of our closest friends live right by us, including Andrew's brother and sister-in-law, and from time to time we get together to share a meal and hang out. This weekend, we made goulash (a favorite meal that Veronica had a lot growing up), and had sherbet for dessert to celebrate our friend's birthday. They have small kids, and we got to spend time playing with them, and after dinner and putting the kids to bed we all relaxed by watching a movie together.

Sunday was also a beautiful weather day, and we met up with people in the afternoon for a Bible study outside. The cicadas are starting to come out but aren't too bad yet, so it was nice to be able to enjoy the outdoors with everyone! We're thankful to have a church very close by with people who love and care about us, and who we enjoy spending time with. We're hoping to be able to spend more time with people as schedules are more relaxed over the summer and the weather stays nice. The cicadas are starting to come in force though, so we'll see how that turns out - it should be an interesting experience to have so many of them this year!

We took the opportunity to visit Ludington State Park with Veronica's family the other day. Being outside and spending time with family are two of our favorite things, and it was a perfect day for it! It's early enough in the year that nothing was crowded, and even though it was a bit windy and chilly it was still warm enough to have a lot of fun.

Some of the highlights were:

- Running up and down the dunes and making pictures in the sand with our niece and nephew

- Hiking out to a lighthouse with Veronica's parents

- Making mini pizzas and strawberry pies over the campfire

- Watching the sunset over Lake Michigan

As we were leaving for the night, we got an extra surprise. When the clouds cleared, the sky overhead was glowing pink and green with the northern lights! It was a beautiful sight to see the color in the night sky. We're always amazed at the beauty of nature, and we thank God for the blessings of the time with family and being able to see such beauty. We treasure memories like these and hope for many more to come!

The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent. - Psalm 104

Earlier this year, we went with some friends to California to do some hiking. Most of our vacations are hiking and camping trips; we hope to keep this as a tradition for our family for a long time! On this trip, we visited Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks. While looking back through the pictures from our trip, we decided to put together a photo book, and we're enjoying going back through the memories. 

While we were there, we saw some of the biggest trees on earth. We got to hike up to giant waterfalls and beautiful mountain lakes. We saw lots of wildlife - birds, marmots, and even a bear! We camped out and cooked over the fire and enjoyed our time with our friends. One of the best (and hardest) things we did with them was a hike and climb up a giant rock feature called Half Dome. It was a long hike with some very steep and difficult sections, but the views at the top were worth it!