Earthquake?! In St. Louis?!?

Yes indeed! Last night at 4:37 I woke up to loud noises. Our windows were shaking, which is not uncommon since they are neither new or good windows. The brass knocker on our door was knocking away and my bed was shaking. I believe my words were something like, "Geez!". After the windows stopped rattling and the door knocker was quite, I tried to go back to sleep, only to realize that our bed was still shaking. It felt the same as when Steve shakes his legs when he can't sleep. So I asked him, "why are you shaking your legs?" he replied "I'm not". So that's when my mind started going and I knew that we had just been through an earthquake.

This morning when I got out of the shower I was going to wake up Steve and tell him that I thought there was an earthquake last night, but I didn't think that he would believe me. (He does not get as excited about this stuff as I do!) He was already watching the news and confirmed what occupied my mind from 4:37am until a few minutes before my alarm went off. Isn't that just the way it goes too? You fall back asleep just before you have to get up!?

So here are the facts: The earthquake was located in Mount Carmel which is 131 miles East of St. Louis in Illinois. It is right on the boarder if IL and IN. It was rated 5.2 on the Richter scale. The shocks have been reported to have been felt in Louisville, KY, Chicago, IL, and Cincinnati, OH.

This is definitely the hot topic of the office today, and I wonder how many times I will have a conversation about this today? But I am excited to say that I have now officially been in an earthquake!

I would like to add to this post, that we just received an aftershock of the first earthquake at 10:28am. I still think that it is exciting to experience this, especially in two different locations. I do have to say that I prefer to be at home with Steve.

Running out of time!

Well, There is just SO much to say under this topic!

First I will say that I am a touch sad that my embroidery class is now over, and we have been thrown to the wolves to try to do this on our own. I don't anticipate a problem, but now I just need to get the time to order the fabric and get going! Time seems to be running out on me!

I do not, at least right now, have pictures of the final two projects. I promise they will come.

Time is running out on our lives here at the seminary. Good, bad, scary, nerve wracking, exciting, and sad are all feelings that are running trough our heads. Steve probably has a few more that may not be appropriate! We are down to 5 days until we officially know where we will be headed after this summer for the next year of our lives. We are running out of time!

Right now I am running out of time, as it is 5:30 and I am still at work, trying to leave. I am waiting for a phone call, and thought this would be the perfect time to catch up on something that I have pushed aside for "when I have time". I just realized that is not going to happen, so this is the short and simple message that I have. We are running out of time!

I will blog again soon to talk about our Twins weekend!!!
Until then, thanks for taking your time to read this!

A New Hobby

I (Calie) have started a new hobby. I am taking a wives class through the Seminary to learn how to do ecclesiastical embroidery. This means that I am learning how to sew the stoles that Steve will be wearing as a pastor. If I get good enough, I would even like to sell them.

So every Tuesday night I meet with 14 other wives and a teacher, who is also a Sem. wife, to learn how to embroider. The first week we accomplished learning how to "couch" stitch. Here is the picture. While it's not perfect, it was a good learning tool.

I was the only one who actually finished the "homework". Our instructor was so impressed she showed off my creation and called it "amazing". I leaned over to my friend and said, "it's either amazing, or shows you how big of a loser I am" She told me to go with amazing, but I'm leaning towards the other one.

The second week we learned the Satin stitch. Here is the picture of this sample. (also not perfect)

Sorry it's so dark, I'll try to take a better picture soon.

I know that this week I am not the only one who finished, so I won't have to through the embarrassment again! Thank goodness!

So tonight is the third class and I am excited to start another pattern. I think that we are learning the long and short stitch tonight.

I will keep you updated on my progress!

Easter Blessings

We hope that all of you had a joyous Easter! We sure did! Sure we wished that we could be with all of our friends and family, but we had a nice relaxing few days together.

Thursday we toured the Illinois country side as our GPS (aka Calie) got us safely to church via a different route. We stopped to eat at Cracker Barrel to use the last of our gift certificates.

Friday was a nice day to sleep in, but of course we can't sleep past 7:30 anymore anyways. We decided that it was the perfect opportunity to watch The Passion. Since it was actually a nice day, we decided to take a walk in the park before heading to church. We got to church and a nice older man seemed excited to see us. His eyes then filled with tears and told us that he had suddenly lost his wife to a heart attack on Wednesday night, while fighting back the tears. We joined him in his pew to try to comfort this man who said there is nothing that can keep him from his Lord, especially now. I don't know about you, but I would not be that brave only two days after losing my spouse. Steve was able to miss a class so that he could attend the funeral. What Steve realized after this man said he had lost his wife was that they were avid bible study goers, and she had just asked Steve what he thought Heaven was like and told him that she couldn't wait to get there, and she didn't wait.

Saturday we worked around the house and capped the day off at Dave and Busters. It is an arcade for adults.

Sunday was a cold snowy day here. We started the day with an Easter breakfast that pales in comparison to the Easter breakfast at Trinity, WI. We then went to church. We had a relaxing afternoon and had some friends over for dinner. Somehow we got on the subject of the old wives tale that you can't break an egg if it's in the palm of your hand. See the picture for the results of Steve's attempt.

Overall it was a joyous occasion of sleeping in, worshiping the struggles and triumphs of our Lord, and time with each other.

62 and Sunny

Easter greetings to you all! We want to wish everyone out there the best celebration of our risen Lord through this exciting season.

Our lives have not been as exciting as the life of Jesus was this holy week. We celebrated today that it was 62 and sunny! Please do not get to envious, we have endured two days of heavy non-stop rain and gloom. There are LOTS of people right now here in St. Louis and surrounding areas that are suffering through flooding waters. There have been many roads that close the flood gates, which literally means that a huge metal wall goes across the road and it is sand bagged. This obviously prohibits travel and even quarantines some communities. Growing up next to a river that flooded often, I am not too surprised by this event. So we are rejoicing in the sunny weather today and tomorrow. It is also supposed to get rainy again on Monday.

I seem to write a lot about the weather, which could tell you something about the state of our exciting (or not-so-much) lives. It actually does affect the extra-curricular lives of both of us. Steve has become more and more frustrated with St. Louis due to the weather. In MN when it started to get nice, you could count on it progressively getting nicer. Here, however, it gets nice then cold again. Never consistent. Steve has started his intramural softball season. However the first game was rained out. The weather allowed them to get two games in one week, and Steve was named the MVP of the season due to his amazing catch from third base. I'll set the scene.....the game had gone into extra innings, and both teams and the umpire were getting tired of playing. There were two outs and the go ahead runner was on second base. The ball was hit above Steve's head, but he managed to catch it while running with his back turned to the ball without looking. His team rushed over to him and threw him on their shoulders. It looked like they had just won the world series. For their team, who hasn't ever had a winning record, it was just as good.

We hope that there has been some event in your life that has felt this good.

Well, we are off to enjoy a meal at Cracker Barrel before heading to church to celebrate the washing of the feet and the reason we celebrate holy communion.

Have a blessed Easter celebration.

The Return

So Steve and I are concluding our first full week back after vacation. Let me tell you, it has been the longest week ever!

Steve started a new quarter of classes, that hopefully he will like just a bit better than the last quarter. He really enjoys the class that the President of the seminary teaches. I think that he mainly likes it because of the professor.

I am back to work also. This week marks the nation wide celebration of National Lutheran Schools Week, which I have spent a great deal of time and effort planning, preparing and shipping things for. Our office arranges schools to come and sing each day for our chapel service, then we provide a small "breakfast" for them. It has been a fun and exhausting way to start each day! It makes me realize how much I miss teaching. Now I am experiencing a lull in the flow of work that comes my way. Which may sound nice, but it makes the days seem l-o-n-g! But I find time to do things like update our Blog.

On Tuesday St. Louis experienced "the biggest snow storm in years". It actually angered me though. One thing that I have learned about St. Louis is that if there is the threat of snow, most places close. If there are 2 inches of snow the whole town shuts down for at least a day. Sounds nice unless you are stuck at work and they will not let you go home. Finally after about 9 inches of snow fell at a rate of 2 inches er hour, they let us go home. Let's just say that nothing was plowed from the sidewalk to the interstate. It was very dangerous driving. A five lane highway turned into three and at times was only two lanes. While I understand that this area does not get much snow, I believe that they should have more that 4 snow plows for this reason alone. Sorry, I just realized that turned into quite the rant!

Well, At least we only have a few months left!

Florida

So this is the slide show of our Week in Florida! We had a BLAST! Who can't when you are at the beach with the sun warming you to the core and a nice salty ocean to cool off in???

I will give you a quick recap of the events:

Day 1: We arrived in the most beautiful place we have seen in ages! We proceeded to Grandma and Grandpa's house to settle in and have dinner with Aunt Sherry. I had to go to bed early, I couldn't keep my eyes open!

Day 2: We were chauffeured to the Fort Myers beach to enjoy some lovely seafood amid a flock of birds who were trying to get some of it. (I survived, but barely. I HATE birds for those of you who do not know!) We took in a few stores and picked up a few souvenirs.

Day 3: BEACH DAY!! Only problem was that we forgot to put sunscreen on some very important parts. We also went to a dinner and a show called Anything Goes. It was a buffet and a great show.

Day4: Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to let us borrow their car for a day without tour guides. We went to Manatee Park to see some Manatees but no luck. Then we toured downtown Fort Myers, drove past Thomas Edison and Henry Ford's winter estates, and went to Sanibel Island. We stopped for a quick game of mini-golf amidst 30 live baby alligators, and yes Steve won...this time. On the way home we got the biggest scoops of ice-cream I have ever seen, but they were delicious. While we were away, Grandma had been making us stuffed cabbages.

Day 5: Adventures took us south to Naples to visit a shopping center called Tin City. It was filled with quirky shops and fun eateries. We enjoyed some ice cream yet again. And as if we did not buy enough wine on our trip to Hermann, we bought some Pina Colada wine made at the Naples winery. That night we went out to dinner to celebrate Grandma's 75th birthday at Bahama Breeze.

Day 6: Steve and I drove back to Manatee park and this time we finally saw one!!! He was an adolescent that was probably waiting for his mother to return, since the park is a safe place for them to hang out. We also experienced another highlight of the trip when we were able to catch the MN Twins during their spring training practice. We were impressed that we could see our favorite team so up close and for free! We returned home to celebrate Grandma's actual birthday at Buca di Beppos. YUM!

Day 7: Took us back to the beach to work on our tan some more. The temperature of the ocean was even warmer than the last time. We finished our lazy day with dinner and another game of mini golf. Steve wanted to get ahead, so he turned the first 9 holes into 1 game and the back 9 holes into another. So Calie got to add two wins to the tally!!

Day 8: Thankfully for us the weather, for the first time, was cloudy and 60 degrees. It made leaving just a little easier.

So that was our trip in a nut shell. We had a great time and are not too happy to be back in St. Louis and back to reality.