A little update...

I guess I’ve been MIA on my blog. I guess I did post a little something today, but nothing much about life with the Balows in more than a week and that’s a long time for me. In my own personal life, it’s been the same old stuff…but I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about life lately. And really busy.

Normally after work during the week, you’ll either find me working out or (and more likely) you’ll find me at home. That wasn’t me last week. I spent a lot of time catching up with friends and hopefully, I’ve “been there” for some of them when they’ve needed support. I have a couple of friends going through some really, really tough times. But on the other hand, I have several friends going through some fun and exciting times (like finding out they’re expecting babies.) So I guess no matter how bad things seem to be in this world of ours, there always are wonderful, good things happening too.It's great to be reminded – that I have some really good friends I need to make sure I’m taking time to hang out with friends.

That's one of the things I'm up to this weekend. Tomorrow is girls' weekend. We're going to be scrapbooking -- or at least that's what we're supposed to be doing. We're going to be staying at this cabin in Emily, Minn. It looks pretty snazy. I'm really grateful that Dave and his family have such great friends and now they're my friends too. I'm glad that it has worked out that way. I guess it's the unintended benefit of falling in love with someone. I fell in love with Dave...and now because of that I've become part of another great family, and I love and care for some many more people than just Dave. It's just something remarkable about it that I never really thought about before I was in love with someone.

Last Saturday, my sister, Rachel, had a house-warming party. She bought a really cute condo in Minneapolis. She had a pretty good party! Although I drove up there with my parents, so we left probably just as it started getting fun. But I was tired, so it was fine with me to head home early. Dave was supposed to go, but instead decided to go to the Wild game with Andee...she got some free tickets through work. I miss those days when I used to get free sporting events tickets through work.

Last Sunday at church, I felt so inspired. Do you ever have those experiences at church when you just connect with the message and with God more than the usual Sunday? Afterward, I just wanted to do good. Part of it probably had to do with the adult education. The mother of Greg Mortenson came and spoke about the work his son is doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He's building schools for the children, especially the girls, in various mountain villages, which provides so many opportunities to the villages where the majority of the people are illiterate when Greg first arrives. It's such an inspirational story. In fact, he's the guy who wrote the book, Three Cups of Tea. I am going to borrow the book from my mom soon. After church, about 50 people all went to lunch to an Afghanistan restaurant, which was surprisingly good (it was the first time I tried that type of food.)

Another reason why I felt so inspired Sunday was that I was so pleased with the turnout of gifts for the soldiers. I had just mentioned at the beginning of the service a week ago that I'd be collecting gifts that Sunday for soldiers in Iraq on behalf of Dave's co-worker, who was sending Christmas care packages to her husband's battalion. My whole backseat was filled with all kinds of stuff....books, magazine, food, toiletries. It was great to hopefully help make the holidays a little more cheerful for those who are away from their families.

Also, we had the Armful of Love tree up at church. Another great annual Christmas tradition. We adopt families through Armful of Love and the families provide us with their wish lists. The families are often those less fortunate who can't afford presents for each other. Often they are families with children (actually that's one of the requirements, I think). Persons are church can pick which gift of the wish list that we're going to get. I picked clothes for a 6-week girl. Got her some cute stuff at Target.

Tonight Dave, Krissy and I volunteered at Feed My Starving Children. Another great organization with a great cause. If you're not familiar with it....basically you assemble meals that are sent to starving children around the world. The meals have made so that they have the nutrients the kids need to overcome the affects of starvation. We packaged lots and lots of meals.

And since I keep talking about all these ways I'm trying to help make a difference...here's one last one. I recently found out that the team I was on for Light the Night, which raised money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society was one of the top ten fund-raising teams! #9! Thanks again to everyone who was able to support me!

So that's a lot of random stuff to update you on what's been going on with us. Nothing crazy or really exciting. But just living and trying to make it all worthwhile...and having a little bit of fun mixed in there with friends and family.