Life Always Seems to Throw a Curveball......

Without going into a lot of detail, sorry I haven't posted in a long time. We unexpectedly went to Chicago the weekend before last, and ended up bringing Bella home with us. (Sorry we missed the family breakfast!) Katie has decided to move into a bigger apartment, and will have a roommate - a guy this time. His name is Justin, and he works in the suburbs (I think he's an engineer?). After meeting him and his current roommate (a girl) who has known and lived with him a long time, she feels very comfortable that he is a laid back, nice guy. The only reason this girl is leaving is she lost her job and feels she needs to move back to Georgia. Katie will enjoy not having to pay full rent by herself, as it's so terribly expensive to live in Chicago. The apartment is actually pretty much in the same neighborhood where Rachel and Katie first lived together - a couple of blocks south of that. It is further from Dave and Rachel than her current one, but still within a 15 minute walk. All this moving wears me out just thinking of it, but Katie will be packing over the next couple of weeks and having a moving company actually move things for her. In the meantime, we will have Bella with us, and we are enjoying her company!

Then, last weekend we had an art show in Traverse City, and our friends, Dave and Lynne Hall met us up there. We were going to spend a couple of days in a B&B and enjoy each other's company. Let's just say things did not turn out as planned. As you know, Dave had a kidney transplant 3 years ago, and although his health has improved overall since before the transplant, he is always very vulnerable to disease and illnesses of any kind. Unfortunately he developed pneumonia while we were up there, and had to be hospitalized. Scott and I still managed to do the show on Saturday (which wasn't very successful anyway, but whatever....), but the rest of the time was spent getting Dave to the hospital (on Friday nite) and comforting Lynne, who was very concerned about the whole thing. He is still at Munson Hospital in Traverse City. One bright spot was that the owner of the B&B, a wonderful lady named Judy, is letting Lynne stay there for free (other than the nights we had originally booked), so that is great. I'm sure we'll hear within a day or two when he'll be released and returning home. As you can imagine, it's always so much harder to be sick when you are away from home.

I'm also worn out from all these art shows. Suffice to say, next summer will be very different. We have not had the chance to be home and just enjoy the summer. Just thought I'd better send a quick update; I've been reading all of your posts and enjoying the pictures, too. Didn't want you to think that we had fallen off the face of the earth......