It's been a while...

We're such blog slackers.  Our apologies.

Last weekend we spent a few days in Chicago with the Hoekstra family.  I had my interview at Midwestern University, and I think it went very well.  The campus is beautiful!  We also picked up our new car on Friday...I'll say more about that later.

On Sunday I ran the Chicago marathon.  Why did it have to be 85 degrees??  TODAY, one week later, it's in the 40s!  It was a HOT race for the second year in a row.  I'm amazed that some can run well despite the heat, but I definitely do not run well in the heat.  So, it was very, very hard.  My favorite part was running with my dear sister, Jessica.  We finished together in 4:56:12...far from our goal, but we finished.  Thanks to all of you who supported us and cheered us on along the way!

Ok...the new car is fantastic, but it did not start out fantastic.  We got into the car on Sunday to begin our drive from Chicago to Canton, and the thing started burning and spraying oil.  There was a major oil leak and we ended up putting about 8 quarts of oil into the car by the time we got home.  Most of you probably recognize that this is a VERY BAD situation.  We made it home safely, but we were not happy campers.  We have since had the leak fixed and John has had a not-so-pleasant conversation with the man from whom we bought the car.  The good thing is that the repairs were not too costly.  That aside, the car is our new favorite thing, and our favorite thing about our new favorite thing is that it has heated seats, so we now have warm butts.

Today we just returned home from Pittsburgh.  If you are ever looking for us at home on the weekends, good luck.  We drove our warm butts out to visit Mom and Dad Baldauff.  Dad was in the hospital all weekend, so we hung out there with him quite a bit.  On Saturday we "kidnapped" mom, as she says, and went to Soergel's Apple Farm for their Fall Festival.  We had jumbo hot dogs, cider, kettle corn, roasted pecans...mmm, good.  And we bought a billion apples.  After dinner at the hospital we made caramel apples and played Settler's with Mom.  It ended up being a very fun and relaxing weekend.

Okay that's all for now!  I'm off to watch the Steelers kick some Bengal Butt (and to wake John up from his snooze on the couch, that bum)!