storm dodging & trunks.

We (Sarah & Andrea) dodged a huge blizzard in order to pick up Ellie from O'Hare in Chicago, Illinois, USA, World, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy. Sarah didn't talk about the storm dodging at all but I insisted we bring it up. She only casually mentioned it, oh about 50 times verbally and 35 on gchat, before she made it her legal middle name (Sarah Storm-Dodger Kron).

Even though the storm dodging was the major part of our trip, take a look at the video to see what else happened. Storm Dodger Kron decided the little sidekick (aka Andrea Froehlich) should hide in the trunk in order to surprise the Brazilian Bombshell because she "didn't know" AF was coming. Let's see what happens...

Eager Anticipation

Steph and I are at home counting down the minutes. Why? you might ask. Because...Ellie Lundquist is back in the US!! That's right...our Brazilian beauty is back home for Christmas!! She flew into Chicago on Wednesday and is now on her way to 2520 with Sarah and Andrea. Now, if we could just get the hands on the clock to move a little quicker...the anticipation is killing us. Hurry up guys!

homeschooler learns to dance

Marathon and Bedrest?

As some of you may know, I (Lacy) have been on crutches for the last 2 weeks. It was exactly 2 weeks ago today that I learned I have a stress fracture in my left hip. The real kicker is that it's been fractured since June! Here's the story...My sister, Linsey, was living with us this summer. She was training for a half marathon and all her running inspired me. So, she and I decided to run a 10K together. Red flag #1, we made the decision to run the night before the race, so I did NO training. I ran the race and, to my surprise, I survived the whole 6.2 miles without stopping. Then comes red flag #2. Two days after the race, when my sore muscles began to loosen up, my left hip started to hurt. Every step was painful, to the point of needing to limp (very sneakily, of course, so as to avoid any extra attention). I assumed it was an over use injury so I laid off exercise for a month and a half. My hip felt a lot better after all the rest, so I started easing back into working out. But each workout was followed by a day or two of hip pain, red flag #3. I suffered through intermittent workouts with no change until finally, 3 1/2 months later, I made a doctor's appointment. I had an MRI, which is how the fracture was diagnosed. Since I did rest my hip for a while after the run and the fracture was not yet healed, drastic measures needed to be taken: crutches for 4-6 weeks. Since I am on crutches, I am unable to perform my work duties as a nurse, which leads to the point of this post. It is a fairly common practice for the folks on our unit (Sarah and I work on the same floor) to get a card signed by co-workers if someone has had a birthday, surgery, injury, ect. This weekend there was a card sitting at the main desk for me. Attached was a post-it note that read, and I quote: "Lacy was injured after running in a marathon. She's on bedrest for 30 days...please sign card." Sarah, being the joy-giver that she is, brought the post-it note home for me to read. My first reaction was, "WHAT!?" 1) I would hardly call a 10K a marathon, it's a quarter of the distance! 2) I'm not even close to being on bedrest. 3) What kind of a running injury would result in bedrest? All I can think of is getting struck by a car or fracturing BOTH hips!Where did this information come from? How funny! It's like a version of the childhood game Telephone. I can't wait until I get the card and I can read the comments...I know it will be entertaining.

go math!

Math is my friend. Well, not really....but here's a problem for YOU!

You finally get an allowance! You put $2 away in January, $4 away in February, and $8 away in March, and $16 away in April and followed this savings pattern through to December. How much money do you have in 12 months?

Alright, friends.....have at it! :)

This is NOT our home.

Tonight, I went to Missions in the Main Hall at Bethlehem. I was really tired this afternoon and I thought about skipping. Glad I didn't. I sat on the floor along with probably a couple hundred other people and was blown away by Pastor John's message on missions. If it was recorded, I strongly encourage you to listen to it. Much better than what I'm writing. But here's my take on it...

He talked about how sad it is when we become satisfied with the little things of this earth and when people live as if this is their "final chapter" in life. Heaven is our final chapter and we should not live as if this were heaven. We have the hope of an eternity in heaven...that's why we can give our lives away to missions here on this earth. He said we need to "get it settled" that our reward is not in this life. Total satisfaction is coming. Don't try to seek it out in things of this earth. Give, give, give. Love, love, love.

One of the other things that stood out to me from his message - if we know the central thing, we can be ignorant in 10,000 other ways and we will be relevant to everyone...because "you will never meet a human being who doesn't have a cavernous longing...for God."

Tonight was both encouraging and convicting. Many times I think I live as if this were my final chapter/heaven. I am selfish with my time and find myself seeking satisfaction in little things rather than seeking what my heart is really longing for - God. May I not look to other little piddly things to satisfy my "cavernous craving for God." People, friends, emails, money, marriage, kids, music, shopping, entertainment, attention and the other thousands of things we may be seeking to satisfy never will fill the deep craving of our hearts. It encouraged me that we should be people who are willing to give our lives for others to share the amazing, life-giving message we have.

not only do we have lots of sweets...

The other day I came home from work and looked at the top of our fridge and it looked absolutely horrible. There's a reason why. It's where we keep all our chips, pretzels and bread. One would think that with just 4 people living here, there would not really be that many bags. You'd think, but it's not true at our house. We obviously like large quantities of food items. We counted the total number of chip/pretzel/rice cake bags. Guess how many...



I'll give you a little hint. A couple weeks ago, our fridge had 9 opened jars of salsa. 9. A lot, right? Not compared to the amount of chip/etc bags.

The worst bag we found is this Market Pantry bag of pretzels. I've noticed it many times while looking through the chip/bread basket. This time I decided to look at the expiration date only to find it expired back in December of 2007. Guessing it's been on top of the fridge the entire time we've lived at 2520.


Sorry MP Pretzels, it's time for you to go.

So, guess how many bags we found...

"Peace Like a River"

I'm on page 125 (out of 311) and am still having trouble "really getting into it." I'm surprised because many people say it's excellent. That's why I'm still reading but I hate having to tell myself to keep going rather than not wanting to put it down. I guess it must be drawing me in enough to keep me through 125 pages. It's not horrible by any means, it's just not grabbing my attention like I thought it might. Maybe I'm fictioned-out, after all the novels I read as an English major. But I think it's the style I don't love.

Maybe it's okay if I don't love it now. Maybe the books message will be worth it. Ok, I've decided I'm going to finish it...hopefully soon. Katie's waiting for me so she can read it.

Are you reading any good books?

oh, the perils at 2520.

For a while, some of my roommates (most obviously not Steph) have commented/complained about the abundance of sweets in our kitchen. I agree, there are a lot, but didn't really realize the extent. We currently have:

Frozen cookie dough:

Carmel Fudge Brownie Ice Cream, Vanilla Ice Cream, Orange Sherbet, Mango Sorbet & Fudgsicles:

Pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting & Twizzler bits:

Two Carmel Apples with nuts (from Cub...10 for $10):

Special K Bars:

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting:

Mini Kit-Kat and Butterfinger candy bars:

One left-over Carrot Cake cupcake from Jason's birthday:


Oh, we also have 3 pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and a couple bags of candy corn...no picture attached. Feel free to come over and eat a sweet...or 5.

goldfish

today i was google-chatting with anna and we realized that 'goldfish' is a really hard word to type. you should try it. or maybe it's just us. it does become easier with practice. anna says it's the d and f combo. maybe. do you have any hard words?

Regression 2009 Part 1

Want to know what happens when you are sick with H1N1 (Also known as swine flu, for those who don't know. Got that, Steph?) for over a week and you can't read any books because memory and concentration are a bit of a challenge?

Movies. LOTS of movies. Here is a list of what I watched while I was sick:

1. Fellowship of the Ring: extended version

2. The Two Towers: extended version

3. Return of the King: extended version (4 1/2 hours!)

4. Pride and Prejudice/Pride and Predjuice: 6 hour version

5. The Incredibles

6. My Best Friend's Wedding

7. Bourne Identity

8. Bourne Supremacy

9. Tuck Everlasting

10. The Guardian (Andrea got sea sick with this one and almost didn't go to church. You'll have to ask her about it.)

11. A League of Their Own

12. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

There might be more. I was semi-conscious for most of the week and can't remember details. A special thank you to the Tong's for allowing the projector to stay at our house the whole week! Made the movie watching that much better................

what makes you most nervous?

1. Making a presentation to 500 people?

2. A long car ride with a person you just met?

3. Talking about your deepest fears with someone you like?

4. Meeting with the President of the company you work for?

Squirrels Strike Again!

Andrea and I bought 2 pumpkins at Aldi this afternoon, for $2.20 each (good deal, by the way). Exactly 37 minutes and 13 seconds later, a squirrel took a bite out of the top of one of them. What the.......! Another reason NOT to waste your money on expensive "pumpkin patch" pumpkins. Especially if you live in the Phillips..........

g.o.a.l.

Sarah, who is affectionately described as the nurse who lives in the basement, is sick. And has been since last Friday. Poor thing. She might have H1N1. Maybe. Yesterday through a google chat conversation, we discussed the scale of 1 to 10. 1 being perfect and 10, about the worst you can feel. Yesterday she was feeling around a 4 or 5, which was better than the 7 or 8 she felt some of the previous days.

Our goal for Sarah is to get her to a 1.5...soon. We were not sure if we could ever get to the perfect 1 on this fallen earth. Right?

Today she's planning to venture out to the grocery store with me. Probably not to all of her 3 stops: Aldi, Rainbow & Trader Joe's. We're hoping that at least going to one will put her up a notch or two on the scale. Mind over matter.

Her health is our goal. And don't worry, when it happens, we are disinfecting our house like none other. Then y'all can come over again.

2520 still loves the Twins.

Last Tuesday, we went to the tie-breaker game between the Twins and the Tigers. It was probably, no exaggeration, one of the best sporting events we've ever attended. The game lasted 12 innings and almost 5 hours. Started at 4pm and we didn't leave the dome until after 9! When they won, the Metrodome turned INSANELY crazy. It sounded and almost felt like we had won the World Series or something like it. The crowd went wild and cheered for minutes on end:



Even though the Twins just lost 3-0 to the Yankees (don't get us started on the Yankees...), we still love the Twins...Carlos Gomez, Cuddyer, Mauer of course, and oh Denard Span.

over 54,000 people were at the Dome:



You probably can't see very well because they look like little stick figures, but the little meetings at the mound happened every few minutes, so it seemed. Mauer walked up there practically every other pitch. Ok, not quite but it happened a lot. And they went through about 8 pitchers. Probably part of the reason the game took 5 hours:


Steph and Lacy got Malt Cups. Lacy said: "I have the nervous munchies...I have to get a malt cup!"

They gave us homer hankey's. I love these. I got one from the '87 team...but I don't know where it is anymore:

We let Sid come, even though he made fun of the Twins all year...and not until the last few games against the Tigers did he start getting excited. Sarah was hesitant at first to let him come, but he promised to cheer for them:

Sarah's mom came too. Big Twin's fan...all season long:


and they won and got excited:

and so did the crowd:

next year, Twins, next year...

Restoration 2009 Part 3

Wow! We've been remiss in blogging about our progress in Restoration. 2009. Part 3 of this process was removing the jungle weeds in our back yard. When we say jungle weeds, we mean jungle weeds---as in covering our windows jungle weeds. This spring, Sarah noticed some plants growing next to the house, in a small, empty garden plot. They seemed innocent and harmless, so she didn't do anything about it and left on vacation for the summer. When she returned several months later, she discovered that the plants were not as innocent as she thought! Of course Andrea should have noticed the growing plants, but it's harder to notice things like this when you see them daily. It's like a baby -- when you see him/her every day -- the growth does not seem quite as dramatic. Y'know? Anyway, back to the story. The plants were, and we're serious here, at LEAST 6 feet tall. No joke. They looked like this:


So, we called him:


Michael Barnhart. Jungle weed expert. He's a hard worker. After 2.5 hours of two people chopping weeds (Yup. Andrea helped), we can see out of our windows again.

from natcon....

Natcon '09 has finally arrived! We are sitting at the walk-on registration desk. We have a crazy amount of candy...and might go back to the grocery store to get more. We 'tweeted' about our candy and have had a few takers.

So...you should follow the conference on this cool website that the DG guys created. You can find it here.

So far, besides the obvious things (worship music, great speakers, awesome fellowship, etc), it seems like a couple themes for this conference are twittering, candy and Piper's (not John) yellow binoculars.

It's 9:44pm and Mike Tong just walked in to the conference...yeah! Since he stopped working at DG this year, it's not the same at the office or the conference. We told him to give us orders and pretend like he's in charge and still our boss, like the good 'ol days...

Tim Keller:

"The gospel creates a new self-image...it humbles me before anyone, telling me I am a sinner saved only by grace. But it emboldens me before anyone, telling me I am loved and honored by the only eyes in the universe that really count."

here we go...

Tonight a few friends came over for dinner, one of them was Becky. After cleaning up the kitchen...Becky, Steph and I sat on the kitchen counters talking and laughing. Lacy came down and left for the gym while the three of us were sitting there. We all felt somewhat guilty that we were not going to the Y, where we are paying for a monthly membership, but never really go.

So, October is the trial month. We are committed to working out 3 times per week. If it works out, great. If not, I don't know. Maybe cancel our memberships? By God's grace, we will be able to have the diligence to follow through...

Monday and Friday -- Gym at 6pm
Tuesday -- P90x at 6pm

Monday and Tuesday are mandatory days, and if we don't go, we owe $1. Friday is a little more lenient. If we can't go, we can make it up on Saturday (with proof). The money (if there is any) will go into a pot that Sarah is in charge of. This will hopefully be motivation because none of us really want to give Sarah a dollar for not going to the gym, right? At the end of the month, it will be decided where it goes.

Pray for us...we might need it...

Restoration 2009 Part 2

The face magnets are all back on the fridge! A few months ago, Scotch Banyon decided to hide our magnets in different places around the house. We have spent the past 2 months trying in vain to discover all of the hiding places. Today, we have Restoration because all 6 of the magnets have been found!

Ellie was hiding in a chip bag, Lacy was in the cookie dough inside the refrigerator, Steph was inside a Diet Coke 24-pack (very appropriate), Katie was sitting on top of the plates in the cupboard and Andrea was 10 feet above the staircase coming down the stairs. These first 5 magnets were found relatively quickly, yet Sarah remained elusive. In fact, we had pretty much given up finding Sarah. And believe me, because of this one missing magnet, things seemed pretty incomplete around 2520.

This morning, I awoke to discover that Sarah was back! Apparently, she had traveled inside of the Tong's borrowed Wii box back to the Tong's, where she sat in obscurity until the Banyon's borrowed the Wii themselves. When they opened the box to hook up the Wii, out popped Sarah. Which is quite appropriate, when you stop to consider that Scotch was the reason she was lost in the first place. Interesting how things often come full circle, isn't it? Katie was kind enough to give Sarah back to Andrea the other night, thus making it possible for Restoration 2009 to continue. Thanks, Katie!