YOWSA!

What a whirlwind. The past few days have been nutty and I'm just beginning to catch my breath. Last week was new student orientation for about 500 students at Elmhurst College (where I work). Unfortunately, on the second day of orientation a powerful storm came through the area and took out the power. The college was out from Thursday at 3 pm until Saturday at 11 pm. Yikes! We ended up sending most students home and spending a lot of time in the dark trying to sort things out. It was crazy! Joe and I also lost power for about 32 hours during all of this. We're still trying to figure out what is good in our fridge/ freezer at home! Look at these pictures of the devastation in the area. I pulled them from the Chicago Sun Times website.

In other news, classes started this week for me. I'm teaching 2 courses this semeser, which will keep me busy-- but I'm really excited about both of them! In fact, I've really enjoyed this whole teaching thing and think I might want to further pursue it in the future. Joe is hoping that he'll have some opportunities to try it out soon as well. I think he'd be a great teacher... and I suspect that he secretly believes that, too ;) He's is moving along in his job search and is excited about a few different positions right now!

Other than that, we were in Rochelle this weekend for Caden's 6th birthday party. It was a madhouse with about 9 kids and lots of fun. This weekend, we're headed to Wisconsin for a relaxing long weekend at the lake. We're both really looking forward to it. That's about it for now! More pictures to come soon.