Today's Coffee: Beaumont Classic Blend

Well, it's June 6th. Much time has gone by since the last post. Many things have happened also. Thomas and I love living in our new house! It's been so nice to have storage for our camping gear and no longer having to pay many many quarters for clean clothes. We love our backyard probably the most. We recently bought 2 camping chairs from Aldis (7.99 each?!?) and do a lot of sitting, eating and thinking out there. Our garden is growing. We have beautiful flowers on the peas and the squash leaves are just reaching right up to heaven. It's beautiful and I cannot wait to make and grill some of these veggies. We also have a family of Canadian geese that used to be adorable and now just make us mad. They have 11 little babies - and they aren't so bad - but the parents literally hiss and scare us to the point of not being able to be outside. Granted, we did feed them a few times and the babies get really close to us - but still. Our feelings changed for the babies when we had gone through the whole germination process with our Cherokee purple heirloom tomatoes. We had 7 shoots (out of 10 seeds!) grow and we were moving some into their own pots when the geese came. The parents drove us inside and a baby goose ate one of the shoots. I could have cried. It was so sad. We are trying to see if it will come back to life without leaves.... but we are pretty sure it won't.

Thomas went to Germany for 10 days in May. It was very hard for us to be apart for that long - especially since we had to use a phone card and Skype to talk. Thomas got to do a lot of amazing things while he was there... such as:
1. Visit St. Thomas church (Leipzig) where Bach worked.
2. Play an organ that Bach designed. (Hildebrandt Organ, Naumberg)
3. Heard a performance of a Bach cantata by the St. Thomas Choir in Bach's church. (Leipzig)
4. Ate lots of good bratwurst and wiener schnitzel.
5. Saw a performance of Rolando Villazon with the Gabrieli Players. (Munich)
6. Toured many incredible cathedrals.

Faith came and lived with me while Thomas was gone for a few of those days. It was great to have her here with me. She got to see my school and my students! Very fun. We also had a Biggest Loser Marathon - even though I kept falling asleep.

My end-of-the-year concert will be on June 10th - why so late you ask? Because I teach through the 24th of June. Long long long school year. And then - summer time! Thomas and I are doing a lot of planning for the summer. We hope to visit SC, Granny in VA, Mary N. in DC... it's going to be great. We also are in the process of training for a half-marathon in September. There are 5 races leading up to the half-marathon that will be cool so that we can keep up with the training and get timed and everything. We hope to do a marathon on day in 2011 maybe. We just bought our new running shoes. We haven't gone running in them yet - have to wait until tomorrow - but they feel so good. Never again will we buy just tennis shoes (for serious running). I am also getting an amazing opportunity to teach at the Morse Summer Music Camp led by Yale this summer. This will be so nice to do and have a schedule starting around mid-July. Before then, we hope to come home and visit all our friends and family. Well, we need to head off to church. Have a great Sunday!

In Christ,
The Russells
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