Illinois Camping

Now two weekends ago, we had our first camping trip here in Chicago. We went with our group of friends to Rock Cut State Park in Loves Park, IL and spent one night on the shore of Pierce Lake. We had a pretty awesome setup, with two pretty big campsites right next to each other for the eight of us (big compared to the parking lot spaces you get in CA, but not compared to camping in Texas according to our buddy Mitchell). We had to borrow some of our camping gear, but managed to get everyone a sleeping bag, tent, etc. and even had a camping stove to heat up hot water. 

The whole weekend was a lot of fun. We did all of the basic camping things: hiked, ate too many hot dogs, drank coffee/apple cider/hot chocolate, sat around the campfire, roasted marshmallows, cooked our dinner in the fire, and so on. 

We all came home smelling like smoke and dirt. Probably the highlight of the weekend was when Austin threw Matt's frisbee into the lake and Mitch retrieved it in his boxers. Probably not the highlight, but was worth noting at least. 

The Goins pitching their tent.

 

Setting up camp!

Not a bad place to be.

Austin...proving his manhood.

Coat: noun, car/boat.

Prepping for dinner.

Erin's hobo dinner. Good eats!

Matthew James...

Beautiful Pierce Lake

Our own personal barista on site to make coffee press after coffee press after coffee press.

We are still coming up with a name for our band.

The Allen dwelling...compliments of REI.

Doesn't get much better than this.

The future youth pastor doing what he does best...

Senior Retreat: A Breath of Fresh Air

This past week Amy and I had the opportunity to attend Moody's Senior Retreat. We weren't sure about going at first, but after seeing that it was a relatively cheap getaway with excused absences from class, we decided to go on the retreat. The retreat itself was pretty mellow. There weren't really any responsibilities or requirements of us and so it was a perfect opportunity to get a breath of fresh Wisconsin air (the first Wisconsin air for both Amy and I). So we packed our backpacks and got on the bus. The retreat itself was located at Green Lake Conference Center, which is Midwest's imitation of Hume Lake. Despite being sub-par to Hume, it was still a sweet place to be. Anyways, we left at 7 a.m. on Thursday morning and rode the four hours to Green Lake. We got to ride in charter buses, which was a nice travel break from cramped Southwest airplanes.

 

Riding the bus!

One of the highlights for the retreat was that a bunch of guys from my dorm floor came. These were all guys that I spent a lot of time with pre-getting married. Amy knows all of them pretty well, so we all had a great time. It was really fun to hang with all of them, catch up, and play some games throughout the weekend. We had time to talk about the good ol' days on Culby 12 as well as make some new memories.

Culby 12 reunion with wives, fiances, and girlfriends.

Not bad for only one try of the 'jumping' picture.

Kyu and Adam...1st and 2nd Mates.

Another highlight was the opportunity to use some wedding gifts. Until last Wednesday night when we packed our awesome backpacks still had their tags on them. However, we broke them out and packed them up and made everyone jealous of the "outdoorsy" looking couple on the retreat. Another good wedding gift that got some use this weekend was our hammock. We finally got straps for it and can use it virtually anyone with two trees. I had a pretty sweet setup next to the lake.

I recommend reading John Steinbeck here.

Touchdown pass for the water polo player.

All in all, Amy and I were glad that we went on the retreat. I think one of the best things about the retreat was that we had an opportunity to press pause on the semester...which we did and paid for it in homework these last couple of days. Still though, we had some great opportunities to pray together, read God's Word, talk about spiritual things, and have time to rest. It was something we needed and something that we really enjoyed.

And on that note, I end.

"Oh, no! We have to do homework still."

Back to Blogging

I am sure that all of our readers will be happy to hear that twopodsinapea is making a comeback.

Yeah, that's right!

Since returning to Chicago and getting into the flow of things I have had an urging within my soul...probably just a feeling...to return to blogging and keep both of my mothers up to date, even with pictures, on the happenings of our life here in the big city.

We'll see if this feeling pans out, but here's to a great comeback.

Major fun in the last month

My plan was to do one blog at a time until we slowly caught up with ourselves (we're pretty far behind time wise in blogging). We're heading to california on this coming Tuesday and I figured it might be nice to start fresh in blogging once we get there so I'm going to do a quick wrap up. There are still a few happenings that I've left out because my dear husband really really wants to write about them. So even though some of them happened over spring break two months ago... I figured I'd let him have his one joy in blogging.As for me let me catch you up with life. 

 This is us at our oh so classy JSB (Junior Senior Banquet) thrown by Mother Moody. We felt it necessary to do a very classy prom pose in case you couldn't tell. We're very fancy. 

This is Mitchell and Julianne with us, They're engaged and getting married on July 1st, in California! that means we get to go :) we love them. 

 Me and Julianne were really enjoying all the attention. Jeremy felt jealous though. He wanted to be in on it too.

 The boys were enjoying themselves too. This is some of Jeremy's close guy friends from the kitchen. He endearingly calls them his crew. From left to right it's Micah, Keese, and Mitch. Don't worry all you mothers out there, that was only soda in their hands. Mother Moody would never serve alcohol at her parties.

 It was actually a lot of fun getting all dressed up and eating a nice meal. they had a photo booth there as well, spent plenty of time in that thing. It was just fun to be with friends and look nice while acting goofy.

Each with their match, how cute, and what an akward pose, who chose that?
In the mean time only a few weeks later we got a visitor. Well actually we had visitors right before this also, but that is one of the designated posts that Jeremy wants to write about :) But this visitor was my favorite one. My sister came. The majority of the trip was mostly about the food. But why not when the food in Chicago is so good. Here's us at Elly's pancake house, one of our favorite breakfast places in the city. Really cute decore. we pretty much go there for every group event with the friends it's a pretty busy place and is open 24 hours!

 We went to the zoo one day, just cruzed through after going to an indoor farmers market. The zoo in chicago is really big and it's free, it's one of the major perks of the city. It's right down town too off lakeshore, it seems super out of place but it's really fun that way.

It's not a lama but it will do...
Having her here was a great treat for us. We did some sight seeing but mostly hung out, and had sleep overs. It was too short if you ask me. 

This is our easter. Here is the easter bunny. He brought me easter flowers. 

Jeremy has this thing for taking easter pictures every year. So here we are in our kitchen/bedroom (haha) On easter afternoon. 

We were given a super fun treat for Christmas, tickets to the Dodgers Cubs game at Wriggly Field. We were super excited Wriggly Field is always really fun for us. 

 
You can't tell but we were all decked out. We both had our dodgers shirts on and hats. We were very brave. Luckily we saw a lot of people sporting dodgers gear.It was a lot of fun. Super cold but totally worth it. Dodgers won! Which made it even more exciting. We can only root for the Cubs when they're not playing the dodgers. That's what Jeremy says. :)


Well that's it for now. Currently we just finished up our finals and are all done with school! Mostly... we have to pack a ton and move our stuff out to our friends Michael and Brittany who are letting us store stuff in their attick for the summer and stay with them for a few nights until our flight leaves because the boys who are subletting from us have to move in saturday. It's going to be a whirlwinD!

Starve Rock Extravaganza

Now back to our spring break rerun. Geez we're a little behind. Soon we'll be updating our spring break story while we're into the summer. By now we've had two different sets of visitors; the Dilbecks and Lawheads and then only a few weeks after that my sister came to visit (Kindra). We have plenty of pictures from that so we need to get to crackin so I can post about those too. 

Over spring break we went to this really cool place called Starved Rock. Our super generous professor and his wife from Moody had us house sit for them, and let us use their car the whole time they were gone. That was such a treat. We went all over. This place is only about two hours out of Chicago. It's basically known as the only place in Illinois with any type of hills (hahaha). Needless to say, the 500 foot elevation wasn't really doing it for me. But it was still pretty and we got to hike, eat, take pictures, and enjoy one of the few sunny days we've had out here since the end of the summer/beginning of the fall seasons. 
There were a lot of great sites to see while we hiked around. That is the River.

Whose that handsome man

There were a lot of waterfalls that you could hike to. We saw two of them. When you come after summer time they're usually all dried up so it was cool to see them running. They're not too big though so we walked around them and behind them. We're standing inside of a big overhang and behind the waterfall in this picture.

 

No matter where we go he finds somewhere to surf

 We even saw a random field full of Turkeys. We thought of you dad leih. Later on I had a long conversation about the turkeys with him and the one time he took Kindra and I turkey hunting and we slept in the back of his truck on a mattress. Back in the day when we were small enough to all fit back there. We also ate spaghetti that we had cooked over the fire. I remember thinking that was the best part because we didn't get to see any turkeys. You have to be really quiet for turkey hunting. I don't think we were. :)

All in all it was a really fun trip and super good to get out of the city for a day and just be in the sun. We had a great time. We even got to check out the hunting lodge up there. There ya go dad now we know where we'll stay when you come. :)