Another Typical Week

This week didn't have anything too special going on, but sometimes those weeks are the ones that help you rest up! Next week is pretty busy, since I'm helping out at another school's literacy night on Thursday night. We also have two parties next Saturday (an engagement party for a friend here and a fondue party with some people from our community group from church) and our membership interview for church on Sunday.

School was great but tiring this week. I had off for Veteran's Day, and I spent the extra time calling to get books donated for our literacy event book giveaway. Since a lot of the kids don't have books of their own at home, we thought letting them pick one out to keep might encourage some of them to read more outside of school. I got 161 books donated from a used bookstore in Redmond and another 50-100 pledged by Goodwill. Another store asked for an official letter before deciding how much to donate and another said they were ordering books just for us (but didn't say how many). The cutest was one store owner who bought us one book herself and set it aside for me. All in all, we hoped to get about 300-400 books, and it looks like that might be quite possible. These are just the stores on the Eastside of Lake Washington where I live. Another girl who works with me is in charge of contacting bookstores nearer to our school in Seattle. Yay!

Another funny story is that I missed my bus stop on Thursday and had to ride an extra 40 minutes on the bus (all the way into downtown and back) to get to school. Oops! Good thing I asked not to be scheduled to tutor any kids until 9:30, so I didn't miss anything except some prep time...

Kayle is doing well at work. He fixed a bunch of bugs this week and felt pretty productive overall. If you want to know more about what Kayle is working on, there is a video from the developer's conference about Visual Studio 2010. Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/emea/teched2008/developer and search for "Jason Zander", picking the 2nd video (the Keynote, not the news one). The video starts with a 15-16 minute introduction, so you have to scroll ahead to start with the demos right away...hope that made sense! (WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS SUPER GEEKY!!) :)

On Tuesday, we went to CG and enjoyed seeing everyone for a discussion of this week's sermon. On Wednesday, I went to Proxy (youth group) where we played a trash can basketball game with a raw turkey (gross...yes, you read that right...yes, we made all the kids wash their hands WELL) and discussed the Gospel of Mark with the junior high. On Thursday, Kayle and I provided the meal for our bible study. We made spaghetti with Hinkle meat sauce for about 10-12 people and baked some garlic bread. Nothing too extravagant, but it was our first time cooking for a large group! Bible study went well, and we looked at Psalm 146. Finally, on Friday, I had my team meeting for Americorps where we made "life maps", basically a time line of our life and how we got to where we are today. It was interesting to hear everyone share about their life but also a bit heart-breaking. A lot of my teammates are coming to this year with a lot of baggage from their past...

Today, we're just running some errands and maybe going to a huge craft sale held by the Christian school where our chruch meets every Sunday. We might help clean-up or something... We're still looking for furniture and piano with no luck so far. We also have grocery shopping, library, laundry, and the bank.

We miss you and love you! We hope to hear from everyone soon!

Angie and Kayle