Eric and Lisa

Sometimes I forget that I live in a place where people know food. This past weekend we went up to South Bend/Mishawaka in order to celebrate our 6th anniversary, as well as reconnect with some friends. Anyhow, while we were at a restaurant, one of our friends asked the restaurant owner (who happened to have stopped by our table) whether one of the salads was made with Romaine or Iceberg lettuce. The owner responded saying, "Romanian lettuce? Nope. The lettuce is American." At first I thought the owner was making a joke, then I realized, he wasn't. My friend asked a couple more times about the lettuce, thinking that he was just being coy. What was funny was that you could tell that the owner had no idea why my friend cared so much about where the lettuce came from...

Our anniversary was quite nice. We washed/waxed our car and went to a small Italian restaurant in Mishawaka with some other friends. It is cliche, but time does move along so quickly. Here's us after six years of marriage...


One other funny story. I'm currently teaching an introduction to Linguistics course at IU, and yesterday one of my students said something that made me realize the age/experience distance between me and them. At one point, we were discussing the syntactic properties of the sentence "Jack and Jill ran up the bill", when I happened to mention that one of my former roommates routinely had a $150-$200 phone bill from talking to his girlfriend at another school. One of my students raised her hand and asked, "Didn't your roommate have a cell phone?" A second student immediately chimed in, "What year were you in school anyway?" It's amazing what has changed in just 8 years.

--Eric

Here are some pictures from Ian's birthday party. As you can see, we had a LOT of fun! It was a beautiful, sunny day -- perfect for an outdoor party! When everyone sang "Happy Birthday", he began digging into his cake right away and enjoyed the singing by clapping along with it. He started off eating his cake very neatly, but made a mess of himself (as well as the house!) by the end of it. He also received an abundant amount of presents and really enjoyed playing with the other kids that were there. It was a fun day, all around! We're so thankful that we have so many friends and family who show they care. Even those who were not able to be there due to other plans or distance were able to show their love in various ways. Thank you all for your support this past year!

--Lisa

PS: For more photos, check out Ian's photo album.

This past weekend, to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, we flew to North Carolina to visit our good friends, JD, Andrea, and their 4-week-old baby boy Taliesin. As always, it was a fun-filled, entertaining visit.

Every year, JD and Andrea prepare a very large and very elegant meal to celebrate the Easter holiday. It's their way of recognizing the supreme importance of Christ's resurrection and looking forward to the feast we will all have together someday as believers in the Kingdom of God. The menu and theme of the meal are different every year. This year, they had a "kids" theme (to recognize the wonderful changes both of our families have gone through in the past year) and the menu was a little more untraditional than usual. The highlight of the weekend's gourmet festivities was a 7.75-pound red snapper, which was much larger than was anticipated, and which caused JD and Andrea to become well-known by the fish mongers at their local grocery store.

The best part of the weekend was being able to spend time with people who are very dear to us and to meet their new son. JD and Andrea are already such good parents, and it will be fun to raise our children together (even though we live so far away). We are very thankful for the chance to go see them this past weekend, and we look forward to the next time our families can reunite, wherever that may be.

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Here's an adorable picture of JD, Ian, and Taliesin:

Yep, it's already two weeks into 2007, and our little town has yet to see a snowflake! We've become familiar with lots of rain and balmy temperatures, though. You'd think we lived in a tropical climate! However, we just had a frigid cold front come through today, so maybe we'll experience some freezing temperatures from now on. It sure has been weird to be seeing ants and flies in the middle of January!

Backing up a little bit, we had a very nice Christmas. Ian's first, to be exact, and it was a very pleasant one. We enjoyed time with our families, and even traveled a bit to see some college friends between Christmas and the New Year.

This 2007 calendar year is already proving to be one of promise...and a lot of hard work! Eric has received two pieces of good "news" in terms of his education: one, that he is now at candidacy for his PhD, meaning that all he has left is the work on his dissertation/thesis, and two, that one of the papers he presented at the conference in Hawaii received a 2nd place award out of more than 60 other presentations! (I'm so proud of him!) He's excited to be working on experiments for his thesis, and the end seems to be in sight.

As for me, I'm still plugging away at my little self-made business. I love my students, and I have daily confirmation that this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. God is so good.

Looking ahead, this spring promises to be a busy one. In three weeks, I'll be accompanying my father-in-law on a trip to Honduras, where we'll meet up with some other American Christians and help out with physical needs of the Honduran people. I'm really looking forward to this trip -- it's been a long time since I've done anything overtly missions-oriented, and I've been feeling the "itch" to get out there in the world! I'm sure I'll post a blog or two about the experience when it's over.

I hope this finds you all well, and that God is as richly blessing you as He is us. That is our prayer, anyway.

Love, Lisa (for Eric and Ian)