something from the upcoming review (I am using Steph's computer)

Well it has been quite a while since my last post, not that I haven't thought of lots of interesting things to blog about during this time, but I guess I have just been too busy living those things to actually blog about. So lets see what have I been up too? I road tripped, which was amazing, long, stretching, beautiful, and above all friendship building. Then I attended the wedding of Z & E, which was simple, elegant, and rainbow perfect. After that weekend, I went east with my family to meet up with Tim & Char followed by the rest of my extended family. I really love my extended family, despite how complicated and competitive they all can be, when it really counts my family can rally around each other. For example our weekend reunion had both a very happy engagement announcement and also prayer requests for an upcoming surgery. Although, by far the hardest part of the weekend was watching my grandmother. She is very fully aware and wants so much to remain involved with the family. She has both Parkinson and this summer had hip replacement surgery. Despite how tired she gets, she insisted on attending the reunion. I think right now I have to say I hate old age, despite my healthy respect for it and the idea of life as finite, the decay of the body and sometimes the mind is so hard to watch. I think I am realizing this the most with this grandma, because I knew her when she was still a young 80, so alive and vital. Now while it is clear that her mind is still sharp, her body is becoming a burden. When I see, her I see the eventual fate of my parents and that is really hard for me to think about. I don't think I will ever be prepared for the difficulties of watching my parents age. When I was younger I used to be surprised that people in their 30's and 40's had a hard time dealing with their parents death. Part of me thought that if you were that far away from youth and so independent, the importance of your parents would fade. But now I am realizing how hard it will be to deal with the death of a parent, no matter what age. So that's a barebones update, in other news it looks like we actually have an apartment lined up in Chicago, and will hopefully be moving up in late August, early September. Oh and yeah it will be a three bedroom, which totally rocks. Becca, Steph and I have been planning and scheming and decorating (and of course Jess will join us in all of this when she arrives back from her summer travels). Let's see I also calculated it out and I logged around 5,000 miles in the car, over a 20 day period and made three trips through or to Chicago. I also impulsively bought a one day pass to Lollapooluza and saw Iron & Wine, Violent Fems and Death Cab for Cutie. It was a good day, but a little overwhelming and not entirely my scene, but it was fun to hang out with Jonathan in his element and to get to know his friend Jono. Oh and I finally did it, I bought a MacBook, which will hopefully arrive this friday. So I will try to update more this next few weeks as I attempt to A: quite my Goshen jobs, B: find or sew an amazing bridesmaid dress, C: Clean and pack up my room. I am sure I will have lots of exciting tales from those adventures. So have a great week.