Welcome Back, Kotter!

After a long absence, I have decided to make a return to the blogging world. I have very much been inspired by several friends (though most likely unknown to them) to do so. As many of you know, I am not by any means a technological genius or a design-savvy individual, so please bear with me on this (un)new adventure.

Isaac and I were fortunate enough to make the trip down to Sikeston to spend the Easter weekend with his side of the family. Family gatherings with the Johnsons are a lot like family gatherings with the Olberdings- there's a lot of us, we talk and laugh a lot, and we can get pretty loud on the decibel scale. The only difference is that with the Olberding family, there aren't any children to really add to the noise level; the adults are just that loud..."naturally."

On the return trip, it was snowing in St. Louis. Imagine, snow on Easter! This is a completely foreign concept to a Southerner such as myself, even after living north of the often-disputed Mason-Dixon line for a few years. I know that while I lived in both Colorado and Germany, and perhaps even in Kansas, snow on Easter was a usual occurrence, but living in the South for so long thinned out my blood, and the idea of "cold" became "below 65 degrees."

My husband and I are going on a date tonight to Chipotle. Isaac gave up the blessed food from this fine establishment for Lent this year, and since Isaac gave it up, by default I did the same. I have been looking forward to this event for over 40 days now.

I am yet again simultaneously reading more than one book at a time. The culprits this time: Jane Austen's Emma and J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. I have found that it is, in fact, rather unusual for me to not be reading more than one book at a time. Even last night, I found myself sorely tempted to begin yet another book (a result, no doubt, of our recent visit to the book warehouse, where the glory of cheap books abounds). Some may see this as a problem, evidence to the fact that my dedication to one storyline may be waning, that I am an adulterous reader of many stories. I think not. I prefer to look on this issue as my insatiable eclectic taste for the written word. I enjoy reading many books of a variety of genres, so why should I be tied down to one book until I have finished it? It's a philosophy of life, really...well, I wouldn't extend my philosophy out to every aspect of life. Call it a philosophy of books, if you will.

"Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it." -Hebrews 2:1