more Fall fun!

We have been wanting to go camping for awhile now, but didn't know a great spot to go. Well, we finally found a great place! A week ago, we went to Moraine View State Park, which is about 30 minutes from us. We hiked about 5-10 minutes to our campsite for the night. We pitched our tent, made a fire, cooked dinner and breakfast, and just enjoyed the quality time together.

Here is Joe near the fire and our tent. There were lots of oak trees around us, as there were lots of acorns dropping the entire time we were there!

Us enjoying the cool morning.

Enjoying our warm oatmeal and warm hot chocolate Saturday morning near the fire.

Joe with his breakfast-hot chocolate, oatmeal, and an apple.

Andrea eating her breakfast near the fire.

Recently, our team traveled to Western Illinois University. While there, we had a little extra time, so the team went to Argyle Lake State Park nearby and hiked on some trails. This is a picture of us as we took a quick break.

welcome to Fall!

It seems as if Fall has finally arrived! The beginning of the school year is always a busy time for us with Campus Crusade for Christ as new students are arriving on campus and we are trying to reach out to them. We've been traveling a lot during the last couple of months going to several different schools in central Illinois. As exhausting as it's been, we've still had a lot of fun and have been able to enjoy ourselves!

Our team with Campus Crusade for Christ spent a day at Tanner's Orchard near Peoria, IL. We ate some goodies, and then picked apples in the orchard.

This is us amidst the apple orchard.




One weekend, our nieces Ellie and Ava, had a swimming competition in Springfield, IL. So we ventured down there with Andrea's family to watch them swim.





Our house is looking festive for the season as we grabbed pumpkins and corn stalks from Joe's parents' house.

Ocean City...here we come!

Well...we arrived in Ocean City, NJ over a month ago..and we can't believe it's already been that long. We've been very busy here with the Summer Project but also have been enjoying ourselves as well.

We live here on the third floor-in an apartment with another couple from Northwestern University-The Syu's! We've enjoyed getting to know the Syu's and using our apartment to allow students to

Every Friday is our day off-so we've been exploring the eastern coast. These first few pictures are from our trip to Philadelphia with our friends Ben and Katie.

Eating cheesesteaks in Philly!

Independence Hall in Philadelphia

This was taken on one of many of our trips to Atlantic City, NJ!

We borrowed some bikes from our local friends the Lenkos and went exploring the island of Ocean City!

The next few pictures were from our exploration of Cape May, NJ:

The final weigh-ins of a shark tournament.

Eating fresh seafood on the water...lobster for Andrea...Mako shark for Joe!

This was our trip to Stone Harbor, NJ.

These are the 4 guys that Joe has the privilege to mentor and work with this summer.This is Andrea and her girls in Atlantic City!

This past week was "Killing the Giants" week for our Project. It involved trusting God to help us initiate with 5203 spiritual conversations in 7 days. The following pictures are from the last night of the week as we slayed the giant because God allowed us to have more than 5700 spiritual conversations last week and over 200 people indicated a decision to receive Jesus into their life.

The "Giant" who we attempted to defeat this week in the power of the Holy Spirit. Our theme was in correlation with David defeating Goliath.

This was all of the students during the last night of the week as they "killed" the giant by throwing balls at him to bring him down.

This was the final defeat of the giant as the students tore him apart!

a couple dollars shorter...

This is what you get for a couple dollars these days. Since we moved into the house back in January, our sump pump in the basement has ran every minute of every hour of every day of every week. There was only one electric pump in the sump. And with that much water coming in, and how often we are gone, we knew we needed to do something. After much deliberation and many professionals looking at our situation, we had a back-up water pump installed. But, they had to do some cutting in our drywall ceiling of the basement. The guys did a great job and we definitely feel relieved knowing that we have a back-up pump in the sump now that does not need electricity.

One of 2 holes cut in the ceiling to run 50 feet of copper water line from our utility room.

The other cut in the ceiling.

Some of the soldering work they did to work the copper around the joists and duct work.

This is the infamous Water Commander back-up sump pump. I highly recommend. All it needs is to be connected to your water line, which you see on the right side of the picture.

The sump with multiple pipes..not sure if I could get many more in there.

The yellow ball is the float for the water back-up pump. The green pump is a new electrical pump I had the plumbers install while they were in there. Notice the water pouring into the sump at the top of the picture. This a common occurrance that happens around the clock. We must be sitting on an underground pond...

This picture shows the two cuts in the ceiling, one closer and the other farther away.

Behind this door is the sump, and where all the pumping action occurs.

tulips!

When we bought our house, the previous owners had mentioned that there were tulips around the tree in the front yard. Andrea was super excited about this since her favorite flower is the tulip. So, we had been waiting in anticipation of the blooming of these tulips. So, we'd like to share a little of the color in our yard!

This little [big] guy is one of many culprits in our yard. We have several rabbits running around and were hoping they would stay out of our tulips.

Thankfully the rabbits stayed out and these are our wonderful tulips...about 50-100 of them!

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago, so our grass is greener and other plants/trees are currently flowering.

Andrea wanted to cut some and bring them inside to enjoy.

Andrea's birthday

Andrea's birthday was a couple weeks ago on a Friday. So Joe had planned some fun outings for Friday and Saturday for us to do. On Friday, we went to Starved Rock State Park and did some hiking. On Saturday, we went to an outlet mall near Champaign, IL to go shopping for the day. We had a blast, as usual..and these are some pictures to prove it:

This was traveling on Saturday to the outlet mall. We basically shopped til we dropped. Then we got some Amish goods [salsa and peanut butter sauce]. We also at Texas Roadhouse that night for dinner...Andrea's favorite.

We ate at this rootbeer stand in Oglesby, IL near Starved Rock. We saw it when we traveled toward the park and decided to eat there for dinner afterward. It was definitely an experience and the rootbeer was delicious!


The remainder of the pictures are from Starved Rock. The park is located next to the Illinois River and is composed of lots of sandstone. Thus, many canyons and waterfalls have been created over time. We had a blast exploring the canyons and trails, with only one scary moment of scrambling across a drop-off.