Connecting With Home

Since this was my last weekend in Minnesota I drove up to Bemidji to spend time with my family before I embark on my journey to India. My Mom & Dad (Tom and Yvonne) still live in Bemidji after 41 years (in our new house since our original home burned in 2002), and my sister, Becky; my brother-in-law, Jim; and my nieces Nicki and Natalie drove over from Erhard, Minnesota (a cozy little town over towards Fargo) so we could all be together.
It was a typical family weekend--we just hung out, ate Mom's great cooking, ordered Dave's Pizza (mmmmm...), watched football (wow-the Vikes actually WON!), played 2500 (our latest card game craze), and just visited with each other. I love going home! We are all such good friends and really enjoy one anothers' company. What a gift family truly is...
Since I am going to miss our family Christmas together this year we even set up the Christmas tree and did a little "early celebration". Nicki, Natalie, Louie (the dog), and I played with my new camera-- total blast. Check out his tongue in this shot.
Since I've been in the routine of driving up to Bemidji every month I am going to miss my visits... but I bought M&D a webcam, loaded up Skype, and showed them how we can do video conference calls with VOIP. Excellent :o) I'm in no mood to pay $2.00/minute for AT&T service--yeah, I think not!

Okay--time to finish final packing. Off and flying in no time. India--ready or not, here I come.

So Take Charge of Education, Already!

Here's a picture from the Bemidji High School homepage (the same article and picture that appeared in The Pioneer, my hometown newspaper) of me presenting BHS with the September Take Charge of Education (TCOE) check from none other than, Target! It was a very cool day all around... Principal Dick Anderson, who, incidentally happens to be a good friend of mine, gave me a tour of the new high school, and Allison, the Executive Team Lead of the Bemidji Target, gave me a tour of their fine store. What a day - it rocked :o)

I love the fact that Target encourages us to actively volunteer to do things like this (present checks to your hometown high school)... I think it really gives a unique opportunity to give back. It's great!

Okay, so now that I've successfully distracted myself from packing for the last hour, I need to get back to work (*sigh*)... moving is really quite a challenge--especially when it's a move to a foreign country. Sheesh

8 days and counting... wow.