road trip

Watertown, WI. I spent my formative years in the town of water. It's a nice place to visit and a fine place to live. If I won the lottery*, I would buy the nicest house in town and live there for, oh, just 6 months out of the year (obviously, the winter months would be spent somewhere warmer...). *You gotta play to win. Too bad I don't play!

So since I'm not living in Watertown anymore it's fun to visit once in a while. Last week I drove down on Thursday and spent the afternoon with my friend Sue. She snuck away from the pie shop just long enough to venture to Madison for dinner. We had fun catching up on each other's happenings. Our meal at BD's Mongolian Grill was interrupted by a power outage (for the entire East Towne area!), but since we were the only customers in the restaurant, the servers were very attentive. Good thing the grill was gas!
That evening we stopped by the rehearsal for The Music Man, a production that MBBC was putting on this coming weekend. When I was young I think we watched the classic movie every year and I loved it! It was disappointing to hear they wouldn't be performing the song Shipoopi...well, not really... My real favorite song & choreography of the movie is Marian the Librarian.

Friday I spent part of the day on Maranatha's campus visiting with former co-workers and seeing the changes around campus. Then I went to lunch with two friends, Sue and Donna. We too had a great time catching up on each of our life happenings. Donna's sister has cancer and it was sad to hear about what's going on with her, but it was good to find out how to pray more specifically for Donna and her family.

After lunch I chatted with a few more peoples on campus and then headed over to see my old OSM boss, Doug. I say "old" because he was at home recovering from shoulder surgery. This man has had more surgeries on his joints then I've had...well, I can't think of anything funny, but he's had a lot! His whole family was home so I was able to catch up with everyone! I can't believe how big the kids are getting - including Nic who will be graduating from college and getting married this summer! It was especially good to see Kris who's also had quite a challenging year as she had cancer.

My visit with the Richards family was a bit long-winded so I had to fly across town to get back to Sue's house where I was staying. She was cooking dinner for me and my Watertown family: Kurschner's, Lawson's, & Chowanec's. (That reminds me of my Guam family. Anyone remember what we named ourselves when we combined our last names to make one big new name?...hmm...Traucht, Flaming, Nixon, Thompson, Clodfelter...how'd we do that?!)

Anyway, Sue cooked a delicious meal and we all got to catch up and also be entertained by the two little munchkins, Noah and Leah. I've included a few pics from that evening below.

Click to Enlarge

On Saturday I met my Watertown family at the pie shop for breakfast before I headed back to the City of Lakes. Wait! this is a town of water, too!?!


All in all it was a great road trip! Beautiful weather. Safe driving. Wonderful fellowship. Believe it or not, there were plenty more people that I wished I would have had time to catch up with. So if you're one of the people I missed hopefully we'll connect next visit! See you soon!

mbbc turns 40

Last weekend I went to MBBC's 40th Anniversary celebration. It was great to be back "home" to visit with everyone.

I arrived Thursday night. Friday I spent the day on campus at Alumni chapel, lunch with friends, visit to Madrigal choir practice, and then an incredible concert program in the evening. Part of Saturday was also spent on campus with mini-reunions for the business department and Madrigal choir.

I enjoyed dinner of Friday with friends at a new Mexican restaurant. Saturday evening I spent with Lawson/Kurschners and got to hold new little Kristin, well I held her when grandma and great-grandma weren't holding her :)

On Sunday Sue fixed a delicious meal that was enjoyed after church with the Lawsons, Kurschners, Chowanecs, and a former housemate, Betsy (who is now Sue's housemate).

Here are a few pics that I took and some that I got from MBBC's webpage:

life on the lakes

Edit: A few email updates from last summer that I found...

Weekend Trip#1
To quote my sister quoting a favorite quote: "Let me 'splain...no, let me sum up!" --- Sun. Driving. Rain. Catching up with friends from far and farther. Alumni Weekend. Hanging out with the Chow's. Coffee Shop. Thoroughly Modern Milly at Fireside. More sun. Church. More driving. Sleep!

To be more specific my weekend started around 11:15 a.m. on beautiful, sunny Friday. Using my 2nd free, summer 1/2 day, I headed out of downtown Mpls going the wrong way! Never fear, I found my way out of the city and on to WI. The trip was relatively uneventful until it started to rain about 10 miles from the WI Dells. I made it safely to Madison and joined Kim and Tricia, two college friends, for dinner at TGIF at East Towne. Kim just got back from Romania and Tricia is transitioning to a new job, so we had lots to catch up on. When I reached Watertown it was quite late -- for a working girl -- after a long week.

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day as well! I headed up to campus to check out Alumni Weekend. If you remember, the football and soccer games were cancelled so not a lot of action was planned. Mr. Davis welcomed me to campus and gave me a tour of the new, very up-to-date coffee shop. I'm so glad I had a part in it! After the tour I was off to the volleyball game. The alumni had a good showing, but the Crusaders won. I had fun catching up with Pam and Mark. Little Noah made me smile when he greeted me with a huge smile and said my name! I was able to catch up with several more people at the Alumni cookout. I think everyone enjoyed the snow cones best! I hung out with the Chowanec crew for a while after the cookout was over. I left them planning to take a nap and then get ready for my evening. I made a quick stop at Speedway to fill up for my trip home and then got a call that my good lunch buddy was at the new coffee shop. I headed back up to campus to enjoy the atmosphere of the new coffee shop and catch up with my friends the Hibbs. I stayed until it was time to get ready for an evening at the theater. Sue and I headed to Fort Atkinson to watch a musical at the Fireside. Last Christmas Sue's mom had given us a gift certificate but we hadn't found time to go and/or a show we wanted to go see. Dinner was a five course meal and was very delicious. The show was amazing! I loved it! The evening was kind of long after such an eventful day and the long drive the day before.

Sunday I thoroughly enjoyed visiting my home church, Calvary. It was very refreshing to see everyone and participate in awesome congregational singing! I can't believe how well Calvary sings! Over the years I've heard people say that we have some of the best singing, but it really was evident to me this visit. Pastor also preached a great message that was both encouraging and challenging to me. After church I headed to the Upper Krust for lunch with the Lawsons, Chowanecs, etc. My long drive looming ahead, I decided to get on the road, but not before I contemplated a nap. Not wanting to get home too late, I decided to skip the nap and just drive. I made it to Madison before my weekend caught up with me...I had to pull over for a short rest. After dozing off for just a few minutes, I felt refreshed enough to finish the rest of my drive...4 more hours! Thankfully I made it back to the Cities without incident. I got back in time to meet Morgen and Carsten at McDonald's after church. Oh, Jen and Eric were there too :)

Weekend Trip #2
Because Jess and I have great bosses we were able to head out of town for the long weekend by 3:00 pm on Friday. Traffic in the Cities was not bad so we thought we could make good time to Indiana, maybe 9 1/2 hours instead of 10. We got on the road and were on the east side of Mpls when I remembered that I was in charge of brining the I-Pass (Jess loaned hers to a friend). Nope, I didn't bring it. We discussed how driving through Chicago without an I-Pass could add quite a bit of time to our already long trip. Then we had a revelation...I thought I had read online when I first set up my I-Pass about paying for missed tolls online. Of course I set up my I-Pass almost 2 years ago and couldn't remember exactly. We called one of Jess's friends who had Internet access right then and found out we could go through without our I-Pass and we would be charged later. Whew!!

We made it to Amish-ville, as we fondly call the area where my parents live, without incident, but it was about 2am. My mom greeted us with a yawn, a hug, and "Hi, glad you made it, brunch is at 10:30. Good night!" and we all went to bed. My dad was still out on his weekly ride-a-long as Chaplain (Nappanee Police and Elkhart Cty Sheriff Depts). He got in about 3am. We didn't hear a sound.

On Saturday Anna was there when I got up and we ate a delicious brunch prepared by mom. Sometime after noon we headed to Goshen to see Anna's new apartment. She got a sweet deal because she's an officer. She drives around the complex before and after her shift and gets a lot of money off her rent each month. We were all impressed! After the apartment tour Anna had to work so the rest of us headed to Warsaw to pick up 11 gallons of paint for the new condo (mom gets a deal from work at Sherwin Williams). We stopped at Lowe's and Walmart to complete our shopping experience that day. When we got back to the ranch we opened up the Flaming Salon: Mom and I highlighted each others hair. We think it turned out great! :) Mom then prepared us another great meal...lasagna.

We enjoyed a great Sunday: Church, Lunch, Nap, Church. It was good to be home! Monday was travel day and back to reality! Tuesday morning came too early!

Currently, no trips planned until Thanksgiving. You're welcome to come visit me in the Cities!