Sickies & Assignment

Unfortunately, we have been a house full of sickies this past week or so, with nastly colds (turned ear & eye infection for Simon). Currently Simon and Jessica are finally on the mend, and Andy is working on preventing his symptoms from developing any further!

We're also in the middle of a very busy time work-wise. Jessica's big paper (special area paper) needs to be turned in to her readers by the end of next week, when we are leaving for a weekend in Madison (I'll be doing an oral defense of this paper on April 22nd--I have to pass that in order to get the okay to start working on my dissertation, so its more than a wee bit stressful!). In a couple weeks we'll be traveling to Denver for a weekend so Jess can present a research poster at a conference--but there's a lot of work to be done to get that poster into existence! Jess has student papers and a recent quiz to grade, with another big assignment due for her class in two weeks, as well. I'd go into a rambling list of Andy's many to-do's, but I'm less familiar with the specifics--needless to say, he has a lot going on as well!

So we've been set back in our work due to the illness and have been laying low--at home and here on the blog. That will likely continue here in cyberspace for a while. But we did want to let you all know a very important recent development: synod assignment! We were assigned to the Southeastern Minnesota Synod of the ELCA. Woooohoooo!

this is a map of the SE MN synod--15 counties with the Twin Cities to the North, WI to the east, and IA to the south

We are quite happy about this as it will let us remain relatively close (within a half-day's drive) to family and friends, and possibly close-ish to the Twin Cities, depending on where within the synod Andy gets a call. From here on in, Andy will have a little more choice as he goes through interviews at individual congregations--the timeline is up in the air, but we are hoping that we'll be settling into a new home sometime this summer or early fall!

Toddling