summer begins to wind down

though neither of us is in school, we somehow managed to pull off a pretty nice summer break. josh had shoulder surgery the first week in july and continues to recover pretty well. we have an appt w/the dr this week, and we're hopin he'll release josh to go back to work! in light of his surgery, month-long inability to drive, and follow-up appointments, i delayed startin a new job...i'm plannin on turnin in an application at the hospital here in seymour this week... but all in all, we've had several weeks here of no work for either of us. we've rested and played and laughed and had a chance to reconnect after seven months apart. we're grateful...

the past couple months, we've spent an unusual amt of time on the road....almost entirely b/w seymour and lubbock or seymour and amarillo....though it's been tiring, we've been able to spend quite a bit of time w/our families, which has been good. lots of laughs, a couple projects, and plenty of piddlin around.... we also took a quick vacation to....drum roll, please...las vegas. yep...we ventured west for a couple days to be overwhelmed w/the sheer amt of over-stimulation....people, noise, lights...as josh said, everything's for sale in vegas. we had fun, though....saw some neat things and laughed a whole lot.

i also just found out i've been accepted into grad school at midwestern state university over in wichita falls. i'll be studyin to become a nurse practitioner. it was really late notice, so i'm scramblin to get things together in order to start in a couple days.... after adjustin a bit to the news, i told josh, w/some eagerness in my voice, "i love school!"

we're gettin to know seymour...little by little. as i recently wrote to some friends - the weather's hot, the pace is slow, and the people are wonderful. it's been dreadfully hot and dry here this summer, as we take our place among the many in texas suffering from drought. the pace is refreshingly slow....livin in a small town, you lose a lot of convenience...but i'm pretty sure convenience isn't all it's cracked up to be. and the people really are wonderful. they've been warm and sincere and friendly....folks in small towns innately take care of each other, and josh and i have been fortunate to be on the receiving end of that.

we've decided to go the methodist church here in town...the first chance we had to go was just a couple weeks after josh's surgery, so we were movin a little more slowly than normal. well, we ended up bein pretty late...really late, actually....we tried to sneak in and sit toward the back w/o drawin much attention to ourselves. then suddenly, right in the middle of the service, our sweet landlord stands up in the choir loft and announces, "i have a joy! i think i just saw josh and lindsey walk in. they're our new game wardens!" all of our sneaky efforts blasted out of the water..... the next week, we still couldn't manage to get to church on time....but we were only about 5 minutes late, so we thought we were safe....nope...this time, our landlord was the lay leader...so again, though not as far into the service, he announces (and in doin so, interrupts himself) our arrival. needless to say, we have not been late since then.... this mornin, when he stood up in the choir loft and began, "i have a joy," we both stared straight ahead thinkin, "but we were here on time!" and then breathed a sigh of relief when the folks he mentioned were not us....

so there you have it....w/the best of intentions, i'm hopin we can blog more regularly...now that we're livin together again and have internet access...now that we're not livin on the road or w/our parents....now that we're finally settlin into life in seymour....