day 4
A look at 8 years...
June 2003-highschool graduation is over and I'm looking forward to a summer full of swimming all day with my friends at the lake, CHIC and Covenant Point back to back, and then 3 days after I return from camp I'm moving to Chicago to attend North Park.
June 2004-freshman year is over...it had it's good and bad times, it's transitions, and I came out alive and with good friends. I had just met Erikka and we just started attending Willow Creek! Off to Covenant Point I go!
June 2005- sophomore year is complete...I'm back to camp for my last summer. Sophomore year was the best year of school for me...Erikka and I had roomed together and our 7th floor girls had bonded...we had realizations that we were "half way done with college"
June 2006- junior year has come to a close and it was a rough year to be honest. andrew and i had met at the beginning of my junior year, and our relationship had been up and down (he hates to talk about this period of our life) :) I continued to be surrounded by amazing women. This was also the year I decided not to work at camp...so I was moving home to the UP to work at Hallmark and spend time in Escanaba all summer.
June 2007- these two pictures were literally the week after graduation...Carri and I were the only one of our college friends left in Chicago and Krista was hanging around to finish up a few things for University Ministries....we were college grads and JOBLESS! I was living at the Healing's and nannying. My internship at Park Community Church was just finished up, and I was on the hunt for a graphic design dream job! Esther was getting married in July, so all our college friends were looking forward to having a reunion in ca$hville.
June 2008- I had been working at Park Community Church for almost a year as the Outreach Assistant. Andrew and I were engaged (!!) and Erikka was getting ready to get hitched as well (June 7th!)...so we were all in "wedding mode". I had joined a Park small group in September 07 and was meeting weekly with these amazing women I still have in my life today!
June 2009- I started training for my first Chicago marathon...Andrew and I had been married 8 months and he had just finished his first year of seminary. I was still working at Park...life was chugging on. Both of Andrew's parents were recently diagnosed with cancer, and everyone was in the middle of treatments...so...it was an emotional summer and that wasn't the end of cancer in the lives of people we shared life with. (you can tell I didn't have my iPhone for a while here because I have NO pictures!)
June 2010- It's hard for me to remember 2009 and 2010...they kind of melted together. I trained for a second marathon, and was still working at Park. Mentally...I was preparing this to be my last summer in Chicago...and I couldn't have been more right. Mabrie was pregnant last summer...so a new chapter was opened in the life of my friends...babies!! Another little man entered our lives...Henry Jasmer (along with his awesome mommy, Molly). 2010 was such a hard year for us...every month, something went wrong...something sucked the life out of us...so it felt like walking in mud. Also..last summer was record heat...which, was interesting.
June 2011- We are spending our last days in our apartment on an air mattress, with half of our belongings in our POD and half of them in our bedroom....as we prepare to head to Connecticut, we want to say...we love you Chicago. So we had a beautiful photoshoot in downtown with Erica Rose Photography. I think she captured our love of this city well, don't you?