7 Quick Takes Friday

I know it's been quite awhile since I've done a weekly update, but here goes, here's the latest & greatest from Pasadena!

**1**

August is almost behind us now, but with it brought two fantastic vacations! I already wrote about our Houseboat trip on here, and a few days later we found ourselves in Colorado with 40 of my extended family members celebrating my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. It was a blast seeing everyone again, playing games, eating, relaxing, and of course sharing hysterical trips down memory lane and we rolled with laughter over the silly things that have happened over the years in the Hanson family. I love that we are so close and get along so well, that is definitely a gift our parents have given all of us cousins.

**2**

Of course a family reunion meant I got to see my baby niece again! I loved getting 4 days with Lily, watching her learn, grow, and charm everyone with her delightful smiles and giggles that are almost always present. She LOVES being the center of attention, and she most certainly was for the weekend!

**3**

We have a CRAZY fall when it comes to traveling, and it's funny because we weren't really expecting that! But just in the last two weeks our September/October have become packed with trips, events, and interviews! People keep asking what's coming up, so here's the run down of what I think our fall looks like. At some point (hopefully in the next two weeks actually) we'll be taking a quick trip to Seattle for a weekend for a job interview for my husband. In mid-September we're going to Florida for 5 days for another interview for my husband, and to see friends who live there, which we're very excited about! My 29th birthday is at the end of the month, and that weekned we're hoping to head up to Reno to visit my aunt and uncle, and so I can show my husband around the part of Northern California I call home (he's never seen where I grew up, went to school, church etc, so we're going to try to stop in Sacramento on the way up and back even if just for a couple hours). I want to take him to Lake Tahoe, Donner Lake, and of course enjoy time relaxing with my family in Reno :) The first weekend of October finds me in the Northwest again, flying into Portland for my best friend's bachelorette party and then hoping up to Seattle for my final assessment with my Presbytery. The second weekend in October we're hoping to meet some friends in Yosemite, a place I haven't been since I was 10, and a place my husband has to see before we move out of California. The 3rd week of October I'll be back in Portland for 5 days for my best friend's wedding. Is anyone else as tired as I am now that I've read all that?? Yikes! Good thing I like reading on airplanes! November should be relatively quiet, my parents are going to come out here for 5 days which I am VERY excited about, but otherwise we should be around before heading to JAPAN for Christmas! (My passport came yesterday & we have our tickets, it's official!)

**4**

One of the things I've really enjoyed this past year is working my way through my list of 28 books to read in my 28th year (I always see birthdays as good times for new resolutions instead of January!). I love to read but if left to my own devices I'm a bit of an ADD reader--I bounce from one book to another, often not finishing them first. This list was awesome because it kept me focused, I actually read them all (okay I have about 1.5 books to go in the next 3 weeks), and I had made myself read a bit of a variety that I normally wouldn't choose. I am almost done creating my list for this next year, which will be posted as soon as I'm done with this past list! Any last minute suggestions? And it was pointed out to me that since I'll be turning 29 soon, I really will be working on my 30th year of life--which means I'll be doing 30 books for my 30th year...and it looks like a fun mixture of non-fiction, theology, fiction, classics, a couple plays, and some young adult/childrens classics I've never read. Stay tuned!

**5**

Work is going pretty well, although there will be some big changes to my schedule when school starts. I had the potential to have 6...yes 6 different part time jobs with Fuller, and well...that sounded a bit nuts to me. And not exactly legal since I can't ever go over 40 hours a week total, and with all 6 jobs that just wasn't going to be possible to avoid. So in mid September I'll have my last day at the Office of Development where I've been working since May. This fall I'll be working 15-20 hours a week for the Ogilvie Institute for Preaching here on campus, and will be a teaching assistant for a beginning preaching class, a distance learning youth ministry class, a youth outreach class that's being taught here on campus, and a youth outreach class that is being taught in Seattle. Our youth ministry prof who I've worked with for years now is moving to Seattle and will be teaching the class from Seattle, with a live feed to the Pasadena classroom. He needs me to be here in Pasadena to facilitate all the classroom stuff here but also to be prepared to teach in the event that the technology goes down. He laughed when I told him I'd pray every day that the technology works. He thinks I'm kidding. So I'll be getting paid both as the teaching assistant to do all the grading like normal but an additional several hours a week as a faculty assistant/class coordinator (whatever that means). I'm looking forward to the opportunity, but am a little nervous about this one!

**6**

The possibility that we'll be leaving Los Angeles relatively soon is starting to sink in a bit, although not completely since we don't know yet if or where we will be going quite yet. But having these job interviews set up far away from here is a reality check for us. Thus, we're working on doing and seeing all those LA things we've always said we'd do someday but haven't yet. Last Sunday night we random decided to go out to UCLA and wander around Westwood a bit which was a very fun evening. We did dinner in a local cafe and dessert at the famous Diddy Riese

This UCLA landmark often has a line around the block. And no wonder! For $1.50 you get a homemade, personalized ice cream sandwich, with two homemade cookies of your choice and a large scoop of ice cream (again your choice of flavor). This is a random image I found on line, but ours was a delicious combination of 1 peanut butter cookie on bottom, a scoop of espresso chip ice cream, and a chocolate chip cookie on top. Talk about a perfect business to have 1 block away from the largest California college!Other suggestions? What else needs to go on our Los Angeles "Bucket List?"

**7**

Last weekend I also planned a date night for my husband with an Italian/travel theme. I really wanted to see Eat, Pray, Love, and well my husband likes Italian food :) So we did dinner at a great Italian place in Pasadena, then saw the movie. Gotta be honest, I wasn't super impressed. I like Julia Roberts, and the travel scenes were cool and made me want to go to Bali, but it was a SLOW movie! We both were a little bored!