An Abrupt Return to "Real Life." Whatever that is.

So, many of you know that my family took a two week vacation out West. We visited such places at The Black Hills in South Dakota, the Tetons in Idaho, and of course Yellowstone in Wyoming. Thankfully, the plan (mostly) worked out without a problem. We did run into some car trouble and had to spend a day in Mitchell, South Dakota when our van's radiator burnt out.
Some of our adventures included: spelunking, horseback riding, hiking, and visiting such things a Crazy Horse and Mt. Rushmore. In addition to all of these things, I also managed to get some quite time alone and use this vacation to further my relationship with my Lord.

Here's a pic from when we were in the Tetons:

Since we got back... let me see... 5:30 a.m. on Sunday (August 23rd) our hose has gone rather mad. You see, we had a little less than a week to finish our summer long deck construction project before my younger sister's graduation open house. Because of this, I've spent very nearly every waking moment this week out in my back yard working on our deck. Finally, at about 11:30 last night my dad and I ran out of decking to put down and were forced to halt. Even though we can't actually finish the deck before the party, we made some pretty incredible progress and for the most part it is done. (Yay.)

But since I spent most of this week on the deck, I've had precious little time to prepare for school. To say nothing of the fact that the 3D packages I ordered along with my new computer haven't come yet. Next Monday (Thank God I don't have classes until Tuesday!) is going to be pretty crazy.

What else is new? Oh yes. I've been trying to get more active with my church this year, now that I've gotten in the swing of things with college and all (haha.) So on Monday nights I'm going to be attending a Men's Theology Group, which should be really cool. The group consists of 9 guys, with a pretty wide range of ages... I I'm probably going to be the second youngest guy in the group. Anyhoo, I think it will be a really cool group of guys and I'm really looking forward to it.

On top of that, I was asked to help lead a Jr. High boys small group on Wednesday nights at my church. I have to say right off the bat that something like this is WAY out of my comfort zone. However, I feel like this is where God is leading me, so I said "yes."

All in all, this is shaping up to be one of the busiest semesters of all time. I was already planning on dealing with a killer class schedule, but pack in everything else and I don't know if I'll sleep until Christmas.

I think that's all for now. I'll leave you guys with a picture my dad took of me that I thought turned out pretty sweet. (I'm sitting and looking at "Fairy Falls" in Yellowstone National Park.) Here you go: