Starting Anew. It's alike a breath of fresh air. Forgiveness of being absent minded/ too busy/ uninspired to write and share our life with you. Yes, the Wutke's are back to blogging and we hope you want to come along for the ride once again. But I think we should really let you know what's happened in life over the past several months since we last spoke, because it has been big. I mean HUGE really. Almost to the level of life-altering. So, here we go, a brief synopsis of the Wutke's and how we spent our summer!
Dane has taken a job in Pittsburg, KS as the worship pastor at LifeTrack Church. It really has been a great experience for us. We have so many wonderful people as part of our church family and we have gotten to apply a lot of the lessons learned in Australia to church life here. As our good Aussie friend Jason said to us, the Wutke's are flourishing.
This summer LifeTrack did a VBS for the community. It was only the 2nd VBS they have ever done as a church and it was a hit. Dane and I both agreed, there was an amazing sense of team throughout the whole week. A couple VBS highlights, Tracker, our VBS mascot and if the kids raised $500 for the mission organization W.I.S.E. in St. Vincent, Dane agreed to shave his beard. Needless to say, the kids smashed that goal, and Dane's face was hairless for a couple days.
We've also became a part of the college/young adults group at the church. Last weekend, we hosted Christmas in July at our house, including a Christmas turkey dinner, Christmas movie trivia and a white elephant gift exchange. Yes, I finally got to put my amazing Fiestaware collection to use!!!
Moving to Pittsburg means moving into our first little house together. We live in a 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bath rental and are loving it. Seriously I have no pictures of our little house which is so sad, but I promise they are to come. Maybe we will do a reveal room by room for you all. The fabulous thing about the rental is the landlord is pretty flexible with us, allowing us to paint and redo what we need to in order to make the house a home. So we've invested a lot of hours into painting and a few other little projects.
The summer has been full of running for us. In May Dane and I ran a Color Run together in Wichita. Then in June I ran my first half-marathon in Kansas City. No kidding, I felt like I had conquered the world that day. Lots of hard work and dedication but it all paid off. I ran the race with my buddy Justin, who totally kicked butt! I'm so proud of all of us.
Of course what would summer be without a trip to the Royals??? Dane surprised me with these killer front row tickets. We are hoping to make it to another game later in the season. Be Royal!
The 4th was a weekend full of goodness. I was in KC because it was Hello Sailor weekend, so spent the holiday with my beautiful friends Caylyn and Chad. Dane's bro Drew was home from NYC. As a family we enjoyed the Alison Krause/Willie Nelson show. I also made a trip to Clay to enjoy the annual Schreefer 4th of July celebration! Here is beautiful Brittany! She was my sparkler buddy. That's pretty much all the firework's power we can handle.
And of course the summer has been full of little trips here and there, including the KC Zoo. We love zoos A LOT!
So there you have it. The Wutke's summer in a nutshell. Sorry if I have omitted something major! Looking forward to continuing this journey with you all via the world wide web.
Love Always!
