Andrew and Katie's Belated Update

Hello all!

We've finally found something of a routine here after a summer of pretty dramatic change.  As I'm sure you're all aware of the big picture stuff, we'll try to fill in the details.

Andrew finished his Master's Degree in Urban Planning and Policy at UIC in early May.  Which meant  a job search as well as a loss of income for us.  Fortunately, he was rewarded for an aggressive search when an informational interview with a family friend turned into a real interview at Peapod, which fortunately turned into a job offer.  While not a direct application of his planning education, the job is challenging, enjoyable, and engaging.

Inside of a Peapod Truck during Andrew's Ride-along

Katie also has seen some change at work with a couple coworkers moving on to other opportunities.  This means more responsibility and some uncertainty as the company looks to hire someone new.  However, Katie still loves her work and has started to do a little more traveling in the past couple months to do some more client-facing work.

The transition to full time employment for both of us has led us to change the other big factor in our lives, our home.  Despite how much we loved our apartment in Chicago, it was not ideally located for either of our jobs.  Once we decided to look outside the city, we wanted to stay relatively close to Katie's family.  This led us to look in Glenview (among a few other nearby places) which is about 15 minutes west of Winnetka, where we had the wedding and Katie grew up.  We live in a development of townhouses/rowhomes that used to sit on the edge of the Glenview Naval Air Station.  The base closed in the 1990s and was demolished.  In it's place is a new urbanist community, which has a nice main street/town center surrounded by housing.  We're about a mile walk from it and a little over a half mile from downtown Glenview, which also has a nice commercial corridor and a train station into the city.  While we were sad to leave the city, we feel very lucky to still have so many amenities so close.  The house itself has two full stories and a basement.  Upstairs is 2 bedrooms and a full bathroom, while ground level is a living room, dining room, kitchen, and powder room.  There's a nice outdoor patio off the dining room.  We also have a full basement with another large living room (now occupied by a ping pong table!), storage room, and laundry room.

Kitchen/Dining Room w/ stairs and Living Room off to the side

Another change created by the new job was the addition of a second car.  Katie still drives her Volkswagen Jetta TDI while Andrew purchased a Ford Focus.  It has already made the trip to Minnesota, when the two of us plus Hannah visited in August, and got its first oil change this week.  Andrew tries to ride his bike to work on occasion as well since his commute is only 3.5 miles now.

Our cat has not changed too much, only getting slightly larger if anything.  Scout loves the extra space and only needed one time down the stairs to calibrate.  On occasion, you'll hear her in the basement batting ping pong balls across the room.  But the best change for her are the views.  She can now see birds every day and even spots some squirrels and chipmunks.  This lead to some sleepless nights early one, but she has since grown used to the noises.

Scout playing some ping-pong

One thing that has changed in the last couple weeks has been the success of the Kansas City Royals.  In an impulsive move, we chose to buy tickets for and drive down to the Wild Card game in KC against the A's.  It was the game of a lifetime!  There were so many emotions as the team went down, took the lead, lost the lead, tied the game to force extra innings, lost the lead in the 12th, but then came back to finally win it.  We arrived at Kauffman Stadium at about 4 pm and left for our hotel at 12:30 am.  It was a true postseason classic and Andrew especially has been enjoying the run to the ALCS so far.

Some shots from the AL Wild Card Game

An obvious change right now has been the transition from summer to fall.  It was such a mild summer that the heat never built enough to make us yearn for the fall, so it felt rather abrupt when temperatures sank into the 50s and even 40s.  However, we're maybe two weeks from the height of the fall foliage and it's impossible to deny that fall is here.  In fact, last Saturday, there were observations of snow in the early morning, which is just too soon.  Winter is great, but we're not quite ready yet.

Some of the changing leaves out our front window

The final change has been Andrew starting a blog.  It's going to be infrequent and more about writing down thoughts on urban planning, baseball, and whatever else comes to mind than a regular update on our lives.  But if you'd like to read, it's here: andrewsscribbles.blogspot.com/

Hopefully going forward the big changes are a little more spread out!  We wish you all the best and look forward to Christmas time in Kansas!