How the wind has been blowing...

Fall weather is upon us here and the leaves are starting to change. The blog updates have been neglected as I've spent more hours living life and less free minutes to document it. So for a recap of where the wind has been blowing the Manz fam these past few weeks/end of summer months, here are some notes:

• After our Oregon trip I was in full swing with International Orientation at my job. We welcomed roughly 800 new international students through the month of August, culminating in several mandatory orientation sessions during the week of August 21st and many fun evening programs throughout the month. One of my highlights was rising early on a Sunday morning to hike to the Cascades waterfall (a 4 mile roundtrip) with some of our new students. 

• As I went into my crazy full week of 14+ hour days, Jonathan took a trip with Heath to New Jersey for his cousin's wedding. It's the longest we've been apart (6 days) but they had a blast and I was honestly too busy to be distracted by it. Heath did great on the airplane, loved seeing the Atlantic ocean, meeting some of his extended Manz family, and broke it down on yet another wedding dance floor for the summer!

• Heath began and is now in a rhythm of attending his new daycare in town. We love his teachers Ms. Jen and Ms. Hope and they are gracious to use his cloth diapers and feed him seconds of food. His class is a bit larger than the previous, but is also filled with a more diverse group of kids and we appreciate that. He is napping well there most days and though he still gives us a whine when dropping off in the morning, when we pick him up he can't stop talking about "my new friends" and how he "misses them" and wants to "play with them soon."

• Heath has been talking in full sentences for about a month or two now. He is still repeating and trying out a lot of new words. (we are trying to eliminate oh my gosh from our vocabulary, it sounds 10x worse coming from a 2 year old). He can hop now with both feet off the ground at once. Heath is kicking/dribbling the soccer ball really well. He LOVES to dance. He is enjoying tailgate season in Blacksburg and 'watching the boys (our college neighbors) play outside.' We had his two year check up in July? and he was a solid 30 lbs and 34" tall. 

• Jonathan is back into a full load of credit hours this fall semester with some statistic courses and an internship with Housing and Residence Life facilities learning more about budgeting and maintenance. After this fall he will have his final course requirements to take in Spring 2013 and the goal is to take comprehensive exams in early September 2013 when they are offered next. 

• Jonathan and I are taking a free language course in German at VT this semester together. It meets once a week for 50 minutes over the lunch hour on Fridays. We are trying to learn more German vocab now so that we can teach Heath both English and German words as he is in this developmental absorption stage of language. We just had our first class last week, and we will meet for 13 more weeks I think. Wunderbar!