I’m not quite sure how we got this far through the year already. Ellie is five and a half months old; we’re leaving for North Carolina in less than two months; my second half-marathon of the year is two days away; and somehow it doesn’t seem like it’s been 11 months since I launched this little family blog. Time flies. When you’re having fun, or when you’re busy, or especially when you’re busy and you’re having fun, time really flies.

When last I wrote, Ellie was in the habit of knocking her bottle out of her mouth and sometimes her parents’ hands while we were feeding her, she had just started rolling from her back to her stomach, and she was nowhere near crawling. Tonight, she fed herself the whole last ounce of milk out of her bottle with zero intervention from me; she spent the hour before that doing barrel rolls across the floor (something she started two weeks ago); and she’s definitely going to be crawling within a month – there’s a good chance she’ll be doing it before Thanksgiving and her six-month birthday, at her current rate of progress. She’s got the legs down, and one arm; once she figures out that she needs to move her right arm, too, she’ll be off to the races. God help us! (I mean that prayer quite literally.)

I’ve finished training up for another half-marathon. In two days, I’ll be running with around a thousand other folks, hoping to set a personal best – aiming to break the 1:30 mark. That’s fast, for me at least: that means running about 6 minutes and 50 seconds on the mile, for 13.1 miles. I’ve trained well, though – lots of 40+ mile weeks, once all the way up to 50, and maxing out my longest run ever at a little over 17 miles. I feel very prepared, and after a couple weeks tapering off, I’m pretty ready to go. I have a little two-mile, super easy run here in a few minutes, and then Sunday morning, at 8:30 am, it’s literally off to the races.

I’ve been super busy with my regular job – which, praise God, I still really enjoy – and with outside work. In addition to launching a custom built content management system for the Continuing Medical Education page of the Oklahoma Medical Board, I recently launched Jaimie’s professional writing site and am within a week or two of launching a friend’s professional calligraphy site. What with our move coming up shortly, I got to be involved in hiring my replacement, who started at the end of last week and is now getting up to speed on just how crazy some of the software in our code base really is.

It’s a little strange not knowing exactly what our financial situation is going to look like in two months, but we know that God will provide for us, as he always has. That’s who he is. In the meantime, we’ve been saving like crazy, and we’ve already started tightening our belts a little here and there, and cleaning up and selling things we don’t need – my old refrigerator from college, for example, which has gotten a surprising amount of use over the last few years, what with the many people we’ve had stay or live with us, but which we certainly no longer need.

Indeed, we’re starting to really come into that transition time in general: thinking about saying goodbye to friends here, about packing up our apartment, about selling my car, you name it. (Yes, my much-enjoyed Mazda 3 is going to be sold off: we only need one car while I’m in seminary. If you’re interested, let me know. It’s a stick shift, and it’s a great car. I’m going to miss it.)

Jaimie and I took one last trip to T.E.A. Café, the restaurant to which I took her on our first date, almost five years ago now. It was fun. A lot has changed – we’ve both grown up a lot, we have a baby now, we’re very different than when I was a college junior and she a college freshman – but she’s still delightful, and even prettier than she was then. It was strange, thinking that we probably won’t be back there again; certainly we won’t any time soon. And that’s true of lots of things.

I’m going to miss my baristas at Hastings Hardback Coffee Café – the top-rated Hastings café in the country, and for good reason. I’m going to miss my friends at Wildwood, and playing piano there. I’m going to miss my current job. I probably won’t miss Oklahoma weather or drivers, but it will nonetheless be strange to leave behind this place I’ve called home the past seven years and some change.

There’s more to say – not least about our new love for Doctor Who – but I’ve gone on long enough and I’ve that little 2-mile run yet to do tonight. Grace and peace to all who read.