LIFE LATELY

T-MINUS 59 DAYS!!

This blog has been fun to keep in touch with people all over the country...some friends or family or Mike's that I have never met and some of my friends or family he hasn't met. Hopefully we can keep this updated enough so you feel like you know us both! Here's what life has looked like lately - things that we're involved in and passionate about.

* Engedi Church - our church family are some of the coolest, selfless, fun people we know. Sunday mornings happen to be one of our favorite times of the week - and getting involved in various service projects during the week extends the notion of 'community' even further.

* CABLE group - we have a group of young couples from our church, headed by our fearless (and awesome) leaders, the Lalos. We've really enjoyed hanging out with them and especially eating Chef Gil's yummy food. :)

* Workin' Out - apart from being our JOB, our downtime is often filled with putting our preaching into practice (most of the time, it's fun, but believe me, it's also takes effort to keep at it each week!). You can find Mike at the gym lifting every morning at 6:30am and cycling his heart out all over town and Jess running, swimming, cycling and lifting. A regular routine of ours is hitting the trails or stairs to spice things up a bit. We have some races this summer (triathlons and running and, for Mike, CycloCross in the fall) - and we are planning on doing an Adventure Race (check out THE RAGE) in late September.

* Monday Night Rides (MNR) - Monday evenings are occasional 35-mile group bike rides, zooming through Holland, Saugatuck, Fennville and back.

* Tuesday Night Rides (TNR) - Tuesday evenings, we join up with other Velo City Cycles groupies for a 27-ish mile ride. It usually consists of me watching Mike take the lead helping pull the group and me using all my power trying to keep up whilst having girl-talk with my friend and fellow-rider, Kelly Slagh. I think the guys sometimes wished we'd be a little more focused, haha!

* Kids Hope - this past year, I've joined up (through Engedi Church) with Waukazoo Elementary and spend an hour every Wednesday with my buddy, Noah. Noah is in 3rd grade and I've gotten to know him and his friends pretty well. Who knew playing Football, Star Wars, Guess Who, and MatchBox Cars would be such a highlight of my week?!
* Memberships and Committees - Mike is working hard on his National Strength and Conditioning Association certification and I'm involved in Hope College's H-Club Board and continuing education for my NSCA certification.

* Marriage, Wedding and Housing Prep - holy cow, this takes up every spare moment we might have. It sure if fun, though! We have both been intentional about enjoying this stage and inviting the Lord into the process. Whether it's from house searches, to closing on the house (yay!) to filling out insurance forms, meeting with our accountant, getting quotes for flooring to designing invitations to totaling 10 hrs in Bed Bath and Beyond registering (another story for another time!), we're trying to soak up this engagement thing as much as possible. It's been an interesting change of the vibe of our daily life, but has brought us closer and I love that!

*Oh yea, the WORK thing. ;) This has certainly taken up the most of our time - Valeo/Personal Training, LLC is going great and Mike has recently joined me full-time with the business! Go Team Luepke! :) My schedule is currently near-booked and I'm able to give more and more referrals to him to get his schedule filled up. He's already gained 4 more clients in the past couple weeks, has another consult tomorrow and we're already working on what it looks like in the future to continue cultivating Valeo. We are also pursuing our Juice Plus selling, a product we are passionate about for both performance and general health. We are praying and trusting that the Lord will continue to provide as we are faithful to him!

*Family! Where would we be without Mom and Dad Luepke, Regan, Mom and Dad Oo, Brookie, Tim, Teagan, Skeeter, Andrea, Tara, Mark, Myles and Ezra?! We love our family so much; our best times are those spent with them.

Did I forget anything?! (Probably) But that's the scoop of a typical week in a nutshell!

*More posts coming soon (with fun pics!) about the house project! :) Stay tuned!