Baby it’s cold outside

This week Pittsburgh saw its first snow flurries. For us, nothing accumulated, but it was exciting/surreal to see it this early on in October. Time to get out those hats and mittens that Ben will be able to fit into this year.

Currently Ben in sleeping, which frees up the time to type. Most of his days are spent cruising around our house. He has moved on from crawling, when near any piece of furniture. He now stands himself up and walks along our couch, fireplace, chairs, beds, rockers, you name it, he’s tried it, yes even the bin (garbage can). He loves people and especially other children, which is good since we are on campus a lot with all the other families. It also helps when we serve at Alpha. Our small group is helping out at St. Philip’s for a little while with their Alpha program and Ben seems to love all the attention from the older children there. They are all sooo good with him, and I’m sure he loves all the snuggles he gets from the adults. Yesterday it was precious to see the other toddlers “looking after him” and making sure he had some toys to share as well. Very sweet.

Reading Week has just ended here at Trinity and that allowed us a different routine than what we normally live. It also allowed Dave to get in his training for shift supervisor at Starbucks. His store has such a great group of people that work really well together. Saturday a lot of us went bowling together, and Dave and I enjoyed our time with them. I especially enjoyed getting to actually chat with his co-workers and bond with them more than my usual, which goes something like, “Grande vanilla latte, please.”

The whole atmosphere at this particular Starbucks is quite different to the others I’ve been accustomed to. I know Starbucks works towards having their stores be the “third place,” but the other stores I’ve frequented never had what this one has. Here everyone knows your name, and not just mine, since I’m a spouse of a co-worker. They know their regulars. They know their drinks. They even name some of the drinks after their regulars. Maybe this is common at a lot of other stores, but not the ones I’ve been to. Maybe it helps that this Starbucks has been in its community for over a decade. I don’t know. I do know that after spending time there, a lot of time there, and observing people that this truly is their 3rd place.