The new and improved website is up for yours truly! Check outmy new blog to stay up on the latest in my life.
I know I have been horrible lately with updating, but this webhost has been really un user-friendly.
So here’s to getting back in the blog-o-sphere!
“I thought it was the rapture”
Someone telling my mother what they thought when the earthquake hit the midwest yesterday…..
This past Sunday Aaron and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary. 6 YEARS! It really doesn’t seem that long ago that we had our tornado siren interrupted ceremony, crazy weather, and amazing time with our friends and family!
Life with Aaron has been a crazy, wild, and amazing ride and I can’t imagine going through all of it with anyone else! We enjoyed a nice weekend in a cabin in Indiana with my family this past weekend. It was so nice to just relax and have no responsibilities (outside of cooking duties, Holly and I got to flex our cooking muscles this weekend and my breakfast casserole was a hit!)
Aaron and I are going to Boston over Easter Break. I am so excited to get 4 days away and to see one of my favorite cities! I haven’t been since college and I am so excited to go back and see several of our friends! I love that I have friends all over the country and great places to visit. Aaron is staying over an extra week to spend time with our friends at Reunion and Forefront. I am so jealous and hate the constraints of allotted “vacation time”. Even though it will be work related for him, it always seems like his job is more fun!
This has been a week with unique experiences for me. I have to say I am really enjoying life at the moment. I also realized this week that I used to blog a lot more than I do now. I am going to try to be more intentional in blogging again.
In my new job I work with Barge Fleeting, recruiting deckhands. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to take a ride on one of our boats and see how they turn a barge and load a barge. It is amazing how they turn these large structures through a tight canal space using ropes to control and guide.
Also this week, God have us the opportunity to make some new friends. As many people know we went through a pretty traumatic year in ministry in 2006. As we have worked through everything, I have felt like God was going to use our situation to help other ministry couples. Through a series of mutual friends and outright strange coincidences, we had the opportunity to spend an evening with Neil and Brandi, a ministry couple in the area who have an eerily similar ministry experience. We were able to share “war stories” our passion for the Church and helping people find their way back to God in spite of the ugliness we have seen over the years, and the opportunity to pray for each other and our ministries. It was a great evening, and I look forward to meeting with them again!
In weird news, I have a stalker in the small river town I work in. Yesterday I was sent out to drop off a UPS package and pick up our company’s mail at the local post office. When I get to my car outside the post office a car had stopped for what I assumed was to take my parking spot (even though they were making it quite difficult for me to get out). A late 40s, early 50s year old man comes to my window and I roll it down. He asks me if he just saw me at Chipain’s (where I dropped off the UPS) and I said I had just been there. And he says, “and now I see you at the post office. I think we should be friends.” Oh and I forgot to note he was French with a rather heavy accent. He then proceeds to ask me what I do on the weekends, and I tell him I am not from around here. He then says, “well, when could we meet.” And I said, “it would have to be a chance encounter like this.” He seemed to be ok with my answer walked away from the car and gets in his car, but not before leering and by this point I am fearful he is going to try and follow me! I made it to the office safely, but you can bet I am going to keep my eyes peeled for older model Black Mitsubishi Endeavors.
Today I ran 2 miles on the treadmill! I can’t tell you the last time I did that. Let’s just say maybe 10 years! I am trying to get back into shape and keep up with the incredible shrinking man known as my husband, Aaron. He has already lost 50 pounds!!!!
I gave up shopping for lent. A couple weeks ago we attended a Generosity conference at church and for a break out session I attended the debt reduction class. I took on the challenge of trying to see if we can live off my income and use Aaron’s salary towards debt reducation and savings. I am so mad because we squandered away months of splitting the bills, so i hope to make the most of these last few months. My giving up shopping will also help me keep my spending in check. Since debt is the reason I don’t feel as free to be generous with our resources when Aaron would give it all away if her could, I am hoping to get our debt down and the abolished, so I can feel as generous as he is!
I am so over winter. It seems to snow every day here. We go to Florida for the Exponential Conference in April, and I can’t wait to be somewhere warm!
My newest obsession at work is Pandora. Check it out!
After several months of “am I going to lose my job?” stress and frustrations, an opportunity was given to me right after Thanksgiving for a new position in HR in a different, smaller division in our company a little closer to home. I applied and was offered the job and accepted right before Christmas, an early Christmas present to myself! So I now have job security for these next few months, will have the ability to learn new skills, and an entire industry I know nothing about, river transportation. Ask me in a couple of months, and I will be able to tell you all about the marine operations of tug boats! The most amazing thing is yet again, God provided for us by giving me a small raise with this move. We are still $5000 short in what we need for Aaron’s salary, and God has continued to provide in little raises here and there for me. This is my third raise since we moved! Another super cool thing about my new job is that I get to wear jeans to work everyday! I will get my suits dry-cleaned and then they get to move to the back of the closet until the move this summer.
Aaron and I were talking at lunch today about how excited we are to see 2007 fade into memory. It was a roller coaster year for us. The loss of a job for Aaron in the most painful of ways, the questions or what God wanted us to do next, the HUGE step out in faith to plop down a huge chunk of our own money to be psycho analyzed at CPAC to see if this dream we felt God had planted in our hearts was to become a reality. Then we moved to Naperville, and have been loved on and blessed by the greatest people and one of the most exciting churches to be a part of. Then I had job drama, where we were unsure how everything would end up, and God pulled through yet again. We found and fell in love with the city of San Francisco, and in 2008 and we taking another leap of faith and moving there to continue following God’s dream and ours to plant a church in a city that so desperately needs to find its way back to God.
So hear’s to 2008. A new job, a new city, and an exciting new journey!
Happy New Year!!!!
My coworker received a call from a hiring manager today who conducted a phone interview with a candidate she submitted. This is a true story.
This guy went to the bathroom TWICE and flushed! He also repeatedly said “you hate me don’t you?”
In other random news I learned yesterday what questions to ask if someone calls in a bomb threat at work…
Where is it?
When will it go off?
Why are you doing this?
Who are you?
You also are supposed to note things like tone of voice, approx age, communication skills, background noises, accent and so on. so my statement could be as follows….
“The caller was a male about 33 with a pleasant tone and excellent communication skills! He had an out of town accent and I heard animal noises in the background.”
Saturday Aaron and I went into the city to see Wicked and celebrate my birthday. The show was amazing! It was my first broadway play and I was just blown away by the set design and the performances! While everyone was excited to see Elphema, Glenda totally stole the show for me!
Then we walked around the city, something we also did a couple weeks ago. I just love going into the city. It is such an amazing city! We ended up eating dinner at the Melting Pot. It is a delicious fondue restaurant and I highly recommend it!
I am very excited for this Thanksgiving break. I get off at 2 tomorrow and then working from home for a half day on Friday. I need the break. The stress of work (do I have a job? do I not have a job?) is starting to take its toll on me.
In other news… we went up north last night to celebrate our good friend Matt McClane’s birthday. It was great seeing our old friends and catching up with our former students. It is amazing how we have been away from there for over two years and we are still so connected to the people there. I love how that works!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
My boss is no longer my boss and as I type I am preparing to spend two days at Corporate putting in face time with my new interim boss while they try to figure out what to do with me and the rest of the members of my team. Please keep us in your prayers as some of us (those of us who work in Chicago) are nervous that the new regime will not be as readily open to having telecommuting employees.
Please also keep me in your prayers that if I do in fact lose my job, that rather than get depressed and hopeless, I will be able to see it as an opportunity by God to really go after what I want to do with me life (whatever that is!) : )
In other news…I have officially entered into my final year as a twentysomething. Aaron surprised me with flowers and tickets to see Wicked! We are going on the 17th and I am so very excited!
Well off to pack….
