More catching up.....

We've been living in California now for a little over a month. It's very different from the East Coast but I'm sure in time we'll grow to love it. In the first few weeks here we had some exciting times that we haven't had a chance to share yet. Matt's sister Jessie was here for the first few days after our move, so the three of us went into the city to explore. Matt and I also went into the city to go on a tour of his school which was really neat, and then we celebrated our first anniversary together where Matt surprised me with a night out at Lake Tahoe. It was a very special night for me because I spent a summer there with Campus Crusade for Christ and it was the greatest summer of my life (aside from the one where I got married!!). We visited the cabins that I lived in, and the resort that I worked at and enjoyed the beautiful mountains, blue lake, and weather.

So below are some pictures of these things. I'm hoping I eventually can catch up to where we are expecting the baby. :-) Everytime I look at that little ticker thing at the bottom of the blog I am SHOCKED. 45 days, 30 days, 16 days......1 day???!! whew. Good thing no one tells the babies about the "due dates". ;-)



A shot of some cool San Francisco row houses.






Jessie and I eating some good Thai food!












A view of Haight St. where we spent our afternoon walking around before saying goodbye to Jessie the next morning :-(
Matt works on installing us a ceiling fan. It took a really long time and since there was no current fixture in the ceiling, it involved Matt crawling through insulation in the attic to make sure the spot was properly reinforced. Matt got to use our new tools that we got as wedding presents!! It is sooooo nice having a fan now!! Especially when you feel like a whale and are hot all the time.

Pregnancy shot! It's time....do you think he's ready to come out??








































Hey Jess... cool huh?? And it's got Matt's school logo in the background. These flags are hung all over the city designating the University buildings. They joke about whether the Academy of Art can take over San Francisco before Starbucks does.
It was really great for us to see Matt's school though. We met with the head of the photography graduate program and were able to see all the buildings and some of the classrooms that Matt would be in. We saw darkrooms and printing areas and computer labs that look like Mac advertisements. It looks like the equipment will be great and Matt has been very excited!

These last few shots are from our 2 days in Tahoe. It was a great, relaxing time. So nice to be back in a place I love so much!

Moving into our new House...

Here are some pictures of the few days we were moving into our new house and some pictures of the carpet getting replaced (another 2 weeks later). I'll try to post some pictures soon of what the house actually looks like now (very different).



Eating area (kitchen is off to the right), with a few chairs and LOTS of packed up wedding presents that we got to unpack for the first time!!! It's been like Christmas for the last month!!







Our kitchen, notice the dark insets in the cabinets....this is our pleather. mmmm pleather. Definitely the first thing we saw when we saw the kitchen of this house. It was cut out by the owners and superglued, yes, superglued to the cabinets. This was the FIRST thing that we said we would change when we moved in. The property manager said she was amazed the previous tenants lived with it, and that they had planned on changing it right away too.

One month later... We're thinking we like pleather. See you get used to it. Even though it is peeling off. But then, you look underneath and see all that superglue, and think about new school, new job, new baby and wonder just how much work you are going to put into a house that you are renting.
Old Family room, before new couches and new carpet and the big chair moving upstairs.
Lots and lots of boxes in the dining room. All of this is unpacked now and there is nothing in the dining room except the baby's pack and play. These curtains (all over the bottom floor of the house) are the second thing that Matt and I have given up on. We were sure that we were going to find an alternative as soon as we moved in, because they are OLD and DIRTY and UGLY, but now the Lord has opened our eyes and we can see that they are FUCTIONAL, and FREE. :-) my new favorite words!
New carpet time!!
Here Matt is, relaxing on our family room furniture in the kitchen! We moved everything into the kitchen for most of the day and slowly drove ourselves insane trying to figure out things to do while we were sitting and waiting.
An idea of what the carpet looked like before it was replaced. The stairs were, by far, the worst, but the rest of the house wasn't great either. It was pretty ratty and dirty and gross. I'm glad our little one won't be learning to crawl and walk on this gross stuff!

Visiting Kansas

After 2 days of westward travel, Matt and Jessie and Mocha and I arrived in Kansas to visit with Becky and Tyler and Eve!! If only our new little one is as sweet and cute as Eve is!!



































Really the best part for me was getting to visit with Becky! It's great to know that friends aren't ever farther away ,than the effort you put into the friendship. I'm so glad we got to visit with the Riders!!

Headed out...

Here are some pictures of our trip out west. Just before we left to come out to CA we had a great visit at Matt's house with his Grandpa and his wife, and I had a baby shower!! I don't have any shower pictures to share yet, but I've included some of the Beardsley's visit and our trip.


Matt and his mom pack up our truck.













Great Salt Lake!

Back Blogs

Ahhh.... the joys of blogging catch-up. Well to avoid reliving the entire summer, (and just get to the stuff everyone is interested in like pictures of our place in CA, and baby updates) I am just going to post a few pictures and throw in some updates of what we have been doing since we moved back into the country. In July we got to visit with my family for the 4th of July. We went up to see them right after our housing search in CA and spent great time with family and visited the Baltimore Inner Harbor. We were in Harrisonburg for the night where we stayed with our wonderful friends the Karunakarans and went to a baby shower for Elisa Forshey, which Suprise! was also a shower for me hosted by Laura Carpenter. The next day we were off to the beach in South Carolina with Matt's family for a week where we concluded the fun at the wedding of one of the Beardsley family's closest friends, daughter. (I hope that made sense) Matt and I then had a short week in Asheville before it was time for the cross-country move. I'll stop there and let you enjoy the pictures from these events before going on. phew!

One Stamp

Hello All,

Yesterday, Laurie and I celebrated our first Wedding Anniversary! It's been quite a year.

We've worked together for the church, traveled together to several exciting new places, celebrated holidays together, said goodbye together to a loved one who passed on, and said hello to new babies together. We've tried to raise a cat together, learned together that we were going to have a baby of our own, moved internationally together, driven across the country together, and set up a new, California house together.

This first year has been a blessing for us both. We've learned so much, and have so much to look forward to. Thank you everyone who has supported us this first year!

Carpeteros

Hey Y'all,
Today, Laurie and I are chillin in the kitchen, with furniture piled around while the friendly carpet people give our house brand new, baby friendly floor cover. It's one more step to being fully up and running in our new West Coast Base of Operation. We're happy to say that the baby is doing A-OK. We've also found a really interesting church to be part of. It looks like even though we've left Chile, we're still on a Hot Mission Field. Check out All Nations Presbyterian Church at

http://www.allnationsoakland.com/

Thanks for reading. Many Blessings!

Here we are at the Bay Area B-B-Q Cookoff! That big billboard-looking thing in the background is one of Texas's booths. It was some good eatin!



And our cozy new livingroom. You can see the kitchen in the background... and snazzy new sofas of course.



Now, a few pictures from our big road trip a couple weeks ago.... geeze it's a big country... Thanks JEZ, You Rock!