My Everyday Life

So not a lot has been going on lately. Mostly my days consist of doing things to get my house ready for my parents (and hopefully brother!) to come visit in March. But when we were home for Christmas I got a lot of the same questions from people. What's living in California like? How's the church? Are you finally feeling settled? And probably the biggest question: Where are you working?

Since graduating college, Tyler and I did a lot of soul searching for myself. I know what I'm passionate about, but I also know that grown-up life comes with bills and perhaps my passions weren't going to get me a huge paycheck.

The problem with this is that I always thought I have to work. When thinking about getting a job I pictured the countless jobs that I felt were jobs I'd never want to go back to. The food industry and retail have burnt me out on their respectful categories and I was dreading having to get just another job I didn't truly care about and would leave me unfulfilled as usual. I've only had two jobs I wouldn't have minded staying at forever- my job at Ozark and at the optical! For the year we lived at home I had the pleasure of finally having a job I enjoyed and looked forward to everyday! Half of this was because of the people I worked for -it was easy to work for great bosses! The other half was that I did truly find the job interesting and liked working with the types of customers we got. But part of following Tyler's calling to work out here in Tracy, it meant leaving that job. I'm still SO thankful I got to have that experience.

But a part of moving out here meant I'd get a break from working. I've been working hard since I was 17 and I was in need of a break! So a lot of people question what I do all day, how I fill my time, so I thought I'd share with you what I'm passionate about and how it fills my days.

I never pictured myself as a "housewife". But truly, my greatest joy and passion is taking care of our home and taking care of Tyler so that he can focus on his ministry and helping lead students to Christ. It may sound super cheesy but this is what I LOVE doing- it's how I love spending my days! I haven't really found myself "bored" at all in the 5 months we've been here. I'm still working on getting our home just right and keeping track of our lives. I take care of our home so that when Tyler comes home from anything, he gets to relax and unwind from the effects of ministry.

But I also spend my time in the ministry as well. I go to most youth events and help lead the high school girls small group. I've been leading small groups for awhile and I love being in the lives of students! I also recently joined a Bible Study on a couple mornings a month and I'm so very excited about that. So this is a little picture of what I'm doing with my days. I love having a break from working outside the home, it's bringing me a lot of joy to finally be doing what I enjoy and not get stressed out by things that I'm not passionate about!

Like I said, I never pictured that this is what I would long to do- to stay at home. But it truly is where God led us and if I need to work again someday- soon or in the distant future- I'll be happy to. But for now, I'm thoroughly enjoying my break!

Goodbye 2012

Here's a quick look at our 2012! It was a really great year, but I'm happy to see what 2013 brings to us!

We spent a ton of time with our favorite people while we lived in Oklahoma:

Graham's 1st birthday!

We went to many Driller's games with family to enjoy the cool Oklahoma evenings. By cool I mean only 95 degrees.

We got to go to an Elks game in Arkansas!

We spent great time at Grand Lake with my family for a few days.

My brother, Joel, got to come for the lake trip. It's always a blessing to see him. But hey, now I live a lot closer to him so hopefully I'll get to go see where he lives for once!

Us at the botanical gardens in OKC.

We spent our 2nd Anniversary in Oklahoma City. We had such a fun trip. The Thunder were in the NBA finals so there was a fun buzz around town and we got to watch a game at BJ's with a ton of fans. We also went to the OKC bombing memorials and museum which was a moving experience. I'm glad we finally did this as we've both lived in Oklahoma for a long time, but had never gone there.

We spent Easter with our families at our church in Owasso.

I accomplished something I never thought I'd do. I ran a 10k race with my sister Elizabeth, while Lydia ran a half marathon at the same time. I loved this experience and hope to run another race sometime soon!

Tyler and I ran the Mission 5k with our church in Owasso. This was a fun thing to do because 2011's Mission 5k was our first race ever and it was awesome to run 2012's race after working hard to achieve some of our weight loss goals!

Tyler was ordained in August and we were sent out by our families and churches.

We loaded everything from our storage unit into a truck to make the trek out to Cali!

We had a great 4 day trip out to Cali with some fun stops along the way. We took our time and it was a super fun road trip.

We moved to Tracy, California! 1,693 miles from my parents home where we lived.

We began renting a cute house and finally got to unpack all the stuff I'd been missing for the last year!

We explored Silicon Valley, and accomplished a dream of Tyler's to go to the Apple Headquarters.

We accomplished a dream of mine to go to a Stanford volleyball game. And we got a huge surprise when they brought out Kerri Walsh-Jennings to retire her jersey. Huge dream come true for me!

We finally got to celebrate Christmas in our new home.

We did a lot of exploring San Francisco and have enjoyed every second of the awesome location we live in!

We got to spend a great week with our families for Christmas! It was so refreshing to go home and share our lives with our families for awhile.

Not to mention we got to go to a great OSU basketball game!

What a great blessing 2012 was! We went through some challenges as we continued to wait on God's plan for our lives. We had great friends and family in Oklahoma that helped us move forward in our lives. I can't say enough about the faithfulness of God. I am so excited as we turn the page in to 2013 that I don't have to wonder when God is going to provide the right church to join. But I am totally excited to see what he brings us this year! If you would have told me as I wrote my 2011 blog last year that this year I'd be writing from Tracy, CA I never, ever would have believed you. It's a blessing to be here and I'm thrilled to see what God does with us in Tracy this year!