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!

As Of Lately...

The holiday time of year is always a busy one for everyone. It can be especially busy for those involved in church and the ministers!

This has been a fun semester for me because I have been a part of the holiday ensemble at church! We've been practicing all semester for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the weeks in between. Music has been a huge part of my life for so long. It was in 5th grade that I tried out for and made my first real choir. Sure, I'd been in church things before but that was the first time I had to try out and got to be a part of the 5th grade Honor Choir at Burlington Elementary. Since then, I've found so much joy in reading, learning, and preforming music. This is the first time I've been really involved in music since we've been married so it's been fun to introduced Tyler to this very serious side of me. I might take church choir a little too seriously, but music is a huge passion of mine that I've been neglecting for years. Anyway, we helped lead worship and preformed some songs for our Thanksgiving worship service. It was exhausting but I loved every second of indulging in this passion of mine! I don't want the holidays to end because I want to keep on singing. 

On December 8th we had the pleasure of throwing a Christmas party for our amazing youth group sponsors! We've seriously been blessed with incredible leaders. They've made this transition so great for us. Not only are they our sponsors but I truly consider them our friends too! It was my first time to throw a party for a group of people like this before. Let me tell you- I loved every second of it! I love being able to devote my time and energy to people who make my life better. When we were doing ministry while I was in school I was not able to devote as much as I wanted to to celebrating people we love... so this was so exciting to me. It wasn't a huge or elaborate party but I loved baking, cooking, and decorating. December 8th was also our 5 year dating anniversary! Our sponsors should feel so lucky to have spent it with us! We also spent an evening with our lovely students for a Christmas party. We ate a lot, had a white elephant gift time, and got to hang out and have fun.

We took another adventure to San Francisco to finish up our Christmas shopping. Last time we drove, parked, and walked. This time we decided to try out the public transportation and let me say, we liked that much better! It was much less stressful and quite a bit cheaper to take the train in from Pleasanton. We did still do a lot of walking, but that was because walking in big cities is one of the best ways to really take it in. There's plenty of easy and cheap public transportation, so I have to say that I think it's the better way to do the city if you don't anticipate doing things in every single part of the city. We did accomplish our shopping needs which was very exciting! We also finally found some good California themed ornaments, which I've been searching for for months!

Now that the parties are done, we've got just a little more time before we head to Oklahoma to see our families for Christmas! To say we are excited is an understatement. We can't wait to hug our parents, siblings, and especially those sweet little kids in our lives that are growing much to quickly! We love Tracy, but I'm excited to be in home, sweet 'Homa so very soon! 

Songs That Take You Back

It's no secret that I love all reality singing shows. Luckily I've pulled Tyler on board and he enjoys watching them now. Last week we even made our list of the order in which we thought XFactor contests would place-now that's a game I can get in to!

There's a contestant on The Voice that has been my favorite partially because of her voice, partially because of her song selections. She sings everything I loved about high school! Her name is Cassadee Pope and I can't wait to someday buy her album. This week I was looking forward to watching her as normal but she sang a song that took me straight back to Highway 169 on April 4th, 2006.

The day before was the day my father had his stroke. I had been at work at the time of that awful phone call, was sent home from work to an empty home and promptly went to stay with my second family, the Killions, as it was too late for me to drive to the hospital in Tulsa. One of the worst parts about that night was that Cathy didn't know what had happened by the time I got there so I had to verbalize what had happened just a couple hours after I found out. There's nothing more awful than saying something painful out loud for the first time.

The next day I went to school as normal and at 1:30 I would have had off season volleyball practice. So I went and told my coach what had happened and asked kindly if I could go ahead and miss practice so I could go to the hospital. He thought I was crazy for showing up and sent me on my way. In school they don't teach you protocol for life events like this. Just a couple days before, the newest Rascal Flatts cd came out. I had purchased it and hadn't listened yet so I popped it in before driving to Tulsa, with the hope that this cd would lift my spirits a little.

Cue waterworks. The very first song on the cd was called "Stand". I had already begun driving to Tulsa and I'm hearing these lyrics that were way too appropriate for that moment in my life. Cause when push comes to shove, you taste what you're made of. Everything about my life had changed in a moment. When Cassadee started singing, I was taken back to that exact time when I first heard this song, just like every time I hear it. Starting from that day, life changed a lot. I can look back now and see how true that song can be if you choose to not let life smother you and keep you down.

I think everyone has songs that take them back to that date, time, and place that something happened. I love these songs, I love it every time, no matter if it was a painful or a beautiful experience. Honestly, even the most painful ones can be the most beautiful ones if you don't let it ruin you.

I want to say it was some time during my freshman year of college, maybe sophomore. My parents, Lydia, James, and I went to the Rascal Flatts concert in Tulsa. You can imagine the moment I had when they started singing Stand with my father sitting just a few seats down from me, alive, Standing every day and not letting the happenings of life ruin him, along with the rest of our family. Each time I hear that song I am taken back to remember just how far we've come.

Every time you get up and get back in the race, one more small piece of you starts to fall into place.

First Holiday Away

Tomorrow will be the very first major holiday that Tyler and I will spend far from our families. I keep wondering to myself, when will it set in that we won't be with our families when they gather to feast and enjoy each other? Well, I think it's easy for me to look at it differently this year.

We've been experiencing somewhat of an unintended newlywed stage. Since moving into the house here and unpacking and re-figuring life out together, it's really been blissful. Ya know, like those first few months of living with your husband or wife. I've found myself laughing harder in the last month than I have in a long time... mostly at the ridiculous things Tyler says. Our first year of marriage was a blast, and if it was the hardest year of our marriage like "they" say, then we're in for an easy ride. Our second year was great as well, just a little less normal, obviously. So now that we are on our own again, it's like relearning how much we thoroughly enjoy life together while living in a sense of normalcy again.

So here's how it is for me this year: being far from our families this year is super sad and I'm definitely counting down the days til we are home for Christmas (33 days!), but it's quite exciting to get to spend this holiday in our own way. One of the fun things about marriage is getting to establish tradition or even just get to start our things for our own family.

It helps that we have such a great church family here! I love having this family and people are so great about taking care of us! We had so many invites for Thanksgiving, so there was never a chance we'd be "alone". So we will be spending our Thanksgiving with some of our new family, and I couldn't be happier. I'll miss the crazy noise level of my parent's house, all the kids causing pandemonium, and looking around being thankful that my sister's are the ones that get to take them home (the best part of being an aunt right!?).

So maybe later on, after Christmas or some other time, it will hit me how far away we are from our families and how much we miss them... But right now we are still living the life we prayed for for over a year. It really is bliss for us. It definitely helps to soften the blow of not seeing our families very often. But this year, my biggest thanks to God is that he provides time and time again. I never know how he will provide, what it will actually look like, but I know it will happen. He's never let us down. This year he's blessed us big time with our life here in Tracy.

San Francisco!

Something I have wanted to do every since we moved here was go to San Francisco for the day. It's not a long drive (that is at the right time. It seems like half the days here are considered rush hour) so luckily we can take a day to go.

 This past Friday, November 9th, we finally got to do so! Since it was my first time to spend an extended period in the beautiful city we decided to start with the touristy spots. I didn't take a ton of pictures at everything we did, but I did take a lot of pictures at the Golden Gate Bridge. My oldest niece, Grace, learned about the GGB at her school around the time we were moving to California. It was super fun that she would know even just the smallest thing about the area we are moving to. One of the saddest parts of leaving our nieces and nephews is the idea that maybe they won't understand where we are after being so close for awhile. So it brings me a little joy to know she kind of knows where we are. Whether or not she realizes how far away California is, is a whole different question!

We decided we'd choose where to start based on the weather. We knew it could rain in the late afternoon, we also wanted to avoid the fog that we encountered the last time we went to the bridge (on a brief stop in SF). As soon as we were getting in to Oakland, we got a view of the bay and realized it would be best to go straight to the bridge since it was clear.

First, though, I had to take a picture while crossing the Bay Bridge. I had a conversation with my mother regarding whether or not all the big bridges here were scary so I wanted to show her how big they are. Driving over the bridges around the bay isn't scary because they are so big, it feels like a normal road! And they are so big you barely see water close to you.

 Here you go, Grace! This is the big bridge you've studied. I can't wait til you come see it for yourself!

View of the bay.

View of San Francisco from the bridge.

Tyler and I on a Pier close to Pier 39.

The famous sea lions that hang out at Pier 39.

Taking a quick break at Ghiradelli Square.

I found some beach area! And there were people swimming in this little area. They were crazy. It was freezing outside and I bet the water was a thousand times worse. They must have been training for something.

View of the Golden Gate Bridge from a pier.

Alcatraz

Last view of San Francisco from a pier.

It was a super fun day of just walking around, being outside, and getting a feel for San Francisco. We did stop and have some fish for lunch. Walking around Fisherman's Wharf with that smell of delicious fresh fish, I could not resist! We drove through some parts I'd really love to go back to! We did drive ourselves. I think next time I'd like to take the train to see if it's less stressful when you don't have to worry about parking or driving in the craziness that big cities can be. I'm known as the long distance driver in the family, Tyler handles the cities. I'd go crazy driving in all that! The downside to taking the train would be a little less freedom. But big cities have such good public transportation, so I don't think it'd be too bad!

Well, that's our latest adventure!

Unplanned Event

On September 21st we encountered something that was not in our plan. We had just moved into our house so we were working on getting a lot of things taken care of like painting, getting bills switched over to our names, and of course the wonderful process of unpacking. So on our way to finally buying the official paint we would use to paint our bedroom, we were in a car accident. 

We were stopped at a stoplight, traffic was backed up quite a bit. The car behind us came to a stop and a few moments later we heard a crash, then heard and felt a second crash. Another car did not see that there was a long line of cars stopped in front of them so while they were going probably 40 miles per hour, they slammed into the car behind us, who hit us, and we hit the car in front of us. I was basically a mess considering this was the first bigger accident I've ever been in, and we had only lived here a month, and been in our own home for just days. 

Our car was pretty damaged but definitely driveable the way it was while we waited for insurance to take care of things. The annoying part about this was that we sold my car prior to moving out west so for around a month we had to drive our poor damaged car around until insurance let us get our car in the shop and get a rental. It took a month for the insurance of the driver who caused the accident to get things to where we could get it fixed. Thankfully, two of our small group leaders for students work at a collision center in town so we knew where we could take it and know it would be well taken care of. This turned out to be a bigger blessing than we necessarily knew it would be at the time. 

This has held us up on quite a few things like getting our car tagged in California and getting some insurance things figured out. That has annoyed me a lot because I am so ready to be all settled and have everything switched over to California! So, that's the story of our car accident. There's a lot more I could tell but it's unnecessary. What is necessary to say is that we finally got our car back yesterday! It only took about 41 days to get it fixed and back to us thanks to how quickly insurance moves (or...not so quick!) But I can't say enough about how well we've been taken care of by the collision center, so for any Tracyites reading, I would definitely recommend Cook's Collision should you ever need it, and hopefully you won't! God really blessed us and protected us throughout the whole situation, leaving us without having to pay a single penny and had great work done on our car.