What's happenin'?

A whole lot, but not much blog-worthy. Life has settled into it's normal "school-year" routine for us. Despite the fact that we don't have kids, the years seems to break up into semesters and summers for us. Our fall "semester" looks like this: Sunday is church of course, and our church has added an evening service (which we have yet to attend, but would like to soon). Monday brings a meeting at church (every other week) during the day for me, and Christmas choir practice (yes, I said CHOIR!) for me and BSF (Bible Study Fellowship) for Tyler in the evening. Tuesdays find me at church once again helping with childcare during the day, and it is $1 day at the local movie theater, so we are often found sitting in front of a screen on Tuesday nights (hey, you can barely RENT movies for $2 total, let alone see them in a theater!). Wednesdays are my days to work out and do things at home (clean, grocery shop, do laundry, etc.). Thursdays and Fridays I am at work all day. Saturdays vary in activities, but include diving, hanging with friends, RedBox movies, and home projects. Throw in some babysitting here and there, and some fun outings once in a while, and that is my life. Like I said, a lot going on, but none of it very blog-worthy.

I am already counting down the days til Christmas...54....even though we're not heading home this year. That is sad, but Christmas always makes me happy :)

Tonight we are meeting some friends for Ethiopian food. It has been too long! My tummy is growling in anticipation :)

Our computer, lovingly named "the Beast," died last week. So, we had to resurrect "Old Faithful" from almost 5 years ago. After a few days of waiting 2 minutes (grrrr!) for applications to open, we ordered a shiny, new quad-core computer. It will be here in 2 weeks. Let's hope we can keep our sanity for that long (remember the days when we thought Oregon Trail on DOS was super fast and cool?!)

I will be 27 in less than a month. That makes me feel old. On the up-side, whenever people ask how old I am and I tell them, they never believe me. I guess my name was very aptly chosen (you can google that one if you want more information).

We have officially taken a break from house-hunting. This made me sad as well, but through several circumstances, we both came to the conclusion that to keep pushing forward in this area, would be doing what WE wanted to do, not what God was telling us to do. So, we will be renting for at least another 6 months and see what happens from there. I must admit, it's been nice not being on the rollercoaster of "I love this house, I hope we get this house, this house is perfect for us, we didn't get the house AGAIN, *cry,* do we need to stop looking at houses, oh look at this house, I love this house...

There's some random tidbits about what's been happenin'. Maybe THIS time I will be better about keeping up with this thing :)

Just a few...

...things I love about Washington...

Snoqualmie Falls

Snow


The Ocean

Mt Rainier



The sea creatures

The kids

The sunsets

P.S.

This blanket is not for me ;) Sorry if I got your hopes up...

Sewing project!!

I finished my first (well, second, but the first was YEARS ago!) sewing project today! It's a little taggy blanket for a baby, about 14"X13". It turned out so cute (I think)!! It was a lot of fun, too. And my machine worked great. Good investment, I think...

Four years

That's how long Tyler and I have been married! Which means, we've actually been "together" for 8! That's a third of my life! But I have loved so much being with him and just knowing that he will be there always. I look forward to the next 60 years (or however long God gives us together). To celebrate our anniversary, we....watched a soccer game! Woohoo! Well, that's not completely true...we did watch a soccer game, and it was on our anniversary, but it was only because we had decided to celebrate this past weekend, instead of on a Tuesday. So, Saturday, we loaded up, drove about 2 hours up north, and went to Tulip Town. I have been wanting to get up there since we moved out here almost 3 years ago. Tyler graciously acquiesced, even though I'm sure it wasn't his first choice of things to do. :) So we spent about an hour wandering around the fields of beautiful flowers and taking pictures. Here's just a sampling:

My favorite (I think....it was really hard to pick!)

The "rainbow of tulips" (some colors had already bloomed and been cut off already)

I love the yellow ones!
The purple were so gorgeous too!
I love this picture, with the mountains in the background

Beautiful scenery out in the country.

Then we went to a little town called La Conner for lunch at a small cafe (delicious food!) and walked up and down the main street and into all the little shops. It was a great day!! Perfect weather, fun outing, and great company!

In other news, I got a sewing machine this weekend. I have been needing one for a while now, and finally we just decided to get one. I'm secretly a little excited to see what things I can make. :)

Tyler has also recently decided to become a Dive Con. This means he will be a "professional" diver. He will help certify students and have to have Liability Insurance in case something goes wrong. He's pretty excited about the opportunity, but more excited about the gear discounts!

One more thing...

I forgot to mention that Tyler and I are signed up for another diving class! We're going to take Stress and Rescue at the end of April, so we'll know better how to save each other (and other divers) should an emergency arise. I've heard from several people that this was their favorite class, so I'm looking forward to it. Neil is actually not teaching us this time around! But I know we'll get some good instruction regardless. Once we get that class under belts, along with 7 more dives (we'll gain a couple from the class, so it'll probably be more like 3-4 dives by the time we're finished), we'll be "Master Divers." At that point, if we decided to, we could go on and take the DiveCon course and be able to actually help get divers certified! I don't know that we'll take it to that level, but it's fun to think we've gained that much ground. :)

(Tyler relaxing on a porch swing at about 60 feet at Redondo)

Not much to report...

Not much is new around here, unless you count house-hunting. We actually had mutual acceptance on a house a few weeks ago and felt excited about it, but it got snatched away at the last minute. Now we're back to the drawing board...We'll see what happens from here. Honestly, I'm feeling rather hopeless about the whole situation. After the ups and downs of being in this holding pattern for more than 2 years, of finding a house that might work only to see the possibility vanish before our very eyes, I'm almost scare to get excited anymore. Maybe we're destined to be renters for a while longer...you all can pray for my attitude. Sometimes I get frustrated and feel like we're being too picky, but I also don't want to buy such a huge purchace only to end up having one or the other of us hate it a few years down the road.

Easter was so fun! We met together with some friends from church for a traditional ham and potatoes Easter dinner. :) I love how friends can feel like family when need be, especially on holidays when I'm missing my REAL family. It was a great day full of laughter and teasing with some serious moments thrown in, too.

Other than that, we're just enjoying life. My job is going well (oh yeah, I started a new job about a month ago). I'm working at Neil's dive shop in Kent part time on Thursdays and Fridays. It's a very laid-back job but it's been fun to get more connected in the dive community. I met a guy a few weeks ago, and he asked Tyler and I to join him and his girlfriend on his boat! It was so fun to be out on the water on such a beautiful day (it was sunny and 60 the day we went out with them). Yay for connections! :)