Our Month of an Update

Well, it's been a little over a month since I last blogged (unintentional, I didn't even realize till someone asked if I was going to update the blog soon haha). I'd say we are settling in ok, life is definitely A LOT different up here, which we knew it would be, but knowing really doesn't seem to prepare you that much. Lets just put it this way, when the sun goes to sleep, so does the town pretty much, lol. But we are adjusting and and loving parts of the quiet life and learning to love (hopefully) the other parts.

A few pieces of exciting news about my half of things, I've started doing childcare in our home! Until school gets out, which is only a few more weeks I believe, I am watching a very cute little 2 year old boy most days during the week. In a few weeks I'll also start watching his 7 year old brother and every two weeks during the summer their 9 year old stepsister. It looks like I'll be working about 30 hours a week. We live 3 houses down from the elementary school and it has a very larger play ground, on top of us having a really big front yard, so I expect that we will be spending a great deal of time outdoors this summer (hopefully in all this sunshine I'll be able to get a tan, haha). In July I also might start watching a 19 month old boy at the same time a few days a week.

Piece of news number two, I got another 4.0 in my spring quarter class, which means I made it through the 08/09 school year with a 4.0 gpa!!! I look at this as such an amazing accomplishment because I never did great in high school or my other colleges (partly because I didn't apply myself but also partly because my learning style was very much affected by my 10 years of homeschooling). I definitely love this schooling online because it is similar to the way I home schooled and I am studying something that I am very interested in. I've decided to do summer school and just keep going year round, hopefully get done a little quicker so maybe I can move on to a masters or another bachelors. My summer class starts tomorrow and I am very excited to jump right back in. I'm just praying that I learn how to balance my childcare and my school work well.

Since moving up here, Donald and I have tried to pick up a few low-cost-summer-fun hobbies, one of which is fishing. I used to fish every weekend during the summer with my family and loved it. There are a lot of lakes up around in this area and we are definitely still trying to figured out which ones are the best; it seems that many people are fond of fishing up here so the lakes get hit pretty hard, unless you are willing to drive an hour out of "the city" (what they call the city, most of our friends in Federal Way would call Hicksville, lol). We weren't really catching anything and we were sure that we were not using all the right tackle and techniques, so we eventually talked my dad into paying us a visit.

So this last week Taylor and my dad came up for a visit. Taylor unfortunately was practically bed ridden the whole time he was up here (he claims allergies, I say his body went on vacation sickness) and I ended up starting work last week, so the visit wasn't a total success, but it was still great to see him. One of the nights after Ty (the 2 year old) went home, we headed out to Anacortes where there are 3 lakes right next to each other, one of which Donald and I had never tried. So my dad drove around and looked at the 2 Don and I had tried before and then decided to drive down to the one we hadn't and look around. He liked it and said we should try fishing there. So the 4 of us got out, got set up, each of us having a different kind of bait, and dad schooled us in the art of fishing (much different than Donald and I had been doing). On my first cast, with in like 15-20 minutes, my line started to go. So I grabbed my rod and started reeling in (now, mind you, I have my husband and my father both shooting instructions at me 0_o ugh, I told them both the shush and let one or the other talk, haha). My dad was praying that the fish would be something like a perch and big enough to keep, but oh man, let me tell you, IT WAS DEFINITELY NOT A PERCH. I get the line reeled in more, and this huge (by huge I mean compared to a 4 inch bluegill I'd caught the weekend before) fish starts flopping in and out of the water and all of our eyes grow big. The guys start kinda freakin' out and my dad grabs the net and helps me get in my 20 inch 3 pound Rainbow Trout that I caught from the shore! Woohoo! And I was the only one who caught anything that whole night. And let me tell you, we had some lookers. A few guys came in from the lake on their boat with a few fish and mine was still bigger, they just shook their heads. Haha, it was great! =) So it looks like we are going to go back out and try a few other lakes tonight and see what we can catch.

Donald and I will be celebrating our 2nd anniversary tomorrow (Monday June 1st). We are both excited and looking forward to another year of the Lord's love, favor, and blessings. We are planning a weekend getaway celebration sometime in June. We are also hoping that we will be able to come down and visit our friends and family in Federal Way sometime in June, we'll keep you posted!

I'll try to keep updates flowing better on here. For anyone keeping us in their prayers, please just keep praying that we can make some great friendships and for solid work for both of us in this bad economy. Thank you!

House in Sedro-Woolley

This is our new place in Sedro-Woolley! We started moving in last Thursday. It is a duplex in the middle of a neighborhood right next to two Elementary schools. The house is one story and has no adjoining wall to the other duplex (the only connecting them is a covered parking area), so it's pretty much like we have our own 2 bedroom rambler! We think it is probably about 1000 square feet.





We have a nice big front yard with lots of trees and beautiful green grass! Along with a cool patio area, we are all set up to hold numerous summer parties =) I inparticular am quite pleased with the sun-shade ratio the house gets, especially since it's supposed to get hotter up here, than it normally does in Federal Way. We are also within about 6 blocks of a park that sits right beside the Skagit River.


We love our new place and were so blessed by the Lord to have found it. We are also starting to attend Burlington Foursquare, which is only about a 15 minute drive from where we live. Donald and I are both excited to get to know the pastors and the church family, and hopefully get involved with their ministry in the near future. I'm sure I'll be updating a lot more on our new church as we learn more about it and it's family. So keep your eyes peeled =)

Movin' to Sedro-Woolley

Well for those of you who don't know or who haven't heard the 411, Donald and I are moving to Sedro-Woolley, about 2 hours north of Federal Way. Donald got a job offer up in Anacortes at a more productive moving company, which is about 30 minutes west of where we are going to be living. We'd been looking for a better job for Donald since last summer and had been unsuccessful, then in the middle of March we hit a 3 week period in which he only worked 3 times. So we started praying (a lot!) and started job searching. We felt the Lord leading us to job search up north also. About 2 weeks after beginning our search up north, a moving company's owner called and asked Donald to come in for an interview. That day the owner of the company offered Donald a job and within 2 days he was hired on full time at the company, coming in at #4 in the company. The Lord totally provided beyond what we had hoped or thought was possible! It still amazes me when I think about it!

Needless to say, we accepted the job and started looking for affordable housing up in the area, in which yet another miracle happened. Again we were looking for about 2 weeks, the weekend of the 4/5th of April we found a duplex that looked nice and was in the price range we were looking for. We had already viewed a few places, most of which were kinda run down, and we were starting to worry that we'd have to go for something dumpy if we wanted to stay in our price range. So we scheduled an appointment to view the duplex that monday the 6th. Let me tell you, we got inside that duplex and were amazed! It was great! Hard wood floors, good sized bedrooms, updated kitchen and bathroom, nice big yard (kept up by the owner!), covered parking area, and the big plus, they were fine with us having cats! (most of the places up there said no pets) It was amazing! Then even more amazing, the realtor offers it to us for half off the first month's rent, and said if we could move in on the 15th, he'd cut the first month's rent in half again and let us pay the deposit in payments over a few months. We were shocked. After prayer and making sure everything would work out by the 15th, we accepted. We are so thankful for the Lord's provision and favor!

So we are in the process of moving our stuff from Federal Way to Sedro-Woolley. We sign the lease and get the keys tmw(I'll post pictures of the house soon), and I'm so excited! This Saturday will be our last night attending NWC, so please if you're around come say goodbye to us =) And thank you to all for your continued prayers and support!