Well We Made It! (3 weeks ago)

Hi friends and family!! We finally made it to Scottsdale. Thank you for those of you who have prayed for us and even come with us out here. It has been quite the experience. We have enjoyed it a lot. I have almost completed 3 weeks of school (which means my first class is 1/2 way over) and I love it. My chef instructor is awesome and I have made some neat friends. It has been a great experience so far. Sorry I haven't written yet, but we decided not to get internet until I get a job so I'm actually writing from my school.

I am desperatly looking for a job (so please pray). My full time job is looking for a job. I spend most of my afternoons on the internet because I've figured out going to a place looking nice and talking to people is dead. Some places won't even let you in, they simply want you to apply online. Its crazy...and of course they don't call you back! Its frustrating but I know that Father has some awesome things planned for us and I have to have a job, so I know he will provide that for me. We have a department here at the school called Career Services and the poor girl who works in there is Angelica. Her job is to help students find jobs. I say "poor girl" because she is the only one in there and there are a lot of students!! She has been completely awesome to work with. She is like my own personal head hunter but I'm sure she doesn't get paid as much. Either way, she has been a blessing. So we are teaming together to get me a job! :-D

Although job searching is stressful, things out here have been good. Chris and I have spent a lot of time together, just us. Its been nice. We are both ready for friends too. Having encouragement right in front of you always helps. We know we have friend and family long distance, but we are ready for people to encourage us here too. We went to a church we really liked last week. We went to the service and to an evening thing called Crash. It was lead by a guy (who looks wayyy to young to be a minister) but he was awesome. He had cool ninja shoes too so that rocks. His grandfather and great grandfather were Aggies so he is good in our book. haha. Either way, he spoke some amazing truth and more than anythign, it was good for Chris and I and go be with fellow Jesus lovers praise our Father for his blessings. It was good for our hearts. We are thinking about visiting another church this week but we might go back to that one, we are unsure.

Now it is time to destroy a little myth about Arizona. I moved out here thinking "sweet it doesn't rain hardly at all and its going to be nice and dry" HA!! Of course not. Its pouring outside as I type. We are also suppose to get hurricane force winds tonight. Fun....So for those of you who think it never rains out here...come take a walk outside with me...

A fun thing Chris and I are doing in this completely different culinary area we are in is trying new foods! Yay!! There are restaurants from all sorts of places here, Morrocan, (I know I didn't spell that correctly but I don't know how to), Iraq, Sushi, so forth and so on...there are lots!! So as I write updates I'll put our latest outing of new food and what I thought about it. Yes, during this time I will be taking my life in my own hands and eating foods I'm allergic to, but I don't do it a whole lot so its okay. I'll be fine. Last night, for example, Chris and I had In N Out Burger. Neither one of us had ever had it and it was pretty good. Their fries are fresh cut potatoes and not frozen like McDs or pretty much every other fast food joint. They were great, and the burger was good. I love their menu. You can have a burger, fries, a shake and a coke. Thats about it. You can double the burger and get it without cheese or other items, but a burger is their only menu item. Its cool. They are a neat place and they had cool uniforms. haha. It was neat to try something new! We are excited to see what else we get to try. After I get my first paycheck we are going for Sushi!! Whoop!

Well this is long enough and I should probably head home. I've been here for at least 3 hrs this afternoon. Please keep us in your prayers about me finding a job and us finding a church home.

Things I like

I found this awesome t-shirt place today. I'd heard of them before but I'd never gotten on their website to look for myself. They are pretty cool. They are a faith based company and their shirts are very cute and not shy about what is true. Check them out!!

wildolivetees.com!

Endings and New Beginnings

I'm sitting here at my desk this morning making lists of things that I need to get done today when I get off or things I need Chris to do while I'm at work and he isn't today. One of the things on my list was to e-mail Beth to let her know where we stopped in Acts last Sunday in Sunday School. As I started typing the e-mail I also wanted to tell her about next Sunday, the girls want to go out to lunch or something like that because its mine and Chris's last Sunday. About then it hit me, this will be our last Sunday in this church. This place where we have made friends, worked, served and grown a whole lot over the last 5-7 years, we will be entering the last time before we head to Arizona. Our attachment has little to nothing to do with the building, because we've only been in this building a couple of years but with the people. There are people in that church from a couple of months old to quite a bit older that we have grown very fond of. As time for us to move grows very close very fast, I will have a lot of hard days to come. I know that, but it doesn't make it any easier. I will miss this place and these people. Some of those crazy Sophomore girls have challenged my heart and mind in ways that blow me away. I pray they continue to do that to every teacher, friend and mentor they have in their life. They are such amazing girls. I can't wait to see what Father has in store for them!

So pray for us on Sunday. Leaving these people won't be easy. We will miss them very much.

Some days life just bites

Stereo types are a funny thing. For example, men are the fix it types. They want to hear your problem then fix it (typically) and women want to analyze it and work it out with you. This is one of those glorious personality oddities about me. I'm both! ha...When it comes to my problems I generally want to analyze it and figure it out, but when it comes to someone else, I want to be able to fix it for them. This comes out in me most when there is pain involved. I teach Sophomore girls Sunday school with the most wonderful lady Beth Barnes. We have several very personality filled beautiful girls. They span three different high schools and even one who home schools. I love them all very much. One of the high schools is A&M Consolidated High School in College Station. Late Monday night there was a car accident. From what they can find the truck went off the road and hit a utility pole out South of College Station (from the best of what I can gather) there was only one person in the car and she didn't make it. She was 22 years old and she was the assistant choir director at Consol. Its been a rough day and a half for that school. One of my Sophomore girls was under her. She really liked her and is having a hard time with this. She said yesterday was a nightmare that wouldn't end. This is where my fix-it heart comes in. I hate that they hurt. I can't stand my girls to hurt. It makes my heart hurt so bad!! I want to take it all away so they don't have to feel it or go through it. But, at the same time even if I could, I wouldn't. I know that this hurts, and it just pretty much sucks, but I also know that Father is working in their hearts and lives and they are going through this for a reason. He sees the bigger picture that we do not.

Two really cool things I've seen Father do to prepare for this, is Sunday during our Sunday school lesson we talked about how Father sees the bigger picture and how things happen and they may hurt but there is more to it, there is a reason, he is preparing us for something. Its so cool how he prepared hearts to handle this this week by that being part of our lesson (because I honestly don't remember how it fit into what we were talking about). The other cool thing is that Sunday night I had a dream about Ashley, the girl I referred to earlier, well I had a dream and Ashley was in it. It wasn't anything bad, in fact I think we were serving food out of a trunk or something very odd like that haha. But since then she has been on my mind pretty much constantly. I know why now. Father knows what he is doing. He sees the bigger picture.

The illustration I gave Sunday was you know how you've seen the painting of the two arms and the fingers are almost touching? You have, believe me. Well we see that but what a lot of people don't realize is that is part of a huge painting in the Sistine Chapel. Its like we see the arms almost touching but Father sees the whole painting. (Its another cool story about how that image popped into my head where Father caused someone's XBox 360 to go out and so they borrowed our dvd player and they had that hanging on the wall the night before our lesson Sunday) Oh how he provides! SO cool!!

But back to what I was originally talking about, I now that Father is going to do some awesome stuff in the hearts of these hurting high schoolers. I know he has a plan. So Father, take their hearts, Father hold Ashley and Brooke. Help them through this one day at a time.

Oh Scottsdale, Beautiful Scottsdale...

Chris and I made the journey this weekend to Scottsdale AZ to see if well, we'd even like it out there and if so, to find a place to call home. I love doing new things with Chris. We always have fun together. Of course this weekend was a complete roller coaster of emotions. For some reason (I can't image what, its only moving two states away from everything I know) I was very nervous for the two weeks before we left. I finally started getting excited about 2 days before we left.

We left on Wednesday and drove to Dallas. Chris's dad dropped us off at the airport and we flew into Phoenix at like 10:30 that night. After a very interesting time with our rental car place we finally drove out to our hotel. Chris's mom stays in hotels all over the US so she gets Marriott points and last year for Christmas they gave Chris and I and Meredith and Mike a two nights stay in a Marriott. So Chris and I stayed at the Marriott Suites...talk about a nice room!! We had a living area, bedroom, vanity, Bathtub and shower/toilet area. It was really nice.

Thursday morning we got up and had breakfast in the restaurant (comped by the hotel because Mary is an Elite member) and headed to Scottsdale Culinary Institute, which is now named Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, Scottsdale. They changed it last Wednesday. We got to go around and see some of the school and some of this restaurant. It is the Mobil 3 star student run restaurant. It was nice.

Then we walked back outside to this fountain. Lisa, the lady who handles all of my stuff for school, was telling me that before graduation everyone gathers around and does a toast around this fountain. She said its a very special time.
She also showed us this: This is the kit I will be recieving when I start school, along with all of my uniform, aprons, towels and all that good stuff.

This is the door to the L'Ecole Restaurant. I just thought the door was pretty.
Meet Jeep Compass. Our ride for the weekend. It served us well and was a very good little vehicle.
This is Ree Drummond, also known as the Pioneer Woman. She had a cookbook signing in Tempe while we were there so we slipped down and got my cookbook signed. We only waited for like 4 hours. :-D
LOOK MOUNTAINS!! REAL MOUNTAINS!!! Our new apt is about 1/2 a mile to hiking trails up a mountain :-D EEP!!
See, more!!

After 1 1/2 days of apartment hunting and finding things we liked, but nothing that was just the right place for us, we were tired and after a not so fun encounter with a lady who made me thing we would never find a place to live earlier that morning, we felt a little defeated, at least I did. So we started talking about how things have always seemed to come for us, me especially. When I got ready to apply to schools for college, it was A&M and that was it, I didn't apply anywhere else. I knew that was where I was suppose to be, same thing with my duplex now and where Chris and I wanted to get married and also for SCI. Things just go *bam* this is it. Since we hadn't had that we were discussing it in the car. I said "I wish one of them would just go *bam* this is it" and we pulled up at Broadstone Ancala. It is set on the edge of town and there isn't much city-ness around, which is nice. Its quiet and the people are really nice. While we were in the office two different people walked in the office with their dogs. They accept Rodderick and that was one of the biggest hang ups for us. He is about 75 lbs so there are several places that won't allow dogs that big. Its sad...but this place does! They started refurbishing their apts a few years ago and got about 1/2 way through and had to stop for a little while. So the set of refurbished ones when all was said and done for us was about $30 more a month. When I say refurbished I mean completely. They have black and stainless steal appliances and granite countertops. Fo-granite in the bathrooms and beautiful light fixtures and door handles. Basically I love it.

Here is the dining room area (looking from the front door)

Here is the living room area looking from the dining room
This is the kitchen. Please note the awesome top shelf above the counter. LOVE IT!!
See, granite! The cabinets have been completely re-done as well.

Even a built in microwave, which means I will be parting with my beloved red one, but at least this one will have a plate!! I also like the room above the cabinets we can display things!

This, my friends, is my new closet!! Its wonderful and I love the corner shelf!!
Vanity area in the master bedroom.
POOL!! I like pools.
This is Chris's favorite part. Two charcoal grills.

After picking out this totally awesome apartment Chris and I treated ourselves to the Hard Rock Cafe! We had a great evening just hanging out. We also walked around the downtown Scottsdale area to find the Sky Bridge Campus of SCI so I would know where I was going :-D

Saturday morning we got up and were going to tackle Banfields to find Chris a job. At breakfast I spilled my apple juice all over my only jeans. Since we both wanted to look decent while trying to get him a job, we found a place to get me a new pair of jeans. After that we visited one Banfield and the girl there told us to visit the hospital (which was number one on Chris's list) and talk to the Office Manager. So we did. Bryant was his name. He was a fairly young guy. He seemed to want Chris to stay with Banfield. He liked that he has 2 1/2 years with them already. He told us if he can't get him a job at that one he would talk to his field director to see where they could place him fulltime there. YAY!! It was cool to see how Father placed things for us. We are very excited to get out there and also to see what He has in store for us next!! :-D

This just in...

I talked to Lisa from SCI at lunch and she told me (which I hadn't thought of) that by doing a 21 month program it gives me another opportunity to get stafford loans through the government which is good because you can consolidate them and you can't private loans! Plus it gives me another chance to hopefully get grants!! :-D Yay! So we will see what happens now!

Slight Change o plans...

Oh life...you are crazy. I still can't believe its October!! My wonderful Momma had her 28th (and holding) birthday along with several other people I know. Chris has started calling around to some of the Banfields in the Scottsdale area to see if he can transfer. There are only 24 in the greater Phoenix area so I think we might have a shot. There are a few that we would prefer but we will see.

I've been working on my financial aid stuff....thats fun...not. I'm applying for a loan though the school but (and here comes the slight change o plans) I haven't to be in a different program then I'm in to apply for it. Well, not technically a different program. Its the exact same program but instead of a 15 month program I have to do the 21 month program. So its 6 months longer but i only go to school 4 days a week. At first I really didn't like this, but now I realize it could be better for us. I will have more time available during the week so I might be able to get a better job. I will probably be able to do a full time job so that will be really good. I should know something over the next couple of days about the loan. I'm currently waiting for my advisor to call me back about the details of the 21 month program. My tuition planner (who told me about having to be in the 21 month program) didn't know all the details for sure, she just knew it was only 4 days a week and they offer night classes, so I need to talk to Lisa and see the details. I defiantly see where this could be better for us though.

I have started looking into jobs in the area. I would like to work at like Starbucks or REI. REI has a position I would really like, but I don't think its available right now. We will have to see. It should be an interesting adventure looking for a job again. It took me 3 months to find this one and I love it. I just hope it doesn't take as long to find another one. I have found its hard job searching 2 states away and 3 months in advance! Either way, I know Father will provide what we need. I can't wait to see what he has in store!