Cabin Fever

Both of our parents have recently purchased land to build family cabins on. Technically my parents are building a ranch house and Kolby's parents are building a main house and a couple adjacent cabins (or casitas, if you will)... but you get the idea. We're super pumped about having new places to go to to hang out with our families! And who knows, if our life plans go sour Kolby and I may need a new place to live :)

Here's the most recent picture of my parent's ranch:

(You can click on it to make it bigger)

It's situated on a bunch of land in middle-of-nowhere Texas, sort of near Waxahachie. The house will have an awesome view and there's a fishing hole and plenty of room for four-wheeling, campfires, pitching washers, playing whiffle-ball, and putting in a kickin' zip-line if Kolby has his way. Mostly, it'll be a great place to "get away from it all" and hang out as a family. My family is really close with our extended family and it'll also serve as a gathering place since we can't fit too many places all together now that several of us have gotten married and the family has expanded to 21 people on my mom's side and 23 on my dad's. The house they're building has beds galore, so it'll be great not to have to split up anymore when we get together with each side. It should be finished by mid-summer and we're definitely looking forward to enjoying it!

And here's a picture of Kolby and his sister, Kassidy, repainting an old cabin on Kolby's parents' new land:

Kolby's parents just recently bought several acres of land in Wimberley, a cute little hill country town just south of Austin. They have been dreaming of building a house there for years and have finally found the perfect spot! Kolby spent this past Saturday down there with them and they worked on getting an old cabin that was on the land ready to function as a place to stay while they get the main house built. The land has access to a beautiful river park on the Blanco river and has tons of space to eventually build little casitas around the main house so the whole family can gather there.

Both places are really convenient to Waco so it provides even more support for our fallback plan of staying put for a little while. We're excited about the progress being made and are so fortunate to have such wonderful places to get together with our even more wonderful families!

Life Update

Here's a life update from our household!

Kolby sent in his fourth and final application for creative writing graduate programs last week. Now it's the tough part... twiddling our thumbs for two months awaiting letters. As I mentioned before, the acceptance rate for the schools he's applied to are VERY low. But we're excited about the possibility of him getting to go back to school- after all, it is his turn again. In the meantime, he loves teaching English and is ridiculously good at it.

I don't have any good words to summarize my feelings towards my thesis at the moment. I've never worked so hard at anything in my entire life. Not even close. But, the end is now in sight. My oral defense has been scheduled for March 17th and I'll have to turn in a final copy of my thesis to the professors on my committee by March 5. That's in less than two weeks! Somehow I'll have to get it finished by then. I continue to work on it 8 hours a day and I survive it all by eating half a pan of Rice Krispies Treats when I need a break.

I've applied to a few jobs, but it's not exactly a great time to be entering the job market. It's going to be crazy to try to coordinate the prospects of grad school and jobs for the both of us, but even if everything falls through--- Kolby has a guaranteed job for next year at the high school he teaches at now, and we're very happy with our life here in Waco. It is such a blessing to have that assurance. It would be exponentially more stressful if we didn't have a fallback plan, and it's a heck of a fallback plan!

So that's the scoop with us.

In unrelated news, Kolby and I joined a co-ed softball team and our first game is this Thursday. Kolby is ecstatic. Also, we're finalizing our Spring Break plans and it looks like we are getting to take our first family road trip! We're heading to Colorado to visit some of our best friends for a few days. And--- we'll get to introduce Maya to snow! She told us that something deep within her tells her she's going to LOVE IT!

Mom, Can We Keep Him?

We are dog-sitting for some friends this weekend and this mondo guy is their pup, Memphis. Maya is super good at playing well with other dogs and they are having the time of their lives together, even though Memphis is more than double Maya's size. We're trying to keep Memphis' presence in our apartment a bit under wraps... Maya has a boyfriend next door, Jake, that would be heartbroken to find out that she has another boy sleeping over. That plus our apartment has a 25 lb. weight limit for dogs, which Maya doesn't even meet.

I couldn't get Maya to smile for this picture because she's a bit perturbed at Memphis at the moment. She likes to spend her afternoons peacefully looking out the balcony sliding door trying to spot the cat that she saw ONE TIME, WEEKS AGO in the parking lot, but Memphis keeps bothering her. You can tell she's less than thrilled that "that goober" (her words, not mine) is still around, but they'll make up soon enough and be back to happily wrestling and playing tug-of-war in no time.

Benia

Kolby and I started sponsoring a beautiful little 9 year-old girl in Uganda through Compassion International shortly after we were married. Her name is Benia. We have been VERY impressed with Compassion and were blown away when we received the following PICTURES of her in the mail this week! For such a huge organization, it's awesome that they make time to take recent pictures of the children to mail to sponsors.

The back of this picture reads: 'Birthday gift of a pig (with her mother)' And this one reads: 'A dress she bought from her Christmas gift'

I think she may be the most beautiful girl in the world.

In her letter she wrote about how she bought a pig to keep at home with the birthday money that we had sent her in June and that she bought a dress, shoes, and fish with the Christmas money we had sent. It's so cool to think that the meager $20 we sent her for each of those occasions meant so much to her and that if we would have kept that money for ourselves we would have probably wasted it on something meaningless. I can see why Compassion places restrictions on gift-giving to keep things fair between all the sponsored children. I would send her the entire contents of my bank account in a heartbeat.

Happy Birthday Two-Five Cloth!

Yesterday, February 5th (2-5), marked the first birthday of my brother's t-shirt company! Brad and his good friend Matt Poe officially launched Two-Five Cloth a year ago with the explicit goal of changing the lives of those in need... all in the name of Christ. The name "Two-Five" comes from the following passage from Matthew chapter 25 and the t-shirts provide an opportunity to live out this call to serve others:

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go visit you?'

The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'" -Matthew 25:34-40

Thanks to those that purchased t-shirts from Two-Five this past year, FIVE LIVES A DAY were changed! Whether it was someone in Rwanda receiving access to clean water, a child in a developing country born with club foot receiving casting materials for corrective surgery, a family in India receiving a chicken to provide eggs and a source of income, or a victim of hurricane Ike receiving provisions to begin rebuilding their shattered life... the love of Christ was shown and lives were changed.

***

Every year 15 million children die of hunger... that means a child dies of hunger every 5 seconds. This new quarter, Two-Five Cloth is partnering with Feed the Hungry to provide nourishment for the bodies and souls of malnourished children in Liberia, Africa. Each t-shirt purchased provides a child in Liberia with daily meals for two weeks. Each Feed the Hungry food distribution also provides an opportunity to touch the spirit and soul of the children in need through prayer, encouragement, and sharing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, go buy a shirt... give hope... and change a life!

www.25cloth.com

Mystery Solved!

I know I've mentioned before how we don't know exactly what breed(s) our dog Maya is. She was listed as "husky mix" at the shelter we adopted her from, but of course they didn't know for sure. We're VERY obsessed with our sweet Maya and have naturally developed a slight obsession with figuring out what exactly she "is". We are always on the lookout for dogs that look like Maya to offer us any clues, but our best luck was running into a dog that looked a whole lot like her, even in size and build, only to find out that it was a husky/wolf hybrid puppy that would grow to be 70 pounds. Maya tips the scales at only 33 pounds and is most definitely full grown as she is nearly three years old (or even older... we aren't totally sure). Anyways, we get questions ALL THE TIME about what she's mixed with or why she's so small.

Fast forward to this past Christmas. I was trying to think of something to get Kolby and remembered hearing about a dog DNA test that could determine the breed composition of mutts. I figured it would be super expensive but looked into it and found a "DNA Breed Identification Kit" online for $35. I realize that even $35 sounds like a stupid amount of money to spend on something like this... but whatever. So I got it for Kolby (and myself, of course) along with plenty of non-dog-related Christmas gifts. A few weeks ago we got the kit in, swabbed Maya's mouth with the included q-tips, mailed the kit back, and waited for the results.

Today we got her "Ancestry Analysis Certificate" in the mail. As expected, she is at least 75% Siberian Husky. Quite unexpected, however, was the news that she is 10-20% DALMATIAN! Isn't that awesome? I love Dalmatians. Her husky markings are so dominant that she of course doesn't look like a dalmatian, but it does explain the traits that keep her from looking 'all husky' like her straighter tail, narrower face, and thinner fur. Unfortunately, the fact that a mix of those breeds should have Maya weighing between 45-50 pounds confirms that her small size means that she likely spent all of her pre-us life on the streets and that year of malnourishment stunted her growth, which is sad. But she's healthy and happy now and we're blessed to have this little husky-dalmatian mix in our lives!