Catching Up

Life has been crazy around here lately! So much for the simple life we had become so accustomed to… hopefully it will return soon!

A lot has happened lately, though rest assured it won’t be exciting to anyone. To our family and friends who read our blog to keep up with us and to know what’s going on in our lives—I hope it serves that purpose even though we rarely have anything interesting to report. I’m sorry that it’s not more fun to read about!

I’ll start with the here and now and then work backwards. This post is going to be long--- consider yourself warned!

Kolby has been working like a maniac these days. Lately he often works 50-60 hours a week between substitute teaching during the day and teaching SAT classes on nights and weekends, and then fits in at least 20 hours of grad school work wherever he can. We only see each other as we get ready for work and as we get ready for bed, and on Friday evenings when the SAT place is closed. We are definitely not OK with this change from relaxing and spending time together all the time like we are used to, but it’s only temporary so we’re making it work.

Why is he working so much? It is hiring season for the local high schools, so he is not turning down any sub opportunities because he wants to have a presence at these schools and follow through with some connections so he can hopefully get hired for a full-time teaching position next year. He’s got a great shot at things working out. Then it appears that he is now the only verbal teacher at the SAT place, so they pack his schedule with workshops, classes, and 1-on-1 tutoring sessions. They are working to hire someone new, but until that happens he just doesn’t feel comfortable saying “no” when he knows the students need him. So he is quite the busy bee, but hopefully things will slow down for him soon.

As for me, things are busy as well. I’m not allowed to write/talk about too many details of work in a public forum like this blog (information security reasons, apparently), but for the record-- I am still loving my job. I’ve been given a lot of responsibilities, more than I expected to have after only 9 months. It’s a very good thing, and I really like the diversity of work. Some of the things I work on are very difficult, but I just take it a day at a time and I’ve been able to handle things so far. Economic research is a good fit for me and I enjoy the people I work with. I am constantly aware of what a great opportunity this job is, and I definitely don’t take it for granted even when I occasionally feel overwhelmed with how hard it is!

In other news, Kolby and I have a couple of exciting things on the horizon.

We have been asked by the pastor at our church to lead a Life Group, which is a Bible study that we’ll host at our house every-other Tuesday evening. We already have some of our friends at church on board, and we’re looking forward to meeting many new friends as we go along. There are four groups starting up and it’s a new church, so these are the first Life Groups and we’re excited to be involved. We’ve decided that our group will look at short excerpts from some of C.S. Lewis’s writings to lead into discussions about different matters of faith that people wrestle with. We’ll switch to something different after a couple of months. It starts next week, so we’ve got to get the house ready! The inside is fine, but our spring cleaning/landscaping project from March left quite a mess under our carport that we haven’t had time to clean up. This is weekend project #1.
Our other exciting news is that we’ve booked a summer vacation! We’ll be heading to the great American Southwest to hit up some National Parks with our friends Tyler and Erin. It’s Kolby’s dream vacation and happens to fall on his 25th birthday so he’ll be one happy camper. We’ll fly into Vegas, spend the night there gambling away our life savings (or more likely limiting ourselves to $10 each), and then move on to Utah and Arizona. We are going to spend a couple days at Zion National Park, then Bryce Canyon National Park followed by Vermillion Cliffs (Coyote Buttes), Antelope Canyon and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Plus a few other stops along the way, like Horseshoe Bend and Lake Powell. We’ve never been to any of these places so we’re pretty excited. It’ll be a lot of hiking, so I’ll need to get into shape at some point!

I’m excited about seeing the sights and taking some cool pictures, but I’m also really excited that we’ll get to spend a week traveling with some great friends of ours. It’s just a good time in our lives to take a trip like this. June can’t come soon enough!

Speaking of 25th birthdays, I realized last week that I’m 24 and not 23 like I had been thinking. I was given some paperwork at the doctor’s office and it had my age listed as 24 on the top. I thought, “that’s weird” and proceeded to do the math only to discover that I am, in fact, 24 years old. So now all of the sudden I’m hit with the fact that I turn 25 this summer. Who knew?

This past weekend we traveled to Wimberley to spend some time with Kolby’s family to celebrate some birthdays and hang out at AlmostA Ranch. That’s the new official name of Kolby's parents' place down there. Roycee’s dad came up with the name and I think it is so clever! It’s a play on the fact that it is almost a ranch, since it has a ranch feel but doesn’t technically function as one. Clever, clever.

We had a wonderful time playing golf (boys), hitting up the San Marcos outlet mall (girls), grilling fajitas, pitching washers and sitting around a campfire. Kolby and I both got sunburned, but that’s nothing new for us this time of year when the sun has been so foreign for so long! Kolby’s sister is getting married in September so it was fun to catch up on all the latest details. Here are some pictures of the weekend, and the ranch. The cabin:

The casita:

For Easter weekend we met up with Russell and my parents down at their ranch. We hung out, played games, grilled steaks and worked on some projects around the new pond. We’re picking up 3,000 tiny fish to stock the pond in a few weeks, so we had to create some “cover” for them since the pond was just dug and doesn’t have anywhere for the fish to hide and grow. [Largemouth bass and catfish, for those family members who are reading this and wondering what my dad decided to go with.] We picked up some old tires that were being thrown out and assembled 5 fish playgrounds made of 5-6 big tires each. It was a lot of work but we love getting away for the weekend and are happy to do anything new and different for awhile. It keeps life interesting.

As we were getting ready to head home that Sunday, a super sweet 1-year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever showed up and long story short--- we discovered she had been abandoned by the side of the road the previous day so we decided to bring her with us and find her a good home. Then a roller coaster of emotions ensued as we fell in love with her but knew it wasn’t a smart decision to add another dog to our family right now. We ended up finding a great home for her and Kolby dropped her off this past Friday. I cried. The good news is she is at a house that is 10 miles away from my parents’ ranch and the owner said he’d let us pick her up for a play date when we’re down there periodically. Maya was happy to hear that because those two were smitten with each other.

Lesson learned from that experience: Unless you’re able to keep the super sweet abandoned dog that found her way to you, maybe don’t allow her to sleep in your bedroom, sit in your lap for hours, become best friends with your dog or completely steal your heart. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?

I can’t think of much else that’s going on, so I guess that about sums everything up! Until next time...