Update!

I’m sorry for the inadvertent blog hiatus. As you can imagine, things got really hectic really fast. Here’s the jist of what’s going on.

We are moving to the **** area and we’re going to buy a house! We will move out of our apartment this weekend (we’re putting all of our stuff in storage), stay with some friends in Waco for a few days next week while Kolby finishes school, and then we’ll be staying with my parents until we find a house. We’ve been on the house hunt for a few weeks, but things will be much easier once we are back in the area and can be more available to look at houses in person. We’ve found a neighborhood that we really like, but we’re keeping our options open at this point.

I start work on July 15th and Kolby will head to Santa Fe, NM for the summer residency for his grad program on July 23rd. We’re hoping to find a house and get moved in before those events, but it’s not too big of a deal if that doesn’t happen. In the fall, Kolby’s main job will be to enjoy his graduate program, but he is also looking into a part-time job teaching SAT or GRE prep classes at places like The Princeton Review or Kaplan. If that doesn’t work out, he can always find work as a substitute teacher a few days a week.

Below are a couple of posts about other things that have been going on.

I can't foresee anything happening in our lives that will warrant a blog post until we find a house. After Kolby finishes school and we move in with my parents, we'll be living the life of bums for awhile. Our days will likely include little more than looking at houses, watching/attending Rangers' games, and finding ways to earn our keep at my parents' house. So, I'll let you know when we find the perfect little first house for ourselves!

Getting Ready for Moving Day

Last week we decided to do some spring cleaning in our closet so we'd have less to pack. We ended up bagging up and donating almost 100 articles of clothing. The bulk of what we gave away was stuff we'd "outgrown", as both of us aren't the ultra slim adolescents we once were. Out of everything we got rid of, I'd say only 1% had been purchased in the past 5 years. It was way past time to go through that stuff.

Maya was a trooper and withheld judgment as she watched me try on item after item that didn't even come close to fitting anymore.

At the end of last week, my mom came down for a few days and helped me pack (thanks, Mom!). There are now dozens of packed boxes scattered throughout our apartment.

We brought the aforementioned bags of clothes to Goodwill and hauled 6 huge trash bags of junk out to the dumpster. It was a long couple of days but I'm so glad we got all that done and out of the way! Kolby and I will disassemble all of the furniture this week and pack up the last few boxes before moving day on Saturday!

Graduations Galore

My graduation ceremony was on Friday, May 15th. It was a small ceremony consisting of only Baylor Business graduate students. I graduated with three of my M.S.Eco peers, all of whom are from China. My family came down for the ceremony, which was less than an hour and included dinner afterwards so my brothers didn't have too much to gripe about :)

My friend Laura came too! The icky velvet-looking thing across my neck is my graduate "hood". It's much prettier from the back. The graduation was called a "Graduate Hooding Ceremony" and we each received our respective hoods.

Unfortunately, Kolby's brother graduated from law school at the exact same time as my graduation ceremony. Because Kolby's entire family and extended family was gathering in Houston for Kason's graduation, it made sense for Kolby to be there, especially since he had to miss Kason's college graduation a few years ago.

Here is a picture of part of the gang after Kason's graduation ceremony.

We spent this past Memorial Day weekend in Austin celebrating Kolby's sister's graduation from the University of Texas. I don't have any pictures yet, but it was a great weekend and Kassidy is now getting ready to start graduate school for social work!

A Farewell to #22E

Our first home:

The Centre Apartments

Corner of 5th and Bagby- Waco, TX

Unit 22E

It is bittersweet to be leaving our first home together and expecially to be leaving Waco. Both have treated us so well. Before we make the big move, I want to reminisce about this place so I can always remember it.

This apartment had the huge advantage of being 2 blocks from campus and was as safe as possible in Waco. It was also super cheap since the management agreed to rent it to us at half price to meet our budget. And although we absolutely LOVE our apartment, that is where the advantages end. This apartment complex is OLD. It does have central A/C but it is so inefficient (i.e. costs a lot to run but doesn't cool the place down at all) that we have only used it for a handful of days since last summer. We've just gradually trained our bodies to thrive in the 75-80 degree temperature range during the day and rely on the window unit in our bedroom to keep it cool enough to sleep well at night. The result? $50/month electricity bills. Totally worth it. Except that it is in the 90s today (outside) and it's so hot in here that I'm sweating bullets as I type this.

Although there are a lot of cosmetic things that are less than desirable about this place, like dingy caulk in the bathrooms, cream cabinets with 70s-style wood trim, and ivy wallpaper in the guest bathroom (we painted over the other awful wallpapers but the ivy was the lesser of the evils so we left it), the tiny kitchen is the only thing that really bothers me. It is a whopping 3 feet wide and half of one of the walls is taken up by a closet for the hot-water heater. There are very few cabinets and a miniscule amount of counter space. So the majority of our nice kitchen stuff that we got for our wedding is still in boxes in a closet upstairs. We've made it work, though, and it'll just be that much sweeter to move to a place with a normal-sized kitchen.

....

I may not have shrunk Kolby's favorite shirt in the wash or served any burnt dinners, but my first year of domestic life was not without its casualties. See if you can guess what happened to this stove burner: If you guessed, "It looks like you ran out of counter space and had to set a package of tortillas on the stove for safekeeping and then accidentally turned on the burner under the tortillas rather than the one under the pot of water like you meant to"--- then you were right. Even after several attempts to scrape the melted plastic off, the nutritional information of tortillas can still be read straight off that burner. Oh well.

Kolby had his own mishap, though... lest we forget the time he inadvertantly trapped Maya in the bathroom. See if you can guess what sequece of events happened in these two pictures:

If you guessed, "It looks like he unsuccessfully tried to pry the doorknob off with a flathead screwdriver and then decided to drill a hole through the door with a brand new electric drill that he only let charge for about 30 seconds before deeming it ready for the job"--- then you were right again!
....

Last week I used my camera to take a video that tours our apartment. I did this so that we'd always have it to remember what this place looked like, but I figured I'd upload it here so the friends and family that weren't able to make it down here to visit us could see it. It's as boring as would be expected, so feel free to skip it.

***Sorry for the poor upload quality and even poorer narration!***

Farewell, #22E!

Look Out ****, Here We Come!!!!

****I got a job!!!!****

I got a very important call this afternoon informing me that I was being offered an amazing research position with a great organization in ****

.

We are so excited that I don't even have the words to write much more about it. The only thing we can really think about right now is how incredibly blessed we feel for the Lord's direction and provision for our lives. He took care of us just like He always has and always will, and His plans are always superior to our own.

"Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him"

Psalm 37:5,7

The Ending of an Era

I had my last day of school last Thursday and I didn't even know it. And by last day of school I mean last day of school ever. I can't even wrap my mind around it. I've been so preoccupied with the job thing that I hadn't glanced at my school calendar in weeks and my last day of class just came and went without warning. I have a final exam on May 11th and my hooding ceremony (graduation) is on May 15th. I'm absolutely terrified of being done with school. I love being a student and I don't know that I'm ready to be an employee. That is, if I can even find a job!

Last week I played in my last intramural game of my college career. Playing intramural sports here at Baylor was one of my most favorite parts of college. I played 5 years of flag football, volleyball, basketball, soccer, softball and wallyball. We had a great team and we played every sport regardless of how good or bad we were at any of them. We even won the All-University tournament a couple times. I'm sad intramurals won't be a part of my life anymore and I'm especially sad that now I have to actually feel guilty about not working out. I've never been one to "hit the gym", "go running", or "get off the couch" but I've always had a weekly basketball or soccer game to make me feel better about not doing any of those crazy things. Now it's just me and my sedentary lifestyle.

Kolby is mourning the loss of Baylor Library privileges as I must return all books this week in order to graduate. If you saw my account, you would find that I've checked out almost a hundred books from the Baylor Library. However, only 6 of those were actually checked out by me during my 5 years here. ALL of the others were checked out by Kolby over the 16 months that we've been married. That boy loves to read.

Speaking of reading, Kolby and I are reading books from the Chronicles of Narnia these days. Right now we're on The Horse and his Boy. We read at night and it's my favorite part of the day. Kolby reads the books out loud and he is awesome at doing the voices for all of the crazy characters in the Narnia books. There are a million reasons why Kolby will make a great dad someday, but his knack for reading stories is one of my favorites.

That's about all I have for today. Can you tell I have a lot of spare time on my hands these days?

Happy Birthday Maya!

Today we celebrated Maya's 3rd birthday!

I took Maya to the vet last week for her yearly check-up (and shots) and she got an A+! I actually really enjoy taking her to the vet now because it reminds me of how far she's come. She was really sick when we rescued her from the pound and just a few days after we brought her home she got so sick that we had to take her to an emergency vet clinic. The vet said that she would have died if we hadn't brought her in that day and that her blood work showed an infection count that was much higher than he'd ever seen in his life. You'd NEVER be able to tell that now, though--- she's happy and healthy and has turned out to be the best dog ever!

Like last year, we invited some of her friends to a nearby baseball field to celebrate her birthday. Three of her boyfriends came to her party, Buddy (westie), Baxter (lab/weimaraner puppy), and Buster (german shepherd mix). Good times were had by all.

***

In non-canine news, things around here are pretty slow. I presented my thesis research at the 25th Anniversary of the Association of Christian Economists conference last Friday. It was my 4th and last conference to present it at and I'm glad to be finished. I also turned in a term paper last week and now it's downhill to graduation. I'm supposed to be meeting with my thesis advisor to move forward with getting my thesis paper published somewhere, but I'm enjoying the free time too much to take on a task like that--- at least for this week.

Our co-ed rec softball team remains defeated (as in, the opposite of undefeated) but it has served as a good outlet for Kolby's mounting baseball obsession. That boy is getting out of control. I came home from school late one night to find that Kolby had grilled hot dogs for dinner in honor of opening day. By himself. He also joined a fantasy baseball team for the first time, causing me to regret introducing him to my friend Robbie who in turn introduced him to fantasy baseball. We stay pretty busy around here watching ALL of the Texas Rangers' games.

Oh, and I never got around to making a post about our trip to Wimberley (just south of Austin) for Easter. We had a wonderful time celebrating with Kolby's extended family and enjoyed a round of golf, plenty of baseball games in the yard and a whole lot of egg-tivities. Here's a picture of part of the gang, which also included Mimi, Kassidy, and Uncle Michael.

So happy belated Easter!

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb...The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said." -Matthew 28:1, 5-6

Springtime

Isn't springtime the best time of year? We certainly think so.

Maya loves spring because it means she can spend almost all day out on "her porch". Our apartment is on the 2nd floor and we have a small balcony off our living room and Maya LOVES to lay out there and watch the day go by.

I love spring because it means that Kolby and I can sit in our rocking chairs out on the balcony and chat and eat popsicles together every afternoon when he gets home from school. A popsicle a day keeps the doctor away, right?

Kolby loves spring because of this guy: For the 99% of you who don't know who this is, his name is Tom Grieve and he's the broadcaster for the televised Texas Rangers baseball games. To say that Kolby loves baseball, particularly the Rangers, would be the understatement of the century. He observed a moment of silence the first time he heard Tom Grieve's voice on TV last week because it marked the start of baseball season. Whatever makes you happy, honey.

The beautiful spring weather has also allowed a lot of progress to be made on the construction of my parents' ranch house. This picture is from March and they've gotten a lot further on it since this was taken. We're ready to enjoy some time out there this summer!

***

Not much is going on around here these days. Kolby and I play on a co-ed softball team and we've lost all of our games so far. Oh well.

My mom got a new car a few weeks ago and Russell got her old Tahoe, which left his Hyundai Elantra up for grabs. So we're borrowing it for an indefinite amount of time until we decide when we want to buy a 2nd car. We've shared a car since we got married and it's worked great and saved us a lot of money, but whatever we end up doing after this school year will probably require us to have 2 cars. Kolby's looking at the Honda Accord but there aren't many used ones that have the new body-style out on the market yet. The Elantra is buying us time to make a decision, which is really helpful.

Happy Spring!

Friends

I've had the same 4 best friends since middle school. It's one of the first things that people are sure to find out when they get to know me. When we all got together last weekend we realized that we'd been best friends for 10 years! That is wild. We became friends through 7th grade basketball and have managed to only get closer and closer over the years. We had a big BBQ last Sunday with all of our families and it was so great to hang out and again make it seem like we still live down the street from one another.

The group: Laura, Jessica, Katie, Alayne, and myself

The family BBQ after our senior year of high school!

It's crazy to think back to that year and how we wondered how we were going to stay best friends after we left home and moved off to college. Almost 5 years later, I still don't know exactly how we managed to do it. But we did it... and there aren't too many things I'm more thankful for than my friendship with these girls.

Here's to 10 more!

Big Friday

Today was a big day in our household for two reasons:

First, Kolby mailed in his acceptance to the Seattle Pacific MFA program. Here's an excerpt from the program's website to give you an idea of what it's all about:

---

The low-residency MFA at SPU is a creative writing program for writers who not only want to pursue excellence in the craft of writing but also place their work within the larger context of the Judeo-Christian tradition of faith.

The spiritual dimension of this program is not intended to produce didactic, sectarian, or sentimental literature. Nor is this MFA intended to produce writers of “Christian fiction.” Far from it.

This program seeks to extend the tradition of Christian writing in which the highest levels of art, an open-eyed exploration of human experience, and a respect for transcendent mystery are all held in a proper balance.

Our models are Augustine and Dante, the Pearl poet and Sor Juana de la Cruz, George Herbert and John Milton, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Fyodor Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot and Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy and Annie Dillard.

We believe that our program will appeal to writers for whom matters of faith are central. We also intend to cultivate reading and writing as spiritual disciplines.

We are convinced that writers flourish best when they engage in a sustained dialogue with the great literature that has gone before them. Therefore, our program maintains a strong emphasis on reading classic works from the Judeo-Christian tradition and responding to them in a series of critical papers.

What distinguishes our program from other MFA programs, then, is its focus on the relationship between literature and faith, its integration of the spiritual disciplines, and the reading of literary classics of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the curriculum.

---

If you know Kolby well, you can easily see why he's so pumped about getting to enroll in such a fitting program. It suits him perfectly and it is the only faith-based program, which is ideal. The low-residency model involves sending packets of completed material and receiving detailed feedback from professor mentors. It allows students to maintain their current locations and only requires two intensive 10-day residency periods per year. The summer residency is in July/August in Santa Fe, NM and the winter residency is in March and takes place on Whidbey Island, just off Washington state. The program will take two years of coursework and a third year of writing a graduate manuscript. So that's the scoop!

Second, I submitted the final copy of my thesis today. It was the biggest accomplishment of my life thus far. I spent a full year working on the econometrical analysis that I used to obtain the results used to write my paper. I used the statistical software program, STATA, to merge and clean the data as well as run regressions, and the statistical code that I had to write to do this turned out to be over 60 pages long. C-R-A-Z-Y. It was a whole lot of work, to say the least. Then I moved on to the write-up, which luckily only took about 2 months and ended up just under 60 pages. Thank goodness that is all behind me now! Most of you know already that my thesis was on the topic of micro-credit; specifically, how micro-credit impacts household productivity. This post is getting too long already, but when I get some time in the near future I'll share my findings.

***

In other news, I had a round of job interviews at a great organization in **** on Wednesday. Everything went well but I won't hear anything for a couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Great News!!!

Kolby got an acceptance letter from the Seattle Pacific MFA in Creative Writing program in the mail today!!! It is a really selective program and things were looking especially bleak as we discovered the number of applicants was way up this year due to the withering job market. He's a great writer and getting accepted into such a great program affirmed it! He has until April 15th to accept or reject, but I'd say there's a 99.9% chance he'll be happily accepting admission into the program. When he officially decides, I'll write a post with more details about the program. The main detail of interest to most of you is the fact that we will NOT have to move to Seattle because it is a low-residency program (I'll explain that later, too).

Here's a picture of Kolby telling Maya that he gets to go back to school! She's a great listener. It is such great news and he is one happy camper today!

And no, that's not a large pile of games on the chair in the background. We are grown-ups now and owning so many (awesome) games would be childish.

Examination Results: Pass

 I passed the oral examination (defense) of my Master's thesis this afternoon! A special thanks to those of you that called, emailed, texted (is that a word?), prayed, and offered encouragement today... I really appreciate your support! I have until March 27th to make the necessary revisions and then I'll be officially DONE with this thing. Then it's downhill to graduation!

Spring Break

Kolby, Maya, and I took our first family road trip this past week! We had a quick visit with our friends Jessica & Steven in Oklahoma, spent several days with Kolburt & Kellie (and their sweet baby Reagan) in Colorado Springs, visited Laura in Boulder, and then headed back to Oklahoma for a night and then home. It was a wonderful trip and we enjoyed the break from school and from Waco!

Here's Maya taking in the fresh Colorado air. This dog LOVES to ride in the car! Kolby and I with the Schultz family: Kolburt (Kolby's college roommate), Kellie (also friends with Kolby from Wheaton College), and little Reagan.
We visited The Garden of the Gods Park just outside of Colorado Springs one day when Kolburt and Kellie both had to work. Here are a few pictures from our day there. FYI: Maya is in a lot of pictures on this trip since we didn't have anyone to take a picture of Kolby and I together and neither of us care to pose for a picture alone.


On our way from Colorado Springs to Boulder we drove up to Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, CO. It was BEAUTIFUL! Here are a few pictures from Bear Lake inside the National Park, which had a view of the continental divide.

One main reason why we drove up to the park was so Maya could have her first encounter with snow. It was love at first sight!

She played and played and played in the snow with no sign of losing interest. It was quite a spectacle for people passing by. "My goodness... she loves the snow, huh?" was a regular comment. People got the biggest kick out of us telling them that we're from Texas and that this is the first time she's ever set foot (paw?) on snow. It was really fun to watch her have so much fun.

Boulder, CO was our last stop and Laura took us to see Boulder Falls, which were nearly frozen solid.

We had such a great time catching up with friends and enjoying all the beautiful scenery that we certainly don't have here in Texas! Now it's back to the grind.

***

Speaking of back to the grind, what I most certainly SHOULD be doing right now is preparing for the oral defense of my Master's thesis... which is tomorrow. Yes, TOMORROW. Wish me luck. I'll let you know how it goes!

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!