Kolby's First Webb Family Vacation

We were hanging out with my parents and Brad & Remy the other night and started reminiscing about our first vacation as a family of 7. It was August 2007 and Brad & Remy were weeks away from their wedding date and Kolby & I were just a few months away from ours. We took a trip to Wyoming to visit Yellowstone and spend some time horseback riding at a dude ranch. My family is pretty crazy and isn't really risk-averse so our vacations typically end up a little on the wild side. This took some 'getting used to' for Kolby.

Our first stop was in Jackson Hole, WY and our first activity was a whitewater rafting trip... on which Kolby managed to fall out of the raft. Poor kid. It was the very first day of his very first Webb family vacation--- you would have thought he could have lasted a little longer than that! We still all laugh every time we think about it and we laugh especially hard every time we look at the pictures.

When we got the pictures out to look (and laugh) at the other night, I decided to scan them and subsequently decided to post them here for everyone to enjoy. These pictures were taken by the rafting company, FYI.

Picture 1: The whole family happily paddling along with our guide. Starting at the back left there's me, Mom, Brad, Remy, Russell, Dad, and Kolby. We were about to hit a pretty big swell so we voted for Remy to move to the front and just ride the raft like a buckin' bronco. So far, Kolby looks like he's hanging in there.Picture 2: We approach the swell--- Remy gets thrown forwards while Kolby quietly slips out the back. This picture cracks me up because it looks like there's nothing too crazy going on with the raft yet Kolby somehow loses his hold and has no hope of recovering it. We hadn't even hit the swell yet.Picture 3: NO IDEA what's happening here.

Picture 4: ????? Seriously???
Picture 5: I was the ONLY person who knew Kolby had fallen out (I watched the whole thing happen... see pictures 3&4!). Everyone had their eyes locked on Remy (even the guide) to see if she'd be able to hang on, which she did. In this picture you can see I'm frantically looking for Kolby in the direction he had fallen out but he was resurfacing (rather creepily) on the opposite side of the raft. Mom and Brad had NO IDEA that he had fallen out nor that they were banging him with their paddles! Picture 6: The front of the boat is laughing at Remy's wild ride, Mom is trying to figure out what keeps getting in the way of her paddle, and I am SCREAMING "Kolby fell out!!!" at the top of my lungs. All this happened in a split second but it seemed like an eternity before I could get anyone to realize Kolby was gone. At this point, our guide was the only one to notice Kolby clinging to the side of the raft for dear life.

Once I realized where Kolby was, I grabbed him by the life jacket and pulled him out of the water and into the raft in no time. The guide had hollered for me to let go of him and he said that he'd pull him in once we got through the rapids but I was not about to let him spend one more second outside that raft. Talk about the power of adrenaline... I pulled him up and out of that water completely by myself. [And he's not small... just take a look at picture 4 again.] If not adrenaline, it could have also been the power of a bride-to-be who already had her wedding dress and was NOT about to lose her fiancee that gave me the strength to get Kolby back in the raft. Either way, he made it back safely and lived to tell "his side" of the story. Basically, he just never thought he (or anyone) would actually fall out so he wasn't hanging on that tight. He fell (flipped?) out and wound up resurfacing underneath our raft but had the presence of mind to guide himself to the edge while even remembering to keep his legs up so they didn't get caught on any rocks. He said it all happened too fast for him to be scared and all he could think about was how cold the water was.

Such a trooper!

Lost and Found

We celebrated Kolby's 24th birthday on Thursday by heading out to the Rangers game with his family.
Check out these great seats!

The game was great, the weather wasn't too hot, and the Rangers won.

Unfortunately, when we called my parents on our way home to check on Maya we found out that she had escaped from their backyard. We rushed home to look for her and searched the neighborhood until 1 am with no avail. We had to go to bed that night knowing she was out on the streets somewhere which was NOT fun. We woke up at dawn yesterday morning to start our search again. I made signs to put up everywhere hoping someone might have spotted her at some point and could give us a clue as to what part of the neighborhood she was running around in.

It wasn't long before my phone started ringing with calls from people who had seen her at some point in the night. Then we finally got a call from a lady who was on a walk and had just seen her on the street that my parents' house backs up to. So we headed that direction and got another call minutes later from a man who had her by the collar at his yard sale. I guess she was just in dire need of a garden gnome to give Kolby for his birthday.

As much as we brag about Maya for being the best dog ever, she does have ONE awful flaw. When she escapes (which isn't very often- it had been almost a year this time), she is in no hurry whatsoever to come home. Although she has a great sense of direction and we never find her more than a few blocks from home, she gets on her own time frame and likes to soak up the freedom for as long as she possibly can. It's annoying to say the least.

So Happy Birthday, Kolby! And Maya says she's sorry for ruining it there at the end.

New House!

I thought I'd share some more details about our new house in case anyone is interested.

It is a pier & beam house (I'm still not totally sure what exactly that means, but I know it is an alternative to a slab foundation), was built in 1957, and has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. There is a nice-sized living room and a there is a large breakfast area off the kitchen where we'll put our dining table. The entry, living room, hallway, and bedrooms have the original hardwood floors. The house is in really great condition and the sellers have made a lot of updates during the 9 years that they've been there.

The kitchen cabinets are original, but there are new granite countertops (AWESOME!), a new tumbled marble backsplash, and new ceramic tile floors. The sink, electric cooktop, and dishwasher are new as well. Here is a picture of the kitchen (all these pictures are from the listing website):
The sellers completely remodeled both bathrooms (down to the studs). These first pictures are of the guest bathroom, but I wish I could post pictures from a typical bathroom in a 1950s house to make you appreciate how amazing these bathrooms are. The bathrooms in the other houses we had looked at were AWFUL. We love the beadboard (which is also in the breakfast area) and the tiled tub and the vanity area. And the new ceramic tile floors. We pretty much love everything the current owners have done to update the house, which is so great.

Below are a couple of pictures from the master bathroom. The first thing you'll probably notice is that it is tiny. There is just enough room for the sink, toilet, and shower. This is true for ALL houses of this size that were built in that era. It is a negative attribute for sure, but we decided that the "positives" that go along with such a unique and quaint house are well worth the sacrifice. The wall to the right of the sink is nothing but built-in cabinets, which will be great for storage. The sellers replaced the old tub with a large tiled shower and it looks really great.

I didn't want to post pictures of the other rooms since they'll look totally different once we put our furniture in them, but our plan is to use one of the extra bedrooms as an office and the other as a guest room. The house has a great yard full of great trees: magnolia, crate myrtle, cherry laurel, bradford pear, red oak, pecan and hackberry. I love that they are all different. There is also a cedar deck off the back of the house and it and the backyard are shaded enough to actually be usable even during the summer. I'll post plenty more pictures once we get settled in.

It is such a great house!

The Road to Get Here

It has been one crazy week!

We moved all of our stuff out of our apartment and into a storage unit last weekend, stayed with some friends in Waco for a few days while Kolby finished school, and moved into my parents' house on Thursday night. Kolby landed a part-time job on Friday morning and then we looked at 10 houses on Friday afternoon, made an offer on one on Friday night, negotiated the price on Saturday, and signed a contract for a new house on Sunday!

Kolby has loved teaching English these past two years, even more than he thought he would, but he is certainly excited about having a break from full-time employment. The graduate program he'll be starting in July will carry a time commitment of about 20 hours a week so he had been looking for a job to fill the rest of his time. On Friday, he interviewed at a college prep place for a position to teach classes for the verbal section of the SAT test. As a male English teacher, Kolby seems to be a hot commodity (this was true at both the schools he's taught at and rang true for this place as well) so he was able to lock in that job with ease and will teach some classes this summer as well as during the school year. It sounds like a great gig for him. Once again, the Lord provides.

And now for the house hunt story. We started casually looking at neighborhoods pretty soon after I applied for a job back in April. I knew the job was a long shot, but we didn't want to be way behind in the search for a place to live if things did end up working out. Anytime we would be in the area for one reason or another, we'd drive around and weigh the options for various cities and even neighborhoods within those cities. We landed on a particular location pretty quickly. It is actually the neighborhood that Kolby grew up in before they moved when he was in 4th grade. His parents have several good friends that still live in that area and they all rave about how great the neighborhood is and how well it has held its value over the years. The more we drove around it--- the more we fell in love with it. It has a great variety of houses--- there are some big expensive houses that help support the home value of the smaller houses like the ones we were looking at. The vast majority if the neighborhood was built in the late 1950s so the houses are old and unique-- and all of the lots are covered in awesome mature trees. There is a great park that is right in the middle of the neighborhood and every street has sidewalks on both sides so its a great place to go on walks and spend plenty of time outside, especially since all of the trees provide shade from the blaring Texas sun. Basically, it's just an awesome neighborhood.

So, we'd been looking in that neighborhood for awhile and we would look at houses online and once we found a handful that we liked, I would try to make appointments to see as many as I could and then just drive up for the day while Kolby was at school. There were also a couple of houses that we found online and asked either my parents or Kolby's parents to go take a look at them for us to see if any were worth a trip up to see them for ourselves. This was a pretty frustrating process because the houses that we liked would usually go under contract before we were able to see them in person. Where we were looking was such a popular neighborhood and the sections of it that had affordable houses for first-time home buyers like us were insanely popular because of the 2009 tax credit. At various times we had gotten our hearts set on a house only to see it get snatched up before we could do anything. By the time we moved up here on Thursday, we were confident in our decision to buy a house in that neighborhood and were hoping things would have a much better chance of falling into place now that we were in the area and ready to make an offer as soon as we found the right house.

This past Friday we spent most of the day looking at house after house after house. A local realtor showed us several, and then we just drove around the neighborhood and ended up looking at a couple more by just calling the phone number on the For Sale sign in the yard. As we were about to head home we happened upon this super cute house that was listed at a price a bit out of our range. We decided to call about it anyways, and this sweet family let us come in and see it. It was love at first sight. The whole time we were walkling through it Kolby and I were exchanging this dropped jaw "oh-my-gosh-this-house-is-awesome" look behind the seller's back. It was so perfect it made our stomachs hurt. At the end of our tour of the house, the seller told us that they had just dropped the price THAT DAY by $6,000 and that because we hadn't signed on with a buyer's agent that they would take off an additional $6,000 (this is the amount they would have had to pay to our realtor if we had one). Seriously?!?! We made on offer pretty much as soon as we got home and we signed the contract on Sunday after church. The house is so much more than I could ever have hoped for! We are bounce-off-the-walls excited about it.

This post has already gotten insanely long, so I'll post more details about the house itself another day. Hopefully by then I can get some pictures of the inside. We're so excited!!

We Bought a House!!!!

Technically we haven't bought it yet, but we did sign a contract today and assuming all goes well with the inspection, appraisal, etc.--- we'll be homeowners as of July 6th!

It is the CUTEST little house in this AWESOME neighborhood and it is absolutely PERFECT! It was built in 1957, is "just our size" at 1,500 square feet, and has the original hardwood floors throughout the entire house (except for the kitchen and bathrooms which are brand new tile). There are a lot of mature trees on the lot, including a magnolia tree in the front yard which I LOVE. I'll post some more details tomorrow, but I just wanted to share the news while I had a minute!

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.