Homeowners!!!

Monday, December 29th we sat down at a big table and signed up for 30 years of debt to buy this beautiful house. We were able to move in over New Year's weekend (thanks to the help of some good friends) and have been setting up house ever since. Needless to say, the rest of our lives have pretty much been put on the back burner - I'm still banking on having 6 months to get our thank you cards out... for anyone who is wondering we did get your gift and thank you, a formal thank you will follow, I promise.

It feels so strange to be married and having such a great time settling into our new home. Here's a couple pictures of some new furniture we've added...

It wasn't even two years ago, I was single and living the life in a neat condo near downtown, sure that God wanted me to use my singleness and travel to do missions work. Something was missing though... and then I met the love of my life and the rest is history.

First Christmas!

Our first Christmas together was a huge success.  We spent Christmas Eve at Bill & Anne's house (Brian's extended family here in town) and had a nice relaxing Christmas day just the two of us.  Holding to my families tradition of opening presents no earlier than 6am with no alarm clocks I couldn't hardly sleep after I woke up to find it was only 4:30... I laid there quietly as best I could until 6 on the dot and woke up Brian (who is not a morning person - but was a very good sport). 

Brian got me an awesome new bike.
And he was surprised by this sweet Garmin. We definitely missed being with our families but being together as our own new family sure was fun too.

Christmas Prep

Christmas is just two days away and I am so excited I can hardly stand it.

For several reasons we had to make the difficult decision to not travel this year. With his family in Ohio and mine in Washington we get to spend a Colorado Christmas, just the two of us. I'm sure it will be much quieter and perhaps a bit more relaxing than had we traveled to either family, though we will definitely miss seeing everyone.

We have our tree up and stockings hung and an unreal number of presents under the tree - I think we all went a little overboard this year =). As of yesterday all the presents for our families are on their way, I can't tell you how stressed I've been trying to get all of that done, prepare for moving and still manage to keep up at work and all the social engagements this time of year brings... why did we get married in November again?

The best present for us this year is, of course, that we are scheduled to close on our first house on Dec. 29th (Yay!!). I'm thankful for our long Christmas weekend, which will be spent trying to get things all packed and ready to go for the long New Year's weekend that follows, which will be spent moving into the new place. As much as I hate moving (I've moved 5 times in the last 3 years!) it's encouraging to know that we shouldn't have to do it again for quite a while. I'm also very excited for us to have the opportunity to settle into our new home and make it our own.

Though I have been feeling the stress (as mentioned before) I do have to remind myself that we are so very blessed, to have each other, our jobs, our health and our faith in Jesus as our Savior.

The Honeymoon

Starting at 4am the day after the wedding (yikes!!) we made our way to our first airport. From there we took 2 planes to get into Belize and wait in line for customs. Then got on a little 14 seater hopper flight to take us to Ambergris Caye. We then took a short taxi ride only to find that the final leg of our journey - a 1 hr. 'ferry' boat ride to our resort just a short 6 miles down the beach - wasn't leaving for another 2 hours. So we sat and had a wonderful Belizan meal (lots of great sea food) at Fido's Bar & Grill on the beach. This was also where we got our first taste of Belikin - "The Beer of Belize".

Once we got settled at our little resort we enjoyed finally getting a chance to SLEEP. It was fantastic. Wake up late, walk out to the beach, fall asleep on the beach, eat whenever we felt hungry... the ultimate relaxation.

We did manage to venture out on Wednesday for an all day adventure. Went to the Mayan Ruins at Cahal Pech - which our tour guide told us means "The Land of Tick". Followed by Cave Tubing - think a lazy river inside a cave. The tubing was really neat, but I think our favorite part was the mile hike through the jungle to get there.

We made our way back to the states, arrived at our apartment around 9pm but were so excited to open our gifts that we stayed until every last one had been opened. Not a terrible ending to our first vacation together.

Newly-wed = Newly-blogger

I have been trying to come up with a creative way to both document this new stage in our lives as well as keep others informed of what we're up to. As popular as blogging is these days, I feel as though I'm falling short on the 'creative' part but this should easily cover all other bases. Now when people say, "how's married life?" there will be a great place where they can really know the answer to that question.