First Novel of the Season

Summer has officially started and along with it my tradition of novel reading.
It is always difficult to go straight from finals into a job due to a lack of time to locate one during finals time. So while I am looking for jobs I also have more time to read. Because of the amount of non-fiction I am required to read during the school year I let my brain take a little break, while remaining active, by reading novels. This summer I actually do have some non-fiction to read such as biographies and Christian books not required for school.
My first book of the summer is called First Light by the Thoene's. I had listened to their third book (a series I found out) while on my way to Bree's wedding back in February.. it kept me wide away on those long, dark, west Texas roads! So, Susan (my mother in law!) let me borrow her signed copy of the first book, First Light. I didn't realize the book were all related but I am sort of glad that I heard the last one first so I already know a lot of the happy endings that take place b/c the first book had some really sad stuff. I still cried several times even knowing the end. It's a historical fiction taking place during the life/ministry of Jesus. It involved people in the Bible and gives them backstory... such as the "centurion" or the "blind man" that Jesus heals. It's a little controversial b/c no one knows for sure how Jesus was or what these people were like but they do a good job of making Jesus' character from Scripture. He basically only says words he actually says in the Bible and they fill in the background details. Really it has made the Bible stories more alive to me to remember the persecution going on in those days and to think about what was going on with the High Priests and Roman Guards before they arrested Jesus... it's wasn't like they just thought of the idea that day and killed him... he must have been bugging them for a while! It's neat to see how they've researched the Jewish customs and everything so they paint a really neat picture of Jerusalem and the neighboring cities during that time. It was right under 400 pages and I read it in a weekend plus a day. Easy and fun read. Now I am anxious to get the second book or to start the series The Flames of Rome, which my greek teacher highly recommends to get an idea of the early Christian churches. Yay for summer!
I am also planning on reading about George Muller, Jonathan Edwards and a few others plus the book Humility by CJ Mahaney. With a friend I am checking out What is the What about the lost boys of Sudan. I also picked up my Hebrew book and accompanying DVD lectures to begin trying to teach myself Hebrew over the summer, so I can pass elementary in the Fall.
I am still looking for jobs and have my resume waiting at several offices. I also got an interview with a classical school as a tutor for the fall.
Summer is here but you wouldn't guess by the 60 degree weather we are having. I won't complain b/c I know once it starts warming up it'll get hot hot hot for a while!! I just don't like all this rain!
Today we also pick up our first (and smallest) batch of veggies from our farm co-op that we are participating in. YAY! I know for sure we are getting asparagus.
Happy summer... if you need any recommendations on pleasure reading I'd be glad to recommend a few for you!

All Done!

Today is the day
All shout Hurray
The tests are done
The novels begun
Time to sew and paint and bake and read
And maybe in finding a job I'll succeed

That's right... I just finished typing up my last test and my last paper (seperate things) and I all I have to do is turn them in by 4pm. That is enough time to eat some lunch, take a last glance over my paper, go for a run and still turn them in on time! I am so relieved and eager to start reading a bunch of novels and biographies that have been resting since Christmas.
I also have to get serious about the job hunt... I applied to 4 or 5 places and one seems interested but not ideal and the another said they aren't hiring now after all... the others... silence.
We are also getting more serious about buying a house... we have looked at close to 20 houses and only 3 of them are even maybe an option. One is a little further out than we would like and needs major updating but is a lot of space and very quaint. The next one is a shotgun with large rooms and a sturdy foundation but has sort of an awkward design (like most shotguns!) and perhaps not enough kitchen space and it a tad bit closer to a karaoke bar than in ideal! the third house is my favorite and has been for months and months. Before we were even seriously looking into buying a house I saw two houses on Reading street that were so adorable (they were the same but different colors). One of them was a hud home and quickly sold and the other has been on the market ever since but we have been unable to get into it. Well, yesterday was the glorious day we looked in. The renters "moved out" that morning and we went to look inside that afternoon. The place was absolutely trashed. Every room had half drunken drinks and trash of all kinds lying all around. It was stunning. I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt that most of that trash was just from moving and that it wasn't always in such a state. =/ However, despite the trash it was Drew's and our realtor's and my favorite house! weird. If you can like it through the trash you might have a good thing, right?! Well there are two large rooms when you enter with nice hardwood floors and tall ceilings. Off these rooms are two small bedrooms with many layers of wallpaper and paint to be removed and nasty carpet with hardwood underneath! There is a small bathroom inbetween the two rooms. Past all this is a decent to small kitchen that needs some updating but has great potential and black and white tile countertops! Past this is an eat in area and then a dinning room (also with nasty carpet that would have to be removed!). There is a ton of attic space but non-conforming and the same is true of the basement. There are washer/dryer hook ups in the basement but there is some leakage going on and the furnace and water heater need to be replaced. Ha... this doesn't sound great but trust me.. .it is some of the best stuff we have seen in our price range. The great thing about most of the updates is that we can take that cost of them off of the price and/or ask the current owner to take care of them in advance. The place has a lot of potential and is definitely live-in-able as is... we'll have to go for a second look to really pound out details and look more into some of the issues.


In other news: this month is cultivate beauty month at our church... where every one is encouraged to kill their TV for the month and allow that time to be used to do something creative or beautiful. This could include, art, photography, cooking, going for walks, reading a book etc etc... We don't get any TV channels as is but we are making sure that we take time to cultivate beauty. I've been cultivating my mind through finals and now I am eager to jump into a good book, get re-aquainted and better acquainted with my sewing machine and do lots of hosting and baking! Plus I have two empty canvases that need paint on them! Drew and I also have been enjoying the weather with walks and last night he started rebuilding his bike so that we can also go riding and ride to church even on Sundays! I LOVE MAY IN KENTUCY! (minus allergies)
I also had another life accomplishment... I ran Cherokee Park last week. I have never been much of a runner, but over the past year I have consistently run 2.5 miles in this nice little flat park near our house. Just next to this park is a much cooler park, more like a forrest to any one from Texas, that is full of huge hills (also huge compared to Texas). I've never desired to run this loop until the other day and I got a bad itch to give it a shot. I knew I could always walk the rest of the way if I needed to. Well, I ran the whole thing, hills and all! It is not really any further than I run at the other park but much harder. It was such an enjoyable run! I need to get to where I have the attention span to run longer distances... I just get so bored and tired after 2 or 3. I'd love tips!
Well, speaking of running I'm off to do just that..... cultivate beauty!

It's Greek to Me! (still)

This is the week of finals.
This is the final week of school.
This is when you find out if you finally got it.

I am very glad to see the end of this semester quickly approaching but I am not glad that the end comes with a swift kick in the pants every semester. This one is no different. Spring Break, Papers, Easter, you finally think you are catching up and then they smack finals on you... and right before mother's day too.. sheesh! Since we have been back from New Zealand catching up has been harder than either one of us expected. Luckily for Drew catching up has taken the form of a few more sales than expected (after more than a few more phone calls and lot visits) but for me it's looked like a few more long nights, more than a few more pages to read and now a few finals.
Today I had my Systematic Theology final... good ole Dr. Moore. I really respect this man and have had three semesters to see how wise he is and how seriously he takes the gospel of Jesus in the classroom and in his everyday life and family. I also respect the way he gives tests (not necessarily how the graders grade them...but that's another tangent). Dr. Moore is not primarily concerned with giving tests and one semester he wanted to lecture the last class period so bad that he cancelled the final! This year we were not so lucky but he did give us the two topics that we would be primarily tested over.
To help you understand that two topics is really a bajillion topics I was going to give you a sample of a few of the questions that we had to answer in "one" question but then I realized that even though no one from the seminary really reads this blog... if they did... that would be considered cheating since I think he uses basically the same tests every year.
So you will just have to trust me that those two topics were severely in depth!
However, I studied and I wrote... and wrote... and wrote and I am pretty satisfied with my answers. We had 75 minutes and I spent the first 60 on the first question alone.. oooops! However, out of all the midterms and finals I have had with Dr. Moore, I felt that this was my best written. I had well thought out things to say and a lot of scripture to support it. For the first time I didn't feel like my brain was scrambled just as they handed out the test. But because I was so thought out it took me a lot longer to write. Thankfully they gave us an extra 20 minutes to finish, which gave me 35 minutes to write the second one. This was barely enough time for me to write down the bones-basics of the question, so I hope I was clear enough for the grader to see I knew and understood but was running out of time... and my hand was having seizures and hating me for writing so long and in depth!
With that over I made a trip to Target and am now home... facing the real challenge of the week... Greek. This semester of Greek was my least favorite and also my least outstanding. Our professor, who is my favorite teacher, was using our class as guinea pigs and at the end decided to never do the class again... I don't blame him. Because of the newness of the class he also forgot to schedule a midterm.. fine by me. I didn't realize until now though that because we didn't have a midterm... we also didn't have a mid-catch-up where I recram all the vocab and study the work thus far... so now here comes the final and I have over 1000 vocab words to re-learn and 10+ old and new testament greek passages to learn and be prepared for a sight reading from the old testament. swell. So this is just a catch-you-up post to let you know why I will not be posting again til the end of the week!
After finals more on: Mothers day, Cultivating Beauty and finding a job!

This is not even half of them.....

Pottery Barn

I think it might be a very nifty adventure to go to a barn filled with pottery. Of course it would be handmade pottery with various lumps and minor mistakes to give each piece it's own character. Some would be raw and ready for paint and others would be neatly hand painted already. They of course would be pretty inexpensive b/c of the cheap overhead that a barn provides! Many women wearing flipflops, fun purses and carrying sonic cups would browse through the pottery laughing and never sweating and purchasing inexpensive pieces for their homes and friends/family. Sounds fun, right?!
Well I am pretty sure that this is the very reason the store, deceptively called Pottery Barn, is so inviting to many a woman. However, I am confused by the fact that said store does not carry much pottery and never looks much like a barn or anything you would put in the barn. The prices are then marked far beyond what any one I know that has a barn could afford!!!!
Don't get me wrong... I love their stuff. The wood is beautiful and they know just the right shade of green a girl needs. They have handy container-store-like things that never get boring and more lamp shades in the same color than a girl knows what to do with. It's just the fact that every time I look at a price tag I get nauseous!! Sometimes when we walk by they will have their clearance stuff sitting in the door way marked way down... but yet still always closer to $1000 dollars. yikes!
But I have chosen to still hold the store in high regard and even browse through their catalog... appreciating that they tell you what color paint they used on the walls in the picture! great idea!....... until recently.
I received a catalog, which I browsed through w/out the slightest idea I would purchase anything from it. Then on the back cover there were these adorable water-bottles. Since learning my beautiful pink nalgene-thing w/ straw was poisonous to drink from I had been looking for an aluminum-type water bottle to replace it that fit my personality. There is was... pinkandred flowers on a white background aluminum waterbottle for only $10.. that's cheaper than any place I had seen. I told a friend and then went and picked one up for her and myself!
Quickly people from our church and school picked up on the cute bottles and now they are everywhere... then it happened. Black spots began to appear on the bottom of the bottle... no biggie my husband reassured me. Drinking on... the spots went from black to white. hmmm. Then while we were in New Zealand I got one of those lovely white spots IN MY MOUTH!!!!
One word can explain...... MOLD!
Sick, disgusting, nasty, blah!!!!!
Oh so gross.
I am still grossed out!
How could a place that charges $1000 for a drawer give me a moldy water-bottle?
I had washed it. I hadn't had any sicknesses. No one else had drank from this water bottle. sick.
Then my friend, the one I gave the other waterbottle, told me HERS TOO was MOLDING!!! ICK!
So we are spreading the word that Pottery Barn is selling water bottles that do not have the right coating on the inside, which makes the aluminum itself not very good to drink from AND causes it to MOLD!
So, if you are looking to be green and stay away from plastic bottles... you should also stay away from pottery barn... unless it is a neat wooden structure where lovely ladies with sonic drinks are walking in and out of in their flip flops with hand made pottery at cheap prices!

More NZ Pics!!

Husband and wife climb a terrifying mountain face together...awww. I am not really doing anything too exciting here b/c I had found a nice little ledge to stand on and there was no other really good place to go with them... Drew on the other hand is killing that hard climb next to me... we were over the ocean...way way way up!!!


Another view from Cathedral Cove, where Prince Caspian was partially filmed (see preview) just after the sun set.


We are sitting on these huge tree roots in a park in downtown Auckland... some of them were at least three feet above ground and the trunks were crazy twisted and neat!

Yes,

We are in NEW ZEALAND!





Today is our last full day here in the city of sails. We have done all sorts of things, which will be expanded upon in later posts I am sure along with the 500+ pictures we have taken. We visited Mordor and the cove where Prince Caspian was shot (you can see it on the preview too)! Last night we walked around Auckland and tried some Mexican food... think freebirds or Qdoba... but still tasty. Tonight we are going to a Rugby game and a chocolate factory. We've had fish and chips and a few other local treats along the way. We camped out and have walked/hiked a lot... no really... A LOT! We also have done some rock climbing on actual mountain-like faces over the ocean and in the forest... plus some indoor climbing as well. It is so scary but quite a fun accomplishment. Drew is a super grand climber!
A few phrases we have picked up....
Good on ya = way to go, good for you, cool
Sweet as = sweet as the sweetest thing you can think of also substituted with cool as, salty as (my personal rendition) etc etc
** surprisingly enough it has nothing to do with swear words referring to your bum!
Cheers = thanks, your welcome, hi etc..
Ta = thanks
Tomorrow (Sunday here, Saturday elsewhere) we are flying back to the states. Hopefully I'll have my paper done by then too.. I've been working on it yesterday and today....

On a Quest....

FOR MODESTY!!!




I have searched high and low all over Louisville, Kentucky in search of a modest bathing suit. I have gotten some of the strangest looks from nice older ladies who ask if they can help me in various department stores. When I tell them I am looking for something modest, it is almost as if they do not know what that word means any more. I figured I would run to Target, my shopping place of choice, and simply pick up the cutest tankini for the best price and be on my way. Oh no no no. For some reason, this year, even the one pieces barely cover the essential areas. Then the tankinis make up in cleavage what they cover in midsection. I want something that covers it alllllll, no comprehende?! I have even looked in maternity!
FINALLY, I found the best, most amazing swimsuit I have ever seen in my life and it's from Sears and actually from the Lands End catalog. Sears now carries some lands end stuff and they have this swim suit top that is a basic high tube top but it has straps you can make a tank or racerback or halter. The tank goes all the way to my hips but both sides have the elastic stuff with strings coming out the bottom so you can cinch it up higher or leave it longer, which ever way suits you!!! It's really not even that tight in the mid-section either. Then, you can pick which ever modest bottoms you like to go with it! They are a little pricey but my husband was willing to splurge for a one time expense that will end the drama of wearing your underwear in public places that happen to have water! I personally chose a solid color top so I can mix and match different or same colored bottoms with it! Then all you need is shorts and you are good to go! So, for all you lovely ladies that are looking for a modest suit for all your summer fun, this could be the place for you. They actually have a ton of tankinis online that come in basic colors that are all pretty modest! CHECK IT OUT!!
I really have to question why we have gone along with culture on this issue. I never even really thought twice about it before. But especially now that I am married I am more conscious of some of these things. I would NEVER EVER wear a bra and underwear in front of ANYBODY at our church or at school or even any of our friends minus a few girl friends alone. So why do I feel like this is really okay as long as there is water around? Why has the church just run right alongside the world on this issue? Even a lot of one-piece suits are crazy provocative!!
I do have to admit, I think 2-piece swimsuits are really cute. When I was on my search I was tempted so many times to just buy a decently modest two piece because they are just way more appealing to me because that is what I have been programmed to like because of what the world prizes and advertises and because of my own sin that wants me to feel attractive and sexy etc etc etc.... So I'm not at all condemning people that wear two pieces and I haven't trashed all of mine. I am just saying we need to really be thinking about this. We need to be people who are constantly evaluating our lives and the things we support and go along with. That is what I am doing, not at all expecting every one to feel my conviction on this issue. Really writing this is a way for me to keep myself accountable to what the Lord is showing me right now, because I am soooo tempted to fall backwards on so many issues.
Happy Shopping

ps. The reason for the bathing suit is because we are going to NEW ZEALAND TOMORROW!!! We will try and post while we are there, otherwise you can expect a long update when we return!!