New Community...

Community is a very important thing. And I've found it to be very important wherever we move. It's been a bit tough this past move down to California. Partly because the schedule that Tobin and I have is not really your "typical" married couple schedule and also the fact that living here doesn't really feel that permanent because we keep moving every year to few months. Regardless, I have been blessed by some girls at the church we started attending, which I hope blossoms into stronger friendships. I for one know that I need encouragement, quality time, and good laughs. So for God to bless me with some people that are fun to spend time with and love the Lord, what a blessing! This past week was one of the girl's birthday, Christine, and she invited us over to her house, we had dinner and then we went to The Melting Pot. May I just say DECADENTLY DELICIOUS! Something I couldn't do all the time because it was just so rich with different fondues of chocolate. But something that could be done on special occasions!

Here we are before we all dug in!

Easter - Christ is Risen Indeed!

This Easter Season was special because I was able to be involved in the music (of which I haven't done for quite some time). We sang some songs that really help reflect and give God the glory. One of my favorites, "There is a Redeemer" we sang acapella and that was a lot of fun. Tobin enjoyed supporting and cheering me and the choir on. I think all the practices and hard work paid off.

After Sunday Service, Tobin thought it was a beautiful day to go for a bike ride. So off we went. There is a fun fairly easy and flat bike trail. We rode it from our place East to Rancho Cucamonga and the 15 (you can look at it on the map if you really want to). Anyways, we came back and rewarded ourselves with yummy frozen yogurt. Friends from the church have raved about this yogurt place, so we thought we'd try it out. It was good! We had Pomegranate, Kiwi, and Taro (which is) with fresh pineapple topping. It was great! One of my new favorites, next to Cold Stone. But Tobin and I determined you just can't compare frozen yogurt and Cold Stone Ice Cream...both yummy for different occasions.

Pigeon Feeder

We finally purchased bird seed for our wild bird feeder, that we had received as a wedding present from our great professor Dwight Kimerberly and had never used! I've seen some cute birds out there, nothing too exotic, but nice- house finches, scrub jays, and other LBBs (little brown birds). Well, I was standing at the kitchen sink, looked out at the bird feeder and saw this:

The little scavengers! They bullied all the little birds away. I quickly stepped out my front door to hear the deep sounds of their wings take off in flight. The flew only to the nearest

telephone pole line, where they greedily looked back wanting more and just waiting for a chance when I wasn't looking. Since then I've seen them back a couple times, but I think they may be starting to become intimidated by some crazy redhead. I really think we need to hang it up somewhere instead so this big birds can't easily get at the food. Tobin may be a bird lover, but this is a bit much!

So...what do you think?

Don't know if I should ask this, but I want your opinion on our new pillow accents in our room. We've had a Pottery Barn gift card since our wedding (because it was a wedding gift), well because we move so much I really don't feel like we've decorated much. So I wanted to brighten up the room an try to add some color to our bedset (I really would just like to get a new duvet cover), but thought this was a great start. Let me know what you think. I bought the green and orange embroidered pillow along with the orange striped rug on the floor.

The Couch

I really didn't give the new couch justice. After living nearly 3 years without one, and strongly hinting at the fact that we needed a couch, we are now enjoying it! I like being able to actually snuggle with my husband while watching a movie rather than sitting on camping chairs or laying on the floor. It's great! I also just got the pillows to go with the couch...so I thought it deserved it's own post!

Impoving Little Mexico

We have named our backyard, Little Mexico as it unfortunately has been a little neglected. We decided that we didn't want to live with a backyard that looks like a dump, so pretty much every weekend we have been spending some time and muscle into getting it to look descent.



Among things we have found and gotten rid of (I wish we would have taken more photos right at the beginning...but really we wanted to just get to work): computer screen, computer chair, rolling shelf, chain link fence gate (this was buried under dirt), lots of metal rods/poles, bricks, concrete, an old fountain filled with dirt (that was handmade), pogo stick, baby blanket, two hockey sticks, pry bar, two wheelbarrows (which we've fixed and are using, but the tire keeps going flat on one of them so we just keep pumping up the tire), two stand up lamps were just in the backyard (we cleaned them up and are now using them in our bedroom!).



It's been pretty hilarious what we've found and each time we are less and less surprised to find something random. Little by little we'll continue to improve Little Mexico and hopefully make it inhabitable!

Our backyard...in process of improvement,

which is actually much better than the way we found it!

Our patio, which before was covered with trash and you could barely walk on it!

mounds of dirt we have yet to dig up...who knows what we'll find!


The truck load of concrete Jenna and I took to a concrete collecting place.
We had to throw these all in by hand and back out by hand. We felt like rugged women!

Our side yard...getting better.

The pile of rocks is what we saved out of the stone fountain that was under a bunch of dirt there in the far corner.

Anyone want some gravel and rocks? We have plenty!

Tobin groomed the Ponytail tree out front.

Well, if you come over for a weekend, I'm sure we'd love to have you join in on the fun!

Our new Place!

We want to welcome our friends and family to a virtual tour of our new humble abode. We welcome any of you that would like to come over for a visit to do so. We have a nice extra guest bedroom where we can set up a nice air mattress! So come on over!

The front of the house

Walkway up to the front door

Entryway

Living room...with Tobin reading a book

And our amazing couch that one of Tobin's coworkers let us use!

Kitchen/Dining area. It is really nice that everything is so open!

The nice big kitchen

Standing in the living room looking down the hallway, our room is the second door on the left

Jenna and Josh are living in the room in the first door to the right

Our bedroom

It was really nice this vanity fit in the bathroom, otherwise I would have had no counter or storage space!

The massive shower and sink.

Sp that's it. I'll post more with the project in our back yard! But for now enjoy.

The Move...

Well, from our move down we have kind of been on a hiatus as far as posting on our blog. Things have gone well and we made it hear safely! Praise the Lord and thank you all so much for praying. I'll have to tell you though, following the trailer was a bit scary at times. The trailer would start fishtailing and sometimes it would get worse and worse...at this point I would just start praying out loud that I wouldn't suddenly see the Tahoe and trailer fly off the road. The trek down for the most part was Tobin and Darrol in the Tahoe/Trailer, Marty in the Toyota, and me in the Subaru. We drove from Medford, OR to Upland, CA in one day (well just over one day). We started in Medford on the 31st and then got to Upland around 2am on New Years Day...It was an interesting and new way to ring in the New Year, which we did literally by calling one another on our cell phones after midnight! Thankfully, God also protected us from any drunk or crazy drivers. It was amazing once we hit the LA freeways it may as well have been 4pm rather than 1am! Crazy how this area never sleeps!

New Years Day we awoke and got right unpacking and cleaning the house we will be living in. You can never be too sure of what you are getting yourself into when moving, especially when you have never seen the place you are moving into! God has blessed us with the ability to live in a house, rather than an apartment, but it definitely comes with it's own types of responsibilities. The owners haven't lived in the home for several months, and prior to leaving had still be remodeling. So we entered upon a lot sheet rock dust on everything and multiple other odds and ends that hadn't been finished. So instead of just unpacking in a nice clean space, we spent days wiping down everything. Now we know it's clean! It was such a blessing to have the extra hands and help of Darrol and Marty! We never could have accomplished as much! I even cleaned our master bedroom shower...it's so big I can run laps in it, get my morning workout and take a shower all at the same time (I don't always do the laps, but it definitely it large enough that I could)!

Darrol and Marty left on the 4th of January for their trek back up north, and Tobin started working as a fellow on the 5th. So that left me with a week to continue cleaning and "making house." I also went to St Jude where I'll be working on the same floor that I was when we lived here a year ago. I have to go through all the orientation and such again, but thankfully the Lord has provided me with income and job at this point! We would continue to ask you to pray that I might find a Nurse Practitoner position, so that I can continue to utilize those skills and keep my licensure up to date.

Oh and the Lord has provided us with a couch!!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!! It was such a blessing because one of Tobin's officemates heard we were looking to buy a couch and he said, I have a nice one in storage that isn't being used, and you can use it for free! Thankfully the couch was right on the outside of the storage unit so very easy access! I'll post pictures later, but as I type this I am enjoying the comfort the couch provides!

We also attended a church today that seems like a great fit and good fellowship to be involved with. It's called Foothill Bible Church. We heard about it because last Sunday we were at home in the afternoon, and two gentleman ran our doorbell (and they weren't Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses) they were Christians, going door-to-door sharing the Gospel! Praise the Lord, you don't see that enough these days! Anyways, they found out we were Christians and new to the area so we were able to talk about the church a bit. It seems like a strong fellowship dedicated to Christ and founded on The Bible! There also is a choir which I'm hoping to get involved with.

Then this afternoon, Tobin and I ventured out to our backyard, which is more like a landmine that has blown up with parts of the landfill in it. Jenna and Josh (or housemates) found in our backyard among other things the following: a computer screen, desk chair, baseballs, flat basketballs, two floor lamps (that actually function just fine and we cleaned up and are using in our bedroom), lots of rocks, bricks, pipes, wheelbarrows, etc, etc. You get my drift. Anyways, the land in the backyard is also very uneven. So Tobin found a wire sifter in the backyard and we started utilizing it! We sifted out 4 wheelbarrows full of good dirt, and filled 4 buckets with gravel/rocks! It's nice to try and make a place look better and get your hands a bit dirty. I hope the owners appreciate the work we are doing...their probably glad to have someone work on it!

Anyways, those are our adventures and transitional changes for now! We also changed from 5 degree weather to 80 degrees! I am still in shock that it is January and our bird of paradise plants are in full bloom! Welcome to good sunny So Cal. I will miss my four seasons, but sun isn't a bad thing either.

Well, I hope to post more photos of the place later this week. Hope y'all are having a wonderful beginning to your New Year. To us it didn't really seems like a big change, and I think I'm still realizing that it's a new year because I haven't had to write the date much (since I'm not working).