Rush hour

That's right, this is what I experience every day--TWICE! Actually, the Lord has taught me a lot about myself and Himself as I spend an hour and a half (at least) every day sitting in stop-and-go traffic. For this reason, I am inspired to play 12 Blessings about Rush Hour Traffic! These are listed mostly in no particular order.


1. I have become more patient as I join in Rush Hour (let me add that I definitely have a LOT to learn in this area and I do indeed still have impatient moments, days, weeks...).
2. Rush Hour to work is good preparation as I can pray and/or listen to worship music in the 35-50 minutes I have alone.
3. Rush Hour home is a good time to unwind, again praying and/or listening to worship music.
4. Often times the Lord uses different experiences in Rush Hour to remind me of His attributes (sovereignty, faithfulness, protection and many more).
5. There have been several Rush Hour moments (mostly on my way home) where the Lord breaks me of sin and I can just think and pray about whatever He has shown me.
6. Rush Hour never fails to remind me that I am not the only person in the world who wants to get home after a long day.
7. Rush Hour is a good time of anticipating seeing my wonderful husband again at home :-D
8. Every so often Rush Hour serves as a time to catch up with friends and family on my cell phone--using an earpiece of course!
9. Rush Hour gives me a chance to listen to the news that I'd like to hear but don't always want to make the time for it.
10. Rush Hour reminds me that life is precious but fleeting, which causes me to ask myself how I will live each day in a way that is honoring to the Lord.
11. Rush Hour reminds me to pray for others, even if I don't know all the details of their lives and struggles, I can still pray for them.
12. Rush Hour provides hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people with jobs--the police officers pulling miscreants over, the construction workers seeking to widen the already massive freeways, the guys who do smog checks, the guys who pump gas at gas stations... Just think how many people benefit!

Ok, so I got a little desperate on that last one, but it is true!

On a more humorous note... this morning as I participated in Rush Hour I saw a guy in a convertible with the top down. Not an abnormal sight you might think, but I bet you have never seen a guy in a convertible with the top down--wearing a chicken hat! Yes, that's right, this guy had a chicken hat strapped onto his head. It looked like those chickens in the Muppet Babies. I nearly burst out laughing. I suppose people do strange things on Halloween. Oh yeah, and Happy Halloween! 

Our Apartment - Part II

It would seem that our blog has decided to stop accepting pictures for the day. My solution? To send you to our updated web albums! I will post the rest of our apartment pictures on there, although with much less commentary. Perhaps some will be glad for that... Anyway, enjoy and have a lovely Monday!

p.s. The office closes tomorrow at 3 pm for Halloween. Needless to say, I'm excited :-D

Our Apartment - Part I

Welcome to a tour of our first apartment! I made a really cool video too, but I'm totally unfamiliar with putting videos on our blog. If you'd like the video (even though it catches Happy belching into the camera) please email me.

To the right is the "dining room" area in our apartment. The door on the right side of the picture is the front door (if you couldn't guess) and you can somewhat see the entrance to the kitchen to the right of and perpendicular to the front door. As you can see, we've done a lot with decorating in this part of the apartment. And our hanging fruit baskets are empty (just as they usually are).

Here I'm standing in the doorway to the "dining room," looking into our living room. You can tell that those two five-shelf bookcases are pretty full, we have another three-shelf bookcase in our bedroom that is packed. Perhaps this is a better view of our empty fruit basket? Oh, I'd also like to say that I didn't exactly "tidy up" before taking all these pictures. I was mostly too excited about having my new camera!

To the right is one side of our lovely little kitchen. As you can see, we now have our refrigerator, complete with magnets. I even have a little rug for in front of the sink. You can see the large cabinets on the left also, which are WONDERFUL and packed full of food and anything I couldn't find a place for :-)

Ok, apparently I can't add more pictures to this post.... New post!

More to come...

I thought I'd just let you know that the pictures from today were just to whet your appetite for even more pictures to come. Perhaps they will be honeymoon pictures... apartment pictures......... silly pictures of Happy & Amy.................... who knows?!?

Pictures!!!

Yes, that's right, I finally brought the camera to work to test if I could get pictures onto the blog this way. SUCCESS!!! The only problem is Picasa is somewhat unreliable. Sooo.... I started a few web albums! Right now you'll find our jack-o-lanterns (also below), pictures of the car when we got hit (by the way, it's all fixed now :-D) and some other random pictures. Enjoy!

Jack-o-Lanterns!

Since this is apparently the only way I can post pictures on our blog, here are the pictures of our carved pumpkins. Guess which one I did and which one Happy did...

First, here are all the pumpkins in their glory:

A: Bat on small jack-o-lantern
B: Grim Reaper

C: The scared guy
 

My first pumpkin bread

 

Happenings

Since I've run out of things to do at work, I thought I'd spend a few minutes updating about the happenings of our life.

For those of you who have been wondering, my allergies are doing much better, although I do still get random headaches every so often. But, I'm definitely not as miserable or as exhausted all the time. Praise the Lord for that! Oh, and I'm hoping that I never have to have another scratch test as long as I live. I'm wondering if I should warn all my doctors in the future that I really don't like needles?

Happy has been videotaping Liberty's football games for the season, as you may recall. Last week Liberty lost 64-30 to Saddleback Valley Christian, continuing their losing streak. They are now 0-6 on the season, but everyone was very excited that LCS was able to score a whole 30 points in one game! Actually, it was pretty exciting, despite the comment I heard later that Saddleback Valley was hardly putting forth any effort at all. Interesting how getting more points in one game than you have the entire season can boost your spirits. I will say though that last week's game was much more exciting to watch than most (all?) of the others. Plus, the Saddleback Valley cheerleaders were actually pretty good (even though they did have their share of cheesy cheers--"Let me hear that left foot stomp! Boom! Shake it up, shake it up!") and I got to watch the game with Katie :-)

I finally finished Jerusalem Interlude and have moved on to Danzig Passage, the fifth book of the series. ONE more after this one! I'm hoping to finish them before I go home for Christmas so then I can be reading something else. Like I said a long time ago, I think I want to read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, but we'll see how many times I change my mind. Speaking of books, we finally got our very first dictionary (of our married life)! Happy really loves it. Whenever I ask what a word means he gets an excited look on his face and jumps up to retrieve the dictionary. Oh the joy of little things in life!

Ok, that's all I've got for today. Hopefully the mail will come soon so I can sort it and get to more invoices! It's also payday today so I'll have lots to do once the checks are all cut and signed. YAY!! Have a lovely Wednesday!

Almost November??

Saturday night Jared & Daina (from my work) came over for dinner, to carve pumpkins and to play Cranium. Hopefully at some point we'll figure out how to get pictures on our blog because the pumpkins came out REALLY awesome! Plus, it was lots of fun hanging out with Jared & Daina, even though they did beat us at Cranium.

Sunday afternoon we went to a farmers' market with Steven & Emily (from church) and to lunch at Red Robin. We got to know them a lot better, which was really cool. Steven & Emily are in the "young marrieds" Sunday school class with us. Emily is in charge of the Valentine's Day banquet at the church and asked me if I'd be interested in helping her with all the planning. Of course I said I would (and am VERY excited about it!) so our lunch on Sunday was meant to talk more about the banquet and planning for it. Yes, we both forgot to bring up that subject so we'll be talking at some point this week.

So, our weekend was pretty full. Saturday morning we did lots of cleaning and laundry (5 loads!) and Sunday after lunch we went grocery shopping. When we got home I cut Happy's hair and then took a nap, even though it was 6 pm :-) I woke up around 7:15, ate dinner, read a went back to bed by 9:15. We were planning on going for a bike ride at some point, but it just didn't happen. Perhaps a bike ride will happen tonight...? We'll see.

Something I've been noticing lately about life after college: it's just as busy now as it was in college--but a different kind of busy and without the stress of homework and deadlines.

By far the strangest thing about life after college: I feel like I'm getting older, but time is standing still. Perhaps that has something to do with the lack of seasons in southern California, but it feels as though nothing is changing and then all of a sudden the day, week, month is gone and it's the next one. Weird. I guess it felt like that in college a little, but at least I had the measure of semesters. Now time just goes on without any sort of measurement. I remember being around 12 years old thinking that days were so long and I could never imagine myself as a grown-up. When I was about 4 or 5 years old I told my mom that I never wanted to grow up. The reason--then I couldn't wear my favorite shirt (the one I had that matched the one that My Buddy wore). Now I still don't consider myself a "grown-up," but I do notice that kids look younger and younger to me.

So here's my question to be answered by those who may not consider themselves "grown-up" but technically are "grown-up." Do you remember thinking all this kind of stuff? Do you still think this kind of stuff? Does every generation look at the next generation and think, "When I was that age..."? I look forward to LOTS of comments :-) Have a wonderful week!

Celebrate!

There's reason to celebrate in Oaktown! The Raiders finally won!

The picture is Derrick Burgess crushing Matt Leinart. Ah, beautiful!