Here we are...

I thought we'd give this blogging thing a shot to fill our family and friends in on what's happening in our lives.

Summer is in full swing and with it comes rent and more bills. Fortunately, we're both making more hours at our jobs, so with 2 of us working 3 jobs, the bills will get paid. Justin continues to work at KMart, and for most of the summer he will basically be running the Garden Shop. I have my PCA job every morning, and will be able to add more hours every week, so not only will I get to spend a lot more time with a really fun 5-year-old, I'll be making a lot more money! On June 12, I'll be starting again in the OHCC kitchen, which will be full-time most weeks through the rest of the summer. I highly enjoy my job in the kitchen and am very much looking forward to working with the other summer workers all summer.

In other news, we will be celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary on Monday, June 2! We're both really looking forward to it. We've already been reflecting on the past year, and it's been quite a ride and certainly not an easy year, but we're grateful for all the lessons we've learned so far, all the help we've gotten from family, the protection and providance (I may have made up that word!) from God, and for each other. We know that after the various crises we've dealt with since our wedding day, as long as we have each other and God on our side, we can handle all the crap life throws us. We've certainly learned to trust that God will provide for us always, and we must always keep that trust. So it will be a good day celebrating a good, though tough, year. And, we finally get to crack open that last bottle of pink champagne we've been saving since the wedding!

Our school and vocational plans have taken a turn in recent weeks. I will still be graduating in December with a youth ministry degree. I hope to take some online classes in the future to complete a Certificate in Disability Ministry, but nothing has been decided on that just yet. My eventual vocational goal, if you don't already know, is to work with special needs youth in some kind of ministry setting, be it church or para-church. I don't know where this will take me or what kind of position I'll end up it, but one of the organizations that has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration is Young Life's Capernaum Ministry. To get a better idea of what I hope to do, check out their website at http://www.younglife.org/Capernaum/. Justin will be taking the fall semester off for various reasons and will work while I'm finishing school. When he starts again in January, I will work while he finishes school. (Although we both plan to work the whole time, it will just flip-flop who's working the most.) When he goes back to school, he's planning to add the Applied Psychology major and will eventually graduate with a BA in Biblical Studies, Youth Ministry, and Applied Psychology. How impressive will all of that look on a resume! His hope and plan is to use all of those majors and his passions for youth and counseling and become a high school counselor. That means more education, but both of us feel God calling him to this vocation, so we'll go with it.

Our summer plans are to work our 3 jobs, spend as much time with our friends here as we can, since most of them will be leaving our Oak Hills bubble before us, and attend some family events. We'd hoped to do a little more traveling over the summer, go visit some friends, make it to Fergus a few more times, and maybe squeeze in a trip to Colorado, but with the gas prices, we're pretty much confined to Bemidji. But we love visitors!

And that's pretty much our life right now. Hopefully this will be a good way to stay connected with everyone scattered every which way. Hopefully interesting things will happen up here so we can have interesting posts in the future! So until next time, happy spring!

Michelle