And now for something totally different...

Well it's been hard to know what to say and where to start with updating this blog. Since our last post pretty much everything in our lives has changed. On December 12th Danny resigned from his job at the Church of the Cross, it was the result of a series of events which made it clear that we no longer agreed with the youth ministry philosophy at the church. So with that we packed up, put our house on the market and moved in with my parents in Charlottesville, Virginia. That may sound a little drastic, but we knew we could no longer afford our house in Bluffton so we would have to sell our house, find a new church and get new jobs anyway so we figured we might as well be up in Virginia with our families. So here we are. We just arrived on Sunday, unpacked our Penske and filled up a storage unit (our home away from home away from home Danny calls it)

So that's life now. Job searching is our main priority. Prayers are definitely welcome, for our house to sell and for jobs to come quickly!

Life (or at least where I work) is Beautiful

Here are some pictures that I took on Wednesday on the property of the church where I work (our "historic" campus).

the building was built in 1884

the palm trees are beautiful

The church is on the bluff (as in "Bluff" town) which overlooks possible the supremely clean May River.

This is the riverside entrance to the church

There's something cool about a weather aged door

pics of me and joel A

Joel and Danny
4 happy campers
I'm always watching!!! :-) I miss you Joel!

thinking caps...

So here are some things that I've been thinking about lately. You should know that Mary and I have not talked about all of these things. Also, most of these have not come out of situations that have arisen...they are just thoughts I try to answer.

Is gambling wrong? What about sponsoring a gambler? What about business ventures? What about the lottery? What about a fund raising raffle or something akin?

Did God intend for us to domesticate animals? If so, to what extent? What about plants? Should we have these things in our homes? What kinds of shelter did God intend for us to have?

If the church is truly not providing the social safety net that it should (to homeless, hungry, needs, widow and orphans, etc.) should Christians support governmental efforts to those ends as a necessary intermediate? How can the church regain its proper place in society (how do we have proper dissent from the government..when and how is it proper)? Should government have the ability to tax at all?

Should we really have freedom of speech? If so, does that mean I have to hear someone playing their music loudly with expletives and crude language or do I have a right to silence?

As the one ultimately responsible to God, can I unilaterally make decisions in the house regarding finances, schedule, purchases, etc.? What does that authority look like? Is it wrong to have a woman "bread-winner" (the wife earns the majority/all of the income)?

And now, a word from Danny :-)

Men's Tuesday night basketball group
(I play when my back says I can play;
sometimes I just take pictures and keep score :-) )
Here's our living room before we moved in

This is the room with our "Christmas arrangement"
AKA "Can you tell we don't use our fireplace?"
(note the lack of Poangs)

I know Mary posted a picture of the lights, but this one is here because it shows the glow of 1,100 lights (1.1 kilalight)

Christmas Tree!

So Friday, Danny and I cut down our very own Christmas tree! Here are some pictures from the adventure.

Christmas tree farm...so cute, I've never been to one

It was raining by the way, but we took our hoods off just for this shot

Danny wanted this one...

...But we decided on this one

So we (he) cut it down (not as fun as it sounds since it was raining and I had to catch the tree when it fell)

Then we added lots and lots of lights

And we decorated of course, we still need a topper and a tree skirt

The part we don't have pictures of is me and Danny carrying a wet and not so light 10ft tree through the front door of our house, wrestling it into a tree stand, moving it across the living room only to find that it wouldn't work there and then moving it back which by the end of it all involved rearranging our entire living room...it was a long but festive night.

Home Improvements

So Danny was out of town last weekend (14-16th) and so I went to town with the paint. Our living room was previously a combination of yellow and primed white walls. We hired someone to paint the two walls that had the high vault (which I was not getting up on a 15 foot ladder to paint) and then I did all the rest in Danny's absence. So here is the mostly completed living room. I say mostly because it still needs some decorations on the walls and stuff.

Here's the entry way which I also painted. And Danny installed a new light fixture which you can see here, he just did that yesterday.

And here's a picture of some more progress on the dining room. It now has a new chandelier, it only took us about 4 months to decide on one.

So I've also been busy in the kitchen. I've tested out some new recipes, below are some pics of the final results.

This is a pumpkin roll I made, which I thought turned out great. Looks really impressive too :)

And this was my first attempt at homemade mashed potatoes (as in, not from the box). It turned out okay, but it was like a baked mashed potato recipe so I think putting them in the oven after mashing them kinda dried them out. Oh well, they look good because they are topped with cheese and bread crumbs.

This week is Thanksgiving and since I work retail, we will be staying put here in SC. We were invited by some friends to join their family for Thanksgiving, so that will be nice. Then I work Friday and Saturday of course. But thankfully, my shifts are not too bad and we will have time to go cut down a Christmas tree on Friday when I get off. We're both really excited about getting a Christmas tree this year since last year we couldn't get one because we were moving. So we'll be sure to post pictures from all that fun to come!