New Edition to the Family!

It's official.....we are now a family of 3! No, I'm not pregnant....we adopted a dog! We got Nemo on Monday April 6th. We adopted him from and organization called Homeward Bound. He is part Corgi, part Terrier and possibly part Bassett Hound. He's just a short, stout guy with TONS of energy! He is 2-years-old, so not a puppy, which has actually made the transition a lot smoother. We had a rough time the first 48 hours just because we were getting used to him and him to us.

We took him to obedience school this morning and he was very distracted, but he did well. Bobby and I learned more than he did, I think! We went to Katie's K9. She's pretty famous in the animal world. There were 7 dogs there, and only 3 were his size or bigger. The other were small dogs. There was one beagle and he just had a rough time, kept whining, it was very distracting for him. But now we know what to do with him at home and that's very helpful. He doesn't like his kennel, but I think that is just something he has to get used to, since it's yet another new thing we're throwing at him. We actually brought his dog bed into our room while we took a nap after the obedience class and he did really well! We wanted him to get plenty of rest since he worked so hard and he tends to be restless in his kennel. I don't know if we'll let him sleep there all the time, since he didn't jump into our bed, but we'll just have to see what happens!

We love our little guy already and he hasn't even been here for a week! The adventure begins!

Baby fever?? What???

Yes, it's true, I've been hit with a bad case of "baby fever".  No, we're not trying....  One of my good friends told me recently that she's pregnant with her second baby and I guess it just got the ball rolling.  It makes perfect sense.  I'm 26 years old, we've been married over a year... but I know the "fever" won't be resolved by having a baby.  Bobby has at least 2 years left of school before we can even think about trying to get pregnant.  We knew all along that the plan was to wait 4-5 years after getting married before having kids.  And I've always been ok with that, and I've never had a strong pull to have a baby before.  In fact, for a while I didn't think I'd ever want to have a baby, and I was slightly concerned to not have that maternal instinct.  Well, now I have it!

So to curb my baby feelings....we are going to start seriously looking into getting a dog!  We've been talking about it since before the wedding but I've always been reluctant to get one.  I know they are a ton of responsibility and we'd have to give up being as spontaneous as we used to be.  But I think I am ready to take that on.  We're probably going to wait until mid-June.  I want to wait until Bobby finishes his semester so he'll be home in the evenings while the dog adjusts to us and our house.  And I don't think it would be fair to have the dog for a month and then leave it for 5 days, especially during that adjustment period.  So we're going to keep our eyes open and start looking at different rescue and adoption places and see what works for us.  Here goes a new journey!

Time to repent!

It is officially the season of Lent! Last night, as I was making dinner before Ash Wednesday service...I couldn't help thinking "Oh, it would be so easy to just stay home tonight..." Then I remembered something. 3 years ago, Karen and I went to the Ash Wednesday service....with Krista. We went to Applebee's for dinner then headed to the church. We had so much fun laughing at dinner and enjoyed the service. Then 2 years ago, I think it was just me and Karen. And last year, I can't even remember if we made it to church or not. For some reason, the fact that I had once shared this Ash Wednesday service with Krista, made me want to go. I wasn't extremely close to her, but I felt I was honoring her in some way by going to church. I knew she was with Karen and I last night, and it was nice to feel that.

I've never been good at sticking to something I give up during Lent. This year, I decided to make a lifestyle change. I'm giving up being lazy. "Oh, I can just do that tomorrow," "Oh, I'll just double up on my next workout," etc. No more! I have goals, why don't I try achieving them? If I want to lose a few pounds, why don't I get my butt in gear and get healthy? A co-worker of mine mentioned doing a 5K this summer. We haven't registered yet, but it got me thinking.... this would really help jump start my motivation to exercise. Some of the treadmills at the Community Center have settings for 5K, so I can train on that. I can start training outside when the snow finally stops. The only glitch is that my co-worker, Jen, lives in St. Cloud. But I can do it!

So here I go...full steam ahead!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Ok, so Valentine's Day isn't until tomorrow....but I felt like blogging!

What is new...?  Well, Bobby has officially reached mid-terms!  The time has FLOWN by!  He came down with the flu on Tuesday morning.  He attempted to go to work and then called me 30 minutes after he left home, telling me that his boss was sending him home.  Well, of course she is!   He's back in tip-top shape, but he never gets sick so it's usually bad when he does.  

February keeps us very busy.  Both of our moms have their birthdays in February.  Plus Valentine's day.  Then 2  very good friends have birthdays as well this month.  It makes the month just fly by in a flash!  We celebrated my mom's birthday last weekend.  We had the family over here for dinner.  It's really hard for us to go out because my brother works in the evenings Monday-Friday and Bobby gets off work just as Jeff is going to work.  So we usually end up seeing each other on Sunday evening for dinner, whenever we do see each other.  We're celebrating Valentine's Day on Sunday.  We tried to make a reservation at Pittsburgh Blue in Maple Grove, but the earliest availability was 9:30! And that was a month before Valentine's Day!  So we opted to just wait until Sunday.  I'm going to see the movie "Confessions of a Shopaholic" with my good friend Karen tomorrow.  We've been impatiently waiting the arrival of this movie since we heard it was coming out....way back in October!  The books are SO good, we cannot wait for the movie!

Next weekend, we'll be celebrating Bobby's mom's birthday.  We're having lunch with Pat and Kara on Saturday.  Saturday night will be exciting for me, because I'm going to the first official "Girls' Night Out".  My friend Millie's sister-in-law does this with her college friends.  We were invited in October when they carved pumpkins and thought....hey, this is a good idea!  So Millie got together a few high school and college friends to start doing this every month.  She is hosting a Wine Night at her place next Saturday.  Then someone else will take March, and so on.  I think it's a great thing to just be with the girls once a month.  A good portion of the girls are married, engaged or in a serious relationship, so it's nice to get away from the boys!  

Really not a whole lot of excitement in our lives right now.... just keeping busy with work and school.  I'm still playing Bunco once a month and attending Bible Study once a month.  I felt it had been a while since our last post.....but not a whole lot going on.  Hopefully next post will be more thrilling!!

3 weeks down....12 weeks to go....

Yes, I'm measuring this time period based on Bobby's class. He has successfully made it through week 3 of grad school! Things are getting a little better around the house. We're both learning when to stop going. We're listening to our bodies and taking care of ourselves. I'm taking on more freelance work, so I've been a lot busier. Unfortunately, at my work, we have had to schedule ourselves 2 months out. So if I don't like my schedule for February, there's not much I can do except take some freelance work to change it up a bit!

Another exciting thing happened this week. After much discussion, I have decided to attend the CODA Conference in Colorado Springs, CO this year! It's in July and I'm SO excited to go! With traveling, I'll be out of work 5 1/2 days. I'm hoping my buddy Lauren will be in town so we can meet up at least once and hang out while I'm around! I thought about extending my stay and visiting with Lauren, but it really is a lot of time off that I can't take. Because it's a Wednesday night-Monday thing, I really only have to make up 2 days of work because I don't usually work Friday-Sunday. But the longer I stay, the more days I have to make up, which gets to be overwhelming. Plus we're going to New Jersey in May, so that's another 2-3 days I have to make up. Although I love that I get to make my scheudle and be flexible with it, I don't work full time, so I don't get PTO. It's a bummer, but it's just an accommodation I have to make.

So this weekend, we will be purchasing our plane tickets! Yes, it's 5 1/2 months ahead of time, but we really want to save on the cost, since we will be traveling and have to pay for flight, hotel and conference. I'm going with a few people from work so it'll be a really cool experience. And of course it'll be really hard to be away from Bobby for that long. The longest we've been apart since we've been married is 4 1/2 days when I went to Utah for Sorenson training. But it'll be SO worth it!

That's really all that is new in our lives! Feel free to leave comments about what's going on in yours!

Oh how I love a new schedule......

Well, it's official, Bobby is now a grad school student! He started on January 6 and is in class two nights a week. He's taking Developmental Psych and Theories of Personalities. Both classes he took in undergrad (well, both of us took it, actually), so hopefully they will be more of a review and maybe go more in-depth than what he did in undergrad. He seems to be enjoying it so far, but it's been really tough on the two of us. He is in class Tuesday and Thursday night then I'm involved with either choir or confirmation on Wednesday nights. So during the work week, we see each other on Monday night, basically. Which is actually a good thing because 2 of "our shows" (House and Heroes) is on Monday night. Weekends have been pretty laid back since he started school just because he gets so worn out during the week. Yeah, in undergrad he was doing 15-18 credits a semester but he wasn't working at the same time. So now he has 6 credits PLUS working full time. It's a big adjustment that he'll have to make and that we'll have to make, but it just takes time.

There really isn't much else new going on in our lives. I have Bunco coming up next week, which I LOVE! I have my massage scheduled for the 31st! For my birthday last year, I asked my mom and mother-in-law to just give me money so I could have a day at the spa. So I did that and fell in love with the place I went, Kalla Lily. Now I go there for all of my hair needs and I'll be going back for another massage. I said I wanted the same thing for Christmas. So my mother-in-law and brother gave me gift cards to Kalla Lily so I could treat myself again. I enjoyed my spa day, but I really just want a massage. I'm hoping to make it a fairly regular thing to get a high-quality massage. We have someone that comes into work and they do 10-minute massages, but it's not the same. The 31st will make it 3 months in between massages, so if I can keep that up, that would be amazing! I'd LOVE to go monthly, but that would be a little spendy.

If you work in education or are in school, enjoy the 3-day weekend with Martin Luther King, Jr day on Monday!

New Year, New Start

Happy New Year everyone!! We hope you all had a fun and safe New Year's Eve!

We went to Josh and Anna's house (Bobby's best friend and his wife). We've been going over there the last 4 years, since they've had their townhouse. The usual suspects were there, and we had lots of good food and drinks to ring in the new year! We had a great time!

Now that it's the new year.... we're starting some new challenges. Bobby starts back to school tomorrow. He will be going to St. Mary's University in Minneapolis for his Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy. He's taking 2 classes this semester, while still working full time at South Metro Human Services. We don't know how it's going to go with school and work, so he's starting small with just 2 classes. If it goes well, he'll probably keep doing 2 classes each semester and just take an extra year to finish the program. OR he always has the option to take summer classes. He will go straight through until April 16, the day before his big 25th birthday! No spring break, just class all the way until April.

I have taken on some new responsibilities at Sorenson as well. I was welcomed on board to the mentoring team. That basically means that when new interpreters start at VRS and they're in the 2 month training program, I mentor them. I give them support while they learn the ropes and eventually take calls on their own. There's a team of about 15 of us so it'll be a fun new experience for me at work. I also interpreted the Christmas Eve service at my church, and have been thinking about proposing that I be a regular fixture in that position. My parents have been struggling a bit with their church and don't know that they'll have a place to worship every single week. It's just a thought I've been having. I haven't actually said anyting to the church about it. But when I was doing confirmation there and my parents would come to worship once in a while, and while I was involved in high school ministry, they had an interpreter there. Over time, there were no more Deaf congregation members, so they let the interpreter go. I do enjoy religious interpreting and wouldn't mind doing it again at my own church on an occasional basis. I also LOVE singing in the choir, so it would be hard NOT to do that every Sunday. Again, just something I've been thinking about, who knows if I'll act on it. And I'm still teaching confirmation to 6th grade girls. They get more and more fun every week and it's something I really do enjoy doing.

As far as the two of us.... we just finally bought a new mattress!! We've been using Bobby's old full-sized mattress and now we have a queen! YAY!! This year we will be taking a trip with Pat and Kara to the East Coast to visit family in May. Then this summer we hope to get up to my family's cabin a lot more than before. We usually just go on July 4th weekend, but hopefully we'll get up there once or twice more this year. I also am hoping to see my college roommates someway, somehow this year. We had originally planned a trip to Vegas for this spring, but since Bobby doesn't get a spring break, we're not sure about that. I've been wanting to get back out to Washington, so we'll see about that!

Here's wishing you all a fantastic 2009!!