We are outta here!

We are done!!! Our work week is now over and we are ready to go! We are leaving today for Depot Bay for a few nights. We got away last year for a couple of nights before Christmas and we are looking forward to going again this year. We are getting the last of the gifts wrapped, house cleaned, and bags packed so we can get out of town and unwind and relax. The last of the busy time at work should be over now and it is time to have some fun for a couple of days. Christmas will be great too and then after that we are off to San Francisco!

Peter did really well this semester too. He is still waiting on a few grades but the worst he has this far is a B and I think that is darn good with taking a 29 credit semester. 4 more months to go!!!

I should get going - lots to do!!!

In sickness and health

Well, the week is over! I did in fact call in sick yesterday. I tried to avoid it but I think it was for the best. There is no way with the shape my back was in that I would be able to do my job. I did go in today and now I only have three more days of work next week! I am still getting over this bug that I have and I am really hoping Peter doesn't get it.

I am always amazed how Peter steps up to the plate when I really need him to. He never fails to take care of me when I need him to. The last few days he has helped me out with every little thing that he can. He's been forcing me to bed at 6:30 at night so I get enough rest. He's been making sure I drink enough water to get better. Wednesday night he even went to the store and bought my food and gift for a gift exchange I had at work. He wrapped the gift and even delivered it to my work after I was unable to go. It really is the smallest things that he does that really make me fall more in love with him and become even more attracted to him.

I feel so very lucky that he chose me to be his wife. It is weird how we still miss each other all the time. I always figured after you got married and lived together that you would get tired of always being around each other, or at least enjoy your time apart. I think we both do enjoy sometime to ourselves, but overall we still really miss each other after a work day and look forward to our time together on the weekends! There is so much about marriage that I am still learning :)

It never ceases to amaze me how Peter lives out his wedding vows to me on a daily basis. I never doubted that he would keep his vows, but in my mind he exceeds them daily! With all of the back problems I have had in the past year and how they have affected me physically, financially, emotionally, and at times spiritually - he has been there every step of the way in more ways then I thought I needed him. God is good and he gave me the best!

The Creepy Crud!!!

This week is almost half over and boy are we happy about it! Peter and I have both been working quite a bit. Now that classes are over for Peter he is working a lot more and I am in the heart of the busiest time of year at work. Unfortunately I am also pretty sick right now. I have a pretty bad head cold but to make it worse my back is killing me. For some reason my soreness that accompanies a cold is really affecting my back pain. Throw in a cough and my back is wasted. I am hoping that I am feeling better tomorrow so that I don't call in sick. I am yet to call in sick and I really don't want to start now! Today I was supposed to work late but I was able to ask if I could leave after my 9 hour day instead of staying for the 11 hours I was supposed to work. So now I am trying to relax and hopefully kick this thing before it gets any worse.




This weekend was nice. Our niece's spent the night with us. They are actually a lot of fun to listen to. They have the strangest conversations and say the funniest things. I have a few pictures to share at the end.





We also met Peter's new little brother Edik this week. Edik is ten years old and is from Russia. We have had a lot of emotions building up to his arrival but he is now here and we look to what our future with him holds. We met him this weekend. It was so weird, he was so excited to meet us and when we got up to the house he was jumping around and excited. We went inside and sat down with him. It was heartbreaking to see how he acted around us. You could tell that he wanted to hang out with us but he was afraid to for some reason. He literally sat there with his back to us. Almost like he didn't feel worthy to be our friend. I don't want to read to much into it because I can't speak for how he was feeling, but that is the feeling we got. It broke our hearts. We want to have an influence in his life and more importantly we want him to feel like he is worthy of being part of our family and MOST importantly worthy of God's love. I hope that we are able to show him love and live God's love out for him! I think the language barrier is a huge issue right now and we will be able to build a much better relationship with him after we are able to communicate!





In one week we will be done with work for the Christmas holiday!!! Our way of celebrating Christmas is that we go away to the beach for a couple of nights before Christmas. It is a lot of fun and a great way to relax our way into Christmas! With how I feel right now I am more then ready for the next week to go by.

Cooking Dinner with the niece's!

Peter's attempt at teaching them video games!

Wow - what a week!!!

Thank goodness this long week is over! I don't think either one of us would want to go back and repeat this week! This week was pretty intense for Peter and his school. In fact tonight is the first time we have seen each other all week. It also figures that he has had a hard time finding stuff to keep him busy at work................. until this week. He had a ton of stuff that he was responsible to get done and work and had a constant stream of meetings and homework with every free moment he had. This is his last week of classes - ONE MORE SEMESTER!!!! He has one take home final this weekend and one in class final next week and he is all done! With how fast this semester went I imagine that the next one will go just as quickly!!!


This week he had a ton of papers to write and two group projects due in one class today. It is hard when you are working with a group because you have to constantly make time to meet with them. So every night this week Peter had to meet with his group. Monday night I think it was, Peter was using my chi-machine while I went ahead and went to bed. I woke up at 4 to get ready for work and there Peter was sound asleep on the floor! He fell asleep using the thing and we both have been so exhausted that neither one of us woke up and noticed. Last night I went to bed while Peter was still at school and usually I wake up when I hear him home, but last night I was sound asleep! Tonight my poor husband is exhausted and just wants to go to sleep - but it is all over and that is very good!

For me I have had a high stress week. I don't want to say to much because I don't want to get any one's hopes up (or mine) but I have had a very busy week and I am hoping for some really good news by next week so keep me in your prayers this week if you wouldn't mind!!! (No I am not pregnant if that is what you are wondering!) I have still been working really long hours at work and that still shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. I am now full time on the other side and while it is much more entertaining then what I was doing it is so much harder physically. Upholstery is seriously hard work!!! Every muscle is sore in my body. My hands hurt and are stiff again like when I first started upholstery three years ago! My shoulders are killing me, my back hurts worse (although surprisingly not as bad as I expected) and shockingly my legs and muscles in my thighs even hurt. I guess it is a better work out but I seriously hope the pain goes away soon!

Now we are waiting to see if we win our auction on ebay and then we will be in bed. Peter and I and my parents are trying to go to the Emerald Bowl in San Francisco on the 28th!!! We have bid on the tickets and the auction ends in 45 minutes. It would be an exciting little get-away if we are able to go!!!

That is all for tonight!!! Keep us in your thoughts and prayers as life is pretty crazy right now but hopefully will be settling down soon. For now, sleep and rest are on the agenda!!!

The girls!!

Updated pics of the girls. They will be 9 months soon. I always joke to Peter that they would like to have a male around for Christmas so we could get some little baby chinchillas, but I am not sure that we really need anymore responsibility right now. We love having two - two is enough :)

Going through the motions..........

Life is just continuing on. There is nothing too exciting to report about but I figured we should update for the sake of updating. Peter is extremely busy right now. He only has two more weeks of classes left and he is on his final semester (yeah!!!!). He had a big final project in Cultural Anthropology that he completed today. He has been working so hard the last few days to get it all done and I am sure he is very relieved to be done with it and he can now relax for the rest of that class. It is amazing to think back to when this whole journey started. Time really has flown by since the beginning of college and so much of our lives have changed since then.

I have had quite a slow down at work this week. It has been a nice relief but next week we are back up to 11 hour days. It has really helped me feel productive and relaxed at home. It is so nice to have a few hours to relax in the evening instead of eat dinner and go to bed. I have been doing some scrap booking and I will hopefully be at a good stopping point with that shortly. We have a big table set up in the living room that I was scrap booking on and I had a goal of being caught up enough to take it down by the time the Christmas tree went. Needless to say it didn't happen. I have some Christmas projects that I want to start working on so I really need to get it all caught up.

hmmm, in other news - we are looking forward to the civil war this week!!! Go Beavers!!! I think we have a great shot of winning, but you never know with the civil war.

I imagine we will probably go to a movie tomorrow night. Last weekend we went and saw August Rush. It was a very good movie and I recommend it. This weekend we may either go see Enchanted or This Christmas.

Okay this was long enough and boring enough but I really don't have anything exciting to report for now. Peter has been very busy with finishing up school and that is about it!!!

Success

Well Black Friday was a success!!! An exhausting success, but a success!!! We got to Best Buy around 4:30 and joined the line that was haf way around the back of the building already. We waited in the cold until 5 when the line started moving. They were only letting so many people in the store at a time so we had to wait probably about ten more minutes before getting the store. We quickly found the computer and were surprised to find that they had several of them. We got put in the computer line and waited.................... for an hour and a half. It was a pretty miserable wait, they were only letting people with computers check out from one little area of the store and I guess the computers went down in that area so instead of letting us check out with everyone else, they just made us wait until they were fixed. We finally made it out of Best Buy after 7 and were on our way to the mall. Basically everything in JCPenny's was 50% off. We bought Peter some dress shirts and ties and decided to not waste time looking around the rest of the store as it was so crowded. We found our way down to Cinnabon and quickly did a little bit more shopping at the mall and got out of there as quickly as we could. The mall was worse then I ever remember it being on a Black Friday. After the mall we went to Target. Didn't find too much there, but we didn't look to hard either. I think we were so tired by the time we made it there that we just wanted to go home.

We were home a little after ten and decided to lay down and take a nap. We slept for a couple of hours and then woke up and demolished our house. It is weird how much moving and rearranging we have to do to fit any Christmas stuff in our house. We have everything decorated now, except for the lights outside which will be coming soon! We ended the night with a pizza and a relaxing night in front of the t.v.!!!

Here are the pictures I promised.

This was my Living Room!!! As you can see the monitor on Peter's laptop no longer worked so he had to set up a monitor and little workstation to use it. It became the perfect little storage place for my pack-rat of a husband.

Christmas Decorations!!!

Our Stockings!!

Our Christmas Village!!!

More Christmas Village

Our Disney Tree!!!

To top it all off!!!