18 months!

Today is our 18 month anniversary. I know that some people think it is stupid to be excited about a year and a half anniversary but I think every milestone in marriage should be celebrated. Since we did have to work all day today our "celebration" will consist of going out to a simpe dinner and maybe spending a little bit of time relaxing together.

We have finally been married just as long as we were engaged. It is nice to pass that stupid milestone. The 18 months of marriage have been superb and much better then the engagement phase! I have enjoyed every minute of being married (okay, almost every minute) and have never looked back or wanted anything else in my life.

Anyway, nothing great to report on this end. I got a raise yesterday - which is always nice :) Today I had my 3 year anniversary coffee at work and tonight we will celebrate 18 months of marriage!!! I guess that is a pretty good 2 days right there!!!

Pressing on!!!

Check out the ticker over there - 3 months left and Peter is free! Free from the bondage's of education at last! He will have a few weeks or months to enjoy life a bit before the business world swallows him whole! Although his "freedom" for the summer will consist of working and studying for the CPA exam so I guess that isn't any freedom at all -actually it sounds like the same thing he has been doing for the past 4 years. Oh well!!!

He has heard a little bit from KPMG this week. It sounds like his start date will be early October. That is a bit of a bummer but they want their employees to be well on the way of passing their CPA exam before starting there. Plus he has to attend a national orientation somewhere - we assume in New Jersey - so he really doesn't has a lot of control over start daters. We just have to pray that his current place of employment is willing to keep him around that long. At this point in time it appears that they want to keep him around until he goes to KPMG!

They also sent him some information on the CPA exam process this week. It is such a blessing that they are willing to pay for him to take the best CPA prep courses there are and also pay for the exam. Basically anytime he is ready to take a test he just needs to let them know and they will either provide him with a 6 week online course to study for that particular portion of the exam or he can take a 6 week in class course to prepare. It sounds like he will opt for the 6 week in classroom prep class. I think he will begin this daunting process as soon as we get back from Jamaica and try to get as far along in the CPA exam as he can before beginning at KPMG.

Still just looking to the future around here! We are living day to day and pushing through the different tasks asked of us and keeping our eyes focused ahead. It is getting exciting around here and the anticipation for April is mounting!!!

Seaside

This week has been yet another very busy. We are trying to get into the swing of things with being back in school. Peter is also very busy now with his VITA program. It is a program where George Fox accounting students do free taxes for senior citizens, students, and low-income families in the community. He is in charge of the program this year and so he will be spending all but two of his remaining Saturdays through tax season doing this.

Last weekend we went with my family to Seaside. It was a fun trip that mainly revolved around entertaining the niece's. Here are a few pics of the trip (mainly of the niece's).

The view from our room!

The girls were very excited and ready to go do something!

Strawberry Waffle's for breakfast!

Stop it Uncle Peter!!!

The carousel that they rode over and over again!

A man who really likes the seagulls.

Exciting plans!!!

As we begin the new and final semester of classes for Peter there is much more excitement to it then there has been in the past. This is it!!! This is what we have been working so hard for and going deeply into debt for!!! Peter is approaching then end of college and I can say that we are both thrilled!!!

Usually we both get a little depressed when Peter goes back to school. We see each other way less (I leave at 5 in the morning and Peter won't get home tonight until after 7:30). Peter has the stress of homework and trust me, there is going to be a LOT of it this semester since my insane husband has chosen to take another almost 30 credit semester!!! We lose the added income of Peter working full time on his breaks! But for some reason - none of this bothers us right now! We are so excited to be almost done!!! We knew when we got married we would have a very difficult two years ahead of us and it is nice to see the end of this phase. I can't say how much we have been blessed in the past two years, but it is nice to be on the end of this phase :)

So anyway, on with the babbling!!!! Peter and I have been talking for a very long time now about a vacation we were going to take as soon as he graduated to celebrate!!! We have thrown around a ton of ideas! Disneyland, a cruise, Hawaii, Cabo, a road trip. We had a really hard time deciding what we wanted to do - but we have made our decision! The plane tickets are booked, the reservations have been made, and now we just have to wait for the next 4 months to go by!

So............ do you wanna know where we are going :)

Doesn't it look great :) Needless to say we are thrilled and can't wait to leave!!! We will be staying at Sandal's Whitehouse Resort on the southern coast of Jamaica!!! We leave on April 30th!!! Hopefully time flies (and I know it will)!!!!

2007 Recap!!!

Don't forget to check out our trip recap - the post below - if you haven't yet!!!

2007 year in review with pictures!!!

We rung in 2007 in Coos Bay!!!

In May we went on our First trip to Disney World!

The tree of life!


Waiting for Fantasmic to start!

In early May we finally received our baby Chinchillas after waiting 2 months

to get them. Callie and Kahlua were both born on March 16th!

In June we went to a family reunion up at Wallowa Lake.

The views from the summit were amazing!

On the top of the mountain at Wallowa Lake!

In early July Peter bought me an awesome

first anniversary present!!!

For our First Anniversary we went down to Southern Oregon

and visited Crater Lake!

Our anniversary trip also took us to the Redwood Forrest!

The months of October and November were filled with

several job interviews which eventually led to Peter

accepting a position at KPMG in early November!!!

Right before Christmas we escaped to Depot Bay for

a couple of nights of relaxation!

Christmas 2007

The girls loved their 1st Christmas!

The end of December sees us in San Francisco cheering Oregon State on

to a win in the Emerald Bowl!!

Our Year almost ended in San Francisco!

2007 was a really fun and great year for us. We continually saw God's blessings in our life and spent a lot of time in awe of how greatly he showed his favor on us. Here's hoping to an even more amazing 2008! We already have much to look forward to in the coming year!!!

Home again!

Our trip pictures first and then the trip recap below!!!

Here they come - It's game time!!!And the Beaver's take control!
Game Over and the fans storm the field!

The disappointed Maryland Mascot doesn't know what to think

The Maryland fans don't know what to think either

San Francisco from our room

We arrived home just a few hours ago and amazingly with how tired we are we actually got our Christmas decorations all taken down in the house. Our trip to San Francisco was very quick paced but a lot of fun. We are tired and it is always nice to be home again no matter how much fun the trip was.

We left at noon on Thursday after we worked for half of the day. We were anticipating a long drive to hopefully get us within a couple hours of San Francisco. We started our drive and made it all the way to Grants Pass and that is where our journey slowed down. We filled up the tank with gas and grabbed a quick snack and were on our way again. Soon after leaving Grants Pass is where the snow began. We were prepared for the snow and fully expected to hit the snow at some point in southern Oregon or northern California. We made it to Ashland and began to notice several semi's on the side of the road beginning the chaining up process. It was amazing how many semi's were pulled over. The line went on for several miles. We eventually hit dead traffic and recognized a sign telling us that they would be inspecting chains two miles ahead of us. We knew that we were not required to chain up because we had 4 wheel drive but there were several morons who didn't pay attention and were the ones causing the hold up in the line. They were stopping every car to see if they had chains and if they were not chained they were making them turn around. We sat in this line for over an hour waiting our turn. We finally made it through the line and were able to continue on our way. We had no problems with the snow, besides the fact that you couldn't drive very fast and we spent the next 2 to 3 hours turning our way through the snowy mountains. It was around 8:30 by the time we made it to Redding and we decided to stop there and get a bite at our favorite California destination "In-N-Out"! We had seen several Beaver fans on our journey and we saw several more during dinner. We began to realize that there would be lots of Orange at this game. It was a lot of fun to talk with these people and go to an "away game" where there were so many of us! We wanted to get as close to San Francisco as we could before stopping so we all agreed we would drive until 10:00 and then call it a night. We ended up making it to Willow and that is where we spent our night. We even got a discount on our room!

The next morning we quickly ate and filled up the car and were on our way. The weather was the biggest disappointment of our day. (We later found out that it was a record breaking low weather day for San Francisco - Lucky us) We made it to San Francisco before noon and started our way across the bridges. We quickly discovered that the local drivers are not very nice people. There was a man who was in the wrong lane in front of us and everyone was honking at him and nobody would let him in. Peter took the high rode and let the man in, and the man, in turn paid our toll at the bridge :) We were three hours early for check in but we went ahead and found out our room was already clean and waiting for us. We got a discounted rate for the second day of our journey! We checked in and decided to go down to the Fisherman's Wharf and find some lunch. We rode the trolley system down there and met up with several Beavers along the way and at the wharf. Several "Go Beavers!!!" were heard throughout the city that day :) We did not however see very many Maryland fans. We found another In-N-Out at the wharf and ate and decided to head back to our room and put more layers of clothing on before taking off for the game. After putting on 5 or 6 layers of clothing and grabbing blankets and ponchos we rode the subway down to the Giant's stadium. There was so much Orange down there! We discovered our seats were the first row behind the dugout where Oregon State came out (Did you see us on TV!!!) and Peter's parents quickly texted us a picture of us from their TV - We are celebrities now :) The game was pretty good - I can't complain because we won! It rained the whole second half of the game but it still wasn't as bad as some of the games I've been to. When we finally did make it back to our room we were very happy that we had turned the heat on before leaving for the game!

We slept in on Saturday and checked out of our room and went back down to Fisherman's Wharf after a quick ride down the crookedest rode -Lombard Street. The whole city was pretty well overcast but we still got to experience the honking horns and fishy smells of downtown San Francisco. We stopped at Ghirardelli Square and got some chocolate and also some famous Kara's cupcakes. Peter and I were hungry so we decided to go down to Hard Rock and have some lunch. It was quite a battle to travel down the sidewalks and it was very easy to tell who was from Oregon and who wasn't. Besides the obvious fact that the Oregonians were wearing black and orange, the non-Oregonians were carrying umbrellas that were poking every which way! Now even the non-Oregonians were talking to us. Besides the normal "Go beavs" there were also several "good game" comments! It was actually a lot of fun to have random people talk to you :) From there we drove across the Golden Gate bridge just to say we did it. We definitely couldn't see anything through all of the fog but hey - we did it!!!

That is about all we did. We drove to Redding yesterday and spent the night and made it home faster then going. All the snow we experienced three days ago is now gone and the rodes were thankfully very clear. We had a fun trip and we are glad we went. We were hoping for better weather but we are Oregonians and used to it. Here's hoping for a repeat trip to Cali next year but next year Peter is hoping for a trip to the Rose Bowl! Here's to wishing!

Home and ready for Christmas!

We had a wonderful time at the beach. Here are some pictures to prove it. We didn't do much of anything. I watched some TV (we don't have cable at home) and read some books and napped. Peter mainly played video games :P

We really did enjoy ourselves. It is nice to have some time to not DO anything and with the last few months we have had between work and school it was very pleasant to just relax and not be responsible.

Our three bedroom condo. It is bigger then our house!

The view from our room. The weather was incredible while we were there. It was in the 50's and calm. The weather did however get pretty nasty the day we left so it was a good day to head home.
Depot Bay
The lighthouse in Newport :)

Now on to Christmas!!! We will be sure to post some pictures of Christmas and also of our trip to San Francisco.

Go Beavers!!!!

and of course.......

Merry Christmas!!!