5 Years!!

The title of my post reminds me of Grosse Point Blanke when Jeremy Pivin's character was smoking pot and telling John Cusack's character how he couldn't believe it had been "10 years...10 years...10 years...10 YEARS!!" since they had graduated high-school!! He hilariously emphasized every word differently each time he said it...I don't know, maybe you have to see it to know what I'm talking about.

At any rate, it has been FIVE YEARS since Jeremy and I were married, and boy what a 5 years it has been!! We usually do something pretty upscale (our 1st we went to Seattle and had dinner at the space needle and then drove the limo that Becky rented for us back to our hotel) but since we're going to Hawaii in December, we kept it pretty low key and just went to dinner and then watched some of Seinfeld season 6!

There are SO many things I could list, but here's the hi-lights of the last 5 years:

• We've moved five times.
• We've owned two houses (sold one).
• We each inherited one sibling-in-law and have two nieces and one more niece/nephew on the way (congrats Becky and Stew!).
• We've owned two VW camper Vans (sold one).
• We've had seven room-mates (Jenn, Stephanie, Sam, Kendra, Jamie, John & Barb), not all at once of course!
• Since Anchorage we've each made one job change.
• I (Olivia) has started her own business (I do scrap booking, custom greeting cards, wedding invitations, birth announcements, you name it! Currently making Christmas cards for this year if anyone is interested, just email me).
• We've had three pets. One cat who tragically ate himself to death (no kidding, but that's a long story for another time) and two dogs.
• We've come into a great church family and have inherited too many wonderful relationships to count!

I am sure I could come up with so many more things worth mentioning if I had the time to really think them out...however I'm on my way out the door to a massage client's house (oh yeah, I do that as a side business, too!) and so I have to go.

In short, God has been SO good to us; we have greatly enjoyed and cherish all the blessings and memories we've made the last five years and are eager to see what good things God has in store for the next five! Thank you to everyone who loves, supports, and prays for us ~ we love you!

Hallelujah Party!

Our Church had their Hallelujah Party (alternative to Halloween) for the kids on Tuesday the 30th and Jer and I volunteered. I ran the craft table (we made little blue whales!) and Jer ran the bean bag toss. Afterwards we went to Jenni's house and had our own little costume party!!! My family never did this kind of stuff growing up, so it was fun. I think next year Jer and I will either be Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, or Jack Bauer and Audrey Raines from "24"!! We have a whole year to decide! Here's Kendra & I.

The next day at work we got to dress up, too. My friend Jennifer and I dressed up as twins!! We got blond wigs, but then blacked out one of our teeth...you know...hot from behind, "oh I was mistaken" from the front!! Hahaha! People who don't know us well actually couldn't tell us apart!

Hot.......

Or not...!!! :)

The full effect!

Update

Quite a bit has happened since our last post - I think an update is in order!

• John & Barb left for Ketchikan the first week of October. The first few days without them were strangely quiet!
• We've been asked by our pastor to start hosting our church's young adults group, which we've agreed to do. We are going through a curriculum by John Bevere called The Bait of Satan. It is about staying free from the bondage of offense. It's a pretty hard core, grow up in spiritual maturity study; we're excited to see the growth it is going to spark.
• I've volunteered to help out with the Children's ministry at our church; I will be helping with the 5-12 year old's two Sunday's a month.
• Jeremy has been laid off for the next two months in order to attend the classroom portion of his apprenticeship. This was his first week; he is currently at the top of his class - I am very proud of him!!
• We are going to Hawaii for two weeks in December as sort of a Christmas/Jeremy's Birthday/our 5 year anniversary treat to ourselves. We're very excited. We are going to be in Maui. We will be renting a VW camper van for one week and driving around and camping Maui, and then we'll spend one week in a condo.
• I've been working my "real" job at full steam and also doing a little massage on the side as well as some scrapbook, card making projects in my spare time.

We've been getting little bouts of snow here and there but nothing has stuck yet. Mostly it snow/rains and then freezes as night, which makes the roads dangerous in the mornings. Thank God for studded snow tires! All of the above have kept us pretty busy. Hopefully something a little more interesting/picture posting worthy will happen! :)

Surprise!!

We had the honor of hosting Kathie Elenberger's 60th surprise birthday party!! I will let Kendra post all the juicy details of guests, etc, but I wanted to post a few pictures of the food. Our friend Amanda from church came and catered and Jenny was her sou chef...needless to say, it was OUTSTANDING!!!

Jenny and Amanda!
Crab & Avocado Salad and Mussels on the Half Shell were the appetizers.
After this we were served a chili based shrimp and rice soup, which I don't have a picture of
For the entree, we had a choice of either....
Halibut Enchiladas
...or Beef Steak and Salsa
We also had 3 dessert choices which I do not have pictured.
Here's a picture of the table all set with appetizers ready!It was a lot of fun to have a formal party complete with a fully catered 4 course meal!!

September Camping

We (Jeremy & I, and Geoff) decided to take an impromptu camping trip last night; we underestimated the amount of people who would be camping over Labor Day and upon arriving at the camp ground we chose, found NO open spots. However, the Lord is good and our neighbors (the ones who bought our original camper van) "happened" to be camping at that same campground and warmly invited us to share their spot. We got SO many "cool, dude" comments from other campers about having 3 vans in one spot, and miraculously, no teenagers came and asked us for weed! :) Anyway, we had a fun time! We took just Audrey and left Jo home with grandma & grandpa. Audrey did very well...she's turning (however slowly) into a very, very good, obedient, loving dog!

The 3 vans!!

Audrey, myself, Jer, John, Laura, and Belle.Audrey with her inquisitive face!

She's huge and still only 8 months old!!