recent conversation with Darren...

me: "the past few nights you haven't slept underneath the covers. whats up with that?"

Darren: "I know. you're the one that even turned me on to sleeping under the sheets. before I always just used a blanket. makes making the bed easier."

what???? I am the one who got him started on that? seriously?

most spouses get each other into eating healthy, watching football or exercising...not sleeping under the covers...

life with Darren = never dull. 

life in November.

i can't believe it's November. 

it still feels like...summer. 

i need the changing seasons to convince me that the holidays are coming. I'm used to the smell of leaves, homemade soup, bonfires, and cold air on my face. Here we get...sun burn, sun dresses, surfing and the smell of ocean breeze in November. 

in light of today's high near 90 in Carlsbad, we can all safely assume there have been no changing seasons around here yet. (the average is 70, so that is unseasonably warm.)

but the sun + warm weather is lovely. so just to clarify, we are not complaining.  

however...will we be shocked when Christmas rolls around and we haven't pulled out our coats and are still sporting the shorts + flip flops? yes of course. in a few days we'll be back around normal 60-70 degree days. and that will last for about...the next few months.

i was literally shocked when Darren and I walked into Starbucks this morning and saw peppermint mocha's and creme brulee latte's being advertised. We did go for a warm latte before work, but during the day I am still drinking iced coffee!

in other news. we are doing well and life goes on...despite the weather not changing for the 7 (almost 8) months we've been here. 

that I can't believe either. almost 8 months.

it really is feeling more like home for us out here. we are still getting settled into relationships and our community group, but we do feel more on board and passionate about our place in the church after these 7 months. We're thankful to have so many friends out here. and to have each other. marriage is a blast, and more importantly, is teaching us both to be less selfish + more Jesus focused. I'm thankful for honest communication and for a husband who loves to talk and process life together. mostly just super thankful for such a dear friend in Darren. no one else I'd rather live + process life with. 

plus, he brought me to Southern California. Shoot, I sit typing this blog post with a glass of iced tea in hand and a view of blue skies + palm trees out our kitchen window. 

to wrap this long winded, rambling blog post up...here are some pictures of the San Diego Beer Week Festival. We volunteered through the Surf Rider foundation and served craft beer all day on Saturday. 

lots of fun meeting people and checking out local micro-breweries out here. 

love to everyone out east! stay warm and enjoy the rest of fall for me!

It's Been a While...

That never gets old.

It's been a while since we've posted an update, so we thought we'd go for it. 

Life has been pretty busy, Emily started her new job working at Rubios Coporate Headquarters. About a week after moving out here, some co-workers introduced me to this place. Ever since then I've been slightly...addicted...to their fish tacos. So it works out pretty well that she got a job at the corp. headquarters...especially the $10 gift cards that we're hoping she gets on a weekly basis. We'll keep you updated. But overall she's enjoying the new job, making friends with her new coworkers. We're thankful for the opportunity that jobs open up for new relationships. It's worked out pretty well because only having one car, her office is about a mile around the corner from mine, which allows us to carpool. And both of our jobs are only about 5 miles away from our apartment which frees us up for longer mornings of surfing, biking, reading and coffee.

We've really been enjoying making new friends and learning to build new relationships out here as well. We've been talking about what it looks like to develop new friendships with people who we have no history with, and how to find contentment in them. What is it that we want out of our friendships? What is it we want to give to our friendships? Being more analytical than Em, I approach everything with a little more difficulty than she does typically. It's been fun learning about each other and how we approach life, and learning how to approach life together. We're definitely learning how to be thankful and content when our expectations aren't met. Especially when our expectations aren't realistic or even right in the first place. 

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

It's pretty easy to be provided for on so many levels, only to strive after the things you don't have. We're learning how to fight for thankfulness. This is where all of our friends say, "You are in California, you have jobs, you have a good church, why are you struggling with thankfulness?!" This has been a lesson for us that we are still in desperate need of Jesus to change our hearts, to mold and shape us into good followers.

Enter Veronica. Veronica has been attending The Fields with her husband, Tom, since January. Tom is a retired Navy Seal and Veronica works at a company called Life Technologies here in Carlsbad. We've had a little bit of time to get to know them since we moved out here, as they are in our community group. Veronica recently decided that she wanted to become a follower of Christ, and she wanted to be baptized. So at the beginning of one of our beach nights, she was baptized in the pacific ocean, teaching us the very meaning of being a disciple of Jesus. Lives and hearts changed by the person of Christ, through a church full of broken and imperfect people. Sounds simple, and we've all heard it. But when I sit back and realize my propensity toward discontentment, God is faithful in opening my eyes to the important things.

On a lighter note, things have been going really well for us! We bought Emily a bike and enjoyed a couple of fun rides exploring the coastal communities until she blew a tire and we had to walk a couple miles back to our apartment. Good times! 

We took some time to explore Balboa Park a few weeks ago for the first time. We had a good time walking around and admiring the architecture and people watching. 

[ Balboa Museum of Art ]

[ in front of the Japanese Zen Gardens ]

[ that's a nice tree in the background ]

We also had the chance to hang out with some friends friends of mine in Santa Monica this past weekend. Pablo is from Tulsa, OK and he was out visiting his girlfiend near LA, this made for a great evening! Pablo also experienced his first Wahoo's! fish tacos...

I'm sure there's more, but it been a while since our last update and I can't remember everything! Tomorrow we're heading to Hollywood for a Josh Garrels concert we're pretty stoked about. We're going to head out after church and spend the day in Hollywood hanging out.

On another note, the weather out here is great. We're still enjoying sunshine and blue skies with highs in the low 80's. Though people have been talking of chances of thunderstorms tomorrow...

... only to find out ... 

... there's a 10% chance.

 #SoCalProblems

We love and miss our friends back home(s)! We'll keep you updated on our back to Knoxville trip planning.

Today I was welcomed with a little surprise when I went to clean our bath tub!

and yes, that is seaweed.
Hmm...yes, my husband surfs :)

"the cool thing about me is...when I'm injured I can sleep and stay in the right positions for the injury and not move."

Quote of the weekend. Darren kindly went to make lunch yesterday but got a little carried with the knife + avocado and basically stabbed the palm of his hand. What we thought was a severed tendon is we think just an injury to the tendon sheath. We shall see. Thankfully there wasn't crazy amounts of blood, and he can move all of his fingers. Today he has his hand wrapped to stabilize the wound. We're praying it heals quickly. 

Pray for Darren as he can't surf for a while. 

No seriously. This is a pretty big disappointment, seeing that he loves to surf in the mornings before work and on the weekends, and has been getting pretty good. 

And I love to watch him. 

I guess I will have to surf and he will have to watch me now.

No pictures, because they don't do the wound justice. Lets just say I will be cutting the avocados from now on. 

In other news, we did get to enjoy the beach this weekend. and we're thankful for that. This picture is Friday after dinner;  a walk down to the beach to enjoy the sunset. 

Happy Monday from California :)

4th of July SoCal Style...

[started the morning out with some surfing]

[on our way to the fireworks]

[part of the group chilling before the fireworks]

[pre-gaming before the fireworks]

[the only good shot of a firework in the sky all night.....]

Our first 4th of July in California was pretty awesome. We got to enjoy it with some friends of ours from church. Thankful for community, for sure.

Wrapping up June.

 4th day in our new place, and we love it already. We randomly came across this apartment for rent 1.5 weeks ago and went to check it out. It ended up being GREAT so we jumped on it and are now moved in :) It feels so good to have our own place. This morning (after Darren surfed, of course) we made breakfast and enjoyed a fresh ocean breeze as we ate jalapeno cheddar bagels w/ cream cheese and fresh fruit and sipped a french press.


We really do want every one of you to come visit us. Scroll down, you'll see why :)

our bedroom:

backyard view from our bedroom:

Ocean view from our street:

My surfer dude!

Now we can grab beach chairs + surf boards and walk down to the beach. We are living the life and are having fun :) June gloom has lifted and the deep blue skies and warm sunshine are back!

Darren and I are both doing well. With his tan and longer hair, he looks quite like a surfer these days. I am feeling really better out here. and I never want to take that for granted. Last week David and Wilma, our pastor and his wife, left town for an Acts 29 pastors conference and we stayed at their house with the kids. I realized during that week that I really am feeling so much better. I had energy the whole week with them, and it was such a fun week, full of the beach, picnics at the park, hiking, dirty diapers, swim practice, waffle-making disasters (Darren *cough cough*), water fights in the back yard, catching frogs and giant lizards, and an occasional bloody nose and bee sting. No broken bones!

(That really did happen...a few weeks ago we babysat for a couple in our community group, and while they were peacefully enjoying a romantic anniversary dinner, their 9 year old son climbed a tree and broke his arm...we didn't think anyone else in the church would ever ask us to babysit, but alas. The pastor did! I guess when you have 6 kids, you jump at a change to get away as a couple.)

That's our latest! We love and miss all of our family and friends back home. Please come visit us! We have a bedroom waiting :)