Update

Ok, so I have been bad at updating this lately.  Please forgive me.   I have been quite busy.

I am now on week two of my new job.  I am still doing training, and don’t actually know what I will really be doing, but I like the company so that’s a good start.  The drive is a bit long, but hopefully I can keep my hours early, and cut down on some of the traffic. 

We are doing really well here in San Antonio.  We actually have curtains hung, so the Apt is feeling more and more like home.  We finally can get around without using our GPS systems, so that is a really good feeling.   I still don’t like the grocery shopping and lack of options for stores, but I will get over that eventually. 

Before I started my new job, I had been working on a couple quilts.  I am proud to say one is complete, and is a gift for a friend.  The second one is almost complete and will also be a gift for a friend.  I will post pictures of them as soon as I send them to the individuals.  I have really enjoyed making them as they, and am even more excited to give them away.  I just wish I could be there when they open them.  Oh well, maybe we will have to Skype. 

We truly MISS our friends in Phoenix.  We have not really made any good friends here in San Antonio yet, which is starting to get hard.  We have checked out a lot of different churches, and think we have one that we will go to regularly, but we are not totally at peace about it yet.  God will direct our steps. 

I am still trying to try something new each week while cooking dinner.  With starting a new job it has been a little difficult.  We have started making fresh fruits and veggie juice every other day, and have started to see an increase in our energy.  Its something small, but its making us feel better. 

Well, off to the gym!  I will try and get better at updating this :) 

Trying New Things

So, since I am currently looking for work, I decided that I wanted to try at least one new meal a week.  For me, its difficult coming up with a variety of dinners that are easy to cook, and healthy.  So far I have tried a few new things out, some that I have liked, and others that I have not liked.

Last week I attempted at making home made mac-n-cheese.  That didn’t come out so good.  It was a lot of work, and the portion was so big that it could have fed about 12 people.  To top it off it didn’t reheat well, so that one was a flop. 

This week I have tried two new things.  First was a Chinese cabbage salad (Found here: http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2011/08/chinese-cabbage-salad.html).   This turned out really good, and I will be making it again.  I made peanut sauce dressing that I really liked, but mark didn’t.  So the only change for that will be that I will not mix the dressing in.  Mark did not like the dressing, so I will leave it off and we can pick our dressing. 

Last night I cooked this yummy crab wrapped in salmon.  It was something they sold at the grocery store, so of course I paid more for it because it was already assembled, but it was so Yummy!!!  Basically it was a crab mix then rolled into salmon. I cooked like a roast for 25 minutes in the oven and served it with Asparagus. 

Tonight I am trying lasagna in the crock pot and will have to let you know how it turns out. Missing all our friends in AZ right now.  We are headed to a young adults service tonight, so hopefully we will meet some new people!

The Big and Little Differences

San Antonio is quite different from Phoenix and even Seattle.  Its getting used to the differences that takes some time.  Here are some random thoughts I have today! 

The biggest difference is the weather.  The weather is somewhat different each day.  It could be windy one day, with low humidity, then switch to high humidity with no wind.  It could be completely overcast for a day, or sunny for the day.  I am having a hard time getting used to the humidity.  We are using the air conditioner a lot more than we did in Phoenix.  You can't just open up the windows and cool the house down.   It just doesn't work.  

There are so many bugs here!!!  Ones that creep and crawl.  Ones that fly and everything in between.  The bugs are disgusting, and I really wish they were not here.  Lets just say Mark gets asked to clean up bugs a lot! 

San Antonio really likes to use one name for all its streets!  Its San Pedro!  There is a San Pedro Road, a San Pedro frontage road, and a San Pedro highway.  It is so confusing!  The one thing that I really like about San Antonio is the roads.  We live in an area where there are hills everywhere!  They twist and turn, and go every which way!  It makes it fun to drive! 

Coffee shops are really hard to come by.  Yesterday I drove about 20 minutes checking 3 coffee shops to find one that was not closed down and that had free Wifi!  I was eventually able to find one, but in Seattle, or Phoenix, that would have never been the case!  It seems like people don't really like coffee here. 

Well, that's all for now!  Have a great day!

We made it to San Antonio!

Well, its long overdue, but here I am sitting and reflecting on our move to San Antonio.  We left phoenix just over a week ago, and took our time driving.  We arrived 3 days after we left which put us getting here on a Monday.  The drive was quite boring as we didn’t go through many cities that were impressive.  West Texas is pretty bland, and there is not much in New Mexico.  We did see Mexico as we went through El Paso.  That was pretty crazy because you are driving on the highway, and you think to yourself, that is a dumpy part of the country, only to realize the border fence is below the freeway, and that is actually Mexico. 

Once we made it to San Antonio we had to stay in a hotel for 3 days until our moving truck got here.  Mark started work on Tuesday, and worked Wednesday as well.  I ran errands and got stuff ready for us to move into our Apt.  Thursday the truck arrived and it was like a game of tetras to get everything to fit.  When a moving company packs you, they use way more boxes that you could ever expect because they use so much paper to wrap everything. 

We are slowly unpacking everything and settling in.  Opening up the boxes is quite a surprise because they didn’t label the boxes very well, and everything is mixed with other stuff.  It’s a slow process making an entire house fit into an apt.  A lot of our stuff is in our garage for now, and will remain in there until we get a house, but that is fine with us.

The dogs are settling in really well.  They have gotten used to stairs, which they didn’t quite know what to do with at first.  Now Zoe will dart up and down just to get herself exercise.  Its pretty funny to watch. 

I am back on the job hunt, something that is long and difficult.  Mark has gotten a lot of information on which companies are good ones, but its hard to get a foot in the door without any referrals.  I know God will provide the correct job at the right time.  I keep believing that the correct job will come along at the right time. 

 

3 Days from the Big Move

Well, we are now three days away from the big move to San Antonio.  Man, I never knew that moving out of state would be so much work!  I am so thankful that I have a few days off work to help get things ready around the house.  

We found an Apartment to live in while we get to know San Antonio.  It will be really interesting to see how everything fits into the Apartment. Going from a 1800 sq foot house with a 3 car garage to a 1200 sq foot Apt with a 1 car garage will make space tight.  Call me crazy, but I am actually looking forward to going back into one.  No more yard work, no more maintenance that we are responsible for.  I think it will open up our weekends to enjoy each other and get to know a new city.  

The house is a complete mess with stuff pulled out and organized as much as possible.  We have been working hard to try and organize stuff on this end while we have more room instead of organizing on the other end where we won't have as much room.  I finally got the kitchen done, just needs to be cleaned, but I still need to finish up all the stuff in the garage.  It will come together, but I know I will be tired in the end.  Oh well, its part of life.  

I am really going to miss all my friends here in Phoenix.  Its rare to find such good friends as I have here.  We are eager to find a new church in San Antonio and get plugged in to begin building new friendships.  I think that will be a hard part about moving.  Rebuilding a strong circle of friends.  

I need to get back to it, but gotta share one other thing that God did for us.  We sold our washer and dryer with the house, and they are not included in apartments in San Antonio.  They do provide hook-ups but just not the actual unit.  So we began to start looking for one on sale this past weekend.  Well,  we were able to find the washer and dryer both on a major sale because they were the floor model, and scratch and dent!  I am so happy I won't have to go to a laundry mat once we move!  

What God has Done to get us to the Point of Being 17 Days Away from Moving to San Antonio

Mark and I have discussed from the beginning about moving to San Antonio.  His family is all located in Texas, all within about a 3 hour drive from San Antonio.  Mark’s company has a small division in San Antonio, and the government contract work that he does is strong in that city.  We thought we would look into moving after we had been married for about 5 years, but boy were we wrong.  God lead us to San Antonio quite earlier than we expected. 

In October 2011 we received information from Mark’s director at work that a position had opened up in the San Antonio Tx office on a different project.   We began to heavily think and pray about the opportunity ultimately leading to us saying Mark was interested in applying for the job.  His name was submitted. 

At the beginning of November 2011 Mark received a call asking for a phone interview.  He set up his interview for the same weekend we were traveling to Washington for my Grandpa’s funeral.  Mark took the call and proceeded to do his phone interview.  After the interview was over Mark felt as though he didn’t do well at all and was very discouraged.  No less than an hour later we were walking out of my parent’s house when Mark got another call.  They wanted to bring him to Texas for another interview!  What an emotional roller coaster we were on that day.  Going from being bummed, to actually thinking we have a shot at getting this work transfer. 

A few weeks later he got his interview set up for the Friday before Thanksgiving.  Mark took off Thursday to try and get a feel for the city.  He interviewed Friday and really liked the office.  The manager really liked him as well and was offered the job on the spot.  We were going to Houston for Thanksgiving, so Mark’s parents were nice enough to take us to San Antonio for an overnight trip so I could see the city.  We went to the Lighting of the River Walk with the holiday lights, and stayed in a hotel downtown.  The next morning we got up and went to the north part of the city to see some places we thought we would be interested in living.  I have to be honest, San Antonio was different than I expected.  Its “Green”, but not green like I was expecting.  Being from Washington, the biggest thing I missed while living in AZ was all the colors of green on the trees. 

The waiting game now began.  We waited for about a month to get the actual written offer from his Company.  We began getting our house ready to go on the market.  The offer came back different than we expected (no closing costs on the sale of our house), so we pushed back, and began to wait again.  It took another 3 or 4 weeks to hear back another offer which included what amounted to 50% closing costs.  We got the green light to go.  It was time to put our house on the market. 

Before we heard back from the company on the second offer we began to really evaluate if we wanted to move, and what sacrifice were willing to make financially to go.  We knew that there was a great chance that we would have to pay to get out of our house, and that we actually wouldn’t get any selling assistance at all.  About a week before we got the second offer back we both decided that we felt that God was directing us to San Antonio, and to not worry about the cost. 

Well, we selected our realtor and began working towards a go live date on our house.  We packed up what seemed to be half the house, cleaned out the closets, and cleaned and re-cleaned the kitchen and floors.  I don’t think our house had ever been that clean!  The day before the house went on the market, the realtor had lined up a photographer to come take pictures of the house.  We were ready to go!  Well, whatever happened is still a mystery, but the realtor said that it was too cloudy and we couldn’t take pictures today (I think he honestly forgot to schedule the photographer so he wasn’t originally going to come).  We were faced with the decision: GO live with listing the house (and take pictures the next week), or wait another week?  We decided that it was a big opportunity for God to show us he is here for us and we went for it.  The house went live on Thursday February 9^th.

Well, I can honestly say the sell of our house was a God thing.  We listed Thursday and had 1 showing.  Friday we had something like 6 or 7 showings (one of those being a double showing to the same couple), Saturday was the same, as well as Sunday.  Saturday afternoon we were headed down to Desert Ridge (an outdoor mall) with the dogs.  We received a call from one of the people that had viewed the house earlier that day asking to see it again, and that they wanted to put an offer on the !  Always a good sign when they want to go back!  We then received a call from our Realtor saying he had an offer on the house.  It was a really strong offer, and had us really excited, but we knew another offer was going to come in.  Well, we waited for a second offer to come in, and it was even better than the first!!! The offer was above asking price, and we didn’t have to pay any extra closing costs (typical in the housing market today).  We went with the second offer and were on our way! 

The inspection came the following Wednesday, and we got the results back Sunday.  We had termites (which is extremely common in Az).  We got a quote from the termite inspection company saying they could fix the problem for about half the price of other companies.  We will use them to fix it.  The major miracle from the inspection, is that they only asked for us to fix about half of what came up on the report!  We agreed to everything and asked for them to order the appraisal. 

The appraisal came and we waited a little over a week for the results.  We were slightly concerned about the appraisal because the house 2 doors down appraised for 50K less than what we were under contract for.  Well, God pulled out another miracle!  Our appraisal came back and it was for $2,000 above what we were under contract for!!! Praise God! 

We are now getting ready to head to San Antonio to find an Apt.  We are believing for God to provide an apt that is big enough for us and all our stuff, and is affordable so we can save for a new house!  God sure is showing us that he wants us in Texas… We are interested to see what he is going to do through us there!  

Sorry for the long post!  You have to hear the details to really understand all the miracles God has provided us to get to Texas.  Check back every once in a while.  We will try to keep up and keep you updated on what is going on in our lives J