Arlington, TX

Hey yall! TJ and I just moved to Arlington, TX. It is about 25 minutes away from where we were in Dallas. We moved so we could be closer to our church (Pantego Bible) where TJ and I are working in the student ministry.
I love our new apartment. We have a washer and dryer in our apartment, and we have a community pool. It has been really nice to now be only 10 minutes away from church.
TJ had a rough summer, just because he had a lot going on. He started an internship at our church. He took a 2 greek classes and 2 church history class in the summer semester, and just this Monday he finished his greek class by turning in a 15 page paper. He now has 2 weeks off of school before he starts up in the fall. I'm so proud of him. If he keeps taking the amount of schooling he has been, he will be finished in the winter or spring of 2012 (which would only be 3 years instead of 4).
The temperature has been in the 100's all this week. I'm going to be so glad when fall comes!

Texas State Fair

Not much new going on since our last post except we went to the fair. The fried coke was terribly disappointing. It was donut holes that apparently had coke in them with a thick coke sauce over, even the cool whip wasn’t good. However the tornado taters where delicious which is thinly sliced potatoes that are fried with cheese sauce which tasted like a mixture of potatoes chips and French fries.
We had some native Dallas friends show us around and we had a lot of fun. We saw Big Tex and a whole lot of people eating fried turkey legs (no utensils just holding it with their bare hands and biting into it.).

Home in Dallas, TX

TJ and I are a settling into a routine with TJ’s studying and my working at home. TJ is still really enjoying his classes, and from what I can see is learning a lot. Working at home is going good. I have my days where I get annoyed with not being actually onsite at the shop to see or explain things, but overall it is going well, which is excellent, since I haven’t gotten a job in Dallas yet. God is taking care of us.
We found a church that I think we’ll be joining and we joined small group with 4 other couples from DTS (Dallas Theological Seminary). We invited our small group over to our little apartment for dinner. It was crowded and I’m sure were overly loud for our downstairs neighbor, but it was a lot of fun. I glad we are getting to know people.
So the big happening in Texas is the month long state fair in Dallas, which started last week. I haven’t gone yet but we are planning on it. They are famous for their mascot, a 52’ tall man named “Big Tex”, and their fried food. The new one is fried butter this year, but fried coke is very popular also. The fried butter just grosses me out but I’m going to try the fried coke and let you know exactly what that is.
-The picture is of TJ, Jessie (my sister), and Tom (my brother-in-law). We are playing Risk 2210AD which is an excellent game of taking over the world after nuclear fallout. I won…..almost. Jessie and Tom moved to Houston the same time we moved to Dallas. And we get to see them again next weekend!!

TJ and I have been back from for Europe for about 3 weeks, and I, for one, am still enjoying using non public bathrooms, and sleeping in my own soft bed which I had been missing for the last 2 months.
I got a new cell phone so you can call me again, yay! In other news, working from home is going good, and TJ starts school next week! So long for now, I’m going to walk to the post office in this 97 degree heat.
The 3 pictures are: a random milk truck with cute mud flaps, me and 1 of my adorable nieces (Maggie), and proof that we are actually settling into our new place (yay pictures!)

Okay, so this is way over due... but since we are now officially moved into our apartment, I have a few minutes before Heidi makes me go unpack the boxes that are strewn all over the place!

We got into Dallas late Monday night and decided to get a cheap-o hotel for the night and look at apartments in the morning. We slept well and started looking at around 8am. The first apartment we actually went into was listed on my school's website amongst other apartments for rent. We really liked it, but since it was the first one we looked at, we decided to hold off on getting too excited until we looked at a few more. Well, long story short, we couldn't find any better than the first. After inquiring with a realtor who told us we should "jump on it" because we won't find that good of a deal for such a nice place anywhere else, we went back to the landlord and told him we were interested. Unfortunately after filling out the paper work and actually writing a deposit check out, the landlord received a phone call from somebody he showed the apartment to the night before. He had verbally agreed to rent it to him if he could come up with the deposit, but the guy didn't call until around 2...right when we were signing all the paperwork. The landlord apologized and sent us on our way...a little confused as to what just happened. We were disappointed and back to square one. The only thing we could think of doing was sit in our car and talk over our plan. We talked about all the great benefits to the apartment we just looked at, and started looking at different areas. Unfortunately, they would be a lot further from my school. This place was less than 2 miles away. We were just about to start driving off when the landlord called us back to tell us that he made the executive decision to give us the apartment. Thank you so much for all who have been praying for us, it has been very evident that God has been helping us find our way.
Some friends helped us unpack our container today as well. We have been so blessed. Heidi wasn't looking forward to moving a couch up to our 2nd floor apartment! She did a great job at holding the door open for us as Dustin and I carried the couch up though:)

Our new address is
6234 Oram St.
Apt F
Dallas, TX 75214

Dallas - 8/04

Yay! We made it to Dallas. We've got a great story about an apartment. We'll write more soon.

Bayeux, Cherbourg, Ireland, Chicago, Michigan...Chicago?

July 21 to Present Day
We spent a day in Bayeux, France which isn’t on the shore where D-day happened, but slightly inland. They were one of the first cities liberated from the Germans by the Allies. They still fly the flags of all the different countries the helped liberate France from the Nazis. We walked through the cemetery and the ever present memorials. It appeared that the only thing the city had going for them was tourism due to the historical events of the city’s past. But, it was well kept and quite the enjoyable little town. After that we took a ferry from France to Ireland. It was an 18 hour overnight trip. The choppy waters made TJ and me a little off balance the whole next day trying to readjust to solid ground. We had to have looked like drunkards walking down the sidewalk. Ireland was particularly relaxing because we were finally among English language speakers again, strong accents, but at least it was English never the less. Ireland is very much like all the stereotypes: strong Irish accents; lots of red haired, fair skinned people; lots of drizzling rain that would stop and start a lot. We explored 2 castles while in Ireland. And our last night in Europe, TJ and I splurged on a nice 4 course Chinese restaurant, which was a nice time to sit, relax, and reflect on our trip to Europe.

Our 7 hour flight left Ireland at 2:20 PM July 23rd and landed at 4:30 in Chicago. There is nothing like flying thru 5 time zones to screw up your sleeping schedule. My dad and Beppe (my grandma) picked us at the airport and drove us to Michigan. It was so sweet, because I wasn’t looking forward to another 4 hour train ride to get us home. Thanks Dad and Beppe!! We have been hanging out with family this weekend. Later today (Sunday) we are going to take off to Chicago again, now that we have picked up our car with some of our belongings. Due to some desperate circumstances that my previous and now current company is going through, I’m going to be working in Chicago this week, and TJ is going to be chilling out near Joliet. So, feel free to call him if you want to hang out! We are down to one cell phone because my phone died in Europe. If you want to call us, use TJ’s cell phone number.

After this week, the plan is to spend another weekend in Michigan and then take off to Texas on Sunday. At this point, our plan has changed more than Dennis Rodman’s hair color during the Bulls era, so we really aren’t positive if this is “the plan” (okay, to clarify TJ added that last sentence...Heidi doesn't really know who Dennis Rodman is or the apparent personality crisis that he was going through during the mid 90's). We will write more later on. Thanks for all the prayers and advice while we were in Europe!