2013 in Review

I really love all the end of the year reviews that happen in late December/early January. It's fun to remember how much has happened in just 365 days. Here are some of our 2013 highlights:

January

I'd had my braces on for just over a month and then started the new year by getting my wisdom teeth removed and another tooth pulled. On a related note, I dropped down to my college weight at this point as I spent the month of January eating almost no solids :)

February

We spent 10 days in Texas and New Mexico. Since we didn't get to be with family for the holidays, this was our belated trip to see them and also to attend our 5 year college reunion at Lubbock Christian University. Most importantly, we got to hang out with our niece, Lucy, for only the 2nd time in her life.

March

We discovered our home had major foundation problems in the month of March, and that radically changed the rest of the year for us. This news came exactly one year after we purchased our house.

April

Easter was a big weekend for us. Kory preached at all 4 services at Redeemer's Fellowship and I cooked my first Easter Feaster, which is sure to become a Mereness holiday tradition, complete with breaking our 40 day soda fast for the 40 Days of Water.

May

We celebrated 2 years of marriage with a weekend at Seven Feathers Hotel and Casino. The weekend included swimming, sleeping in/naps, The Office on Netflix, and ice cream. Perfection!

June

We participated in the Run for Ohm 5k for the first time. Our times weren't particularly note-worthy, but we did finish before the 10k winners came in, and called that a win.

July

We flew to Angel Fire, NM to spend an extended weekend with Kory's family to celebrate a 60th birthday, 80th birthday, and 60th wedding anniversary. After only seeing Lucy once in the first 18 months of her life, it was awesome to see her again, just 5 months later.

August

After talking about it for 2 years, we finally climbed South Sister with our best friends, Abby and Jeremy. We camped, hiked, and spent the weekend on Oregon's 3rd tallest mountain.

September

After over a year of planning and preparing, Kory helped put together a Parenting Conference this Fall. His parents flew up and taught at the conference and we enjoyed a wonderful extended weekend together.

October

We hosted a Halloween party and ended up with about 45 people at our house at some point in the evening. Kory was dressed as Zombie Steve Jobs and I was a green M&M.

November

I graduated from Launching Your Leadership, which is a leadership training program through the State of Oregon. I spent most of the Fall driving back and forth to Salem for this program.

December

As anyone who is Facebook friends with me knows, we just flew back to Texas to surprise family on Christmas morning. A detailed post about this trip will soon follow, but I'll leave you with a picture of the newest additions to the Mereness family, Molly and Jude.

Catching Up

I have now been very absent from this blog for the past month or more. The short story is, life has given us quite a lemon and making lemonade is turning out to be a very long, slow process. (More to come about the lemon in my next post.)

My 13 in 2013 goals have not gone away completely, but I've certainly changed my focus a bit. The goals were good and they were healthy, but I have taken up a couple new hobbies and tried to focus in different areas. Ultimately, I feel led by God to pursue a couple opportunities and I don't want to let this blog or some goals I set months ago get in the way of that. So, here's what's been going on with us recently:

• Kory preached at all 4 Easter services at church and did an awesome job, as always. You can watch his sermon here, if you're interested. http://www.redeemersfellowship.com/index.cfm?i=14728&mid=18&g=44607
• My 6 month rotation as a lead worker has become a permanent position, so I'm really excited about that! I love this new job and enjoy coming to work pretty much every day, which is a huge change because I was experiencing major burnout about this time last year.
• We sold my little red car in April to a college student who was in our youth group in Myrtle Creek. I was sad to see it go but really happy to be down to 2 cars and also to see Karlie get her first car ever. She was so cute and excited!
• I've gotten back into running and I'm almost finished with Couch to 5k again. Kory and I are running a 5k in June with our friends, Edgar and Florence. Sky is my running partner 3 times a week and I've loved having him to push me to go a little bit faster. 
• My garden is planted and doing well. I am growing strawberries, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, green beans, and watermelon this year. Of course, that is assuming I can keep the cats out of my garden. They think I've created one giant litter box for them...great. So far I have eaten a couple strawberries and they are quite delicious!
• Things have been really busy for us lately with the end of the school year approaching. Kory preached this past Sunday again, then we had youth group Sunday night, went hiking with some students on Monday, Wednesday we had our 8th grade mixer, tonight is a band concert, tomorrow is a different band concert, Saturday is a graduation party, Sunday morning we're honoring our graduates during the church service, and we're hosting a lunch for our graduating seniors and their families at our house for lunch on Sunday. Things should be a little bit calmer next week before we run our 5k on Saturday morning, head to a wedding Saturday afternoon and then have graduation on Sunday right after church. I know I don't get a summer break but I am excited for things to slow down a bit once summer starts!

Mid-August Update

It's about time for an update to cover what's been going on over the past few weeks.

1.) We had a Car Wash Fundraiser a couple weeks ago and it was incredibly successful! I had never heard of a car wash quite like this before, but it worked really well for us. We have 3 services on Sunday morning, and we did a valet service (with adults driving) so people could drop off their keys with us and we would wash their car while they were in the service and it was back in their parking spot squeaky clean when they got out. People could also drive their car through in-between services if they wanted. We ended up making over $1,000 in about 4.5 hours!

2.) My wedding ring saga continues...and my disgust for Samuels Jewelers continues to grow! So, as of May, I had lost 5 diamonds from my wedding ring in under 18 months. The last time I took it into the store, I was talking to the Store Supervisor about this and telling her how frustrated I was that I had to drive 2-3 hours to a store or pay to ship the ring to get it fixed. She said I could call the Customer Service Line and they would send me a postage-paid box or envelope and I could send the ring in for free and get it repaired and they'd send it back for free. I lost another diamond (#6!) while putting away laundry one night and promptly called the Customer Service Line the next morning. The lady I spoke to could not find any record of us purchasing any jewelry or insurance plans from Samuels and she spent about 10 minutes trying to convince me I must have bought it somewhere else and I was just confused.

I am 1,000% sure I have an insurance policy with them as I have already used it SO many times! She was finally able to locate some information in the system for Kory and asked me to mail in a copy of my receipts to prove we bought a ring and insurance from Samuels and then they will start the process of adding our records to their system. I found the business card for the District Manager in with the paperwork from when Kory purchased the ring, so I decided to give him a call. I left a voicemail for him, and in his message he promises to return all calls, yet I never heard back from him. So, now I don't really know where I stand. I'll probably try to call Customer Service again this week because I sent in the paperwork a couple weeks ago now. I wish it were something less important to me, but because it's my wedding ring, I will continue this fight.

3.) I'm doing pretty well on my New Years Goals...though they have changed a little bit throughout the year. My initial goals involved learning to sew, reading 12 books, and getting back into crocheting. I've sewn several things this year, am on book #6 (got a little behind on this one) and re-learned a few basic crochet stitches. After moving into our house, I kind of decided that instead of focusing on crocheting, I was going to learn how to garden. It's been really fun even though many of my flowers and veggies haven't survived. Here are a few pictures of what is growing in my garden right now:

Green Beans just came in this week.

Zucchini has been my best crop by far.

It will be a while longer before the cucumbers are ready.

The strawberries are just as delicious as they look!

April Update

Here's a quick update on life in Oregon:

1. We moved into our first house! There were over 20 people who helped us and it was really a fun day :) We had so much help that the moving went really quickly and people ended up unpacking a lot of our stuff too. By the end of this week, we should be totally unpacked and settled. I'm hoping to spend this weekend doing some outside garden/yard stuff, and I am really excited for that! I keep getting giddy about the little things...like parking my car in a garage for the first time.
2. Tonight, I'm starting a Beth Moore Bible Study with our women's ministry. My two best friends from church are doing it with me too, so I am really looking forward to it. Most of my church activities are focused on teenagers, so I'm thankful for this opportunity to focus on my own spiritual life. It is at the same time that Kory has a guys Bible study at our house, so that works out perfectly where we don't have to spend more nights apart than we do currently.
3. We got some sad news yesterday at the vet's office when we found out our cat, Kabie, has feline leukemia. This is a virus that attacks the cat's immune system and leaves it unable to fight off many diseases and other viruses. Our other cat, Mr. Sir, has not contracted it and the vet doesn't believe he will since Kabie has likely had it for over a year and she hasn't given it to him yet. Unfortunately, this means Kabie can't be an outside cat, like we hoped. We don't want to risk exposing other cats to this virus and her weakened immune system means she would probably pick up other dangerous diseases if exposed to them outside.
   
   It isn't likely that she will die soon, but the vet did say this will ultimately shorten her life span. This is probably part of the reason she is so lethargic and fat...she just lays around all day, because she is sick :( I feel really bad now that we haven't been very nice to her--we just thought she was lazy and fat! haha She really isn't very friendly, but now that we know she's sick, I have much more compassion towards her. I still really want Mr. Sir to get to be outside as much as possible. I know he'd love the trees and animals and grass in our big backyard!
   
   Kabie doesn't seem to be suffering at all right now. If she starts to, we plan to end her pain peacefully before it gets bad. When talking to the vet yesterday, she told me she doesn't think it's a good idea to let the cats outside because there are dogs/bigger animals and cars could hit them and it's just really too dangerous. I think she's lost perspective on the fact that they are animals! I would be SO sad if either cat was killed, but I think their quality of life would be so much better playing outside rather than spending their life indoors looking out the window.
4. One more thing about Kabie...that chunky girl is over 21 lbs now!! haha She is huge! Sadly, she can't really groom herself or jump much at all, so she's going on a strict diet ASAP.
5. Things at my work have been really busy for about the past 3-4 months, and it's just now starting to slow down a bit. Any time I'm tempted to complain about how much I have to do or how I don't want to do any of it, I'm quickly reminded by our lobby full of customers that there are a lot of people here who would gladly take my job in a heartbeat. It doesn't always motivate me, but at least I realize I need to keep my whining to myself :)
6. We had a beautiful winter in Roseburg this year...lots of sunshine and mild temperatures. Spring, however, has been crazy crazy rainy!! The month of March set a new record for the most rainfall in one month here. I still love the rain after spending most of my life in a drought, so you won't hear me complaining about how wet it is...I am always thankful to fall asleep listening to the rain. I do look forward to some summer sunshine though!

Lately...

We've been pretty busy around here with a lot of Fall things going on!

1. We're looking at houses to buy/build, so that's very fun and exciting (and a little scary)!

2. Kory is preaching at all 3 services at church this week (his first time preaching at Redeemer's) and also filmed a sweet video that goes along with the lesson, so that's been very time intensive.

3. We had a (stinking cool!) Halloween party for the youth group last week, which I hope to blog about soon. It was amazing!

4. I'm doing the lesson at youth group this week since Kory's preaching and been busy with that preparation.

5. Next weekend is our Fall Retreat and with everything else going on, it's kind of hit the back burner so it all has to be planned next week in about 4 days.

6. Youth group kids have athletic events we have been attending, Kory does a Bible Study for the boys every week, oh and I have this full-time job I also do 40 hours a week. And that job sent me to Salem for a couple days this week.

7. Good problem...but we have a lot of friends here and it's kind of hard trying to figure out when we'll have time to hang out with all of them. I am not complaining at all because I'm SO happy to finally have friends our age :) BUT, I feel kind of bad when a girl from church asks me to hang out and I have to tell her tonight that I'm scheduled two weeks out and we should be able to get together after Thanksgiving. That sounds kind of arrogant like I'm SO cool and popular. That's not really it...I'm just the new girl in town and so I'm trying really hard to build relationships and get to know people. With no family here, friendships are uber important.

8. We got our membership at the YMCA yesterday in an attempt to start working out again and get back into shape. It is not a myth that you gain weight after getting married. Sheesh! It happened far too quickly so we're going to work out instead of buying new, bigger pants! Though I do wonder when we think we're going to fit all these workouts into our schedule? Ideally we'd get up at 5:30 and go work out but that's insane in the membrane. Not happening in this household!

So yeah, that's our recent life. I know everyone is busy, (especially you who have kids!) but thankfully our busyness is FUN and we're loving life in Roseburg :)

Storage

So apparently all the pictures I've taken in the past few months are going to remain trapped on my camera for quite some time. I am sure the cord to transfer them to the computer is somewhere in storage...maybe I'll find it before 2011 is over?

On my laptop, there's a slot to just put the memory card in and get the pictures uploaded...but where is my laptop? Oh yes, in storage.

I bought a little converter thing that plugs into the USB port and then you put the memory card in and you can upload the pictures like they're on a flash drive. Well, I accidentally broke that that converter thing so I bought a new one. Now the new one (identical to the old one) isn't recognized on my computer at work or Kory's laptop at home...so that's $22 spent and still no way to get the pictures off my camera.

I think I'm going to have to go dig through all the boxes we put in storage and find the cord or my laptop. Whichever I discover first will be fine with me. You may have seen my status on FB a while back explaining how the two boxes labeled "Mandy's Winter Clothes" that I pulled from storage actually contained sheets, towels, pajama pants and formal dresses...so I have no clue where my actual winter clothes are now.

Well, I know they're in storage. It seemed like such a great idea to put all the things we didn't need to use in storage since it wouldn't all fit in our smallish apartment. However, several times a week I wish I had something that is in storage.

Also, when I say "in storage", I don't mean inside a storage unit that we rented. I mean in the church office basement. The church offices are in a huge 3 story building that used to be a department store. We were told we could store anything we needed in the bottom floor for as long as we needed. That worked really well for us.

Or at least it did until there was a sewer leak/flood in the church office basement. Yeah...so there's no telling what condition some of our stuff is in. When we went to pick up the winter clothes, I didn't really find anything that had been damaged but I did find one box that was falling apart and really dirty/smelly. (Yes, I know it's not close to winter yet, but I have no long-sleeve shirts or jackets and it's starting to get chilly in Oregon at night.)

So there ya have it. I guess I needed to rant about storage today. Thanks for listening.

Busy Busy

With this being the last week before school starts, we've got a lot going on as we try to fit in last minute hang-out time with the students before they're tied up with school and extra-curriculars. One of the best parts of all this is that it's forced me to clean our home and keep it that way.

Summer weather finally arrived in Oregon in August, so a lot of our time has been spent outside. Last Sunday, we went to 2 cook-outs in one day. That meant no cooking all day and lots of delicious free food! I'll take that any day.

Tuesday night we had our high school swimming party at this AMAZING house:

Tonight we'll host our young adult small group at our apartment since the usual hosts are out of town. They're also about 7 months pregnant with twins, so we're praying about finding a new location to meet beginning soon. I'm very torn about whether we are able to host or not. I love having people over and my apartment will be cleaner this way, but with all the youth group activities we're already involved in, we're trying to decide if it will be too much to take on.

Tomorrow night we're having a couple over for dinner and then we're all going to watch Inception again. The husband is on staff at the church and works with Kory, so we were visiting with them at a church event recently and all decided we wanted to see that movie again because it is THAT incredible. It's worth watching many times.

Saturday, I have two baby showers to attend. One is for the daughter of one of my co-workers and the other is for our small group friends who are expecting twins. I have bought diapers and wipes for both of them because apparently the new trend is to ask people to bring those and then they enter you in a drawing to win prizes. The number of entries you get is based on the number of diapers/wipes that you bring. Then, you're supposed to bring a gift on top of that...very tricky, I tell ya! After seeing the price of diapers recently, I totally understand the need for other people to buy diapers for you. Wow they're expensive!

Sunday, we'll have the High Schooler's over to our apartment for dinner and Bible Study. We did this two weeks ago and had 25 people to fit in our little apartment! It was insane, and awesome at the same time. Here you can see all the people crammed into our living room...there are even a few people beside and behind me when I took the picture that you can't see here.

Redeemer's just purchased a new building for the youth group, so hopefully in a few weeks they'll be meeting there for youth group activities. I love having kids over, but the lingering stench of that many sweaty teens was a bit much for me to handle. All the Scentsy in the world can't overpower that smell!