New Job...New Dreams

Sorry for the recent silence in my blogging, as I have been busy adjusting to my new job.

I have been really enjoying working at the church (for all of 2 weeks now). I am starting to feel a little more settled and less overwhelmed. I find that it is hard coming into a ministry in the middle of the program year. My first day at work, I was told I had to have the students confirmed for the mission trip in 3 days. So now some of that craziness is over and I am starting to meet some of the youth (I am training myself to not call them kids). They seem really awesome. I had Jr. High youth group on Friday and I was quickly reminded of how crazy Jr. Highers can be. Dodgeballs were flying and youth were running all over within seconds of stepping into the church. But I love it at the same time. This week will be more of a test as I will have Jr. High and my first Sr. High youth group. In addition to that I am starting to plan meetings for mission trips, parent meetings, and other "church" things that I am trying to figure out. In addition, I have musical schedules and middle school girls volleyball games on my calendar...oh the life of a youth worker.

But with all that being said, I am happy in the craziness. It is also very nice to be able to arrange my schedule to get home around the same time as Jess most nights.

The new job has also opened up some new ideas and opportunities for us. We are in the very, very, very early stages of looking at buying a house. Jess and I have had so much fun walking through houses to see what is available in the area. Below is an example of one of the houses we have liked so far.

It's all pretty crazy, but I am definitely loving life right now.

Peace and Love

What a crazy week...

Well since my last post, I have been on quite a crazy trip. Jess and I went to babysit Justice (our friends crazy 9-year-old daughter) last Friday. By Friday night, there was about a foot of snow on the ground around their house. In addition to that, the Wii and Cable were not working because of the power going on and off a few times on Friday night. So by the time we woke up on Saturday morning at our friend's house, we found about 22 inches of snow on the ground, a crazy 9-year-old in our care, and and only DVD electronics to keep her occupied. So we spent a few hours shoveling the massive amount of snow outside the house and then drove to our apartment in Sewickley to find that we had lost power and there was a large tree down in our front yard.



So after our adventure in Sewickley, we headed back to Center for the rest of the weekend. When our babysitting gig was over, we continued our nomadic journey by heading to Jessie's moms house in Mt. Lebo. We spent some good family time relaxing and shoveling snow... What a great and crazy few days.

Oh and not to mention, I started my job this week. This will definitely be a week Jessie and I will never forget.

Check out Jessie's blog: www.jpatouillet.blogspot.com to see some pictures of our winter adventure.

A glimpse into the future...

This weekend, Jessie and I are going to take a look at what our future could look like in 12-15 years. A lady who Jessie is close with at her church is going away for the weekend and asked if we could babysit her 10 year-old daughter. So we will be staying at their house and being substitute parents for the weekend. That includes everything from playing wii, watching movies, cooking meals, and going to her indoor soccer game EARLY Saturday morning. All of which are normal activities for Jessie and I except watching little girls play soccer. I expect that it will be a fun weekend and may be a deterrant from us having kids for the next couple years. I am excited for the weekend and look forward to being a temporary parent.

A weekend of movies...

One thing that Jessie and I love to do is watch movies. We spent many Monday evenings while we were dating out at the movies. And recently, there have been so many movies that we wanted to see, so we spent some of the weekend catching up.
On Friday night, Jess took me out to celebrate my new job. It was so great. We drove down to the Waterfront and grabbed dinner then a movie. We have heard people talking about Avatar for months now, so we had to see it. Jess thought it was pretty good, and I really enjoyed it. The special effects were incredible and it had a classic, epic love story. If you haven't seen it yet, you should go check it out just to say you have seen it.
Saturday night, Jess and I went out with our friends Tiger and his girlfriend. We repeated our Friday night by going down to the waterfront again but saw Crazy Heart this time. It was amazing! I really enjoyed it and I had no expectation going into the movie, which made it seem even more awesome. Jeff Bridges delivered an awesome performance as a washed up country singer. He should definitely be at least nominated for best actor in the Oscars.

My movie weekend was capped off with watching the Hurt Locker last night. Jessie lasted about 20 minutes, but I got through most of it. It was supposed to be really good, but I thought it was kinda disappointing. It was a depressing look at a bomb crew in Iraq.
So all in all... it was a great, critically acclaimed, fun, wife-filled weekend.

New Job...Same place

Hello all. Sorry I haven't been keeping to my blogging ways, but I hope to be back on the blogging scene more now. I will be starting a new job next week at Community Presbyterian Church of Ben Avon. I will be the Youth Director there and I will also be working with the youth at Mt. Nebo Presbyterian Church. I truly feel that the last few months of frustrations between different jobs have been preparing me for this new opportunity. I can look back and see that God provided me with jobs to sustain me until this position became available. I am excited to let my creative juices flow as I will be able to give talks, plan events, and do other creative things that come with job. Another great thing about the job is that our current apartment is in a perfect location for this job and Jess' job too. I will only be 10 minutes from my church and Jess is stil about 15 minutes from her church. Yet another thing that has made me feel confident that this is God ordained. I look forward to starting at the Church in the next few weeks. Once again, I hope to be blogging again soon.

A weekend of hosting and sickness

Jess and I had a very interesting weekend. We kicked it off by having a couple of the high school guys I work with over for dinner on Friday. It was fun to have Jessie spend some time with the guys I spend a majority of my week with. She made a great dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, corn, and bread. The guys were pretty quiet, but very appreciative and polite. On Saturday, we had Jessie's mom, her boyfriend, and Jessie's sister over for dinner. It was great to spend some time with family (it sounds great to say family and not her family). The bummer of the weekend however was that Jessie was fighting a cold. And on top of that, I came down with the stomach virus on Sunday. So with that being said...here's to a week of feeling better as we get closer to Christmas and more time with family. Hopefully a more upbeat post will come later in the week.

The Blind Side

Jessie and I flew down to Florida to be with my family for Thanksgiving. When we travel, we normally stop in the airport to pick up some magazines to parooze while on the plane. Jess found a couple magazines that she liked, but I opted for a book this time. I saw "The Blind Side" in one of the little stores and figured it could be pretty interesting. Well I became engrossed in the book and couldn't put it down for the better part of a week. It is the true story of a rich family in the Memphis suburbs (the Tuohy's) who adopt a poor kid from the roughest part of Memphis (Michael Oher). Michael went on to play football for the Christian school where the Tuohy children go. He then went to Ole Miss, and now starts for the Baltimore Ravens.
The book is written by sports author, Michael Lewis. He writes the book in a very interesting way because he spends about a third of the book discussing the development of the left tackle position from the impact of Lawrence Taylor to present day football. He spends the rest of the book telling this wonderful story. I recommend that you should read this book or at least go see the movie. I must say that the book was more enjoyable for me, but the movie stays pretty true to the book. It has challenged Jessie and I to be more like the Tuohy family.