He's employed!

Mark was offered and has accepted a position at St. Louis Children's Hospital doing pediatric orthopedics! He goes in for a TB test, etc., this Thursday and tentatively will be starting next Monday. This is the "dream" position I had mentioned last week, so we are both really excited about this. :)

Excitement for the technology-challenged

We are really only technology-challenged in the fact that we don't have much technology. No Ipods, no Tivo, no microwave, no dishwasher (okay I know it's not really technology but...). And that we couldn't figure out how to use an MP3 player when we were baby-sitting. *sigh* We're going to need kids soon to help us navigate this new world. ;)

So the most exciting thing this week was we got new cell phones! Same phone number, so those of you who have the number(s) are still good. We had a small problem getting them activated since the number is a Michigan number and we are in St Louis (Missouri, not Michigan. There is actually a St Louis, Michigan. We were there for a wedding.). I had to call Verizon and lo and behold I spoke to someone who was completely understandable AND was able to fix the problem. :) A rare occurance in customer service these days, it seems.

You have no idea how behind the times we really are. Our new phones are not Blackberries, they're not Razrs, they're not Chocolates...but they are actually flip phones. :) :) These are the first flip phones we've had, and so far they are fantastic. We got the LG VX5300. Ooohh, and we got them for free since we've been with Verizon for so long. Of course, we just signed another two years of our lives away.

The best laid plans of bloggers...

I've been meaning to post for three days about the things going on and there's been so much going on it hasn't happened. :)

Saturday was our clothing drive at church. We work with Master Provisions to collect, sort, and pack clothing which is then sent to Ukraine. You can read the full story of the impact of these clothes on their website. Mark and I have been to Ukraine (and Kosova) with MP and can vouch for the amazing work they are doing. It was great to see Jim and get to catch up on the things happening in Ukraine and Kosova and to our friends over there. We collected about 1.5 tons of clothing that will be shipped over to Ukraine (most likely Brovary, a small suburb of Kyiv) later this year.

We have the top floor of the property we are managing rented out, and we sign the lease for the bottom floor tonight. It will be such a relief to get those both rented. Now we're into the "the shower is leaking" and "the kitchen faucet is leaking" stage. Tuesday Mark replaced the showerhead and yesterday he replaced the kitchen faucet. He hasn't been able to work on our house since Friday!

We started community band on Monday. I'm playing French horn and Mark's playing euphonium. So far it's a lot of fun, although it's a lot different than playing in the musical. It's a lot louder. Which sounds really stupid, but when you're used to being the only instrument and tuning to a small group it's a little overwhelming to be in the midst of 100 or so musicians, some of whom can tune better than others. ;) Next Tuesday is our first concert.

Mark has been interviewing like mad, and currently has two open offers and is anticipating another on Monday. We are really hoping for a good offer on Monday, as this could be something of a dream job for him, but we'll have to wait and see. I will definitely keep you posted!

Ukraine is still not accepting dossiers until the first of July. They filled their quota of dossiers to accept for the last quarter, so they won't start accepting again until the start of the next quarter. We are hoping for a quick submission but it's looking like we may have to redo documents again. *sigh* Please pray that our dossier would be submitted in the beginning of July.

Hard work

Mark has been working so hard this past week! Yesterday he mowed three lawns (ours, ours, and not ours), installed a steel exterior door (including the frame) by himself, moved a bunch of things within and outside of the new house, cleaned out the 'not ours' house, met with a guy to collect a security deposit for the 'not ours' house (hooray--one unit rented!), and figured out which parts we needed to install the new stove. Then he was up at 2:30am this morning to drive a friend of ours to church to leave for a mission trip to Spain. I didn't wake him when I left for work this morning--he needs the rest!

Last night we went to Lowe's and picked up a bunch of little things we need for the new house. Mark will be connecting the new stove today. Yes, Lowe's decided to deliver it yesterday. I called yesterday morning and it was already on the truck. I'm not sure if they were planning on telling us that or were just going to show up, but regardless we have a new, beautiful stove. The delivery team yesterday was not the same delivery team from Monday, and we were much happier with this second delivery team.

Discoveries continue to happen at the new house. Earlier this week Mark found a beautiful marble hearth for the living room fireplace. The hearth is currently covered by hideous brown carpet, but will eventually be complemented with hardwood floors. I'm going to have to post a picture of my absolute favorite part of the house. It wasn't much to look at when we got the house, but it's fantastic now!

We're in the process of finding an architect/designer to draw up plans for the new house. We need to submit plans in order to get a building permit, and with what we're planning we definitely need a permit. :)

Oh, and I forgot to mention that on our anniversary we bought a planer off of Craig's list. An older gentleman is giving up woodworking and is selling off everything in his basement. We got a great deal on a planer and that's something that Mark has been dreaming about for quite a while, so it was a perfect anniversary present together.

Pizza for me

Yesterday was our 8-year anniversary! Mark picked me up from work and asked what I wanted to do for dinner:

Me: "I really want Pizza House." (a pizza place in East Lansing, MI, with great Chicago-style pizza)
Mark: "Well, if we left when you finish work on Friday, we could be there by 9pm..." (it's about an 8-hour drive)

Yeah, we really did consider it. We would also be the people who drove 1.5 hours to Detroit for dinner and 3 hours to Chicago for lunch while we were living in Michigan. After living in Texas you just get used to driving long distances to go anywhere. :)
We ended up deciding to try a pizza place here in town (maybe a mile from us) that has been highly recommended--Black Thorn Pub, on Wyoming west of Grand. It was fantastic!! During the 30-minute wait for our pizza (we got Chicago-style, of course) we plotted out things to get done on the house and which things we need to do first. Then we dug into our 9 lb pizza. Yes, you read that right. Nine pounds...and oh was it good. We both ate over 2 lbs of pizza last night. I can't believe we didn't get sick. It was an awesome anniversary dinner. :) :)

And the new house has a new shower head--and a garbage bag taped over the missing tiles in the shower. I'm hoping to post some pics soon. We're making progress slowly but surely...

It's ours--happy anniversary!

On Friday we closed on the house. I was able to attend the walkthrough with Mark and the realtor, and we were very impressed with how little was left in the house. The tenant did an excellent job clearing it out. We did/do have a few things left over--a stove, a fridge in the basement, a small kitchen table (also in the basement) and various other odds and ends. We spent the weekend at Mark's base ball festival and all of our spare time cleaning the house.

Yesterday, Lowe's was supposed to deliver the new fridge and stove between 8am and noon. They showed up at 12:40p, and then there was a huge dent in the stove so Mark sent it back. Now we have no stove in the new house and no idea when it will be arriving. *sigh* But the fridge looks great! I cleaned the floor where the old stove and fridge were last night. That was very disgusting.

On Sunday, we had our last dinner with Scott and Heather. We swapped items we had borrowed from each other and we took a bunch of things they were getting rid of--cleaning supplies (we certainly need them!), clothes for the clothing drive this weekend, wood scraps, etc. They leave today for Vegas and there's a chance we might get to see them on their way out since they will pass right by where I work. This next post is a great opportunity for them but we really will miss having them around. On the up side, flights from St Louis to Vegas can be had for pretty cheap! :)

Homeowners once again

In a few hours we will close on the new (117 year old) house. Mark and the realtor are doing a walk-through at 10:30am to make sure nothing unexpected has changed since we signed the contract. It's been a crazy week. On Tuesday evening (yes, 3 days before closing), the realtor called and said the current owner wanted to know if the tenant could stay an extra month and pay us rent. If we had known about this, say, a few weeks ago, we might have been able to work something out. But we've got inspections next week, and appliances being delivered, and there's just no way.

And this week we became property managers for a friend of Mark who is moving out of state and will be renting his two-family house. Mark's been fielding phone calls about the apartments and showing them--3 times yesterday!--to prospective renters. We think we've got both units rented out, but the leases aren't signed yet so we'll see. We'll be glad to get them rented so all we need to worry about is maintenance.

God is moving in some unexpected ways in our lives with the house and the property management. It will be interesting to see what He's got planned for us. Right now I think we pretty much feel like we're along for the ride. :)

And Wednesday night we got to babysit! We watched Ashley (4 yo) and Maggie (almost 2), Scott and Heather's girls, while they had rehearsal for worship for church. Their usual babysitter was unavailable at the last minute. We met all of them for dinner and then we finished up dinner with the girls and took them back to the base. It's fun knowing them and the girls so well that we know their exact bedtime routine. It was a little more crazy than usual since their whole house was in boxes--we couldn't even find a book to read for bedtime stories! But definitely a lot of fun. We're going to miss them a lot. :) We'll see them at least one more time before they leave as they're coming out to see the house on Sunday (plus we're holding their camcorder hostage to get video footage of the new house ;) ).