You say 'Mater...

Two days ago I came home to find 5 garden tomatoes on our driveway, near our backdoor. When I asked Ben about them he said, "I figured you knew why they were there."

So some mystery person anonymously dropped off 5 tomatoes at our house and we have no idea why. We've called all two of the friends that we have and they didn't leave them... We weren't going to eat them, but there is nothing better than garden tomatoes and I am trying to live on the edge a little...and well.... We ate one with dinner. Now I am trying to not imagine my stomach eating itself.

Just call me Andi the Serf

So that apartment that seemed so great... well.... let's take a quiz and see what you think.

Choose from the following the reasonable things to put into a lease:
A) Tenant will pay for any plumbing work that needs done
B) Tenant will pay $120 every time the landlord has to come look at the plumbing
C) Tenant will pay for any damage done to windows or doors including damage caused by severe weather
D) All of the above

So raise your hand if you would go with D. You would make a great landlord in Ohio! In fact I think I know someone you could work for.

Short of the lease changing, we won't being signing anytime soon and may be back to being homeless in 2 weeks....Hopefully something works out soon....

Edit to add: I think we worked things out. We may just need to change the wording of the lease a bit...

Moving at the speed of change

Everything is happening sooo fast. On July 1st I applied for my job. On July 22nd I accepted the job and on August 8th we are moving.

Last week I had a phone interview, took part in Amberly's wedding, drove back to Ohio for the second interview, accepted a job, quit a job, and signed my name to the apartment Ben found. Whew. The apartment is exactly what I imagined a city apartment to be. Small, hardwood floors, fireplace, lots of windows, old. It's not where I want to live for forever, but I think it'll be fun. We will just be living there until we can find a place to buy. AHHH!

Today we started packing and I forgot how exhausting it is. WHERE DID ALL THIS STUFF COME FROM????? I am not sure why we still have our old license plates, but I am also not sure what to do with them. Also what do you do with good office supplies that you won't use? And that jewelry I like but haven't worn, what do I do with that?

This is what our office currently looks like:

If you like packing and want to come help... we would welcome it.

Hurray!

I can finally post why I haven't had time to post!

WE ARE MOVING! IN LIKE 2 WEEKS!

We are finally moving back to Ohio. After being in transition for FOREVER... we have jobs and things are in place to move. We just made the final decision yesterday and I start my new job in 3.5 weeks. Today Ben found us a place to live while we look for a home to buy!

So much is happening at lightening speed that it is hard to keep up.

We are super excited. We'll be working with a small church plant in an urban neighborhood. I am excited about the community development opportunities and Ben is excited about the discipleship opportunities. This is what we have been waiting for for over two years and it's nice to take a big step towards it. My husband is going to be a for real, no kidding pastor. I'm so proud of him. He's going to make a great pastor!

Hopefully there will be just one more trip to Ohio and then we will live there! I am so excited!

I hope you had a great Independence Day. Ours was filled with trips back to Ohio to visit family. Yes. I know. We spend so much time in Ohio we should move there. We are working on it.

We spent some extra time at my parent's house helping them clean for the cookout they were having. My sister, Sarah, and I got to go through some boxes full of stuff from our childhood in the process. Whoa. There was a lot of highly entertaining items in those boxes. Lucky for you all I took some pictures before I tossed the stuff!

First up - Self Portrait, Age 7

Apparently I still had blond 80's hair then and had lost a tooth. Also I was rocking the multi-colored turtle necks. It took me a while to figure out what was so "off" on this drawing but Ben helped me out and pointed out that my eyes were all wrong. Which just goes to show that even at 7 I thought my eyes were just that blue.

Next - Illustrated story. Date unknown

The story was something about how I was thankful for my mom, my dad, God, food and flars. Which, from judging by the picture, means flowers. My favorite part of this picture is my mom's chicken feet hands and my dad's butt hands. Not sure where I got that....

Next, I was reminded why I disliked swimming lessons so much. I sucked at it. Here's a report card from 1989 (age 6):

I needed work on everything except for floating and sticking my face in the water, and yet I still got a GOOD JOB! comment. Please notice which class I should be in next - Polliwog I.

Now, let's jump ahead a three years and see the report cards for Sarah and I in 1991:
I am STILL IN THE SAME CLASS. Except now my little sister is in there with me. Awesome. I really enjoyed spending 3 years in the same class. There goes my parent's hopes and dreams of me being an Olympic swimmer. Also, let's read Sarah's comment: "Sarah is a very eager pupil. She will soon be a fine swimmer." Let's read mine: "Andrea tries hard and has a desire to learn...." But obviously I wasn't learning... It took 2 more years for me to make it through Poliwog II and to get an instructor who was tired of trying to get me to swim with my face in the water and just move me on to Minnows. Then we stopped taking swim lessons and there was much rejoicing. Now my idea of swimming involves laying on floating and relaxing. I've got that down.

I also found my preschool evaluation and learned that even back then I had a hard time not interrupting people could only recognize numbers 1-5, 7 + 10. But doggone it, I could share and play well with others. Take that stupid swim class....