Another one of those massive updates...

Our visit to Portland was just the beginning of the good news to come our way! Our interviews went well, and we were able to get a good feel of the city and some of it's surroundings. The position Mark interviewed for, was open before we could make a move to Portland, so we decided it would be best to pass it up. There is a possibility that another position may open, but it seems like God may have something even better than we could have ever expected in store for us! Mark is headed to Portland, June 11-13th for another interview, this time with a Quaker church for a youth pastor position! He's one of the top 3 candidates, and we are really praying he gets the position! We both feel like the church would be a perfect fit for us, and we'd finally be able to get back into Youth Ministry, one of our greatest passions.

Beth will begin her new job as an assistant at a small home-based Montessori school in the Mt. Tabor neighborhood in August! She is beyond thrilled! There are a few details that need to come together with the school, but we are trusting that everything works out.

Our search for a place to live has also proved to be fruitful! Mark posted an ad on Craigslist, and shortly after we were contacted by a family who has a basement apartment in their home for rent! It was exactly what we were looking for! There is even a fenced in back yard where Oliver can play along with their black Lab! Mark is hoping to stop by and meet with the family while he's in Portland and give them part of our deposit. They were so gracious to wait for us, as the apartment has been empty for over a month already. We're looking to move in July, so keep you all posted once we pick a date!

Here are some great shots from our trip of the gorgeous land we are looking forward to calling home!

The Columbia River Gorge is about 20-30 minutes from Portland! We got to see lots of great waterfalls along the river, and you just wouldn't believe the gorgeous colors of green that blanket everything in the forest!

This was taken at Ecola State Park, near Cannon Beach, OR, just an hour and a half from Portland, OR!

I'm sure it's not hard to see just why our hearts have been in Oregon ever since the first time we stepped foot there! And If you've been around us enough, you know that we talk about our experiences in Oregon A LOT! It's been "home" to us ever since, and we are truly excited to be able to make it our physical home.

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We celebrated Oliver's 1st birthday on April 3rd! He's adorable and ornery as ever!

(And continues to grow like a weed!)

Isn't he handsome!

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Beth continues to knit, and has been knitting up lots of baby hats for our friends back on the East Coast that are expecting! She's been knitting from patterns, but hopes to come up with her own design soon to post on her Etsy shop! She has also started getting paid to clean a couple homes, as well as a local church. It's really helping us save up for the big move to Portland, and she actually kind of enjoys it!

Beth calls this "Stitch and Pitch," knitting at a Rockies game!

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Ladies and gentlemen, the hair is gone!

And Beth got a trim and some side bangs. :-)

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With the start of baseball season, Mark has really enjoyed keeping up with his Fantasy League team, and of course rooting on his Phils! We got to go see game 1 of their series against the Rockies with some of our favorite Denver people! The Phils won of course! :-) Unfortunately games 2 and 3 got cancelled due to weather... but we're looking forward to going to one of the makeup games!

Adam and Joe

Carrie, Mal, Brit, and Me

They're all one reason we'll be sad to leave, Denver. We love them all so much!

PDX

"If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet wiht a success unexpected in common hours." -Thoreau

We have been allowing ourselves to dream about what we want to do next, since things just haven't quite been working out for us. February Mark and I both started exploring other options that were beginning to interest us, and let ourselves dream about what that might look like for us. Finally a couple weeks ago, we received good news! We are headed to Portland on Saturday for a couple interviews! We'll be there Saturday through Tuesday. We'd feel a bit better if we each had at least one more interview, but if not that's okay too. We are just grateful that someone is actually interested in meeting with us!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -Mark Twain

After the suggestion of a friend, Mark began exploring the possibility of working in residential treatment centers for youth. We’re excited because these type of positions seem to fit Mark a lot better than any youth ministry position we have looked at. He has not been able to find any openings here in Denver, so we decided to check out Portland. Mark emailed a connection we have there, and it turns out he had some pretty good leads for him. Mark was able to line up an interview almost immediately with Northwest Behavioral Healthcare Services, a residential treatment center for youth.

I've been exploring getting into Montessori Education, and I really think it will be a great fit for me. I have been considering going to one of the Montessori Institutes to become a teacher, but decided to look into job opportunities first. I found a posting for a position as a classroom assistant in a small Montessori school run out of a mother's home in SE Portland. It seems this would be a great opportunity to gain a significant amount of experience before seriously considering becoming a teacher. It also just so happens that she is into local/organic foods, gardening, community, yoga, etc. That made me even more excited! I emailed her and she said she’d be very interested in meeting me, so we went ahead and set up an interview when we found out about Mark’s interview.

We feel like we finally have hope that something will finally work out for us. We are trying to stay calm though, we're so afraid of setting ourselves up for disappointment. So please keep us in your thoughts and prayers!

"Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations.

For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live."

-Thoreau

I often hesitate to update this, thinking that unless I have some update on our lives that it really isn't worth writing anything. I have to remember that this blog isn't strictly informational in the "I just did this, we just did that" sorta way. I guess there are plenty of things that I wish you knew about the two of us. Chances are, when you learn these things, we will have found another thing in common. We like that common word. Community.

I have been reading a lot of David James Duncan as of late. More specifically My Story As Told By Water. I guess you can call it a memoir. If you call it that, then I guess you could read it and hear our story too. I (Mark) feel like it is as much of My Story As Told by Water as Duncan's. His descriptions of the Pacific Northwest feel hauntingly like the very words I use to describe it, the images created by his words are the very photos and mini-movies I have preserved in my memory.

So I have been flipping through all of those as of late. Remembering and reliving those sacred moments in Lincoln, OR. Beth and I both go through these times often. Beth calls them the "Oregon Homesick Blues."

Take for example the photo below. A picture of our honeymoon road trip starting in San Francisco and traveling north through the redwood forest.

Thinking about that first full day of our marriage...man. We arrived in San Francisco, rented a Jeep Patriot from a shady rental place, and turned that thing north. We traveled for nearly seven hours, passing through the rolling, grass covered hills just north of San Francisco, then dodging in and out of dense redwood forest and the subsequent fog. We stopped in tiny towns for burritos and gas. We drove by roadside attractions like "The Legend of Bigfoot," and laughed.

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We met Paul Bunyan, who amongst the giant redwoods, seemed at home, but thankfully retired many years ago.

We were headed to a campground on the coast in Brookings, OR. Our second night as a married couple was to be spent in a tent, and we preferred to set up that tent with plenty of daylight. But as we entered into the ancient forests the headlights started to beat out the sun as far as illumination. After hours in the forest we rounded a corner and beheld the mighty Pacific and the setting sun. Still hours from our campground we decided to stop and embrace the disappearance of our easily set up tent. We took this photo:

Man, how I wish we could repeat this again soon.

Thanks to Beth, the blog has a pulse. I figured I should follow up, show some signs of life myself. The days of winter here in Colorado have a nice cyclical feel to them. A week of absurdly warm weather (I'm talking 50 plus degrees here folks) teases us with the thoughts of sprouting vegetables, and hours more of sunlight. These pleasant and Vitamin D filled thoughts are squashed by the blast of arctic air seemingly pouring off them mountains just west of us. And when I say squashing I mean it in the most unprepared, rude, and destructive way, because before you know it your looking at -15 degree nights. yea. This is usually followed by a dump of snow. 10-15 inches usually. The snow hangs around forever, even as the temperatures start to climb back to a more understandable level. The snow melts and turns to ice and you have daily mini-heart-attacks when your treadless shoes decide to move just slightly faster then the remaining 96% of your body. Thankfully no bones have broken, nor heads cracked. Just lotsa' "take deep breaths honey" types of sentences after recovering from so many near death experiences.

I wish I could be more specific, but that's a little tough now. I think a lot of things are going to change for us. We're realizing that the $50,000 education that was supposed to be "an investment into your future" has actually just taken a huge dump on us. sorry to be crude, but man I can hardly think of a better way to express that. I'm thankful for my education in many ways, just not in that "your gonna work at Starbucks and be poor/slightly miserable, for much longer then you EVVVVER expected" sorta way. Did you start reading to hear me whining?

So yea, things are probably going to be changing. There. Stay tuned. K?

Oliver (yes we are those type of dog owners) is forever growing in size and sass. He is even talking back to us now when we "correct" him. He gives us this throaty and disgruntled growl after you tell him to "shoosh!" And will continue to do it until you grow tired of his teenager ways. Kids.

Other then that I would strongly encourage you all to take care of your appendix's. If that tiny little pouch of flesh decides to get all infected and angry you WILL land yourself in the hospital. Also, that little stay in the five star hospital will cost you a pretty gosh darn fortune. Yep $16,000 for that little dangly flesh hanging off your small intensities. (Prepare yourself for sarcasm) Thanks to our unsurpassed and completely functional health insurance industry I paid next to nothing for this procedure. (Prepare yourself for absolutely no sarcasm whatsover, seriously) Except for a year later (which was about a couple days ago) when you receive a bill for $4,000 benjawashinglincolns. psssssst we have no such money!

Yep. SO the crapping on continues. Take care of your appendix's folks.

New Year, New Post

We're not very consistent bloggers to say the least, but in our defense, we honestly haven't had the time nor the motivation. So here's what we've been up to...

Mark's parents and Beth's family came out for a visit in October a few days apart.

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Beth sold her knits at a couple craft shows.

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Oliver experienced his first snow, and it turns out he LOVES snow!

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We celebrated Christmas together at home, and then again with the Preston family, and then the Beach family. It was wonderful to be welcomed into their family celebrations, as we were definitely missing our families back in PA.

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After coming home crying one too many nights, Beth decided to quit her job at AE. We both decided money wasn't worth being treated less than human. So since then she's been cleaning and doing all the laundry that we've put off for over a month, spending time with Oliver (who has spent way to much time pent up in his crate), knitting, and spending time with Mark. That's been the best part of course, since we were both working 40 hours per week, we rarely saw each other. We've also gotten to spend a lot more time with our friends out here, which we have both missed as well. We also got to see a couple of our dear friends from out east when they were in town visiting family.

SO that's just a tiny bit of what our lives have been like lately.