Chugging away...

Good news. My car is resurrected! I never knew what a difference some antifreeze, oil, and transmission fluid could make. Apparently I should be checking those things more often...oops.

A Southern Bowl...

See the steam rising? Yep, that means goodness. We were greeted on Tuesday at T and M's to an incredible spread on their table for couple's dinner. Mo boiled a ton of incredible spices and deep south goodness together, then dumped it out on the table covered in newspapers, we sat down, tied our napkins onto our shirts, and dug in with both hands. So, so good! And 10 points for presentation, friends! They even had shrimp, which made Isaac a happy boy.

Blustery days and baby blue Volvos...

Here's a fun story for you all. As most of you know, Isaac's beloved '84 Mercedes (given to him a year ago for free) went to car heaven a couple weeks ago. It was a sad day because Isaac had grown to really love that car. The transmission died and it was going to cost over $3,000 to get it fixed, which is more than double the value of the car and just not quite worth it for us. So we gave her up to a charity last week and planned to continue biking/busing our way to work and using my car as our primary car when we needed to drive. It made for a slight bummer of a week, but life happens, right?

Fast forward to Monday of this week.

Isaac was biking home from work and randomly biked by this '71 baby blue Volvo wagon (I'm sure there's more of an official name for it, but since I'm writing this blog and Isaac isn't, that's the girly description you get) that this old man had just put up for sale that day. Isaac stopped to look at it, talked to the man for a couple hours, checked everything out, found out that this man had kept the car in perfect condition because he LOVES his Volvos and wouldn't even sell the car to someone who didn't love Volvos like he did. It was a great find! So Isaac took it for a test drive, stopped by the bank then and there and bought it! I promise to take pictures of it soon so you, too, can share our joy. The cool thing is that this is exactly the car he wanted before he was given the Mercedes. So we weren't even looking for another car, and God blessed us with his dream car for a great price! Yay, God!

Fast forward to this morning.

Due to the slight downpour and blustery-ness of the day here in the 'ham, I, being not quite as adventurous as the love of my life, decided to drive to work instead of bike. So I get in my trusty Kia (also given to me by my parents a year ago after my other one was crunched and died...a definite blessing from mom and dad) and, lo and behold, it decided to stop accelerating this morning. No idea why. It started fine, but my foot was to the floor and it was just creeping along with the check engine light blaring at me from the dash. I made it to the end of the block and then used my impeccable reasoning skills to determine that it was extremely unsafe to continue driving at this point. So I turned her around, crept back down the block, parked her safely to the curb, hopped on my bike, and braved the wind and rain into work.

I say all this as a testimony to how good God is. We had no idea we would be needing a car and were counting on the Kia to get us through another year or so, but God knows our lives and our futures and he knew we were going to need another car. So he provided us one two days before mine died. It just makes both of us laugh out loud at the irony and incredibleness of the provision of our God.

Post Script. For those of you mechanics out there reading this who are saying out loud to your computers, "Wait, the Kia might not be dead yet...check this first, and maybe this..." have no fear. We're not pronouncing her fully dead yet. Isaac has a few things he wants to look at first and I'm sure we'll take her into a shop to get an estimate if it comes to that. So don't worry, we'll keep you posted.

I moved in!!

It's official...I am moved in to our new house! Isaac has a place to stay in his current house until the wedding so I'm the lucky one that got to move in first to our new place, and let me tell you...it is so fun! I've never lived by myself before, and even though it's only for a few weeks, there's just something nice and relaxing about it. I can come home and do whatever I want without wondering if the tv is going to be free or if the bathroom is going to be free or if the roomies are going to be cooking dinner in the kitchen. Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful to live with the girls this year, it's just a whole new experience that is nice as well. Isaac and Brian helped move in all the heavy stuff last Thursday (oh, they look tired, huh?), and that made the place really start looking like home...well, as homey as a place can look with the decorative elements of a house, that is. We walked in Thursday afternoon with the first load of stuff and on the counter in the kitchen was this beautiful bouquet of sunflowers that Isaac had brought over to welcome me into our new little home. It was so thoughtful and made me feel so loved and even more excited to get to start my life with this man! Here we are having our first meal together at our house...and there are the sunflowers he brought me. It's such a perfect first place for us, I wish all of you could come over and see it. The kitchen is large and sunlit, perfect for all the cooking and baking we'll be doing. The living room is nice and open, and also sunlit by the two long windows, and the bedroom is really big. It's halfway between our works, so we can each still bike to work, no problem and it is in a good neighborhood. Sigh. I could go on and on, but this type of thing is always more interesting to the couple moving in than to all the onlookers, so I'll spare you.

PS...only 26 days left!!! We can't wait, we can't wait, we can't wait!

Oh the joys of the great outdoors...

The great outdoors was calling our names this past weekend, so after making a thousand pounds of trail mix, we drove down with a couple friends, met up with a couple new friends in Seattle, and then all headed out to this podunk town (if you can call it a town) of Cle Elum. Ever heard of it? Yeah, not many people have. But it's pretty popular for hiking, backpacking, snowmobiling, all of those outdoorsy sports, and the mountains and forests surrounding it are incredibly beautiful. We arrived at the trail head at about 8:30pm, just as darkness was falling, strapped on our packs and hiked up two and a half miles to our campsite on a lake. It was a slightly painful experience for me since I hadn't backpacked with that much weight since the car accident, but I made it not too far behind the rest of the group into camp with no incident. The boys were troopers, packing their gear as well as the tents and stoves, so that was great! We set up camp, made a little dinner, and then fell exhausted and cold (at least I was cold, freezing to be exact) into our sleeping bags for the night. The next day, instead of hiking on with our packs, we just went out on a six hour day hike, which was great because I didn't have to use a pack (thanks, Isaac for taking one for the team and packing the weight that day). My back felt much better, and once the sun came out, I was in good spirits. Of course, everyone else was in good spirits as soon as they crawled out of their sleeping bags, but as Isaac likes to say, "Warm Becky equals happy Becky." So true. We hiked up to Cathedral Rock and scrambled to a ridge near the top, also a challenge for me and my attitude because I'm scared of heights, something Isaac found out for the first time. Oops. I must have forgotten to mention that. The view was pretty amazing, I'll give them that, but we were high up there. The rest of the day was just hanging out at camp, swimming, feeding the 'camp robber' birdies and then we packed up Sunday morning and headed home. I'll be honest, it was a challenging weekend for me with the coldness, the difficulty of packing the weight, and the heights thing, but the company we shared was great and Isaac had a wonderful time since none of those things really bother him. And when else do you get to experience the glory of not showering for three days and having the most incredible camp hair you've ever seen? I'm glad we went...and next time I'll just pack more warm clothes and not hike to the top of ridges. Easy.

Keys, keys, keys...

We got the keys to our place yesterday! And I get to move in today! So exciting! Just wanted to share that with you all. It's great, too, because now that it's all cleaned out and freshly painted, it looks even nicer and larger than it did when we originally saw it a couple months ago. We absolutely LOVE it!!

A touch of the regal...

So, we need to tell you about the chair. Isaac, the blessed artistic soul that he is, found this old, rusted, little metal chair with an extremely dilapidated seat in a trash pile near my house. (Can you tell where this is going yet?) You might see that chair and think, "That is beyond saving. Gross." but not Isaac. Isaac sees the potential, he sees the beauty that we can make it. So, he brought the chair home with him, tossed out the seat leaving only the rusted metal frame, and spent a couple hours scouring the frame with whatever it is you scour rust off with (the picture shows it scoured, it was pretty nasty beforehand). Then we picked up some plywood, this fun, purple/green/orange swirly,silky, rather regal-looking fabric, some stuffing, and set to work on our masterpiece. Isaac cut a new seat with the wood, then we stuffed and reupholstered the chair into something beautiful! It was a great project, and you'd never know to look at it that we found it in a dump. That's what my man does best, and that's one of the reasons I am incredibly excited to get to live with him. Our house will never fail to be full of creative furniture and designs that he has thought up. Man, do I love him!

Being Born...

We had a birthday yesterday! I'm sure most of you know, but incredibly enough, Isaac and I share the same birthday of August 17! It's not the same year as Isaac is exactly a year older, but nevertheless, the same day is pretty amazing. And it's just double the joy of celebration on that day. It was a fantastic birthday weekend for us (with none of the freezing cold attempts at floating the Nooksack like last year), one that brought us a lot of rest, joy, and fun times with friends and each other. Saturday started out with my bridal shower, which was so fun, thanks to Anne and Tina! There's just something wonderful about being in a room with fifteen other women who love you a lot, and who you love. And my mom drove up for the party, which was sooo nice! It's quite the drive for her, so she was only able to stay for a couple of hours, but it just made the day all the brighter to get to share it with her. There was food, a gloriously sun-shiney day, fun stories, lots of laughter, and lots of great gifts to help us get our house and life together started. After the shower, we got to go to the lake with J and A for a few hours and roast ourselves in the sun, then it was out to dinner with friends. Except for the unfortunate bout of food poisoning Isaac got at two in the morning, it was a great night. Then we had church on Sunday, a little lunch at a new cafe up here, just the two of us, then some biking and blackberry picking. Our goal is to fill our new freezer with tons of frozen berries, and we're working hard at that. We're planning to head back to the blueberry fields this week to get another batch before they go away for the summer. Mmm, mmm, mmm. It was just a great weekend. Thanks for all the birthday congrats, by the way!
In other news, we get our new house keys on Wednesday!! We can't wait to get me moved in and to begin decorating and putting together our new house. Only four weeks and five days till THE DAY!!!
Ooo, also in other news, we ate our first cucumber from the garden and it was fantastic! I should have taken a picture of the honors...sorry. Mom got to try some, so that was fun. She's been saying she really, really wanted to get to try something from our garden. And we picked a lemon cucumber from the garden yesterday and tried it. I've never had one before, but I really enjoyed the hint of lemon, as did Isaac. Success all around!

Hannah's Homemade Favorites...

So, my very best friend since fourth grade has slowly been developing a little dream of hers. Hannah loves making and decorating cakes and word has been getting out over the past year or so to the point where some weeks she is making two or three cakes for different people! I LOVE her cakes...they are so unique and individualized and fun and I just wanted to take a second and congratulate her on the 'launch' of her new blog...

www.hannahshomemadefavorites.blogspot.com

Nice work, Han! And if any of you around ol' Hood River ever need a personalized cake, just tell her Becky sent you. Here are a couple of my favorites, especially the baby shower one and the corset one for Sara's bridal shower...

Sharing my excitement...

I have a bridal shower this weekend up here (thanks, Anne and Tina) and my mom is coming up to visit for it! I'm just excited to see her, so I wanted to share the excitement...

We had ourselves a few fun adventures this past weekend! We headed out of the 'ham around 8pm on Friday to drive down to Isaac's family because we were going camping with them for the weekend. Sounds relaxing, right? Well, the camping part was, but it was slightly the opposite of relaxing before the camping part even started. Around 9:30pm, the engine of Isaac's baby started whining like we've never heard it whine before and it lost most of it's power. We had enough ummph to coast up the off-ramp and into the first driveway we could find, but nothing worked after that. And we were still three hours from our destination. I'll spare you the gory details and just give you a quick summary of the rest. Essentially, we ended up getting the Benz towed to our friend's work in Seattle, and one of our friends from the 'ham drove all the way to pick us up and bring us back to my house. We pulled into my house at 1:30am, grabbed a snack and immediately got into my car and turned back around toward our original destination. We reached Isaac's family's house at 5:30 Saturday morning. Neither of us had slept, so we caught a quick three hours before we got up with the family to start the day. It was quite the late night adventure. Kudos to Isaac for driving the entire way (I was way too tired to be anywhere near a safe driver at that point). At least it was an adventure we got to experience together, right?
As for the rest of the weekend, camping was really enjoyable. We were in the gorge, which is beautiful (if you have the eye to see it). I wanted to show a picture of the trailer that came with us...it was quite the operation. I've never been camping with so many people before, so it was awesome to see how loaded the trailer was with food and supplies. Isaac's mom was incredible and made home-cooked meals every day for 20 people! Nicole flew up, too, for the weekend, which got everyone excited. Her living in California makes her homecomings especially sweet. There was kickball, swimming, lots of relaxing, games, blackberry picking (which was awesome except for the berry spiders all over the bushes..yuck). Michael brought some watermelons, which brings me to one of my favorite activities of Isaac's family...seed spitting. They purposefully will only buy seeded watermelons so that a spitting war can accompany the enjoyment of the juicy fruit. I was raised with no food playing (as many are, I'm sure), so the first time I partook of this activity, I was a little hesitant, but now I just love it! I gotta give it to Isaac, he's a champion seed spitter. Just another one of his incredible qualities. My parents dropped by for a few minutes after church and brought a box of the most incredible peaches I think I've ever eaten! They were so perfectly ripe, sweet, and juicy. Mmmmm, mmm. And here's Jayden...perfectly adorable doing anything, even if she's merely opening a bag of raisins. All in all, camping was a success!
When we got home, we checked our garden to find a HUGE cucumber, ready to pick and eat! It's as big as the ones you buy in the stores, if not bigger, which I am slightly excited about because I wasn't sure how the cucs were going to fare with the lack of sunshine earlier in the summer. Not to worry, they are growing! There are several more, too, just none as big as this one yet. We've got some lemon cucumbers coming up as well. They're not quite ready, but one is almost eating size. We're going to pick the cucumber this afternoon and eat it with dinner...so exciting! The season of peas in our garden just finished, but for a couple of weeks, we were getting a few handfuls a day. And they were so sweet and good! The chives are good as well, and the sunflowers are coming up. I cannot wait until they burst into color...hopefully they will before I have to move out. Speaking of which, we get the keys to our new place in six days!! Who-hooo! Talk to you all soon!

A place to call our own...

We got a place today! I'm putting the deposit down after work today and I can move in August 20th! You know what's hilarious? We actually decided last night to go for one we had looked at way back in the beginning of our search. I even blogged about it back in July, thinking it was going to be the perfect place for us...and it was, except that it had no washer/dryer on the premises and there were no hook ups for them, either. But after a gazillion hours of searching, calling on places, looking at places, and finding that anything with character in our price range was fairly unappealing, and after touring a couple generic apartments and not being too impressed, we decided that we would much rather have this place and love coming home than get a place with a washer/dryer that we didn't like. Some trips to the laundromat will just add even more character to our first year of marriage, no biggie. We're so excited and relieved to have this stressful process over. And to end up with one we love is wonderful! It's beautiful, in a great neighborhood, and it's a one bedroom, which is great. We looked at a few studios, thinking we could make it work if we needed to, but they were so small, so ending up with a one bedroom is great! And it's wonderful that it was even still available since we had looked at it over three weeks ago! Thanks, Lord, for the end of this process.

Thanks for all your prayers!

Biker Gang...

Phew! The last few weeks have just been crazy with wedding planning...and house hunting to be specific. We're still on the lookout as I type this, hoping maybe a couple possibilities will pan out tomorrow. You will definitely all hear about it if it does. I keep trying to calm myself with the knowledge that the Lord is in control, He will provide a place. Isaac's always a good source of the reminder to be calm as well, but I know we'll at least find something we can live in. I just want to find something we love (or at least really like). But regardless, we will have each other and get to be married and that will be wonderful in and of itself. Six and a half more weeks!!

So, I have a fun story I've been wanting to share for a couple days. On Friday, we hung out with J and A, M and T and formed ourselves an awesome biker gang! All six of us are now hooked on bicycles and ride them all the time (thanks Tommy, for starting that trend a year ago), so we gathered the crew and took off from my house in search of some cards from M and T's. Then we traveled to a local public market for some games while being serenaded by the live music. It was so fun! Bellingham is a pretty bike-friendly place, so it's really relaxing to ride around town. And we had an incredible sunset to boot! Couldn't ask for more. Want to hear something fun? There's this cool thing called Smart Trips where you can record all the trips you make my bike, walking, the bus, or ridesharing and you get rewards and discounts for local businesses as a thank you for saving the planet. And according to Smart Trips, I have saved $144 in gasoline this past month and a half from riding my bike all around. Although I must admit that 99 miles worth is from a motorcycle/rideshare trip I logged, which used a little gas, but not much. Anyway, the number of dollars is fun and really encouraging, even if it's not quite 100% accurate. All this to say, we just love riding our bikes. The other night we cruised around a couple neighborhoods for two hours just looking at houses, seeing if there were any potential ones to live in, but also just enjoying the cool, old houses, and it was such a plus to be able to be on the bikes to ride by them slowly enough to enjoy but quicker than walking would provide.

Okay, I'll stop raving about bikes. We'll keep you updated on living stuff. You'll hear soon as my lease ends in three weeks so we'll have to find a place by then. Happy evening to all!

As it was with David...

I just read Psalm 51, which was written right after the prophet Nathan came to David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba. It's so interesting, because David's prayer sounds exactly like one of my prayers after I have messed up, hurt others, sinned. There's a hint of worry that maybe this time God won't forgive me. Maybe this time I've screwed up too badly. But God always does. He did with David...and David was known as a man after God's own heart, a man who truly sought to know the heart of God. It gives me a lot of hope - I can't believe God really forgives everything we do wrong. It's pretty amazing.