Our bench...

We finished an awesome project last night! Our living room seating was rather limited with the furniture we had, so a few weeks ago Isaac (of course) came up with a creative idea of finding an old bookshelf, turning it on its side, and then getting a combo piece of furniture that served as both a bench and a bookshelf. Then off we went, searching for our perfect piece to work with, and after a few trips to the ReStore (one of our favorite stores in the 'ham), we found the perfect piece this past weekend! I should have taken a before shot of how the shelf started because it was originally a section of a cupboard that had been torn off the rest of the shelves, so it had random strips of molding around parts of the edges and it had a huge cupboard door on the front of it. Not exactly nice living room material, but nothing phases Isaac. He's always able to see the treasure no matter what the original product looks like. So he sanded, stripped the molding off, took off the door, primed and painted it while I made my mom proud at the sewing machine. We wanted to make a cushion that was more than just two pieces of cloth sewed together...we wanted thick edges and good corners so it looked more rectangular. So we bought some fun fabric, and spent the next few hours trying to figure out how we were going to make this work. But we did it! And we even sewed a huge zipper into the back so we could get the foam in easily! Now this is probably not that big of a deal for you seamstresses out there, but you have to remember that this is only the second time I've used out sewing machine and the first was only for simple pillows. So we were really proud of our creation. And last night, the paint was finally dry so we filled it with books, placed it in it's new home by our front door, and took a picture to share with you guys. Our little home is coming together! PS...that's our little Kumquat tree next to it in the big yellow pot. And it's growing!

Stalks of green...

Remember way back several months ago when I posted a picture of the huge stack of books I was currently reading? And they were all entertaining novels, or books on living life with the Lord, or fascinating nutrition books? Well, here is my latest stack of books...even more interesting, I know! My first classes will hopefully be Pre-Calculus and Nutrition starting in January, and then on to Chemistry 121 Spring quarter. In order to prepare, I have a Pre-Cal textbook, a Chem textbook, and an Anatomy and Physiology book that I'm studying from. I want to make sure I learn this stuff well, and since I haven't taken math in six years and I've never taken Chemistry before, I've got some studying to catch up on. The awesome thing, though, is that I am so excited to do it! I can't wait to get home and spend some time with my Chem textbook or my Pre Cal textbook. On Sunday, I finished the first chapter in the Chem book, took a ton of notes, and did all the practice problems at the end of the chapter, and I actually understood everything! It was so encouraging! I know it probably sounds about as boring as one could get to some of you, and believe me, there was a time I would have agreed with you. But the joy and interest that is welling deep in my soul is in itself a testimony to the fact that this just might be a good path for my life. We're meeting with an admissions representative from my top schooling choice tomorrow evening, so that should help us get more of a feel for what this whole process could look like. We really are excited to see how the Lord opens the doors for this if He thinks it is a good path for me.

In other news, we have a new plant! Isaac is growing grass now as an accent to the rest of our little green jungle. He sprouted some wheat berries and they started growing so quickly! I swear the grass grew half an inch taller while we were gone at work yesterday. The grass in the larger container is a different kind of seed and it appears to be growing slower, but it looks a lot more like real grass (smaller stalks, closer together). Give these guys a couple of weeks and they'll be lush and green and five inches tall. So fun!

Blue? You're sure?

Here's a fairly typical scenario from our life. Isaac will come home with a brilliant new design idea that he has formulated throughout the day and will be brimming with enthusiasm about, and, quite happily, he recounts to me exactly what he is planning to create for our house and why it's going to be amazing. The look on my face at this point usually involves a slight squinting of the eyes coupled with several brief nods as I attempt to visualize the new product being described to me. I like to think the squinting helps me, but most of the time, I'm left as lost about the whole thing as I was before Isaac started. This is not because I can't understand what he's saying, it's just that what I visualize from his descriptions are usually not what he's visualized in his head, and the things I visualize are not very attractive things. You can imagine the dilemma that might create. It's actually become quite the humorous thing between us. The great thing about Isaac, though, is that, tried and true, I know whatever he ends up making is going to look awesome whether I can picture it or not, so I'm learning to just let him go with it, no matter what the idea is. The bookshelves are a perfect example. The coffee table, another example. The couch...same thing.
A couple weeks ago, though, it happened again, and regardless of the assurance past experience has brought me on these things, I just could not for the life of me picture how this one was going to work. We have a beautiful wood kitchen table and have been collecting chairs to go with it. This is a very purposeful thing - Isaac wanted six different chairs that shared some of the same characteristics, but would all be slightly individual, brought together by the final paint job that would blend the chairs as a complete set. Well, a couple weeks ago, Isaac came home with the perfect color he had chosen...bright blue. Can you picture that working? Yeah, I couldn't either, but lo and behold, Isaac's artistic side won me over again and now I love them! This I know, my friends, life is never boring when you live with an artist.

A kumquat for our living room...

I'm alive! For a while there, we were wondering...three days of intense body aches and a fever did not make for a very fun time, but I woke up yesterday with hardly any traces of the little invaders whatsoever. And today I still feel great!

So, friends, guess what we did? We bought our first tree! First of many, if all our dreams come true. This one is a kumquat tree for our living room (yes, our living room) and it's so fun! We bought a huge yellow pot for it to go in and soon, the fruit should be a bright orange to compliment. The running total for plant life in our house thus far is somewhere in the range of 16-20, with lots more to come! They're in our windowsills, hanging on hooks in every room, on tables, cupboards, even the refrigerator. I'm fairly certain I've talked about this before, but Isaac's dream is to bring as much of the outdoors inside, and the most we can do in a rental house is have tons of plants. Eventually, we'll buy ourselves some land and build some amazingly interesting house that Isaac designed specifically to accommodate an enormous cherry tree in the living room, but for now we're settling with our little kumquat tree. And it will go in the living room as soon as it's done basking in the light of the kitchen window during its recovery from the shock of being transplanted. In other news, we got ourselves a rabbit ears antennae for our television so we could try to bring in the channels with football games on game days for Isaac, and it has brought our little family some high quality entertainment these last few days. Not entertainment from the shows it broadcasts, mind you, but entertainment from the many different ways Isaac can find to hold the antennae so it displays a better picture. If you've ever had the ol' rabbit ears, then you know exactly what I'm talking about, huh? It's pretty hilarious. Yesterday afternoon, I walked in on his latest genius to get better reception for the game he wanted to watch. Cute, isn't it? Yes, that is a PVC pipe he is holding with the rabbit ears duct taped to the top. He was a little embarrassed that I might publicize this picture and then everyone would know how much work went into trying to watch one football game, but the truth is I'm actually quite impressed with Isaac's talents at creating the best picture. For one station, he even duct tapes the antennae up to the heater next to the tv. Ridiculous, but it works! Yes, my husband is a technological genius. Ooo, and you can see another one of our hanging Pothos plants above the tv! Here's our other Pothos on top of our cupboard, crawling all over the wall. I would picture all of our plants here for you, but something tells me that not everyone would find that as fascinating as Isaac and I do. It's probably better to hit you with them one or two at a time, and then you can get the full effect the next time you come to visit our place. Mmmm, we just love our plants!

Boo...

I (Becky) have the flu.

Boo.

A good path...

I got accepted to Whatcom Community College today! Not hard, I know, but it signals the start of some dreams beginning to turn into a reality. I've talked about it before, but I have this far-off desire to possibly become a Registered Dietitian and work with people, teaching them the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, natural medicines, whole foods, that type of thing. Holistic health. Now, like I said, this is just a far-off dream, not something that would happen for a while, and not even something that is guaranteed to happen at all, just a dream that I am slowly beginning to pursue and see where it takes me. A dream that starts, rather practically, I might add, with fulfilling the prerequisites at our local Community College for a potential masters program. And so I applied to WCC, got accepted, and am in the process of figuring out precisely what all of those prereqs are that I would need. One baby step at a time.

I've been thinking a lot lately about this potential path for my life (our life, I suppose, now that Isaac is my husband), especially about how I should go about praying for the doors to open. I mean, does the Lord really have just one path that is 'his will' for everybody's life? Should I be praying for all the doors to open only if this is 'God's will' for me? Is that how it works? Is it enough that I have the desire and that my husband is incredibly supportive of this potential opportunity? How would I ever know if this path was the one God chose or if I used my mind and heart and chose it myself? Or are there actually many good paths I can choose based on my desires and interests and the Lord will come alongside my decision and bless whichever path I choose? Or maybe, in the end, either of these ideas of God's will lead to the same ending...a life that the Lord is present in.

Well, I suppose we would just ask you to pray for wisdom about whether this is a good path for Isaac and me to venture down. And we'll just see how things go, I guess. I mean, if I can't even make it through my prereqs, then we'd know that this wasn't a good path for me, right? It's like I said earlier, one baby step at a time. It does make life a lot more exciting with so much unknown ahead of us, though, I'll tell you that much.

Making mom proud...

So, my mother has had two dreams for her children since she gave us birth two decades ago. One, that we would learn to play piano, and two, that we would learn to sew. After hating the practicing that went into piano all growing up, I had a change of heart a few years ago and decided to teach myself some piano. I fell in love with the instrument, bringing my mom immense joy, but unfortunately I still had little desire to sew. Well, I'm proud to announce that that day has finally arrived...I sewed something, mom! Mom and Dad got Isaac and me a sewing machine for our wedding and we broke it out last night and figured out how it worked, how to thread the bobbin, how to put everything together. And then we sewed pillows! An easy start for the novice seamstress, I know, but you have to start somewhere. And you know what? They didn't turn out too badly! Isaac put his handyness to use last night, too, after we figured out the sewing machine, and made us a window box for a couple of our plants. I tell you what, that man can build anything. I'm a lucky girl. Also, here are a couple more pictures from couples' night earlier this week with our married friends. Oh, the cute couples...now that we're officially a real couple!!
So, married life. It's been three weeks now, and I still wake up every morning amazed that Isaac chose me. It's such a different experience getting to share so much of your lives together...you're together when you wake up, together when you're working on projects, together as you cook dinner, together in the evenings (at least the ones we're home for), together as you go to sleep at night. For me, it's extremely calming to have Isaac be such a constant presence in my life. I love it. I love him. It's wonderful to be married. But you know one thing I've learned in the past three weeks? I, unfortunately, didn't get any less selfish once I got married. Which is a bummer, because I think some small part of me was hoping that once we got married, I would immediately become this perfectly loving wife who always put her husband first and became completely selfless. All the wise counselors in my life had been telling me up to this point that marriage actually brightly highlights one's selfishness instead of reducing it, and I would always smile a confirmation of agreement, but it isn't until now that I feel like I'm getting a clearer picture of what they were actually saying. And so we learn. We love, we fall, we disagree, we talk things out, we take baby steps toward loving each other the way that God loves us. My incredible blessing is that Isaac is a man of grace and patience and he continues to love me with his deep, committed love through my selfish times. And you know what is really fascinating? The ups and downs, the laughter, the love, the selfishness, the grace, the frustrations, the forgiveness, the memories, all of these are what make up marriage. They're what make up life. And the intimacy that comes from walking through this life together is so, so worth being faced with my own selfishness - as long as I choose to take that selfishness and work to change it into God-honoring love for my husband. And so, we approach the end our third week together with excitement and anticipation of how our love will grow and mature in the next fifty years.

The Raining and the Pouring...

I'm looking out my window right now and it is bucketing down outside...so cool! I was just remarking to Isaac how every season I am convinced that that season is my very favorite (with the exception of winter of course, which is a tad too cold for my liking), but then the next season starts to bud and I remember how very much I love the next season as well. And this year is no different. I love the sunshine and warmth of summer, but this past week has been gray and blustery and I am now so excited for the falling leaves, the rains, the brilliant oranges and yellows, the cool, crisp, clear days that only fall brings, the sweaters and mugs of coffee. God did a good thing when he gave us seasons that change all year long. The rains of fall are bringing even more adventure to Isaac's and my lives as we have decided to continue biking everywhere until the snows fall and the roads become icy, which means we'll be riding through a lot of rainy days on our way to and from work. Not a problem, though, as the drowned rat look is one of my personal favorites :)
Well, we're home! And it's great to finally have the same home. The wedding was a wonderful, intimate gathering of family and a few close friends at a beautiful old historic home up here in the 'ham. It was just what we wanted and so much fun! We won't have all the pictures for a while, but when we get them, we'll be sure to share them with you guys. We headed down to Ocean Beach in California for our honeymoon and spent a lot of time just relaxing on the beach, exploring on our bikes, taking walks, and playing with the animals at the zoo. Isaac made a couple pretty incredible sandcastles and succeeded in wowing the under-seven crowd with his masterful designs. It was fun to see the little tykes ooohing and ahhhing and dragging their dads over to let them play with us and our sandcastle. Interesting fact of the day for you - Southern Californians apparently really, really like the single-speed bicycles. Up here, road bikes and mountain bikes are huge and the more gears you have, the better the bike is. But down there, everyone (literally everyone) was riding these one-speed cruisers around. It was a nice touch to get to bike around while we were down there, and the cruisers turned out to be a lot of fun, but going up hills is definitely more of a challenge when you only have one gear. The week away was nice, but we were ready to be back in the northwest by the end of it. No more hot, sticky days and smoggy air for us...we love the trees and fresh beauty up here! We came home and opened presents, and then spent the rest of the afternoon and the entire next day putting together our house, unpacking Isaac's things, putting away the new gifts, throwing away all the wrapping paper strewn all over the floor (as you can see, that was quite the job on its own), running errands, things like that. And the best part of it all? Isaac didn't have to go home to sleep at the end of the day. He already was home. And that, sigh, is a wonderful advantage to married life, my friends. Well, there will be more tales to come, but work is calling my name right now. Happy weekend!

Here are a couple pics from our friend, Ryan...

We're back...

...and happily married!! Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Hurst. Mmmm, that sounds good. As you can imagine, after being gone for a week and a half, we've come back to lots of craziness at work and lots of business at home putting our house together and starting our lives as a married couple, so this is a blog saying that there will be blogs starting soon, it just may take a couple days for everything to settle. But we're happy and in love and loving life! Talk to you all soon!