loooooooooong overdue updates!

All right, since the last time one of us posted was back in September, I think it's time for an update, yeah? I don't want to write this all out in narrative because that would take more time and energy than I want to expend, but I think it's worth at least some brief highlights from each month since early fall. Ready? Go!

October:
I was accepted into grad school at Southern New Hampshire University! I am earning an MA in English/Creative Writing and my focus is in fiction, although nonfiction was a very close second.
Eric was deep into his first class in grad school and loving it.
I made a Halloween costume inspired by Pinterest.
We went to a corn maze with the young adult group at church, which we are tentatively calling the "TLC-Hawks." ;)

November:
I made my annual commitment to NaNoWriMo and survived once more! My goal was to finish the novel I started the previous year, and even though I hit 50k before the end of November, there are still several scenes left to be told. :P
We enjoyed Thanksgiving with the Shaws and Joneses on the peninsula.

December:
I never realized how crazy December could get until we were involved in church during that month. Things get all kinds of nuts that month.
I shared a short sermon at our Christmas Eve service.
Eric wrapped up his first class in grad school with a 3.7! I'm proud of how much work he's put into his studies thus far. :)
I started a blog to document the daily life of living in south Seattle and to highlight the wonderful restaurants, organizations, and scenery located down here.
Christmas we spent with my family again because of my folks' imminent return to Africa and not getting to see them again for God only knows how long.

January:
I started grad school! I'm currently in my last week of my first class--going part time--and it's been a good reintroduction to formal education.
Eric started his next term of classes and continued his good efforts.
I taught one of the youth from church how to make jam! :)
We hosted a worship event called Encounter: Worship which pulled on the larger Judd family network and was a wonderful experience.

February:
We found out that Eric's sister and husband are going to have a baby girl! It was fun and emotional to find out and very exciting. We can't wait to meet her in June!
Rosie discovered an Amazon box that I feel like I can't throw away now because she curls up in it all of the time.
We had our annual business meeting and potluck at church. The food was good, the discussion was good, and we discovered our very own "drunk baby!"

March:
Eric and I went on vacation to Cannon Beach, which deserves its own post, but we'll see if I ever get around to posting about it. It was definitely needed!
We had another "Encounter" event, but this time, it was an all-night prayer meeting. It was long, and I have never done anything like that before. I think it was good, and we definitely want to do it again. Hopefully, more people will come next time!
We have been going through The Bible series on the History channel as a small group activity, and that has been fun because our host homes have changed a little, so we've had the opportunity to spend more time with people that we don't know as well. It's nice. :)

And I think that brings us up to date! Easter is coming up soon, and today is Good Friday. We aren't doing anything "traditional" for it, unless you count grabbing Ethiopian noms with an atheist friend as "traditional." ;) I'm looking forward to tonight anyway. :)

Where we at?

K...I've been super lazy with updating this, but we had a busy summer and somewhere along the way, I kinda forgot that we had a blog to begin with so...yeah, here we are!

I'm going to recap a few big events from the summer and then quickly discuss more recent events.

1) Fourth of July/Missions trip

For the 4th of July, E and I went down to Bend to be with his folks. It was great just relaxing and eating good food and we even tried paddleboarding! I'm proud to say I'm the only one that didn't go flying into the water. ;)

The missions trip followed this right away and was a fantastic experience for the youth and a growing experience for me. ;) Mostly, I really enjoyed spending more time with the girls on the trip and bonding with them.

2) Portfolio shuffling

Eric and I are no longer officially youth pastors. We are still working with the youth group, but we are no longer co-leading or planning, etc. Instead, we are trying to refocus into growing a group of young adults since there was nothing available for young adults and hasn't really ever been something for young adults at our church, so everyone on staff felt that this area needed to be filled and Eric and I are working on that. Prayers would be appreciated!!

3) Summer camp

Eric didn't go to summer camp because of this, and then the pastor who led our group there caught the bug going around camp and was super sick. :S

4) Labor Day weekend

For the long weekend, E and I went down to Mt. St. Helens to go camping with his family and go huckleberry picking. There were nine of us total, and it was tons of fun. The huckleberries weren't easily found, but it was still a fun weekend. My huckleberries are in the freezer, waiting to be made into a pie at some point. I don't know when I'll get around to it, but every time I see the tupperware they are in, my heart smiles.

5) Grad school!

Eric is currently enrolled in grad school. He is taking online courses from Knox Theological Seminary in Florida through Logos, and so far, he has perfect scores. Yeah, baby! So proud of him. :) The program will take three years, so if you read this, please pray that his motivation will last. :)

While on the topic of grad school, I recently applied as well and am waiting to hear back from the school on whether or not they will accept me. My admissions counselor said they have a pretty high acceptance rate, so that's promising. I just hope that financial aid will be good. If everything works out with finances and acceptance, I'll start my own online courses come January.

I think that's everything for now. Enjoy the random Instagram pics at the bottom of this post. ;)

date night!

Last night, Eric and I had a date--woo! It was lovely. :) We went for dinner and a movie--a classic combo--and ayre some Thai food at Southcenter before going to see Brave.

Highlights: the gal dressed as Merida who took our tickets for the movie, the extraordinarily long line of people waiting to go see the movie, and just how fantastic the film was. It was wonderful!

I wanted to be like Queen Elinor as I felt like I've already been like Merida. I was delighted by the mother/daughter story and the family dynamics. It was so lovely! Eric and I both laughed a ton and Eric almost cried while I cried several times.

If you haven't considered seeing this movie, I highly encourage you to change your mind! It is wonderful!

gradumacations

Tonight, Eric and I will attend our fourth graduation in ten days. Fortunately, I think it will be our last one for awhile, but holy cow...so many!

I am very proud of everyone who we know that graduated (& will graduate this evening). To Tony and Gwen (college graduates and siblings): I have much faith that you will both be excellent teachers! To Erica and Gracie: I am so excited for you to start college. You two are already leaders, and I feel better about the future knowing you'll both have a hand in making it great. To Mark and Elisha: I know you'll make great men because you are both trying to learn all that you can now. Always be teachable. :)

Kudos to you all!

babies and cannibalism

Me: Whenever I see cute babies with chubby cheeks, I just want to chew on them...

Eric: Have you been snorting bath salts?

This *may* be a good reason to hold off on having kids for awhile.

upcoming

We have a couple of big youth events coming up this summer, and I'm getting really excited about it! The first one is coming up really soon in early July, and it will be a missions trip. The second big event will be summer camp in late August.

Because Eric and I work at the same place, we can't take off time together, so I'm going on the missions trip and he's heading up the camp. We've asked one of the young adults to help chaperone with him. She'll be great!

For the missions trip, we're going to be traveling all over! We'll be at a conference in Sacramento, then we'll join up with Bridgetown Ministries in Portland for an event, then we'll wrap up the trip in Yakima. It's going to be exhausting, but I'm excited too. I just hope we can get more kids signed up! :)

Summer camp is always a fun event, and the timing for this one makes it right before school starts back up, which we're hoping will get our teens pumped up and ready to start spiritual wildfires at their schools. Also, we hope that we will be able to have non-Christian students attend and hear about God. So many hopes for this summer!

Together, these events will cost about $500. If you are reading this blog and would like to bless the youth of Rainier Valley, consider helping financially. We can always add to the scholarship fund!

If you do want to contribute, please send a check (w/ youth scholarship fun in the memo line) to:

Trinity Life Center
4402 S. Graham Street
Seattle, WA 98118

Thank you!

mw2

On Saturday, I had the fun times of hanging out with a few different gals from the youth group, and one of the things we did was play video games. We started with Left 4 Dead 2 then progressed to death matches on Modern Warfare 2.

It ended up being one girl against three because we kept trading off one of the controllers and she beat us all. This was my first time playing MW2, and I thought out was such fun that I asked Eric to play with me, thinking that I could hold my own while conveniently forgetting that he probably has days of practice on me.

After the first couple of rounds, I was getting really frustrated, so we went to the smallest map, turned the radar on, and Eric resorted to simply knifing instead of using any of his firearms. I still lost, but only by about six kills. ;) Yeah...he's got gaming skills!