Our New(ish) Home

Back by popular demand: Blog updates!  This entry will have pictures of our home.  We have pretty much everything how it will be.  Baby Mac 2.0's room is still a bit of a wreck, but that's partially due to the fact that he won't be sleeping in there for a while.  However, it's mostly due to the fact that Naomi likes to go in their and play.  So, here' goes:

First, here are a a few pictures of my girls.

Andrea, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen

Naomi is feeding her bear.

This is her Cubs bear wearing a diaper.

Here's the living room:

Here's the dining room:

Here's the kitchen:

Here's Naomi's Room:

Here's Baby Mac 2.0's Room:

Here's the guest bathroom:

Here's our bedroom:

Here's our closet:

Here's our bathroom:

In the next post, I'll get some pictures of the church and my office.  I'm also in the process of getting my co-contributor (Andrea) to post something to the blog.  She claims that she doesn't know what to say or is witty enough, but I told her that posting her sewing projects would be interesting to people.  If you think so, please comment!

The Rest of the Trip

So, we left you last in Missouri.  We took the bypass around St. Louis, which may or may not have caused some confusion in the car in which I was riding.  It did, however, provide some interesting photographic opportunities.

The Mighty Mississip

Something that piqued my Scottish roots followed our slight miscalculation was a church sign in the St. Louis area:

I wonder if they all have pointy beards...

There wasn't much going in Missouri until we hit Kansas City, which is much smaller than I thought.  I guess it's a typical Midwestern capital, though.  We saw the home of the Royals, and we heard an interesting radio advertisement that talked about the hottest girls in Kansas City.  I don't mean any offense to anybody from Kansas City, but I don't immediately think of hot girls when I think of Kansas City.  It just seemed...funny.

The Royals play here.

Something else that perplexed me about Kansas City is that it's in two states.  Does that mean it's got two mayors?  What's going on in KC?  That's right, you guessed it.  We crossed into Kansas next.

There's not a lot going on in Kansas once you pass the exit for Manhattan.  We stayed the night in Manhattan, which is affectionately known as the Little Apple.  It's the home of Kansas State University.  We were pretty beat by the time we got there, so we didn't get to take in the sights.  I've been told by my Kansan friends that Manhattan is pretty great.  Maybe next time we move to Colorado, we'll stay in Manhattan a little longer.  I was also surprised at how hilly Kansas actually is.  East of the Manhattan exit, it started to flatten out, but not as much as I thought.  I think Indiana has Kansas' number in that department.  The really interesting (and by interesting, I mean eerie) feature of the Kansan landscape were the wind farms.  It looked especially creepy against the gathering storm clouds.

If you aren't paying attention, it's easy to miss the Kansas and Colorado border.  Eastern Colorado looks a whole lot like Western Kansas.  It was a few hours before we saw the Colorado that Hoosiers always picture.

The mountain passes have a few of these small tunnels that actually function to protect the roads from snow.

So, that concludes the brief journey across planes to Pagosa Springs.  We lived in the house for 3 days and 4 nights without any furniture.  It was very uncomfortable, but we were thankful that it was only that long.  Our stuff was originally going to arrive about a week after we arrived in Pagosa.

Well, now that you've made it to Pagosa with us, blog updates from now on will be of more current events.  I've also added Andrea as an author to the blog, so look for future posts from her!

Blogging on Borrowed Time

When you visit this blog, do you wonder, "When will Jordan run out of funny blog titles?"  Well, friend, I'll tell you: never.

Today, I will post some pictures from our adventure that we had coming out this way.  Just to get you in the travel mode, here's a map of our journey:

We basically took I-70 from Indianapolis until it veered to far north in Western Kansas.

Tobi was a good dog during the trip, perhaps thanks to the medicine we gave him.

Not long after we left Kokomo, we had to bid a fond farewell to our Indiana home.  Of course, "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" came to mind.  Even though I was already longing for my Indiana home, we eagerly pushed on into Illinois.

There wasn't much in Illinois to comment on.  I'm not very familiar with So. Ill., other than it has a cool abbreviation.

At this point in our trip, my dad and I reminisced about our trip to St. Louis a few years back.  This trip was a good time, filled with baseball games and a brewery tour.  However, it is also the trip on which I lost my favorite Cubs hat while trying to get a picture of the St. Louis Arch from the highway.

My dad and I have competing baseball loyalties.

Not long after entering Illinois, we crossed into Missouri.  We went around St. Louis on this trip, but we did get to see the arch.

St. Louis must be broke if they sold the arch to Travelodge!

Now crossing into Missouri.

That gets you up to Missouri.  In the next post, I'll chronicle the journey further.

Just so you're not stuck in the past, I did get installed today as vicar at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Out West of the Great Divide (Literally)

Sorry for the drought of updates.  I have been without the internet since June 30, making updating an impossibility.  However, I will remedy that with a whole mess of posts (maybe, depending on my ability to get online) about actually moving out here.  Here's what has happened since June 30:

1. We packed up our apartment.  This was quite a task.  We staged nearly everything in our dining room/living room to make it easier to load on the truck.

Before the truck was loaded...

2. We checked loaded the truck and checked out of our apartment on July 1.  We had initially planned to come back to Fort Wayne on July 5 to check out, because we didn't think the moving truck would arrive early enough for our 2 p.m. check out.  We were wrong.  The guys who helped us pack were extremely helpful in this.  Thanks, guys!

After the truck was loaded!

3. We spent July 1-July 5 in Kokomo saying goodbyes.  This was extremely difficult.  We will really miss our friends and family back in Indiana.

Naomi is helping Grandma Susan mow the lawn!

4. We got a new car.  Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of it.  It's a blue 2003 Jeep Liberty Limited.  Andrea's Civic had some transmission and wheel bearing problems that made it financially unwise to fix.  It turned out to be a good thing, though, because it showed us how much God provides for us through our neighbors (especially my mom and Grandpa Jay who helped us locate and purchase the vehicle, respectively).  It also will help us get around better in the winter.  Apparently, 4-wheel drive is sort of necessary in the mountains in the winter!

5. Andrea, Naomi, Tobi, and I move to Colorado.  We started out the morning of July 6, made it to Manhattan, KS (the Little Apple!) and arrived in the evening of July 7.

Here we are at our new home.

I think that's all I will write for now, but I wanted to let everyone know that we've made it out here safely.  In the next few posts, I will unfold some of our adventures a little further and let you guys know how it is to live in a house with no stuff for a little more than a week!

Eschatology...Sort of

Tonight was the last time I worked at Walther Library.  It's probably the last time I'll ever work at a library, actually.  I never really thought of myself as a library person.  I mean, I studied their occasionally in elementary/middle school/high school.  I studied at the Ball State library pretty frequently in college (it was also a GREAT place to take a nap before I lived in an air-conditioned dorm room).  But then, after Andrea and I got married and we moved back to Muncie, I got a job working at the Muncie Public Library's Maring-Hunt branch.  I held a variety of jobs there, but I really learned that I loved to work at the library.  I haven't had that many jobs in my life, and I've liked most of them, but I honestly loved working at the library.  When we moved back to Fort Wayne so I could start at the seminary, I applied to work at the campus library (come to think of it, I also tried to apply at the Allen County Public Library, but they weren't hiring).  Anyway, long story short, I also loved working at Walther Library.  We're back where we started: Tonight was the last time I worked at Walther Library.

The circulation desk at close

This is my desk.  We liked to put weird/funny stuff on the wall.

So, what is eschatology?  Eschatology is a theological term that means the study of the end times (literally, words about the last things).  Recently, I've been thinking quite a bit about last things.  You know when you were in high school, and you celebrated all of those last things that you did?  Swim meets, track meets, cross country meets, plays, dances, etc.  I'm doing that all over again at the seminary.  Last day of classes, last time to sing "A Might Fortress is Our God" in chapel, last time to receive the Lord's Supper at the chapel altar.  What it all comes down to is this: I'm already getting a little homesick for the seminary.  We're also making final visits to family and friends.  I'm homesick more for Naomi and Baby Mac 2.0 as far as that goes, but it's hard to know that we're possibly leaving them behind for quite some time.

Not all of my entries will be this melancholy, I promise.  I really am excited to get out to Colorado.  It's just difficult to leave every body and every thing behind.

***Point of clarification***Andrea and the babies are coming to Colorado.  That line about me feeling homesick for them was more that they won't see extended family as often as I got to when I was growing up.  (Thanks, Grandma!)

The Inside

Yesterday, I posted some pictures of the exterior of the house. Today, I'll post a few of the inside. The "stuff" in the pictures belongs to the lady we're renting from. In order to respect her privacy, I won't post all of the pictures. I'll post some more when we actually get there. Come to think of it, I can probably post a video tour of the house. For now, here's the kitchen and the three bedrooms:

New Blog, New Home, New Adventure

We are about to embark on a new adventure. Sure, you could call this blog a new adventure, but what I'm really getting at is uprooting a growing family of Hoosiers and transplanting them to Pagosa Springs, Colorado, about 7,500 feet above sea level.

Why would such a family leave their beloved Hoosier State, friends, and family for the mountains? I'm starting my vicarage. What's that? It's an internship of sorts. I think it's more closely related to student teaching, but I think you get the idea. In most Christian traditions, a vicar is basically a parish pastor. However, in the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, a vicar is a ministerial student. That year of vicarage is supposed to be a time of formation as a pastor wherein the student gets field experience. He should be under a supervising pastor, sometimes called a bishop, to learn how to be a pastor. This includes preaching, teaching, visiting church members, and other administrative tasks.

So, in order to keep this from rambling too much longer, I'll start to show you around a little. We don't leave for Pagosa Springs until early July, but I have some picture of the house we're going to rent for a while. Enjoy!