A New Beginning

OK - so 4 months and many well-intentioned attempts later, I'm back to blog. So much has happened over the last few months - we've hardly had the time to keep up. Of course there was the wedding (on April 20th), then the honeymoon to Costa Rica, then packing up all of our worldly belongings in early June (in 2, yes 2!, giant Uhaul trucks), which we then drove ourselves the 14 hours to lovely Las Vegas. Then there was all the unloading, unpacking, decorating, and general moving nightmare - all while maintaining a job and starting as a new couple together. Talk about pressure! But we're finally here and settled. Well, kind of settled. Neither of us has yet mustered the energy or desire to unload all the myriad of boxes strewn through the house. But, we're making inroads. Hopefully by Christmas we will have pictures on the wall and all of our clothes hung in the closet. Ugh!

Through all of this, we've actually had a great time. Most things have gone very smoothly and we're really liking Las Vegas. We're blessed. As for today, Nate is still looking for a job here in Vegas (the job search process in Vegas is a post within itself - crazy.) while I'm pressing forward with Ocean Spray. We know he'll find something worthy of his talent soon. In the meantime, he is making me some awesome canvases for the house. I'll have to post a few pics of those. We're beginning to get to know our church congregation (aka ward) here. It's huge! I think we're topping 700 people now and I swear it grows by 4-5 new families per week. We're meeting with the bishopric tomorrow evening. We hope to get involved soon and maybe even get a calling.

As an FYI for all those members out there, they're doing this really cool test market thing here in Vegas. The church is running a ton of commercials in primetime, on the radio, on major billboards, etc. spreading the message of "Truth Restored". The ads are all super cool and not so much like the tear-jerking older style of church commercials - more black and white and very thought-provoking. If you get a moment, please check out the new mormon.org and look for these ads there. If the program works here (and we've heard some amazing stories so far), you may be seeing this program come to a city near you. What a cool thing to see our message in the mainstream. It's getting so many people to think, and that's just what we want.

I need to get caught up on pictures soon. For all of you who are waiting for wedding pics, they are coming. We were super slow in picking our pics and then our photographer went on maternity leave, so you'll have to wait a few more weeks.

More to come . . .