Whirlwind

So a plethora of things have happened since anyone updated. *cough cough* It's technically Jason's turn... I will make a bullet point list.

- We got living room furniture

- We got rid of the gnats

- I got a garage door opener remote

- We had a housewarming party

- People painted canvases for our walls at the housewarming party (they are so cute!)

- I got a JOB at a battered women and children shelter in Fort Worth!!!! I start next week and I'm so excited

- I got a DOG! Her name is Zoe, she's a black lab mix. Cutest thing in the world. I adopted her from a shelter where she had been brought after being found abandoned on the side of the road :( She is already spoiled rotten (oops!) but is adjusting real well to life in the backyard.

- I had to put some chicken wire in the backyard to cover up some holes in the fence just the size for Zoe to fit through.

- I signed Zoe up for puppy training classes which we will start next week :0)

- I officially got accepted to Southwestern and will start classes in the fall!

- I visited my parents in San Antonio the past weekend for Father's day and had a great time!

- Have been having fun picking up Ryder and Jagger from daycare

- I reconnected with one of my old bosses and am going to be doing some project work for her this summer.

- I am in one of my good friends weddings this weekend so I will be going to Brownwood for that on Friday.

- Jason got me Sims 3 for a graduation gift and it's completely addicting. Hopefully I will have more time to play now that the dog is situated outside.

- Sorry this is kinda boring but I wanted to update everyone on some of the things going on!

-Jason needs to update.

All Moved In - gnats included

We got all moved in finally!  Well, I am all moved in. I think Jason still has some stuff at his apartment but he's got most of his stuff here.  I've been working on setting up the house and assigning chores (evil laugh hehehe).  We seem to have a gnat problem and it's driving me nuts.  They are everywhere and I've been doing everything I can to kill them.  Anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of gnats?  

Jason bought a new 42" HDTV that got delivered today and they just mounted it above the fireplace in the game room.  Exciting!  I will post pictures tomorrow of the house and the new additions to it!  I'm still looking for a job but very grateful for the time to get the house set up before having to start working.  

That's all for now but like I said, will post pics soon!

Soon to Follow

Well Joanna got herself all moved in this past weekend after enlisting a fleet of vehicles to transport the last of her belongings. I'm looking forward to moving in myself this coming weekend.

The house looks better and better the more things we get into it. My family also put a lot of work into cleaning the house last weekend which sharpened things up as well.

We have all our appliances, including a TV that is now en route. It's a 42" Panasonic display that I picked out after a good bit of research.

That's all for now!

T-9 hours!

I graduate in 9 hours. Just thought you should know if you don't already :)

I love you Mr. Clean

I finished with school on Wednesday (WHOOOOP!) and headed to Arlington on Thursday. Last night I spent the evening deep cleaning my bathroom. It was a chore but it turned out delightful!  

Today, I woke up early and went garage sale-ing. I did not have much luck but did get two really nice end tables for $40.  After that I went and looked at some mattresses and some other furniture.  Grandpa came over and mowed the lawn :) (thanks!) Mom and Dad got here this afternoon right when the appliances were being delivered (YAY we have a washer/dryer and refrigerator!!!!!). We went out to dinner with Jason and Maycee then mom and I went to Wal-Mart to buy some cleaning stuff.  We moved the futon into the living room so we have something besides lawn chairs to sit on in the house! 

Our goal for the weekend is to clean the house really well and maybe get some of my stuff unpacked.  We will maybe try and hit up some more garage sales tomorrow but we'll see.... They are coming to set up our internet on Monday! I will head back to College Station probably Monday evening and then I graduate FRIDAY!!!! 

On a completely different topic, I met with my pastor on Thursday afternoon to get my church reference for Seminary and that was really exciting.  I can finally finish up my application and get the ball rollin' on class for the fall!  

Hope all is going well for all of our readers :)

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

2 Thress. 15:16-17

One Test Left!

In less than 24 hours, I will be done with college! WHOOP! My psyc test is tomorrow at 10:45 and then I'm finished!

My Grandpa and Casey came yesterday with Grandpa's truck and loaded all the big things from my apartment so my room is quite depressing now. I should have no problem moving the rest of my stuff in my car after graduation.  They put all the stuff in the garage at the house and we will start unpacking this weekend. Thanks Grandpa and Casey for all your help :)

So, the whole fam will be spending Mother's Day weekend in Arlington to start the move-in process! So exciting!  The carpets were steam cleaned this past weekend and apparently they look really good.  We are going to clean everything else real well before I start moving in.  Lord willing, we will also be able to get a refrigerator and washer/dryer.  I hope to hit up some garage sales over the weekend to maybe find some furniture for my room as well. 

As it stands there are some bare necessities we are still looking for for the house:

-Dining room table (got some chairs from my Paw Paw)

-Couch

-Queen size mattress

-Dresser

-Desk and desk chair

If you know of anyone looking to get rid of any of these items let us know :)

In other news, my car has been receiving some TLC over the past week.  I got some brake work done and got the struts replaced. It drives like a brand new car!!! And it is currently at the body shop getting the bumper repainted.  I was in an accident in Nov. '06 and was rear ended.  The body shop fixed the bumper and put a new trunk lid on but the paint has been chipping over the past year or so.  Since the paint has a lifetime warranty with the body shop, I decided I better get it fixed before I graduate!  Haha

I will be permanently moved into the house May 18th and I'm guessing Jason will start moving shortly after.  His lease is up at the end of May.  Hopefully we will be able to have a house warming party end of May or early June!  

That's all for now. God bless!

       He put a new song in my mouth, 
       a hymn of praise to our God. 
       Many will see and fear 
       and put their trust in the LORD. 

       Psalm 40:3

Huzzah!

bwah ha ha Joanna had to write twice!

Not too much had happened with the house since I wrote, then I got in my wreck and my life is just now getting back to normal enough for me to think about writing here again. So that's my excuse :)

So... my wreck! The morning of April 4th I was driving to pick my mom up from the house for breakfast while she was in town, and as I was driving through an intersection an SUV coming the opposite way turned left in front of me. We tried to avoid each other but it didn't work out and I hit him with the front of my car going ~40mph. My steering-wheel and knee airbags both deployed and worked as advertised. I didn't lose consciousness. Within a minute a police officer was there and he drove my smashed car into an adjacent parking lot and out of the middle of the intersection. Another officer arrived (as well as my mom) and a police report was made citing the other guy as being at fault in the accident. His SUV was, of course, drivable while mine was totaled.

I actually had to preach that night, and was able to do so, but the next two days I was constantly on the verge of passing out. A visit to the ER revealed I had suffered a concussion in the wreck, but by that Wednesday or so I was totally better.

That set off nearly three weeks of calling insurance agents and the collision center multiple times a day. The other guy's insurance company (UAIC) eventually only accepted 70% liability on the wreck so we went through our State Farm collision coverage instead. When I told UAIC that they offered to reimburse my deductible, and later we came to a good settlement on my bodily injuries. All told my car was worth more than the loan on it which was a huge blessing and, like Joanna said, last week I got another one. The first time I drove it I had pretty severe crash flashbacks, but that was completely gone after a couple of days. And in case you were wondering, I named her Audrey.

Lessons Learned:

- If a potential wreck is forming, get on your brakes as early as you can.

- Knee airbags are amazing

- United Auto Insurance Company mostly sucks

- State Farm is mostly balla

- car salesmen still drive me crazy

How God took care of me:

- Police officer was on the scene within a minute of the wreck

- I was blessed with a car that could protect me (5-star frontal crash rating!)

- My only injury was a mild concussion

- My mom was in town that weekend

- I wasn't upside-down in the car loan and lost hardly any money on the aftermarket work I had done

In other news, yeah, I did buy a push-mower and cut that grass last week. I'm going to need to get a weedeater as well. I've spent the night at the house a couple of times and it has a unique smell to it. I'm wondering if that will go away when the carpets get cleaned this weekend.

Also, I'm excited about having a garage in which to keep my car!

Air Mattresses and Lawn Mowers

Well, I realize it has been entirely too long since anyone's posted!  I've been kinda waiting around for my bro to post but since he hasn't, I guess I will have to do the deed ;-).  

I went and stayed at the house over Easter weekend and slept on a faithful air mattress that mom left in the game room after she stayed.  It was really nice to stay there.  I went and visited Southwestern while I was there which was also good. I got the chance to meet with some professors and visit with people from admissions. I got really excited about the next chapter in my life that is quickly approaching.

For those of you that do not know, Jason got in a car accident a couple of weeks ago.  He was not seriously injured but his car was totalled.  He has been busy working with the insurance companies to get a new car and he got a new one today which I think he's pretty geeked up about! Maybe he'll post an update about that soon.

I also hear he got a lawn mower and finally gave the lawn a makeover at the Fern.  I need to work out with my Grandpa when I'm going to take the first load of stuff from my apartment here to the house in Arlington!  I have to be out of my apartment the day after graduation so I am going to try and get most of my moving done the first week of May.  

A week from today I will be done with all of my classes except for ONE final that isn't til May 11th.  It's really a crazy feeling.  Graduation is May 15 and then I will be up in Arlington for good!  I will get to start the quest of finding furniture and decorating the house! 

I cannot wait.

We have a Family Reunion at the Land (in Blanket) this coming weekend. I am going to be able to make it down for a day and am completely looking forward to seeing everyone there. Hope all is going well with all of our readers.  Please continue to pray for us to see clearly God's will for our lives!  

The Fern

As Jason mentioned, we closed on the house today.  It's very exciting to think about.  I will not longer have to bum a place in someone's living room to sleep when I go up there.  I cannot wait to get some free time to go back and do some painting.  And garage sale shopping for furniture!

I got to see the house last weekend when I was on spring break!  I love it!  I took a few pictures and hope y'all are excited to see them.  We hope to have a sweet housewarming party once we get all moved in but that won't be til the end of May.  But you should come!

I got to see the house last week while I was on spring break.  I love it!!! It has so much space and natural light, which is great.  I took some pictures which are below: outside, master closet, game room, dining room, and kitchen!

On a different but also exciting note, I graduate 50 days from today.  And no, I'm not counting.... hehe. I'm pretty pumped and will be the first to admit that senioritis has kicked in in full force! 

Hope all of you are doing well and thanks for following our blog!

it's closing time

My dad and I will be closing on the house in just over 2 hours. I am still struggling to grasp the concept that the phrases "my house" and "our house" are soon to become a regular part of speech for me.

Ah Spring Break, We Hardly Knew Ye

House-wise, we are closing this Friday afternoon. I am VERY excited about that. Joanna came up this last weekend and finally got to see the house. A certain Maycee got to see it as well. Overall the girls approved of the paint scheme, though a lighter grey is desired in places. My bedroom is currently painted a chocolate brown which simply will not do. We are unsure of what color to paint my room. At some point we will put up some pictures of the house here. :)

Life-wise, we had our most recent Nü Service this past Saturday and the following morning announced that we will be doubling the frequency on our Saturday night service to twice a month. Todd will be preaching every other one starting April 18th, but that means I’ll be doing the one in two weeks. I’ve never prepared two sermons in a month, so I’m a little stressed about that but I know it’ll turn out well.

Fun-wise, we were able to go sailing this past Friday afternoon and it was quite the adventure. We parked the boat in the slip under sail power for the first time ever as the pull on the motor broke while we were attempting to start it to head back in. The crew was very good and handled all the emergencies as well as you could ask for.

That's all for now!

Glorious Spring Break

Time for a quick update. 

It's officially Spring Break! Yay.  I will be leaving tomorrow to go to San Antonio for the bulk of the week. Mom and I are going to make a quick trip to Fredricksburg for some mother/daughter time! While in S.A. I plan on doing a whole lotta nothing. Maybe some shopping, maybe some knitting, a lot of sleeping.  Maybe I can convince dad to start some new car shoppin' :-)

Next weekend I will head up to Arlington to spend some time with the bro, old friends, and family up there. I look forward to hopefully finally getting to see the house! I can't wait to see it in person to start envisioning decoration ideas!  Also, I just remembered that I get a $1000 tuition rebate from A&M for graduating in four years which will be a very nice addition to my "Joanna needs furniture fund". 

I am so excited about the future. That's all for now.

My Half

A dog? Seriously? More like a ball-and-chain!

But I digress.

I never really had any kind of concrete life plan. The closest thing to a plan I ever scraped up was go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, live life, die. You can imagine I never pursued that plan with any great level of passion because at the end of the day it’s pretty unfulfilling. I got as close as being engaged until that relationship ended, and with it any desire I had to pursue my life plan any further.

At that point in time I was delivering at Pizza Hut which gave me extraordinary amounts of time in my car. I tired of music and began listening to podcasts which led to listening to sermons. Before long I was listening to nothing but sermons while out on delivery and through the words of those individuals God began to teach my heart about faith, hope, love, salvation, and the difference between a cool Christian guy and a Godly man. Two truths took deep root in my heart after which I would never be the same. The first was that God the Father loves me unconditionally, and the second was that the accepted Christian lifestyle I had been living for so long was a poor shadow of the life we are intended to have in Christ.

Meanwhile, towards the end of my Pizza Hut career I found myself in a fledgling college ministry at the church I had grown up in. The first time I showed up it was one girl I had grown up with, and two guys I hadn’t. A few weeks into that we decided to study the Bible, pursue God, and never worry about how many (or few…) people show up. We had no teacher or college pastor or anything of that nature, so we took turns teaching. We did start to grow, excruciatingly slowly at first, and somehow or another I moved into a position where I facilitated discussion and learning on a weekly basis in our group. While I don’t remember how that move happened, I remember why. Through that Bible study God had revealed in me a desire and a passion (and a gift!) for teaching His word.

It was about this time God had completely captured my heart by saving my life and I knew my heart would never be happy with anything less than devoting the rest of my days to serving Him. My gift, and indeed my greatest joy, is in preaching and teaching the Bible to others. While my life thus far has done well to prepare me in this task, I long to be thoroughly equipped and so decided to pursue a seminary education after my time at UNT is done. I will be graduating from UNT in May 2010.

Fast-forward a year or so and the Bible study is still doing well, but beyond that the people who make up the Bible study are having a huge impact in our church. Represented in our young adult group is the Awana Commander, four directors, a (very helpful!) secretary, and other leaders. Additionally, we facilitate a Saturday night service for the church which includes a worship time, a sermon, and dinner for everyone. I have been blessed to preach these services and look forward to every opportunity I have to speak God’s truth.

Like Joanna said, we are very excited about living together and having a house, and I hope you’re a bit excited about getting to follow along!

Blessed

Welcome to the brand new Kelley Kids blog!  We are so incredibly blessed to be embarking on some exciting things in our lives and want you all to be a part of it.  

Let me give you a little background to get you up to speed on the changes that are about to take place for me and Jason.  I am currently in my last semester at Texas A&M.  I will graduate on May 15 (whoop!) with my degree in psychology. My plan up until about a year ago was to go to nursing school after I finished at A&M. 

But God had other things in mind.

Through my classes in psychology, the Lord sparked a passion in me to help people struggling with mental issues.  There are so. many. hurting people out there. They have no where to turn, no answers, and no one to bring them comfort.  God put many people just like this in my path while at school and my heart broke for them. I could point them to the Word and to God's truths but I longed to have formal training in how to help people find God's peace in troubled situations.  I know that psychological problems are real. But I also believe that Spiritual warfare is at hand in many of the mental problems people experience.  No amount of medicine or therapy is going to help without Christ. So all that to say, I decided on Easter weekend of last year to attend Seminary after I graduate to pursue a degree in Christian Counseling.  I want to learn to combine therapy with biblical truths to be a light to hurting people. 

I will be moving to Arlington in May and plan to start at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the fall.  I will be in a three year program to get my Masters of Art in Christian Counseling and will then become certified as a Licensed Professional Counselor.  I'm not sure where it will take me but eventually I would like to work with military personnel and their families.  Military life and war cause large amounts of psychological duress and there are new programs starting left and right to provide counseling services to our armed forces. 

Jason can tell you all about how the Lord has brought him to where he is currently and where he is headed. But what I can tell you is that my amazing parents just bought a house in Arlington where me and Jason are going to live together starting in May! Get excited! I will hopefully post some pictures within the next week or so of the house but needless to say it's pretty baller. It's 3 bed/2.5 bath in South Arlington.  We will have a guest room so if you want to come visit after we're all settled, let us know!

I live in a fully furnished apartment currently so the only furniture I own is a futon. Jason has one too. And that's about it. Soooooo, if anyone has any furniture they're hankering to get rid of, feel free to contact us :) Couches, tables, beds, dressers, bean bag chairs, ANYTHING really. haha

I'm currently thinking about getting a dog once we get into the house. Outside dog of course given Jason and I are highly allergic.  I haven't mentioned it to Jason yet.... haha surprise! 

That's all for now! 

Joanna