Sunday, December 6, 2009

The End of a Chapter


It is a total bittersweet feeling to be ending my college career. While I am excited to move back to Delaware and start a new job, I can't help but feel sad to leave something I have fallen in love with.

I wasn't always in love with Miami. To me, Miami was a big, secular campus and I was only one Christian girl with only a few high-school acquaintances. I felt alone, scared, without my Marky, and I wanted to go home.

It was a long first semester and it seems like it was only yesterday. I had no idea what God had in store for me after that first semester...little did I know. If you told me a 3 years ago I would be a senior, married, graduating early, moving back to my hometown with a job in the Haller family business...I'm pretty sure I would laugh-out-loud. But it's true, God has given us direction and answered prayers.

As exciting as this all is, there's a part of me that isn't quite ready to leave Miami or Oxford. Over the past four years, I've gone from hating this school to loving it and the community it is in. I have friends and memories here that are irreplaceable, looking at pictures isn't going to fill this void. I trust that God has plans for me in Delaware and that he will lead me with what HE wants me to do, even if that means living in an apartment above a garage! :)

The countdown has started and so has my list. T-minus 10 days to:
Drink my last Kofenya Latte
Eat at Kona Bistro
Ice Skate at Goggin
Pull an all-nighter (only done once in 4 years!)
Kiss my hubby under Upham Arch
Not get a $65.00 Miami parking ticket
PACK! PACK! PACK!


It's going to be a crazy end to December but we're excited to move, start/re-start our jobs, and be a part of a community we know so well.

Look out D*Town here we come!

Monday, November 30, 2009

The Intruder

THERE WAS A MOUSE IN OUR APARTMENT THIS MORNING!!!

I do not know how he got in or how long he has been there...but eewwwwww.

As I was making Marks lunch this morning, I saw him scurry across our floor into our living room. I jumped up on the counter and screamed, probably waking up everyone in our building. I saw where he went and directed Mark that way. Still on the counter, I shivered as the image of the little furry thing ran through my head (ewww again!). Mark found him in the corner by the patio door but he was fast enough to run around behind our TV and Christmas tree and into our 2nd bedroom. We (I mean Mark) went in after him and about ten minutes later the intruder was D-E-A-D! THANK GOODNESS.

Ironically enough, when we were in my parents basement on Saturday, there was a dead mouse. Straight out of my husbands mouth were the words, "I cannot wait to see you react to our first mouse". Little did we know, it would only be two days later!


Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse...FALSE!



Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Prayer Requests

Please pray for us as we decide on Jill's job, living situation (next semester and year), and just in general as we transition from being students to going out in the working world.

Thank you!

We will have more posts on things going on with us in Oxford as soon as school settles down.

Overall, school is going well. We're keeping busy with schoolwork and other stuff and getting somewhat excited to graduate...heh-heh.

Please feel free to call us to chat anytime, we love catching up! :)


Sunday, October 11, 2009

Wonderful Weekend!

We had a busy weekend filled with lots and lots of fun with friends from our community group. Sadly, I don't have any pictures from Friday or Saturday but I know we had a blast.

Friday we played games at a friends house (Mark and I were introduced to the game "signs", SO FUN!)

Saturday we went to a wine and cheese tasting party hosted by our friends Stephen and Joy (they are sooo cuute!) Their house was filled with really neat wine/vineyard inspired decor and they had a variety of different cheeses for everyone to try (highly recommend fontina and double creamed brie with honey-mmm). Everyone brought a bottle of red or white wine (under $15) and we did 'blind tasting' followed by voting at the end. Neither of us had been to a party like that and had a great time even though we are not wine drinkers at all!



Today we went to Butterfield Farms just about 5 minutes off campus. Here are some pictures from the day...it was beautiful outside!
Ridin' on the wagon

We got to feed some big, hungry cows on our field trip!

Did I mention they were BIG and HUNGRY?? haha
Mark feeding the bull

Click on this picture to see what Miami engineering students did at the farm.
Our CG--minus Jason and Kristyn :(

Courtney and I in the corn maze-gosh, I love this girl!



After the farm, we agreed that it was much too beautiful to go back home..so we went for a walk in the woods.

Words cannot describe how peaceful it is to walk in the woods with a cool breeze and the sun shining down.

Did I mention I am married to a Haller boy?
David, do you do this too??














The weekend went by fast, but we had a lot of fun and feel so blessed to have so many great 'young marrieds' in the area-we are loving Oxford even more than before!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

One FIne Day

I'm not sure what the weather was like where you were today...but here in Southwest Ohio, we were blessed with a beautiful fall day with sunshine, a light breeze, and temperatures in the mid-50s low 60s. GORGEOUS!
The day started early (around 7:15) when we peeled ourselves out of bed to go to first service (sorry no pictures to show, let's just say we were quite tired). Our church, Oxford Bible Fellowship, is currently doing a series on Ephesians and this morning the message was about being redeemed, forgiven, and reconciled in Christ. Check out our pastors blog: http://jeremyacarr.blogspot.com/ After service we went to our "young marrieds" class that we have been attending for about six or seven weeks and to say that we love it would be a complete understatement! As many of you know, marriage is very challenging...don't get me wrong, we do love marriage, but it isn't as easy as we thought. Our young marrieds class is a total blessing, there are about 15 married couples that come every week and we have gotten to know many of them really well. In the class, we are reading the book Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas and have been learning a lot about marriage, both from the book and from the other couples in the class. Today we discussed, "The Cleansing of Marriage-How Marriage Exposes Our Sin"...something us newlyweds are learning about. I really liked this quote: "One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, 'here's to helping you discover what you're really like!'" -Gary and Betsy Ricucci The idea that God intends to use our marriage to expose our sin and to help us grow out of it is something that we both really like...sounds strange doesn't it?
After our class, we came home changed clothes, ate lunch and headed out to a farm in Hueston Woods State Park for their annual Apple butter Festival. We saw signs around Oxford this week and thought we would go and check it out. Here are a few pictures from our fun experience at the festival:

Above: Here is a barn that was filled with old tools, farming equipment, and other sorts of antiques-so neat!

Left: We stopped and listened to a man dressed in Civil War attire talk about the artillery used in the Civil War. We saw these two men shoot different guns to show which one had a better firing ability...the guy on the right won but I forget what the gun was called, sorry. :(

Right: After they shot the guns, they announced that they were going to be doing a demonstration with the canon seen in the picture. It was pretty cool, the three men along with about four others demonstrated the whole deal right down the saying the degree that they were going to be shooting towards. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of the smoke after they fired the canon...it was kind of challenging to cover my ears and hold the camera at the same time...
After this, we then went and check out some other things around the festival including checking out the old barn, buying some kettle corn (YUM!), buying apple cider, and of course, some apple butter as well.
First floor of the barn, mostly old tools


Here Mark is checking out a machine that was used when harvesting corn.



YUMMY KETTLE CORN!! This is an old building that was moved from Uptown Oxford to the farm. I don't remember what the building used to be, but one of the features of the building is something I loved having when I was growing up. Shown below:
For those of you who don't know what this is (or who haven't seen Harry Potter), this is a mail slot where the mailman delivers the mail and growing up, this is how we received our mail. It was always conveniently inside the door (on the floor) when we arrived home. It brings back a lot of memories when I would lay on the floor in our entryway with my backpack still on reading magazines or letters that came in the mail...(sigh).









YAY, here I am with our kettle corn, cider, and apple butter!



A park ranger
had an owl and a red-tailed Hawk with him. I'm not a huge bird fan, but they were pretty cool, especially since they were in cages most of the time. :)



After leaving the festival, we headed into the actual state park area to collect plant leaves for a botany project that Mark is working on...but don't tell anyone because I read on one of the sign postings under LAW A9.07.B15 (or something like that), that it is illegal to take animal, sand, plant, mineral, or any other kind of sample from the preserved area. So...then traveled back to campus right next to my Freshmen dorm to check out a Buckeye tree (Horse Chestnut Tree) and a bush that has ORANGE buckeyes it--I was so intrigued!

Right: Here I am collecting the orange buckeyes from the "Bottle Brush Buckeye".


I had no idea that this is what a buckeye comes out of! A little spikey, but so cool!


Right: The orange buckeyes from the bush-have you ever seen these??



After collecting a bazillion buckeyes, we decided to head to the grocery store and then home.
You can kind of see it, but I made a "free" fall decoration with a square glass vase that I filled with the orange and regular buckeyes, super-cute and so inexpensive! The two vases are sitting our coffee table-who would've thought?

This beautiful day ended with a delicious dinner, slow-cooked chicken served with rice-. (Thank you for the recipe, Barb!) We are loving living together, cooking together (more posts to come), and all-in-all being married. It definitely isn't easy-as-pie, but we are learning and are excited for many years to come. I especially am excited for more late night conversations that result in loud giggling that wihtout-a-doubt wake the neighbors ...something every married couple should do every once in a while, even it is because your spouse forgets that turkeys have wishbones, not chickens. ILY! :)




We have been a little busy and we would love to post more... so hopefully October will be filled with a few more than September!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

The Notebook

No, not the movie, something that sits in our coffee table


Something we just started doing, this notebook is used to jot down anything and everything we find interesting television. The idea came up last week when Mark and I were watching one of our favorite stations, Food Network, and both agreed we wanted to travel to some of the restaurants on the show, "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives". By the end of the show, both of us had forgotten where the restaurants were and agreed "we need to write this kind of stuff down".
End result: the notebook.

To clarify, we are not TV junkies, but, we do like to relax with a bowl of popcorn and watch some of our favorite shows after our homework is done for the night. :) So far, we have a few facts about old items from the show Pawn Stars and some from Food Network. Our idea is that by having this notebook, we will justify our time watching TV and will be able to use the information we write down for future meals, trips, and anything else we want to remember.



Thursday, August 27, 2009

All moved in!

Well it's been a few weeks now since we've moved in, and we have been really busy! We spent our first whole week shopping, exchanging, un-packing, re-arranging, and setting up our apartment. We absolutely love how it has turned out! Here are some pictures of it now:





Here is our kitchen area - we've been having fun cooking our own food, and of course popcorn! I (Mark) have set the smoke detector off already, but I'm working on it...Jill has been making some great food, including the best chocolate chip cookies I've ever had!



The living room...


Our office/spare bedroom


Our bedroom


Jill's vanity in the bedroom


and the bathroom.


Anyone is welcome to come at any time! More posts are soon to come!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

It's Official!

We are going to blog :)

Coming soon: pictures of wedding, honeymoon, and our new apartment!