Taxi Drivers, Landlords, and New Bosses!

Marcel has subbed 6 days now and has been an instructional aide (at Desert Springs Elem, Sage Valley MS), PE teacher (Birch Elem, Vallivue HS), 1st grade teacher (Central Canyon Elem) and an Alternative School teacher (Vallivue Academy). He has loved each of them, even if he was a bit nervous going back to first grade. They have each provided many wonderful opportunities for him. Like today at Sage Valley, he wasn't really needed as the classroom aide, so he was able to meet the Band teacher and even conduct the jazz band! At Birch, he was able to meet the music teacher who has now personally requested him to sub in her classroom for 3 different days! Back to the original point of my post.

Being a substitute teacher is quite an art form. I learned that from a guy I worked with at the gym. Because of what Dan taught be about subbing, this is our nightly routine:

Check the sub site multiple times throughout the night, and right before bed. Wake up at 4am to check the site again in hopes of there being an opening to claim before the calls start going out to fill spots last minute. Return to bed until needing to be up to get ready for the big day of work!
(last night was the first time Marcel had a job prior to going to bed)

That alone is quite an art, but we also do one more thing nightly:

We call/text the people pictured above to see if Marcel can be driven to work in the morning.

This is how awesome they are: we are able to put them "on-call" to take him all the mornings that I am at work and they get him to wherever he needs to go. Marcel just calls them at 6:45am (when my mom gets up) and lets them know where his job is for the day.
(Marcel has been able to get himself to work only twice, which happened to be his first 2 days)

Our current financial situation requires that we both be working (and ideally, more than we are!) but without the public transportation that we had available in Oregon, it would be impossible for Marcel to sub and for me to stay as a stock associate at Banana, because of the schedules. Also, because of our financial situation it is not feasible for us to get another car. We did some used car shopping when we got here, but it is so hard to think about adding another expense to an already tight budget.

We are so grateful for all the help they provide us. Besides this amazing taxi service, they are also great landlords that don't expect payment while Marcel is in school. I don't know what we'd do without them.

They are going to be able to retire as taxi drivers soon, as I have been offered a job to watch a 4 month old in my home, so Marcel will be able to take the car. The family is a bit worried about our 1 car situation, because if Marcel was working, I'd be stranded at our house with no means of transportation. But, our awesome landlords/taxi drivers have come to the rescue once again! They have agreed to let me park their old suburban at my house to be used in case of an emergency; not that I'd want to drive it any other time because of the cost of gas for such a big vehicle. I need to get in contact with the parents again soon (we always seem to play great games of phone tag!), but it looks like I will be starting March 16th!

All Settled In

We are FINALLY out of boxes! It seems like it took forever, but with the busyness of the holidays I think we did really good. There is still a few small projects to get done, but our house is very liveable as of now. We are loving our new place!

Living room (from the dining room)


Dining room (from the living room)

Speaking of small projects, all the stuff on the back wall needs to be returned to my mom, put in her storage unit, or figured out how to be recycled!

Kitchen (from living room)

No dishwasher at this house which I miss dearly, but we are slowly becoming dishwashing champions. I don't think there has been a night yet when we go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink!

Study nook (from kitchen)

Laundry (from study nook)

MaryBeth's side of the Hobby Room

I'm about a year behind in my scrapbooking, which makes starting up again a little overwhelming, but once I start again I know I'll get very into it and will get pages whipped up super fast.

Marcel's side of the Hobby Room

His "diploma" isn't actually his diploma. We haven't received that in the mail yet. We are currently displaying the notice he received in the cover in May when he participated in the graduation ceremony. Soon enough we'll have 2 Pacific diplomas on our wall!


Hallway (from living room)

Our hobby room is the door on the left and our bedroom is straight ahead. Marcel was in there with our bed full of clean laundry that needs to be put away so a picture of that room will have to come later, as well as pictures of our 2 bathrooms. The picture frames on the left wall are indeed EMPTY! We bought the frames after our honeymoon and still have yet to print any wedding pictures to fill them, yet another small project for us!

Now In Idaho

There are a few new posts below this one!

We've been very busy since getting here Saturday night. We are almost entirely settled and out of boxes. The main room we have left is what was called "The Office" in Oregon. Now that our house has a built in computer desk area, now known as the "Study Nook", our office is now "The Hobby Room", as it holds Marcel's drums and guitars and all my scrapbooking stuff. I told Marcel he needed to take pictures of me doing something because I was taking pictures of him unloading the U-Haul and setting up our surround sound systems, but there was no pictures to show that I did anything. This is the picture that I have now!


We thought the closet was big until we started to fill it!


Monday, December 21st, Marcel had his interview for George Fox University to get his Master's of Arts in Teaching. It turned out to be a group assessment, not an interview, but nonetheless, Marcel was accepted. He had to stay in Boise after the assessment for the mandatory orientation session that night. He starts classes January 7th! We are very blessed by this opportunity and love that he'll be able to work too, as classes are only Thursday nights and a Saturday a month until November when he starts student teaching. I was scared about signing up for internet without knowing just exactly how much either of us would be working, but with school, Marcel will need the internet, so we stepped out in faith knowing that we would always have enough to cover our needs.


Marcel dressed up for the assessment!

Some of the things we are still trying to get used to about being in Idaho:

• TV--prime-time starts at 7pm, not 8pm, like in Oregon
• Sales Tax--although we are both originally from states that do have sales tax we have spent 4-5 years in a place that didn't. And when we went grocery shopping, I learned that Washington (where Marcel is from) doesn't tax food.
• Altitude--we have been living nearly at sea level, so being at a higher altitude means thinner oxygen. I liked the oxygen in Oregon!
• Recycling--after being in Oregon for 5 years I have become an avid recycler. We were able to recycle just about everything, even putting everything in the same bin. I know that we'll have to sort our recycling, which is something we've already started, but now I just don't know where to take it. We ARE going to find a place to recycle everything that we did in Oregon, just might take awhile, but we will be Idahoans who recycle!

I'll take more pictures of our house once we are finally out of boxes, have pictures up, and decorations placed!

Oregon to Idaho

We have been in Idaho for 5 days now and have set-up internet already which will be explained later. Here is the recap of our big move:



December 18th, Friday
Marcel and I picked up the U-Haul at 7:15am. When we got home we loaded our washer and dryer, before our moving help arrived. We had help from some awesome people from church: Dave, the worship pastor; Jon, the administrator; and Brandi, the wife from our pre-marital counseling group. Jon and Dave helped Marcel load and perfectly fit everything into the truck, while Brandi and I cleaned. Poor Brandi picked to clean the shower and oven--I got pretty lucky there! As we were breaking for lunch after the U-Haul was loaded, Dave & Jon informed us that church was paying for us to stay in the local hotel that night because we had plans of crashing the floor of our apartment since our bed was packed. They decided we needed great sleep before making a 7+ hour drive the next day.



The U-Haul half loaded (Jon working his organizational magic)



Brandi & I giving the kitchen much love



Before heading to the hotel for the night



December 19th, Saturday
We got up at 5:30am to get ready for the big day, including an amazing continental breakfast at the hotel. We met our landlord at 7am for our walk-through and to hand over our keys. Our apartment was deemed to be in the same condition as when we moved in so we'll get our entire $700 deposit back! We headed to the gas station and were on the freeway by 7:45am! We stopped in Pendelton for lunch about noon and made it to Caldwell around 4:30pm, about 8 hours later. The weather was great. Some rain, but only snow on the side of the road, and pretty dry roads. We had planned to unload the U-Haul Sunday, but once getting here we felt very motivated, and so in just a blink of an eye the unloading began. My dad, Cindy, Stacey & Lisa (Dad's friends--Stacey used to work with my dad and a long time ago he called us his adopted children) came to help us unload. After we were done, Marcel and I treated ourselves to a dinner out at a sit-down restaurant: Applebee's. We had been talking about having to pay sales tax but it wasn't until we got the bill for dinner did we realize the time had come.

Marcel's self portrait while driving



Landscape we encountered



At our new house!


Marcel unloading

Keys

Today, Marcel and I went to sign our lease. Everything went extremely well. They were even nice enough to only make us sign a lease until December 31st, since we're hopefully going to be in Idaho by then, considering Marcel or I get into school there.

We have keys and can start moving in whenever we want now! I've had boxes in my room forever and still have yet to buy packing tape to prevent myself from packing prematurely. Well, now the time has finally come. Everything keeps falling into place so nicely. It is extremely comforting to see things work out so well. We truly do have God on our side!

It's Official

After what feels like forever, I finally heard back from the apartment we applied for.

We are picking up keys and can start moving in April 3rd.

Things just keep falling into place! Only 87 more days until our wedding :)

House Search

The last few weeks it seemed everyone I talked to had one question for me...

"Where will you and Marcel live?"

All I could tell them was that we want/need to stay in Forest Grove so Marcel can get back and forth to school on his mo-ped or bike when I'm working. Plus, I'm just not quite ready to live somewhere else! Everytime I thought about it, it stressed me out. I called on an apartment Tuesday and went driving around Wednesday looking for places for rent. I did find quite a few places, but Thursday morning I got a call back from the only place I called with a message of having an empty apartment starting the first week in April, just the timeline we were hoping for!

My lease is up in May before the wedding and graduation so students won't have vacated their apartments, thus the April timeframe. Plus, my mom already had tentative plans of bringing out my wedding dress in April so now she can come help move. We're so lucky!

We have now turned in our applications and should know Monday or Tuesday if they were approved. I was told the only reason they ever get denied is outstanding rent (we have none!), a felony charge (we have none!), or a violent misdemeanor that would threaten the safety of other residents (we have none!).

Seems our house search is over just as quick as it started!

Enjoying My Backyard

Yesterday, I came home from an extremely normal but boring day at work, with a bad headache. I came home and noticed that no one had checked the mail so out I went on a walk to recover whatever we may have gotten. When I returned to the house, I found that I had locked myself out of the house with nothing but the mailbox key and yet another store catalog for the previous tenant. I was then standing on our garbage bin to open our fence so I could sit in one of our lawn chairs in the back yard. After 5-10 minutes I could hear that I hadn't gotten the fence closed completely and when I went to fix it I noticed a roommate had made it home. Well, I spent another 5 minutes on the front step, because she had locked herself IN (much better than out!) and had gotten in the shower. Let's just say it wasn't the greatest evening ever, until me and Kelly had a TV watching marathon and I finished a season of Gilmore Girls. And I'll just let you know that it is the most time I've spent in our yard :) The joys of a real house and no longer living in a dorm! I'm finding it much more humorous today than yesterday so I hope you can all enjoy a laugh or two at my expense...