Emily's Wedding: Zoo

Even with our super late night, we had to get up early and clean up the beach house to be out of it by 12pm.  With Alexa in tow, we decided we'd spend our real last day of vacation at the Portland Zoo.  It was wonderful.

I loved watching this goat.  He never moved!

Alexa's portrait of mom and dad on the train ride.

And at the end of the day, it is so nice to be 3 so you can just lay down on the ground.

Girls Weekend in Portland

I was able to fly to Portland Thursday night and spend a wonderful night with Allison, Kelly and Kelly's family. 

We spent a little time at Pacific University, which was very weird.  Like my home away from home that really isn't that for me anymore.  It will still always have such a special place in my heart!

Kelly, Allison and I did a lot of walking around stores, to pass the time for Amy to be done with work.  Target, Best Buy, Sports Authority, Michael's, Old Navy, Barnes & Noble, which was the most fun!  That night we all went to Macaroni Grill and were unhappy to find the calorie counts printed next to each item. 

We enjoyed breakfast at Elmers, even with the worst waitress I've probably ever had.  We watched Inception and The Social Network.  Then Kelly went back to her parent's house for a birthday party and Amy, Allison & I went to Chipotle for dinner.  It was delicious, as always, and I ate way TOO much of it, as always.

Sunday, we went to the church we all went to together in college and were blessed to hear Phil Joel (old member of the Newsboys) speak.  He was fantastic and spoke the message straight to my heart.  We then spent some time cleaning up the house we stayed in (Amy was house-sitting and they agreed to letting us all stay there.  It was like a dream house, a house I'd love to have but realize is probably too grand for us!)

Monday, Kelly & I met up with Amy in Portland for lunch before I had to get on a plane.

Intermixed between all those activities, was plenty and plenty of girl talk, which we all so desperately needed and wanted.  It was such a simple weekend, but perfect just the same, as each time we get together it is like no time has passed and we pick up right where we left off!

Now to the pictures!

This is the 1 picture I took!  We were headed to Chipotle and decided since we were only going to pick it up, we didn't need to change out of pajama's, which we wore pretty much the entire weekend.  But the only shoes we all had were dressy ballet flats.  We got to Chipotle to find the parking lot very empty, which excited us, but as soon as we got out of the car, so did 5 other car loads of people.  I'm sure we got some very interesting looks, but we were gone as fast as we got there!

We did manage to get 1 group shot before we parted ways but it was on another camera and I don't have it yet!

Pictureless Post

Updates on The Bailey's

• MaryBeth LOVES spending her days with Lilli, who can finally army crawl good enough to get wherever she wants. If you hold her fingers to support her, she's an excellent walker.
• Marcel LOVES working at the Boys & Girls Club in Kuna. It's a lot different than the other 4 summers he has worked at a club, but he's still enjoying spending time with the kids.
• MaryBeth is just about finished with her first official week of training for a half-marathon. The training schedule will have her ready to race on or after September 4th, just in time for her 25th birthday, which is what motivated her to run a half-marathon in the first place
• Marcel is just about finished with his first year of graduate school. He is currently taking 3 classes (2 online only, and 1 on the Thursday night class session) so that they have the month of August off. When they start up again in September it's just 2 months before starting student teaching
• MaryBeth is still spending her free time couponing! She is loving how far she can stretch her small budget by matching sale prices with coupons.
• Marcel is still spending his free time at church. He recently auditioned to play drums and guitar on the worship team. He played drums in the Wednesday night service, which they use as practice before playing on a Sunday service. He'll slowly start playing the guitar, but the more he plays on the worship team, the fewer Sundays he has to run the sound board, which he has been doing great on. What it must be like to be so talented that people fight over where to use you!
• They are both getting very excited for th Bailey Reunion in Puyallup, Washington in July. It's just a weekend trip, but we're staying an extra day to make it down to Oregon to see some old friends. After the reunion, Snoh is coming to spend about 3 weeks with them. They plan to spend a day at the water park (because Snoh tells them everytime they talk that he's finally tall enough for the big rides), swim in Wende Lady's pool, play in the big sandbox, and other fun things to be determined!

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

Oh How I'll Miss Thee

The time has just about come...the boxes have been packed, the apartment has been cleaned, the jobs have ended, the education has been achieved, now all that's ahead of us is the move.

In memory of my over 5 years, and Marcel's 4, in Forest Grove here is everything I am going to miss...

• MAKA--I never called us that before but as I was making a list of everything that had to get done before I could leave this place, a party with MaryBeth, Amy, Kelly and Allison was on the top of the list. My handwriting is large, but my planner isn't, so it became the MAKA party...I could go on and on about why I'll miss these girls. People say that high school is the best years of your life and I believed them...until I went to college, where I made the friends I'll have forever. They were there for me through everything. When school, home, Marcel, or just life in general was getting the best of me, they helped me see the bigger picture.

• Pacific University--I'll start by saying this was not the school's logo the entire time I was a student, but now it's undergone a much needed facelift. Pacific was my home away from home for a year, and then finally became my home when I started spending my summer breaks here too. I can still remember the first time I called this place my home to my mom! It gave me more opportunities than I ever thought I could get out of college. I met some of the greatest people ever here, had the coolest bosses ever (even the President!), and had more fun than I could ever try to recall.
• Sonrise Church--It reminds me of my first semester at Pacific, trying so hard to find a church that wasn't just a college group; we all wanted a family church, one that had kids, young adults, adults and even an elderly crowd. With the help of Whitney's pastor at home, Sonrise became just that for us. I started attending there January 2005, and teaching in the Preschool Sunday School Class (the same class I taught up until moving) in October 2006. It gives me hope to know that if I was lucky enough to find a church that would help me grow spiritually once, I will be able to do it again, as Marcel and I search for a new church home together.
  I don't believe luck actually had anything to do with it! It was more like a God thing :)
  

• Meadowlark--Our first place! How could I not miss the place we spent our first 6 months of marriage? While we were stressed about having a place to live, this place practically found us. It provided us a safe place to live close to school and close enough to work. I may or may not miss the actual apartment, but the time spent in #34 will be cherished forever, and I know that we will always look back on the days spent here.


• Bailey Avenue--I drove by this road every day I drove to the gym from Forest Grove and have no recollection of it until my first day back to work after my honeymoon—when I was finally a Bailey. For reference, I had been working at the gym for nearly 7 months at that point! In a book we got from Marcel’s mom, I read about the importance of prayer cues, having something to remind you to pray specific prayers. This street served as my prayer cue to pray about my marriage, my husband, my life as a wife, whatever was on my mind and heart about our marriage. While I hated the 30 minute drive through the city, this sign slowly earned a place in my heart and started me praying about the most important thing in my life. Now that I have dedicated time to continually pray those things early in our marriage, I can continue to follow the same pattern even without my prayer cue.

• 24 Hour Fitness & Banana Republic--I started working at both these places, hoping they’d be very temporary until I could find something more practical for my using my education. I soon felt very discouraged when job searching was going nowhere so I was happy to take a month or two off from looking. Then the economy happened and I was simply grateful to be working at all, when at 1 point, 14% of people in Oregon weren’t. I spent probably way too much time complaining about these places, but looking back now they were awesome. At both places, I met great people and learned great things about myself. Plus, as I recently told my mom, the gym has taught me more about parenting than I ever thought I’d learn before actually becoming a parent.
  
• No Sales Tax--When I went to the dollar store the other day to buy Christmas wrapping paper, I took in a single $1 bill. After the move that is something I'll no longer be able to do. It seems so little, but still something I'll miss!

Girl's Night Out

A few weekends ago (really I have no idea how long ago it was--time is running together with everything we have to get done!), we had a reunion. Amy, Kelly, and Allison were all at my house for a girl's night. We kicked Marcel out of our apartment--he had a party of his own--and had one of the best girl's night ever. We stayed up entirely way too late, which we expected, and then headed to Woodburn for shopping at the Outlet Mall...

We didn't take many pictures, but this is my favorite:

Allison, Kelly, MaryBeth, Amy

Oh, and if you click on the photo to view it larger, you'll notice a big scratch right between my eyebrows. I did it to myself during a nap. I guess that is what I get for sleeping when I should have been packing or cleaning, or really anything else productive. Because of it Marcel has added a new nickname for me to his collection: Harry, because it resembles Harry Potter's scar!

This Place...

In my last post I said that I could not have possibly caught up on the 2 years I hadn't written in my journal, but I did write about what I was feeling at that time. Again, I said last time that it is already packed up but what I wrote about is still tugging on my heart, so I'm writing about it again...

I had spent the day packing up and while I am excited beyond belief to be moving I was getting very emotional for the following reasons:

• This place has been my home for over 5 years
• This place is where all my closest friends are
• This place is what brought Marcel and I together (I didn't reread this far back in my journal, but I know that as a senior in high school, I was scared about picking a college because I had hoped and dreamed that would be the place God would show me my husband, and at 18 that thought was scary!)
• This place is where Marcel and I have spent our entire relationship: dating, engaged, and now married
• This place allows me to visit our wedding site whenever I want...nothing is as good as going back to campus and walking through the place we exchanged our wedding vows and remembering the excitement of that day!
• This place has changed me into the person I am today

Even with all of that and some things I will miss about Forest Grove (I have a draft of a post I'll publish when it gets closer to moving day) I am super excited to be returning to Idaho, closer to my family after these last 5 years of being gone. I am forever grateful for everything Forest Grove and Pacific University has done for me and could see us ending back in this area God-willing, but for now my time here is complete and I need to head somewhere else to keep growing in my relationships with my husband, my parents, my sisters, and of course God.