The everydays

The land of the Lawrence family was starting to slow down and now it's picking back up again! Last month we traveled out of town three weekends in a row.  Time with family was wonderful: San Francisco, Phoenix, and LA! We went from moderate at home, to cold weather in San Fran, to scorching hot in Phoenix, and leveled out in LA.  We'll be glad to fall to come, with it's sweaters, backed goods, and now the start of football season!

Sun Devil football is big talk over here. While we may  not get to attend you can bet jerseys are worn and tv's are primed for the night.

Sun Devil football!

 In exciting news, things are picking up with school and new (ish) jobs.  B and I are both 7 of 12 classes into our masters.  The extra difficult classes have officially begun (they actually begun two classes ago) and we are in the home stretch.  Prayers for sanity and sleep are always welcomed ;)
About two weeks ago B and I were both promoted to new jobs.  We are working at the same places, but different positions.  New, exciting challenges and changing lives!

Lately, we've been praying for this little guy:
http://www.youcaring.com/fundraiser_details?fundraiser_id=8913&url=babyboazbiliaryatresiafund
Trenton is the 4 month son of our friends, Greg and Jill Boaz.  He was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a disease affecting his liver.  In a short amount of time, he has already spent a third of his little life in the hospital going through surgeries and tests.  We continue to pray for healing and God's hand as they go through this time. 

The next few weeks bring papers, new responsibilities, longer papers, the end of summer, papers, papers, and hopefully some good friend time.  Soon we take a break and take a mini-vacation.  Until then, we write!

Round Two!

After an almost year-long hiatus, I am going to try keeping our blog again!  Let's see if we can keep up this time :)

This past year God has been working in our jobs, our relationship, in our friendships.  Growing up is tiring.  Learning is tiring.  Did you know there is a lot of stuff to learn about being an adult? About being married? About finding out who we are?  Yup, lot's to learn.  All that to be said, we are learning what everyone older than us already knows. Amidst the learning we are sure having a blast.  Life is great and we are having a lot of fun.  Our most recent burst of fun was a trip up to San Francisco to visit B's brother, Greg.  What a vibrant city!  We visited downtown, the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, ate Italian food, and enjoyed cold weather.  B grew up with chilly winters, but me not so much.  So, to think about 55* August afternoons is crazy talk!

Golden Gate Bride and San Fran skyline with the hubs

As you can tell by the scarf, sweater, and boots...it was chilly!  We are both rather fond of the chillyness that accompanies places other than Phoenix or SoCal.  Maybe we'll have to try somewhere new when our degrees are over?

B at Muir Beach

Muir Woods with B's brother and parents

Next stop?  We will be exchanging boots for tank tops as we tackle the 115* at my parents house in Phoenix.  Family two weeks in a row, pretty great.

Quick Notes

It's been too long since we've made a post.  It is late and we wont fully get to one but we'll so a short blurb!


In about four hours we are leaving for the airport (yup, we should be sleeping...not writing blogs) for a 6 o'clock flight to Virginia.  We will be joining B's family for a 4 day, west-coast excursion.  I can't wait to meet parts of the family I have yet to meet and to see the family I met at our wedding.  I have scarves, coasts, gloves and adorable new Christmas shoes pack and ready to go!

B and I are doing great out in San Diego.  We'll post more about specifics later but we're working, doing grad school and just loving being newly-weds!  Hopefully you received  Christmas card and I hope we keep getting them in the mail.  There are about four on the fridge so far!

Merry Christmas to everyone. I pray that your Christmas is filled with the love and joy God gives!  We can't wait to celebrate the birth of our savior in just a few days.  What a joyous reason to celebrate!

Love,
D and B

Tis the season

Tis the season for....

1. Fun
2. Lovely weather
3. Busy-ness
4. Fun holidays

As soon as Halloween comes around I am ready to go for the holidays.  It is without a doubt my favorite time of the year.  From October to February there almost 10 fantasticly fun holidays.  Lets see.....Halloween, Thanksgiving, (this year we get to throw in Colin and Jenny's wedding!), my birthday, Christmas, New Years, B's birthday, Valentine's day and the day B and I started dating.  See my point?  It's the most fantastic time of the year.

Colin and Jenny's wedding was last weekend, which was a blast!  After a terrible flight/morning B and I finally made it into Phoenix.  We had girl/guy lunch before heading the the rehearsal.  Meeting all of the bridal party was fun.  They are so quirky and made the event fun.  Then the rehearsal dinner was great.  We headed over to their house to eat and spend time with our family. It is always wonderful getting to have our family in town, it doesn't happen very often.  B had a ball jumping on the trampoline with my 10 year old cousin, Eric.  Then the BIG DAY!  We went to our brunches, primped our hair (both B and D!), and off to the chapel...kinda.  Their wedding was so 'Colin and Jenny'.  It was help at an art gallery in downtown Phoenix that was once a warehouse.  Very snazzy.  The ceremony was beautiful and made me cry, of course.  Everyone had a blast and loved seeing them make that commitment to each other!

Next comes Thanksgiving...turkey, casserole, potatoes, big comfy couches, family...can't wait!  We're going to be at B's parents this weekend so we can have an opportunity to see his family before Christmas.  Then for the actual Thanksgiving celebration/my birthday celebration we are headed back out to Phoenix.

In other news-we started grad school yesterday!  Today is now day two and so far we have all of our assignments done.  Maybe we'll have to go to a coffee shop at the beach next week to do our work ;)

All is well on the Lawrence-front!

Grad School

That's right....a few months off and we're back in the game.  God has blessed us with the opportunity to go back to school for very little.  Brian will be able to go back for free and because I am a spouse I can go for just about nothing.  Who would have seen that as a reason to move out here!?  Just one more way God was setting us up for success.  Anyways....our applications are in, Brian filled out his financial aid yesterday, and I just finished.  Hopefully it'll all be in place and we will be starting on November 15th!  We are able to pick specializations to go along with our degrees.  I will be getting a Masters in education with 2 specializations: Higher Education and Mathematical Education.  Brian will be getting a Masters in Organizational Management with a specialization in Organizational Leadership.  Exciting!


We are so excited for this weekend to start the holiday festivities.  A friend comes into town, B's parents will be in San Diego for business next week and then my brother's wedding!!!  I'm so excited to go out to Phoenix and celebrate Colin and Jenny.  Then Thanksgiving, my sister comes into town, Disneyland and Christmas in Virginia!  Can you tell I'm a holiday kind of girl??? I am SO ready for it to be about 10 degrees colder, bake cookies, have mochas, ice skate and go to the Grinch!

Team FUN!

I have done a rather poor job of updating our blog lately.  But, let's put that aside.  Nothing too crazy has been going on but we have been having a lot of fun!  Needless to say...this will be a big post :]

Brian's job is still going great.  He is learning how to be more efficient with what he has to do and even helping other people do the same.  Between creating a number system to sort student numbers and teaching people to send emails 40X quicker they are loving his help!  We joke that if he had a computer degree he could be one of their computer-tech guys! The newest thing is that we are now eligible to start school again.  A few months off and now it's time to become graduate students!!  God has truly blessed us.  We could have never seen the opportunity for B to go back to school for free and me for 80% off to be one of the reasons God was leading us towards SD.  That is one blessing that we are still in awe of!

My job at Sylvan is going great!  Now that I've been there for close to two months I am understanding how all of the programs work much better.  Earlier this week I had one of those realizations that I didn't have to think about what to do next anymore.  It feels nice to have a rhythm and be a part of things.  I now have some more administrative responsibilities that I am really enjoying.  Those that went to school with me know how much I like do admin/office type things.  The people I work with are just lovely-it's a great fit!

We have been up to a lot of fun lately. Somehow we put a bunch of great activities all together.

Two weeks ago we had a lovely fall weekend of apple picking with Brian's family.  We were just expecting his parents but Greg (B's brother) came down from San Fran to surprise us! The five of us went to a Tehachepi and came away with about 40 apples each!

About a week ago Thursday B and I geeked out...I mead geeeeeeeeeeeeeeked out.  We went with a few friends to see...wait for it.........Lord of the Rings in Orchestra.  It ended up being a blast!  They played the entire first movie on the screen while the German National Orchestra played the music for the entire 3 hours!  There were points where we would get distracted and only be watching the movie because they played so well.

The next night we went to a pumpkin patch.  That one was upon my request!  We went up to Lakeside to get a few pumpkins and go on a hay ride.  What a lovely place!  The patch we went to was way more than a parking lot pumpkin store.  It was on a farm where they grow the pumpkins and people can go pick them from the ground.  A cow had been born that afternoon so we were given the opportunity to go see it as a part of our hay ride.  After the ride, playing kiddie games, petting animals and finding someone to take a picture of us (usually we can only get one of us int he picture!) we enjoyed sorting through their pumpkins.  Our house is quite festive now.  A

Our apartment doesn't look quite like this but......still a lot of gourds!

Baby cow-born that day

A picture together! YES!

And, somehow there is more fun!  The next day, after a great brunch-date, we did archery....yup....arrows...targets...the whole shebang.  We found it on groupon a while ago.  Mr. Archery-Merit-Badge-Counselor husband of mine decided to teach me.  We had a great time.  I never missed the target-woo!  And, B was the star of the class.  He won the game we played by getting closest to the center and then hit the exact center! There was even a prize involved.

Hash House for brunch! They are known for their crazy large portions.  B and I split this meal and only ate 3/4 of it!

That's right!  And I always hit the yellow, red or blue. 

They call hitting the exact middle joining the spider club.

Then to end the hoopla we had a big group of friends over to watch the ASU game and eat apple crisp.  There were still so many apples left from the prior week's events!  

Life in SD is going lovely.  There is much more going on that is less surface than the fun we've been having but maybe I'll go into that tomorrow!  This weekend is going to be a quick turn-around to PHX for my sister-in-law-to-be's bridal shower!  Can't wait!

BLACKOUT!

BLACKOUT!  Depending on which state you're reading this from it could mean something different. Right now, Brian and I are spending out pre-bed time watching a few minutes of the first Arizona State game of the season.  Go Devils, we are doing amazing!  It's the debut of our new black uniforms....which looks quite intimidating...and the whole stadium is decked out in black.  Team Lawrence may not be there but we've been sporting our school gear all night.  Trying to represent out in SD. 

If you're in California you either experienced or heard of the largest power-outage in our history.  Yesterday afternoon at 3:30 all of the power in the house went off.  Usually after about 2 minutes it comes back.  After about 5 minutes I didn't quite know what to do.  So, I of course called B at work wondering if I should call the apartment manager or the electric company.  Turns out his entire work building was down too.  We were quite impressed, seeing as he works 20 miles away.  Throughout the night we found out that the power was out from LA, to Mexico, to Yuma....wow.  Blackout! It took B 2.5 hours to get home, gah.  We decided to make the best out of the situation and have fun.  Two days earlier I bought 5 things of steak so that was first choice for dinner.  A few friends came over, we filled the apartment with candles, ate steak and enjoyed talking.  The candles made the apartment hot and sleeping was not fun at all.  I'm used to having AC or a ceiling fan out in PHX...not here.  We have little fans near our bed and don't turn on the AC so I have a hard time sleeping normally.  Luckily at about 1:45am we heard the buzz on the little fans....mmmmm....we were happy campers.  So, Brian did have to go to work, the stores were open again, and SoCal in once again in working order!

We live next door to Greg and Kill Boaz.  David was over too so the three of them joined us for the evening.

Brian, Greg and David in our living room.

It was pitch dark, making the moon shine brighter than we've seen anywhere in the city.

The sky last night was one of the most exciting parts of the blackout yesterday.  Not a light for hundreds of miles.  Just the glow of the moon.  The sky was almost gray because of the absence of city lights.  God sure gave us a gift!  We got to enjoy each other's company and marvel at His creation.  We woke up to a much cooler San Diego today.  It has been hot and muggy this week due the the day of rain Monday. Gross.  But, today was breezy and lovely.  I felt like it was a little present from God.  "Here ya go, guys.  Just because I love you."

Now, back to the game. Take that Mizzou!