Our New Home

We signed on a house today!!! We are so blessed! We found this house in our price range and it is right down the street from my school! I can walk, seriously it would take me all of 3 minutes from our front door to the school! If you click on the link (I hope it works), you should be able to see the house. They have painted the kitchen and dining area since they took the pictures ...it is a softer color now that looks great:) Another great part is that we get to close on August 20th, only 17 days!! Our pups will be thankful for that. Now we are praying that our house in Albuquerque sells:)

http://northassociates2.texas.remax.com/listings/listingdetail_r4.aspx?LID=48770463

TEXAS!!

It has been way to long since I have posted! Let me catch everyone up to speed;) I (Briana) drove out to Frisco last Sunday with Molly and Teddy! So far Frisco has far surpassed Charlie and I's expectations. Everyone we meet has been wonderful and the area is beautiful!

Currently we are staying with Charlie's sister JoDe, husband Rick and their two boys Noah and Jakob. They are so generous to let us stay during our transition period. We have started looking at some houses. Right now there seems to be a couple pretty great deals, so we will keep you posted on our search!

Charlie continues to enjoy his work. He is mostly studying and preparing for tests that he is and will be taking periodically. He passed one already, so he is off to a good start. I visited my school (and it is soooooo nice!) , I love the way it is set up. I also met all of the ladies I will be teaching, they seem to be a close group that works very well together! Such a blessing!! I might have to take a test to receive my standard Texas license, but for now I have a one-year license that will allow me to teach this school year.

Lastly, we are visiting a church tomorrow that we have a feeling might be our new church. It is called The Village and it is in Highland Village, Texas. Charlie visited last weekend and felt that it would be a great fit for us. For those of you who don't know, Desert Springs Church (in Albuquerque), was and is such a wonderful place to worship and grow. We hated to leave it and our friends too!! But on the positive side, this church was recommended by someone from Desert Springs and from what we understand is very similar. So that would be a so good to find our new church home and begin meeting new friends:)

Now that we are somewhat settled, I will try and post more often! ;)

Virtual Tour

You can see a virtual tour of our house on this website! Technology is so cool!!

http://www.mlsfinder.com/nm_swmls/kw_642/index.cfm?action=listing_detail&property_id=626491&searchkey=0e6b36ad-9ecb-f09f-708e-6e68de5f6799&npp=10&sr=21#

Just click on it and look for the virtual tour button.

House 4 Sale

We have good news! Someone is very interested in purchasing our home! (However, it is still up for sale.) But, if everything goes as "planned", we may have an offer next Tuesday! Praise God, He is so good. Don't worry I am not counting my chickens before they hatch! On the otherhand there is a really cool story to be told about this interested "person."

On Monday, a lady called to come and see our house. She came, looked around and then asked me why we were moving. I pointed to my lovely sister and said, "My family all lives in Kansas and we are trying to move closer...." Then she said, "Well, my mom lives in Winfield, Kansas." That was odd because.....my great-grandparents lived there (when they were alive) , for as long as I knew, so we figured they probably knew one another. We kept talking, and I mentioned my grandmother's, brother and wife, Floyd Ray and Valita. They had come to a few of my basketball games in college and had spent several Thanksgivings with them. That is when Kim, said..."Did you say Valita?" To make a loooong story shorter:) She told me that was her mother!! So she is my grandmother's, brother's, wife's daughter! So by marriage she is my 2nd cousin! Crazy!!! Soo...she is very interested in buying our home, but now we must wait and see if it all works out. So whether or not she gets it, it was still amazing that she called to view our house in all of Albuquerque and we I got to meet her!!

Here are a few pictures of the house! Enjoy!

Guest bedroom

Kitchen

Living Room

Entrance way from Kitchen

Larissa and Beau's Visit

Inside the tramcar, on the way up to the top!!

My wonderful sister and brother-in-law drove out to Albuquerque to spend the week with me! Today we took the World's Longest Tram up to the top of the Sandia Mountains. It was beautiful up there and very cold! We drove by the bank on the way up to the tram and it was 105 degrees! When we got to the top of the mountain at 10,300 feet, it was only 41 degrees!! Crazy huh! Anyway, we had a great time and we even saw a rainbow in the mountain!!

Larissa and I standing at the edge of the ramp, overlooking Albuquerque.
Beau and Larissa off the back of the mountain where the ski lifts are. The rainbow is right through the middle of the picture, by the time I got my camera ready to take it had faded:(
There is the rainbow!! Simply BEAUTIFUL!

A Tough Day

Today has been a tough day. Charlie left for Frisco today after church. It was very difficult for him to say goodbye to many of our wonderful, terrific and amazing friends there. Seeing how difficult it was for him made this whole move seem real for the first time. Since we found out, time has just flown and we really haven't had a chance to sit down and even think about it!

Charlie has especially had a lot going on these past couple weeks, and I really don't know how he has done it! From tiling bathrooms, to mowing the lawn, to finishing up with Cardinal Health, to packing, to painting.....he is the real life Superman I think:) So if you pray, please pray for him! He starts tomorrow morning with UNUM. Pray that once he gets settled in at JoDe and Rick's house (Charlie's sister) that he will have some time to relax and regain his strength!

My hero tiling our master bathroom!

Our New Jobs

We each have new jobs waiting for us when we get to Texas that we are thrilled about. Charlie will be working for UNUM, an employee benefits company. His "job title" is a sales consultant trainee, of employee benefits. Once he begins work (Monday July 7) we will be able to give a few more details on what his job will actually entail..... he does know several people in this industry who really enjoy the work and opportunities it will provide. As you know, Charlie is a very relational type of person, and we think this job will allow him to do what he enjoys doing most....building relationships with others! He will drive to Addison, Texas to his office each day, only about a 15-20 minute drive from Frisco, where we hope to be living.

I got a job at Christie Elementary in Frisco, teaching 4th grade. I report August 13 for new teacher orientation. Then school doesn't start until August 25!! Wow, with this move I extended my summer by 2 weeks, can't beat that:) My school looks fantastic and I will get a classroom INSIDE the building for the first time!! I am very excited about that part.....for those of you who don't know, I have taught all 3 years in a portable classroom, which has it's pros and cons....but think it will make my day a little more predictable (no windstorms, no sandstorms and no rainstorms while we walk to the building, 4 times a day:))

We will keep you posted on how those new jobs work are working out for us!

Let's try out this blog thing.....

Picture taken at our wonderful friends' Jeff and Debbie's house.
They had a going away party for us! There is a faint
rainbow behind us, along with the Sandia Mtns!!

So, I have seen others begin Blogs to share their lives with us...and I never thought about starting one of our own until just the other night. I mean, there is nothing too exciting to read about us, we don't have any children yet or even any on the way....but then I thought, it really would be a great place to reflect and share what is happening in our lives now and in the future. So hopefully this works out and people will enjoy reading it and get a chance to look into our lives and see what is going on, on a more regular basis.

For the past 8 years, we have both moved 3 or 4 times each! We create close friendships and then....it seems it is time to move. It has always been an exciting move, we both love to travel and meet new people. But it is always hard to leave people behind. Well, we are getting ready to move again, to Frisco, Texas. We are VERY excited about the move, but yet have a feeling of sadness in our hearts, as we leave friends and family and our first home as a married couple of the last 3 years in Albuquerque.

When people ask us "why" we are moving, the best answer I can come up with is that we would like to live closer to my family, yet we want to move to a central place where Charlie's family can still all get together and with JoDe and Rick already living in Frisco it seems like the ideal spot. There are of course other reasons, but when it comes down to it, if we are ever going to move, now seems like the best time and Frisco seems like the right place.

So I guess what I was trying to say is, we are moving yes, but hopefully everyone can keep up with us through this blog, how cool is that!!! Thank you for taking the time to read about our lives, we pray this will be a tool that will help keep us close to all of those we love, miss and care about, even when we don't see them as often as we wish we could!






Enjoying the Tim McGraw concert at Journal Pavilion.