4th of July

On the 4th of July, Bo and I went with our best friends Jerry and Anna to Lake Wilderness for the day. They had games for the kids, lawn chairs, a bbq, games for the adults, blankets, everything we needed for a day out in the sun! We got there at about noon and stayed until just after 11pm. We had a great time playing cards, some sort of golf, Bo won the potato sack race, playing catch phrase, throwing football and just hanging out together. Jerry took pictures of the fireworks display so those pictures are courtesy of him. Actually all the pictures are courtesy of Jerry and Anna because i didn’t even have my camera. Happy Belated Independence Day!!!

House Update

We put our offer on the house on May 20th and got to stick the “for sold” sign then. It was pretty exciting for us. The process has been moving along with permits, down payments, deposits and all that other stuff you can’t actually see on the property. Today was our “pre construction” meeting and the day they drop lumber. They’ve laid the foundation already and are scheduled to begin constructing the frame on Monday July 7th. Estimated closing date is September 19th which the superintendent told me has an 85% chance of being correct. He said even if they finish early, we won’t close early so I guess September 19th will be the earliest we can get in. Between house sitting, parents, friends and possibly trailers, we should be taken care of for the month and a half we will be homeless after returning from our honeymoon. Eventually the house will look like the one below but it will be blue. We’re getting so excited about the wedding, honeymoon and house! So much to look forward to! I’m still looking for a job as well…. it’s pretty amazing how a house can go from this to this in a matter of months…. so exciting!!!!

Nothing New…

Not much to report this week. Bo started his new job and is enjoying it. They have daily devotions as well as a weekly chapel service where he works now which is pretty awesome that he can take his faith to work. He won’t be able to go to all the services because he’s the new guy and has to man the phones right now but that will change at some point. He works Mon-Fri from 8am-5pm and hasn’t had to stay late yet like he did at his last job.

I’m still looking for a job but have 2 new leads. I’ll find out from 1 this week at some point and the other probably won’t be until next week because the recruiter is out of town this week. I’m not sure which job I want more, the first one is work that I LOVE and that pays very well, BUT it would be going back to shift work again based on seniority which I have none of. It’s also only 4 days per week with 3 days off which is nice as well and there’s lots of overtime available so I’d make enough for us to buy the appliances we need for our house (washer, dryer & fridge). The other job pays less but it would be normal Mon-Fri 8am-5pm with no weekends or holidays or any of that which I love the idea of. We’ll see where God wants me if either of these leads pan out.

The house is going great, i’ll post pictures tomorrow. The foundation has been laid, it looks REALLY small and the yard is quite a bit smaller than we thought as well. The patio hasn’t been laid yet so after it is, i’m thinking we’re only going to have about 4 feet of yard from the back of the patio to the fence in the back. We’ll see. Estimated closing date is still Sept 19th though the pessimist in me is planning on October 1st.

The wedding is in 18 days, things are still being planned and being changed and being worked out. I’m so ready to be done with it all right now. I just want to get married, go on our honeymoon and come home and live together but none of it is going to happen that way. There are more details to work out for the wedding, bags to stuff, decorating to do, payments to make, confirmation to call on, dress to pick up, etc etc etc. And we have to print everything for the honeymoon, pack for 2 weeks with no laundry available and get there then when we return home on Aug 1, we have no place to live since the house isn’t going to be up until Sept 19th. We’ve got some house sitting jobs lined up for that time but just a week here or a few days there, other than that we’ll probably be with his mom depending on where she’s at, or my parents or in a friends trailer until our house is done. Not exactly how we planned on starting our new life together but we’re so thankful that we have the inconvenience of being homeless for 6 weeks to get our own home it doesn’t matter. I’m so excited for the wedding, I think it will be great. We went to a friends wedding at our church this last weekend and it was so beautiful, I LOVED it. It was simple and classy and beautiful and fun. Our wedding should be similar to theirs but we’re having food catered and we have a DJ as well which they didn’t but I’m hoping it’s similar to theirs because it was just perfect.

I’ll write more tomorrow after I have the frame walk meeting with the superintendent for our house and post pictures of what’s there so far. Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave a comment, here’s how to do it again (i know it’s kind of confusing on this page) … click on the red “comments” word below. Enter your comment in the box, click on “name/url” and you can enter your name as who the blog is from. You do not have to have an account to post a blog, you just have to have a name :)

Much love!
Kari & Bo

Job PRAISE!!!!

Thank you so much for your prayers! Bo got a job! And he got THE job… the one he really wanted! It’s a temp to hire position through a staffing agency for an international Christian agency. Bo had a phone interview yesterday and went in for the personal interview today. He called me as he was leaving the interview and told me all about it. He said they told him he would hear about the results of the interview today. About 10 minutes later as we were still talking about how the interview went, the staffing agency was calling on the other line already offering him the job! He starts this week! It couldn’t have worked out better! He gets to do the desktop support/computer/IT stuff that he loves AND he gets to do it for a Christian organization… I am just so amazed and thankful for how God works things out. I still need a job, but I’m not near as desperate as I was, ready to jump into anything that was offered to me anywhere for any amount of money. I can narrow my search back down to the local community and take a lesser pay because we don’t NEED me to make that much anymore since Bo will bring in most of the income. Please keep that in your prayers.

On another note, my parents found out today that their beloved dog Sampson has Cancer. Apparently with this breed of Rottweiler it’s common. He’s such a wonderful dog and plays so well with my niece Chloe, it’s of course heartbreaking news. They don’t know to what extent yet but it’s just sad he has more medical issues to deal with after having surgery to have both of his knees replaced in the past 1-2 years. Maybe it’s just a small skin tumor, that’s what we’re praying for so it can just be removed and all will be well.

Thank you again for all your prayers, we appreciate it so much!

Love,
Bo and Kari

Job Prayer

Most of you are aware of the situation Bo and I are in and how we’re both desperately seeking jobs right now within the next 2 weeks to try to save our house. Well, I’ve applied for quite a few and interviewed for 1 so far and didn’t get it. Bo has applied for quite a few as well and had a phone interview today with a Christian Agency needing an IT/desktop support guy which is what he does. He was so excited about this opportunity to work in a Christian environment doing what he loves. He had the phone interview today and they liked him and said they’re looking to fill the position immediately and requested he come in for an in person interview tomorrow. Yay!!!! So please keep the situation and his interview tomorrow in your prayers!

(this picture of him is about 2 years old… probably similar to how he will look tomorrow for his interview, all nice and dressed up, super excited but also scared like a deer in the headlights look)

Bridal Shower

Anna threw me the best bridal shower today! We had a lot of fun and didn’t have to play the “dress the bride up in toilet paper” game! We did play a few games one of which had everyone cracking up to the point of tears. It was a lot of fun. Here are just a few pictures…. I’m only including me, my mom, my sister and anna because they know any pictures I get are subject to being posted on the internet but i’ll respect everyone elses privacy to be nice :) Thank you so much to everyone who came, I’m so glad you could come and share this day with me and play games and be goofy. I love you all!

What’s going on…

Well my goal was to be blogging at least weekly to have some consistency for our readers but I’ve been slacking. I have no excuse. I’ve thought about writing a blog about dependence/trust in God a few times over the past few weeks but blown it off. So I’ll give you the readers digest version here.

When I applied for the World Race, I did it for application practice, I never once actually thought about leaving for a year and what that would mean. When I got accepted, I had to finally consider that and was put in a place of dependence on the Lord to tell me what to do, when, where and how to do it. It was a big deal for me to think about quitting my job, selling my house, getting rid of my pets, leaving my family/friends, etc. That was my first big lesson in dependence on the Lord. My second was while on the race, pretty much all year long I was in a place of dependence for one reason or another and God got me through the year.

As Bo and I have been preparing for our wedding, honeymoon and new life together after we get married, we talked a lot about what we wanted from our marriage. We want a home where we can be comfortable spending time together and we want time together. We’ve never lived together so we’re really looking forward to having real time together, not just weekend time like we normally get now. We decided I would work part time to supplement his income so I could also be home taking care of the house and him as my new husband. After a few months of searching, we found a house we could afford on his salary and bought it. It’s a new construction home so it’s not built yet and closing is not expected until mid September (though i’m assuming it will be more like Oct 1)…

We were so excited, the wedding plans are going great, the honeymoon is almost paid off, I’ve been looking for part time jobs (while i’m working part time from home), he got a new job that he loves, we got our loan approved and it’s just on hold for closing time. He started his new job 2 1/2 weeks ago and has enjoyed every minute of it and is learning a lot. Then he got paid on Friday and there was a discrepancy. Come to find out, him and his boss were talking about 2 different figures when confirming his wages and what Bo was talking about as an hourly rate, his boss heard as a yearly rate and that’s what he paid him at. It’s 50% less than what we budgeted and got our loan on and it’s about 1/2 the amount of money he was making at his last job. How this big of a miscommunication occurred, we have no idea but it did and we have to deal with it. We quickly came to terms with reality that there is a really good chance we will lose our house now and the large sum of non refundable money we put down on it but we’re ok with that. It sucks of course, but we’ll get through it.

For Bo, he believes this is a lesson of dependence on the Lord. He feels that situations like this where you basically get completely knocked completely off track unexpectedly is a lesson of learning to be dependent on God. I’ve already learned that lesson, many times over… why do I have to learn this one again? For me, it’s a lesson on walking with God. Bo and I were doing everything on our own, HE got a job, WE got a house, WE are getting married, etc, and we hadn’t been giving God the glory for providing the job, the house, the relationship. We recognized this a while back and even joined a new bible study group to try to pull God back into our relationship and we love our new bible study group, but all it did for us was add a Wednesday night service into our week in addition to our Sunday morning services we attend. It didn’t refocus our relationship on God, we weren’t really spending that much more time in the Word and in prayer like we had hoped, we just added another service to our week.

We finally realized that an additional “service” added into the week won’t bring us closer to God and one another, only we can do that intentionally if we make the daily effort. So while Bo is learning his lesson of dependence on God, I am learning my lesson about walking daily with God, we’re both growing in our relationships with the Lord and with each other and it’s great. We’re facing losing our house that’s going to start being built probably on Monday and losing a substantial amount of money but we realize that’s life. Life happens. What matters is how we respond to it and get THROUGH it. We have to go through this, we can’t go around it, we can’t just skip it or ignore it, we have to deal with it and we’re doing well.

I can’t say that I did well initially… I was standing in Costco at the checkout line crying like a blubbering idiot on my phone to a friend who was trying to enjoy the Disneyland experience on her family vacation. I doubt she even heard anything that i said other than the snotty sniffing, heavy breathing occasional yelling about how upset I was that this happened. Ha. There’s another lesson for me, my initial reactions. Ugh.

Anyways, Bo and I are desperately seeking jobs, we’re hoping he can get a new job immediately making at least what he made at his previous job (a contract position that expired so he can’t go back) and I can find a part time job that pays decent and we may have the opportunity to save our house and our money. We don’t want to lose the house or our money, but it’s not the end of our world if we do. We are still getting married, we will still be starting a new life together and following where God leads us whether it’s in our new house or in an apartment.

I interviewed for a new job (full time) on Monday and should hear back next week. Bo is getting a few interviews set up hopefully for next week. I would love to get this job, it’s SUPER close to home, it’s Mon-Fri 8:30am-5:00pm with city benefits and I could do it well. The pay isn’t great, but I wouldn’t be spending really any money on gas/travel, i could leave at 8:25am and be home at 5:05pm and still have time with Bo (assuming he’ll be working days too) and have good medical benefits for the both of us. I think it would be great for us, we’ll see if God wants me to have this one though.

In other news, my dad is doing great! Cancer free and he had his first epidural cortisone injection on Friday which seems to be working great and relieved a lot of his pain. If it continues to work it may prevent him from having to have another surgery so we’re praying for that.

Mom is doing well also, she’s at home with Chloe now who is also doing great! I’ve been practicing with her to be the flower girl, she has her little basket filled with flower petals and she’s great at throwing them everywhere but not so great at walking at the same time. I’m assuming she’ll just end up running down the aisle to either Bo or her mom and not throwing anything but she’ll be so cute it will be funny anyways.

Ok back to work! Much love to you all!
Bo and Kari

June 3 Updates

Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted an update. So here’s the latest…

Dad got his first post-op PSA (cancer) test back after 6 weeks and it shows he is cancer free! Praise the Lord. His recovery from the surgery is great except the nerve damage he has as a result of the surgery. He’s in horrible pain and the doctors haven’t been able to control it with medication yet though they’ve tried a few different medications already. He’s going to start cortisone injections soon to see if that will help. He’s back to work and works in the shop as well so it’s nice for him to get out and about though he’s not back full time yet.

Chloe has been back at my parents house weekly again since dad is feeling better and she’s been a blast to hang out with. Here are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks….

Other than that, Bo started a new job yesterday that he loves so far. He’s an IT guy for a computer store and works in an office but also gets to go to homes to work on computers as well so he’s not always stuck in the office.

I’m looking for a full time job. I applied for 1 job that I’m interested in but haven’t heard anything back from them yet and have been told to just wait. I’m also a Creative Memories consultant again which I enjoy but isn’t bringing in much income so it’s more of a hobby than a job. The job I applied for is very close to the house Bo and I just bought which is part of the reason I’d love to have it, so I don’t have to drive far.

Our house… YAY! We bought a house! It’s not built yet but here’s what it will look like once it is (a different color though) ….They applied for our permit yesterday and will hopefully receive it within a week so they can start construction. We plan on being homeless for about a month after our wedding until the house is complete, we talked about pitching a tent in the driveway and just living there anyways but i doubt the construction guys would allow that to happen. hahaha. We had a blast at the new home showroom picking out all of our flooring, countertops, cabinets, colors, etc. But man they really get you in there, you have to pay for lights in the rooms, apparently new homes don’t come with ceiling lights so you have to buy those individually and pay per light if you want a light in a room. UGH… they really can nickel and dime you to death but Bo and I did well with the selections, we spent a LITTLE more than our budget we had set but we got a TON for it so we’re very excited. We still need to buy a fridge, washer & dryer then we have to get to work on our back yard since it only comes with dirt and rocks.

Wedding planning is going well, we have all the major details worked out (i think), we’re just trying to finish up all the minor details and everything we forgot or didn’t even think about and figure out how to fit all the people inside the church (yikes). We still need to get the flower girl/ring bearer dresses for my niece and Bo’s niece (they are both about 2 1/2 years old), find wedding favors, come up with programs, pick music, get the guys fitted for tux’s, go on a diet to fit in my dress, get that altered and who knows what else, hahaha.

The honeymoon planning is going well. We’re still paying that off as well but our wedding registry is a honeymoon registry so if people chose to purchase gifts for us, they can purchase things for our honeymoon like offshore excursions, pictures, a special dinner, etc. So we’re paying off the actual trip itself (cruise, hotel, airfare, etc) but have registered for some of the extra fun stuff that we might not be able to afford. We’re leaving straight from our reception to the airport to catch a red eye flight to New York. Our cruise ship leaves New York City the following day at noon and heads to the Eastern Caribbean for 8 days. We’re stopping at St. Thomas, San Juan and Tortola. Following the cruise we have a 3 night stay in Manhattan (Times Square) to hang out and sight see in New York and visit with some of Bo’s friends and family from his summers he used to spend there. We return home and have to find a place to live for a month or so while our house is being finished. We don’t have an exact closing date on it yet but we should get that this week.

That’s it for updates now. I hope you are all doing well. I’ll try to post more regularly so there’s not so much to say each time. Be back soon!

Love,
Bo & Kari

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How to comment on blogs

If you want to comment on a blog post here, just click on the red “comment” word below. Enter your comment in the box, if you have a blogspot account, you can then enter that information, if not, click on “name/url” and you can enter your name as who the blog is from. You do not have to have an account to post a blog, you just have to have a name :)

Email me if you have any questions. boandkari@kaidok.net