{our} life be like...

ooo aahh ooo aahh :) 

sorry, just reliving my rap days... yup, you many not believe it now, but i was a huge fan of all things rap.  i knew all the words to all the terrible awful songs :) and i still know some!

anywhooooooo


today was a great day.

isaac and i took the day off work to venture up north so i could go through the first stage interviews for yl staff.

there, i said it.  i am trusting god, and moving forward, and learning about what life looks like as a yl staff member.

and if i'm being totally and completely honest, it looks awesome.

i'm still scared and feeling like i have many unknowns, but that's life, right? good life, at least.

this is what my devotional had to say last night before bed. exactly what i needed to hear. thankyoujesus.

today was also a great day because we had our second to last wyldlife club of the year.  it was so fun! we are just loving meeker wyldlife! our leaders are so fun, more kids signed up for camp, and our games were awesome! it is amazing to witness god at work at meeker :) 


our house is clean again.  i should've taken a picture of the obscene amount of laundry we had piled all over our room.  one friend came over and asked if we were moving because there were piles everywhere.  it was awful.  but we put our big kid pants on and cleaned.our.house. i love clean houses, especially ours. 

now for the projects. 

the next few things we're chatting about doing are:
-painting our room
-take care of the yard (front and back)
-painting the dining room chairs
-"sprucing up" our bathroom
-finding 3 or more dressers
-getting a king mattress and bed for our room so we can move our current bed into the guest room
-finding another couch for the living room so we have more seating
--&so much more!


i love our home.



life lately has been oh so busy, but oh so fun.  we are working hard to create boundaries so we actually have quality time together, while still doing what we love and feel called to do.  something i am figuring we'll spend our lives trying to figure out.

payce out.

A post with at least one picture

Hm.... what can I talk about that has a picture that accompanies it? Haha, we are bad at taking pictures of daily life with our actual camera, but I'll add are some iPhone pictures to accompany this post. They will probably have nothing to do with the words, but that is fine!

This is Alli and Aus snuggling last summer :) from way back but waaaay cute!

Hm, what is new....

the girls and I last summer after we made our fabric braided head bands that broke way too quickly

we had a great weekend relaxing and getting caught up on things around our house/life.  Last night we had our two favorite ladies over to play Wii, eat ice cream, watch tv, and youtube.  A very fun night and we are so thankful to live so close to them now! :)

At the Ben Harper concert last summer at MaryMoore Park :)

We think we may have found a dining room table! We are hoping to get it before we host Easter dinner (so 3 weeks away!), so hopefully that works out!

our couch got delivered on my birthday this year to our apartment! LOVE that couch! It's actually seafoamy grey, not the color this instagram photo was edited to make you believe!

We are really starting to get excited for summer break! It's our first summer living together that we both wont be working full-time! I have so many projects I want us to do, we'll just have to find the right budget for everything! Can't wait!!!

Alli and skimming this summer at skim camp

 We are also getting excited to visit family this summer in Hawaii for two whole weeks! So excited to see more of them! We had 15 members over a week ago for dinner who were here from out of town which was so fun, and we can't wait for more family time in the near future!! And of course time in the hot Hawaiian sun! :)

some cheer girls cheering in the stadium bowl last season! New season is starting up soon!

 I guess the rest will just be random pictures! :)

Anna, Cal and I at the Halloween All City YL Club :) Love them!

A pic of our first "pending" notification on Red Fin :) We were so excited!!

We are now a two car family! We love Karlton very very much! :)

Austin's Christmas Present! It only took him a few weeks to devour the whole thing!

We got to go to Bellevue to spend the day with these two newly engaged peeps and take some engagement photos of them at their bench :) A super fun day with super fun people!

Gina, Maddy and I at Disney Club for Stadium YL :)

One of our "in process" moving out photos from our apt

Hahaha, a really funny invoice we received

Rotating Sushi date night :) YUM!!

Isaac with our neice Alexis :) She is super adorable!

Couch Date meal for Valentines Day 2012 :) Couldn't have been better!

An in-process shot of our future office! We've now put up a curtain wall and filled in some of those shelves... but we aren't done yet! Still need a few more items including chairs and to bring in lots more of our office/craft stuff that's sitting in boxes in an upstairs bedroom!

Isaac is sleeping in a cave on a mountain.

It's my favorite weekend of the year.

NOT.

Isaac is having fun with friends which is GREAT. Isaac is sleeping on a mountain, in a cave him and his friends built. I am trying to not be overly dramatic, but I freak myself out thinking about it.  I won't go into all details of worst-case scenarios that replay in my head, but I'll be very happy when he gets back.  They do this every year (for the last like 5 or 6 years) and are always safe, but still. Blah.

Anywhoooo

Life is still nutso.  We hosted pre-club dinner at our place for Stadium YL this week and had our second WyldLife club at our place which was super fun! We love that we get to use our house to serve others, and can't wait to see how else our God uses our home to help us to serve.  It is still very empty, but I am trying hard to be ok with that :) trying is emphasized. We have more than we need, but I just love completeness. I am looking forward to garage sale season (haha, who am I?) so we can stock up our home with inexpensive furniture!

We are on the prowl for many things, but here are a few topping our list:
-dining room table and chairs/bench
-office chairs that can double for the dining room
-another seating option for our living room (that can hopefully also double in our dining room)
-new bed for our room so we can use our bed as a guest bed
-a big dresser for our room


We would love to have a "house warming" (slash excuse to see lots of people we love who are and aren't living close) party in the near future.  We need to just pick a date and make it happen, I would love to have a few extra beds/couches for them to crash on so we can give them the proper show of Tacoma and attract more residents to the city (because we are the self-nominated members of the official Tacoma Recruitment Committee, of course!)


Also, we took a few steps forward on a very exciting thing this week.  We are not ready to talk/share yet, but I wanted to document this week so we would remember.  Get ready for some sharing coming up :)

God is very very good.  

Haha, I am not good at this.

Oh man has life changed...

It's been almost half a year since our last update and here are just a few of the things that have changed.

Isaac is a first grade teacher. {and a very good one at that}
We bought a car. {yay for finally having 2 cars!!}
We bought a house. {ehem... ex-squeeze-me you say??}
We are now leading WyldLife at Meeker Middle School. {and still at Stadium, of course!}
We are hosting Wyldlife in our very own garage. {yes, it's carpeted and amazing}
Did I mention we bought a house?? :) {yes, yes we did}

Life is insane.  And we love it.

God is hil.airy.us.

We wanted a house for so long, and nothing was working out.  All dead ends.  Then suddenly the home we were stalking, no really, I was stalking it on line and in person (like creeped into the backyard on MULTIPLE occasions), dropped remarkably low and we just had to do it.  And it happened. 

We bought a house. A real life human home for real life humans {and one real cool dog}.

Our home is empty.  We have like no furniture, a bunch of boxes, and so much extra space.  I know that someday I am going to wish I had nothing like now, but right now I just want to fill and fill and fill and nest and nest and nest.  What a fun stage of life we are in.

I know that I will want to have pictures of this time, so I will take some soon.  I will also post about the {remarkable} story of how God bought us our first house sometime down the road.  I hope that I do that before too much time goes by, but we've seen my track-record for posting. No good.  But as always, I am hoping to do better. 

Our life is worth documenting. 

Well as I suspected...

Well, as I suspected... it's been a while! And lots and lots has happened! I was debating blogging in general for a while now, but after reading this post we're baaaack :) memory keeping is important, and I am really excited to work harder to be a better memory keeper. Our life is exciting and worth remembering.

Well first off, we've moved. Yes, we no longer live with my wonderful parents. We now live across town, right next to Stadium High School (where we lead YL). It's so fun being closer to... I dunno, EVERYTHING :) We love our apartment, and Austin even loves it because we are right next door to Wrights Park! He's loving his multiple times a day walks/runs/ball chasing :) I love decorating the new place :) Here are some BEFORE pics of the apt, when we were doing the walk through:

This is the bathroom, there are extremely deep floor to ceiling storage cabinets on the left, and the shower is DOUBLE the size of our last one :) haha I love the huge mirror and the sink!

This is the bedroom, unfortunately we didn't take a pic of the opposite wall (which has 2 large windows) but look at those closets!! So much storage, mine is the one on the right and Isaac's is the one on the left... just kidding :)

This is the breakfast nook. It's opposite the kitchen. It's not actually that dark and you can see Mt Rainier out it's window (Mom was very proud)

Yay for another tiny kitchen (the fridge is smaller with an inside mini freezer and no dishwasher) but the storage is like Mary Poppin's bag, we fit EVERYTHING in here (with the help of the wonderful Megan Jones :])

This is what you see of the living room as you enter the apt, we love the views and lighting from the windows. The doorway on the right leads to the kitchen which then leads to the bedroom. I LOVE the hardwoods. The entire apartment was just redone for earthquake safety (it was built in 1920s)

This is the view from the wall opposite the entrance. No surprise, but I LOVE THE BUILT INS!! :) That's the front door on the front left.

This is the storage room that is on the left as you enter the apt (the bathroom is on the right). Boy do we need this space :)

Hm... That's all the energy I've got! Here's some bullets of other things we've been up to:

• YL kick off was last Monday, it's gonna be a great year!
• NE Tigers cheer has been great! :) The 39 girls are awesome and so much fun!
• Norpoint Sting is doing AWESOME! They won their first tournament (undefeated) and won their game yesterday 9-0, Isaac is an awesome coach!
• I LOVE my job and teaching has been great this year!
• Isaac is no longer working for DB, and is pursuing a career as a teacher :)
• The Tacoma Teachers are on strike... my first full year of teaching I'm not teaching :( Hopefully it'll end soon...
• I just turned 23! Now I'm old! :)

More to come!

another summer update

today is July 6. summer is flyyyyyin by!! we are having so much fun and i would consider praying for it to never end...

that would be if i wasn't teaching again next year at the best high school in tacoma {i'm sure i'm not partial or anything...} i interviewed last week for a continuing contract back at SAMi and they offered me the job! my summer will be ending aug 29 when i go with the entire school to camp :) what public school starts their year with a 3 day camp? SAMi :)i'm so excited to be back!

in the meannnnntime... i've been spending most of my days with my two main ladies {linds and alli}. we've been snugglin and watching movies at home...

skimming at the beach at skimcamp as isaac's campers :)

piggin' out at RTB {round table buffet for those not in the know}

and making super awesome headbands we found on pinterest

and today we went to wildwaves {unfortunately no pictures, but very fun!!}

this weekend was the DB Pro/AM Skimboarding Competition a DashPoint State Park. the weather was perfect, and the day was amazing! for detailed information you can check out the DB Website buuuut isaac took first in the PRO, Josiah took 3rd in the AM, and Seth took 1st in the U16 :) So much fun and there were even girl competitors {3} this year which was so fun! Here's a pic of the top 5 pros:


Photo by Matt McDonald | More Photos: here


And here's one of the ladies who helped cheer them on:


in addition...we've been hanging out with friends, family and lost more fun stuff :) we had the privilege of attending our friend Lorien & Taylor's wedding... they had these super cute centerpieces honoring all the teachers at their wedding.. guess who got a shout out :)

their wedding was so fun and filled lots of personal touches {like a peanut butter and jelly unity sandwich} so fun to see lots of college friends...

coming up in the Thomas household:

*YL Camp Malibu
*3 more weddings {1 that I am honored to be a part of}
*Our 1 year wedding anniversary {camping and mini-trip}
*skimboard competitions
*lots and lots more :)

hoping isaac will post about the comp a bit, but not so sure about that actually happening... see ya in a month {always hope for sooner, but inevitably it takes way too long to do updates}.

<3 the thomas's

Summer so far..

This post is very scattered and it took me 3+ days to actually "complete" it... I apologize in advance.

We cannot believe it's already the middle of June. We've been married for almost 11 months. yikes.

Well, my first year of teaching is OVA. Caboots. Sianara.

We wrapped up the year with a week long mini-term. I taught "Hiking" with another teacher. We closed the week with an overnight camping trip with 27 teenagers. Isaac graciously offered to attend as the male chaperon. What a swell guy. Now he knows a little bit more about what high school is like when you aren't actually a high schooler :)

For the first time ever, Isaac doesn't have a "summer break" now it's a summer is when life gets busier and crazier :) He left EARLY this morning for Bellingham-->Canada for a skim comp, with a few work stops along the way and back. Me=sad he's gone < happy for him to be having fun!

I began nannying this week which was so fun :) I am so happy to be spending yet another summer with these amazing girls! We've already gone to the $2 theater to see Soul Surfer and went to Dash Point Beach with friends :) Next week Wild Waves is on the schedule, cant wait!

I recently (earlier this year) got involved with a non profit football league in our neighborhood. I am helping to coordinate the inaugural year of their cheer program, and I'm so excited!! Karlene is going to be helping me coach (double excited). We had a canceled carwash this morning, so did registration instead. We have 25 girls signed up already! I am really looking forward to getting to know the girls and their families. Allison {the younger girl I am nannying} is signed up and I am SO excited for more time to play with her! So stinkin cute!

Isaac was recently recruited to coach for a U-13 girls rec soccer team, and he is so excited! Lindsey {the older sister I'm nannying for} is on the team, and he is looking forward to coaching her. A bunch of the girls were on the soccer team I coached at Meeker MS last fall, so it will be fun to see them play under Isaac :)

We are starting to get involved in coordinating a Young Life program at Meeker MS, while still staying involved at Stadium. We're going to Malibu at the end of July, and will be fundraising like crazy for the next month or so to get all our kiddos to camp! :)

Overall, the summer is off to a great start and life is going great! Hopefully summer will allow for more updates on here about our life... hopefully. And just because no post is complete without a picture, here's one of Isaac, Aus, and his uncle Toby on a walk on trails right on the outskirts of our neighborhood :)

LOVE these guys so much.