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casunshinegirl
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Name: Tonya
Gender: Female
Interests: In my free time (which usually comes in the summer) I love to read, write, camp, hike, and be outside! My husband and I also enjoy traveling, and hope to travel to Africa as missionaries sometime soon.
Occupation: Education/training
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
12/21/2005
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| I've been on Christmas break for the past two weeks, so i've had time to do some Xanga reading. I love hearing about all of your lives, but it's been making me feel a little guilty about my dismal attempts to keep up my site.  Maybe my New Year's Resolution should be to keep my Xanga site in this decade! Okay...here are a few of the big things that have happened in my life recently.
Jeremy and his dad have been tackling our kitchen remodel. They have the cabinets halfway finished, and I am super excited about the way the kitchen will look when they're done. We're going from fifties cabinets with seventeen layers of paint to new cabinets, countertops, ceramic tile, etc. It's been a slow process because Jer's dad can only come for a weekend at a time, but they're getting there. The tough thing about owning an old house is that there always seems to be another project waiting when you get one done!
We were in California for a week with my family over Christmas. It was a nice visit, and we definitely enjoyed the California weather. It was 75 the day we got there (December 23)! My brother is off exploring New Zealand so we didn't get to see him, but we had fun with my parents and Jess. We went on a couple hikes and spent a day at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park.
Here's our Christmas picture (actually taken at the Wike family Thanksgiving).
I celebrated my 28th birthday in November. That means 3-0 is getting closer - yikes! Here I am enjoying birthday cake with my nephew, Noah. He had to take his clothes off to really enjoy the frosting. 
In August I got to spend a week in the Northeast with two friends from college. We spent time in Boston and then drove up to Acadia National Park in Maine. I had never been to either place, so it was a fun adventure. Here are some very Maine-esque sailboat/lighthouse pix.
My favorite memory of our trip was watching the sunset and eating lobster on Cadillac Mountain. You can be the first person in the United States to see the sunrise at the top of Cadillac at certain times during the year, but we decided that sunset fit our schedule a little better than sunrise.  We made it up just in time for the sunset, ate lobster and backpacking food, and stuck around to watch the stars. I think the night sky might have awed me more than the sunset. It was incredible.
The biggest news in our life is that we've decided to adopt a baby! We found a Christian agency in the area, and we've already completed our home study. We're really excited, but we also realize that the timing is not in our hands. That's a lesson we've been learning again and again over the past couple of years. We'd appreciate your prayers as we continue on this journey.
Alright, I'll close for now. I need to get out of my P.J's so I can do something productive. How am I ever going to wake up at six and go to work on Monday?!?
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| Okay...we're having more FREAKY Indiana weather. I woke up to snow on Easter Sunday - yuck!  I did get to escape the weather for awhile last week. It was my spring break, so I spent seven days in Cali with my family. I went backpacking for two nights with my sister, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend. It seems like now that we're all grown up, we're usually in 17 different places at once, so it was fun to get some sibling bonding time. Here I am with my brother and sister. Aren't we cute? This is at the summit of Mt. San Jacinto. We hiked up to 10,834 feet. (I did get a little queasy and altitude sick, but it went away pretty quickly. I guess I don't spend much time on mountains in Columbia City!) 
The view from the mountains was awesome! We looked down over Palm Springs and out toward Joshua Tree National Park. It was crazy the way the geography changed from desert to mountains. 
The first night we camped in patchy snow at 9,700 feet. It was cold even with four of us bundled in the tent together. The sunset was gorgeous though, and we enjoyed it by keeping warm with big mugs of hot chocolate. 
When we finished our trek, my mom and dad met us in Palm Springs and we spent two days laying out by the pool in the ninety degree weather. Needless to say, I was a little shocked when I got off the plane at O'Hare in my flip flops!  It was a great week, and one of the times I am definitely thankful to be a teacher! | | |
| Wednesday evening: 70 degrees...a great night for a walk Thursday morning: snow Enough said.  On another note, we're in Ohio this weekend visiting some family friends. They have three boys who are tons of fun. It has been a great visit. We just got done with a rowdy game of Disney Scene It. Not to be competitive or anything...but I played with two of the boys and we kicked Jeremy's tail! Now the guys are outside playing basketball, and I'm enjoying the fact that I'm still in my pj's at 6:25 at night. That never happens! After a REALLY long week at school (I worked 13 hours on Thursday), I'm really enjoying the rest. | | |
| I'm in the middle of grading papers, writing plans for a sub, and trying to survive Monday, but I got some cute pictures back that I wanted to pass along. We've had some gross winter weather. (Okay, so maybe I think all winter weather is gross...well, at least winter weather under 65 degrees.) These pix were taken right after our big blizzard a couple weeks ago. Here's Cali enjoying the snow. She LOVED it. We took her on a walk, and she kept romping in the drifts instead of walking on the road. 
This one is Jeremy and me inside the snow fort we built on Presidents' Day. We spent an hour working on it, and when we were done we could both fit inside. We ending up soaking wet, but laughing like crazy (as you can see!). 
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| Okay...so it's been ages and ages since the last time I posted anything. Of course, my life on a lazy Wednesday February afternoon isn't exactly full of the most exciting Xanga material so here's are the seven most exciting things that have happened in my life since my last post seven months ago
7.) I still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing when I finally grow up. (Aren't twenty-somethings those people who have the houses and the cars and the cute babies and everything in their life all figured out?)
6.) I'm teaching fifth grade instead of fourth this year. I LOVE it because I have 15 of the kids from my class last year. They're awesome and I'm definitely going to cry when they leave to go to sixth grade at the middle school. Next year I'm teaching first grade. I'm actually really excited about hanging out with 18 six-year-olds all day long!
5.) I'm enjoying my fourth snow day in two weeks. Seriously, do we go to school in Indiana anymore?
4.) I've gotten totally hooked on Grey's Anatomy - thanks, Erin. It's bad. I think I'm addicted. I've already watched two episodes today. (Don't tell, but I think Jeremy likes it, too.)
3.) Jeremy just started a new job yesterday. He'd been working at Home Depot and we NEVER got to see each other so I'm excited because his new job is first shift Monday - Friday. YEY for quality time!
2.) I'm going backpacking with my brother and sister over spring break. My brother graduated from college and my sister's a freshman. Yikes, I'm old!
1.) We got a puppy. Her name is Cali (after, well, you know), and she's an adorable Golden Retriever who's a lot bigger than when we got her in November. She loves the snow, chewing EVERYTHING, and standing up like a real person so she can eat things off our counter. I'm pretty sure she actually thinks she's a real person.
1 - again.) We bought our first new house! Well, new to us. In reality it's 87 years old. It has one tiny, ugly bathroom, but we're working on that. We've got three bedrooms, a garage, and a big backyard. It's HUGE after living in Lamppost for two years, and there are lots of projects for my industrious father-in-law to help us with.
So that's my life for the last seven months. Hope all of you are doing well. Spring will be here soon! | | |
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