Fall is here...yippee!!

Fall is here, and while that induces a bit of stress in my work, school, and youth ministry life, it also induces intense excitement because we have three, count em', THREE, vacations coming up this fall. It was quite by accident, but we're excited all the same, and we're ready to take a break!


This summer on July 1st we celebrated our second anniversary and on August 3rd welcomed our first niece into the world! She's beautiful and we are dying to meet her but will have to wait until November since Danny's brother and his family are all the way in Manhattan.

So, for our three vacations this fall, we are counting down (see the post below) to trip #1, our big trip to Italy, in less than a month. We will be in Rome for three days and Florence for four, and I'm beside myself with excitement! I can't wait to introduce Danny to the adventure of 14-hour flights and jet lag and the joys of seeing a new country. I've been practicing Italian, which is close enough to Spanish that I'm picking it up really easily. I'm looking forward to seeing the Sistine Chapel and the ancient sites in Rome and eating amazing food and gelato in Florence! We will definitely post pictures on our blog, so stay tuned!

Trip #2 will be with Danny's folks to New York in November to meet our niece. Fitelson family trips to New York are a blast, and I can't wait to see the baby and see my old friend, the Manhattan skyline. Fall in New York just makes me happy, and we have a baby to snuggle to make it even better!

Trip #3 was a recent development, but we are going with my whole family to Texas to celebrate my sister Grace's graduation from Abilene Christian University! I'm so happy for Grace to celebrate this big accomplishment, and I'm looking forward to introducing Danny to my Texas roots and Harold's barbeque. I'm drooling just thinking about it. We'll be spending two days in Dallas so I'm looking forward to catching up with Pepperdine friends Travis and Meagan (and their two kiddos) and Kelli (and her new baby boy). Lots of new babies to meet and old friends to hug! But, the climax of our time in Dallas will be ..... drumroll, please..... my first Cowboys game!!!! We just got the tickets in the mail today and I'm about to explode with excitement. We'll be seeing the second to last game in Texas stadium (sniff, sniff) and possibly the biggest game of the season as they take on the New York Giants. I plan to deck myself out in blue and silver and scream my head off. As my mom often quotes one-year-old Bethany: "EEEEEE BOWBOYS!"

In between these vacations, we'll be continuing with life as usual with the Oakland youth group, I'll be taking a new class on the Gospels in the fall, and work at Fuller is busy as always. More updates to come after all the fun to be had over the next four months!

The Fitelsons are alive and well!

Wow time flies! Yes, we are alive and well, and still very busy. The school year has just ended for both the high schoolers and Fuller, which means we get about a week to breathe before summer kicks off.

This week I completed two things that have had me swamped and stressed: Fuller graduation, which I was largely responsible for, and my Spring quarter class. Graduation took up all my time at work, and writing my final paper for my Spirituality class took all my time outside of work! Since Wednesday I've had some time to relax and it's been great.

On the youth ministry side of life, we had a great time at the FCC family camp on Memorial Day weekend (including Danny's annual "ballers only" grass volleyball game), Danny planned and executed a great grad banquet for the seniors, we had our last Tuesday night for the year, and now we're ramping up for the summer.

The past few weeks my youth ministry self and Fuller student self have been able to collide since my final paper for a class on spirituality was about teens and spirituality. As part of my research, I read Mark Yaconelli's book "Contemplative Youth Ministry" and was blown away by it. I highly recommend it to anyone in youth ministry or who has teenagers in their life. It's made me see the kids in our youth group in new ways and made me feel more convicted to be a good role model.

The most exciting news in our little family is that we have booked tickets to Italy in October! We are both in need of a vacation and I can't wait to explore a new culture and country I've never seen. It will be Danny's first time overseas, and he's starting to get excited - mostly because we saved a ton of money by going in October instead of August. We'll spend 3 days in Rome and 3 in Florence. We welcome any travel tips from those of you who have been to those cities! I've got about 20 travel books and am loving reading them with expectancy.

I'm off to bed. I hope to post more news and some pictures soon. At the moment I'm too sleepy to remember anything we've done the past three months, so I'll call it a night. Leave us some love!

Jury Duty

Today I had my first jury duty experience. Ever since my high school government teacher told us we should take advantage of jury duty as a way to learn about the justice system I've been fascinated by the idea of being on a jury.

I was actually looking forward to the process - until I realized that on Monday I'm supposed to be in Pasadena for our Fuller staff meetings with all the staff from around the country. We do this just twice a year, and I've been looking forward to it for 6 months! Not only is it so fun, but we have meetings and training sessions that will affect my job for the next year. So I started to get a little nervous, but thought, "Nah, what are the chances?"

Shows what I know. I got what I asked for - I learned a lot about the jury system, starting with you never know what to expect and should prepare for anything! I figured I could check in over the phone and not even have to go in - wrong. I figured with only two trials that day and 100 people in the room I wouldn't be called - wrong. I figured if I did get called to a courtroom that they would do the selection that day and the chances were that I wouldn't be selected anyway and life would be back to normal before Monday - wrong.

On the way up to the courtroom I ran into a friend from church who happens to work in the D.A.'s office. It was fun to see a friendly face in a strange place! When we got to the courtroom they read the details of the case, and then had us fill out a questionnaire. Although my buddy wasn't in the courtroom, the D.A.'s office was prosecuting the case. On the questionnaire they asked if we knew anyone in the justice system in Oakland, so I mentioned my friend's name. I was hoping a little bit that would be my ticket out of there and my ticket to Pasadena, but also not wanting to exploit the system and be a whiner.

Then the judge said we would need come back another day for jury selection - on Monday! We had the option to fill out a "hardship" form if we wanted to be excused from the case. We had a two hour break and had to come back to plead our case before the judge. My heart was pounding the entire two hours! I spent time talking on the phone with my co-workers and Danny trying to come up an argument the judge would accept. I felt bad the whole time since I really didn't want to skip out on the system, but I really wanted to be part of the staff time in Pasadena!

I came back at the right time with butterflies in my stomach, ready to be grilled by the judge on why I wasn't smart enough to postpone jury duty before the day it began. (Like I said, I realize now how naive I was about the system.) Then the court clerk came out and said the judge had looked over our questionnaires and had a list of people who were excused. I held my breath...and my name was on the list! I'm thinking that the fact that I already bought plane tickets for next week and the fact that I know a guy in the D.A.'s office probably combined to get me excused.

I had been praying all day about it, alternating between selfish "I want to go to Pasadena!" prayers and "Take control and do what's best" prayers. When I heard my name called I was really thanking God! Danny asked me later if I would have thought to put my friend's name down on the questionnaire unless I had run into him, and I'm not sure that I would have! God may have thrown me a little bone by having our paths cross.

So I'm relieved of jury duty for a year, get to get on a plane and see my friends on Sunday, and learned a lot in the process. Not too bad for a day I didn't have to go work. (Now that my heart has stopped pounding, the change of pace was nice!)

Other than that, here's a quick run-down of what we've been up to:
- In one weekend, we went to a musical, a wedding, and a funeral
- The funeral was for an elder at the Campbell church who died suddenly of a heart attack. Browning was a dear friend, my adviser and confidante while I was a missionary in Japan, and I feel more like I lost a grandfather than an elder. Through the grieving process I've learned that not all churches have elders like Campbell elders, who are true shepherds and pastors and not just administrators. I'm truly thankful for my Campbell church family!
- The day Browning died Danny and I had tickets to see Bon Jovi in San Jose. I had been looking forward to it for about 7 months, but I wasn't really in the mood to celebrate. But, when my boys hit the stage and got a few songs going, I was on my feet and singing along, albeit a little more somber than my usual Bon Jovi-induced hysteria. I love them in concert!
- I've begun my Spring class at Fuller, Intro to Christian Spirituality. It's exciting to be "forced" to read spiritual classics like Celebration of Discipline!
- We're still planning on a vacation, maybe to Italy, but may have to put it off because we've got sticker shock on the airline tickets. But we definitely need time off, and I need to get off the continent, so I'm praying it happens!

I think that's about it for the Fitelsons for now. Leave us some love!

Long Time No Blog

I am finally making the shameful, apologetic return to blogging after taking far too long of a break. If anyone is still checking our blog, I'm sorry it's been so long since you've heard any family news from our end! (For those of you who are waiting expectantly for Danny's #1 movie pick, he might need some prodding. He won't even tell me what it is and I'm dying to know, but I think he's run out of steam. Give him a little encouragement!)


My reason for not blogging more is two-fold: 1) we have too much going on, and 2) there's really nothing going on. We are really busy, but since we don't have a cute baby to post pictures of and our lives pretty much follow the same pattern, there's not much to report! Plus, I haven't taken the time to learn how to upload pictures from my new phone yet, so I have absolutely nothing to show for what we've been up to the last few months.


In the spirit of cute baby pictures making for good blogging, here's a picture of a precious little one who I love dearly but have yet to meet! This is the daughter of my Pepperdine roommate, Patty Ortigas Surmann. Patty, her husband Olaf and little Zoe live in Hannover, Germany, and I will get to meet Zoe for the first time this summer!





Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to.

School

Last weekend I finished another quarter of school, and I have a month-long break in between classes! I'm very excited. In fact, this weekend was the first since January when I didn't either have class at 8 am Saturday morning, or I didn't have to write a paper all weekend. It's been fantastic. That said, I really love being in school! I don't always love writing the papers or going to class all day on a Saturday (especially since I work at my school - I feel like I'm working 6 days a week!) but I am loving what I'm learning. The class I just finished was on the Pentateuch and I'm seeing the Old Testament in a totally new way. I actually enjoyed learning about Numbers and Leviticus, which was a surprise!


One of the biggest things I've learned from last quarter is seeing the Sabbath in a new way. It's the longest of the 10 Commandments, but the only one that we have no trouble breaking! We don't take time to rest because it's completely counter to our culture. We feel guilty resting - but we shouldn't! I also realized that the idea of Sabbath was not solely about rest, but also about relationships. I used to think that napping and watching football on a Sunday afternoon was taking my Sabbath (and sometimes that's the rest we need) but the Sabbath was designed not for lazy self-indulgence, but for building relationships with family and with God. So this Sunday, instead of napping by myself, I took a nap with my husband, haha.


Family

The most exciting news we have is that we are going to have a niece or nephew! Danny's brother, Michael, and his wife, Betsy, are due in August and we are SO excited! We're also glad for a decoy from the fact that we're not starting a family any time soon, haha. We are really happy for Mike and Betsy and can't wait to meet the little Fitel. I'm doubly thrilled because I love babies and I love my brother and sister-in-law, and because it's another excuse to go to New York more often!


By the way, you should be thanking me that I didn't play a trick on you by saying "there's a baby on the way!" or "the Fitelsons are expecting!" It was really tempting....


Vacation

Danny and I have high hopes to take a vacation this summer and get some real time away and time off. Last year we took no more then 4 consecutive days of vacation together, so we're hoping for a good long one this year! I came to the realization around the new year that 2007 was the first year in EIGHT years that I didn't leave the continent of North America. I was pretty excited and proud to realize that every year from 1999 to 2006 I left the continent at least once for either trips to Japan, business travel, or mission trips. In 2007 I left the country to go to Mexico for a youth trip, but that was NOT a vacation!


So this summer I'm hoping to see a new country and to take Danny on his first overseas adventure. We hope to go to New York to meet Little Fitel in August, and then go East from there. On a sidenote, several times when I've told people we want to go to New York and then go East from there, I am met with a confused, blank look and the comment "You can't go East from New York." When I say, "Sure you can. Like Italy!" they just laugh. I'm not sure why that's funny. Anyone feel me on that, or is my circle of friends just really that weird?


I hope that our trip will be somewhere in Western Europe because the extent of my time in Europe was 3 days in Germany. We won't be going to Germany because my main reason for visiting Germany (see cute baby above) will be in California. So, if anyone has a suggestion for a European city that would be good for a week of vacation for two Europe newbies (and one who has never traveled abroad) we would love suggestions!! Rome and Florence? London? Athens? Paris is out because we still plan to do that with Danny's family some day, when Little Fitel is portable.

Youth Group

The Youth Group is still great. We've got amazing kids and they keep us busy. I've been bonding a lot with the sophomore girls and trying to spend one-on-one time with a handful of them - which is really difficult with my crazy schedule. Danny is working on a service project for the high school students over Spring Break so they can serve around Oakland and see that they don't have to go all the way to Mexico to help people in need. He's excited about it and it's saving the church a ton of money. He's hoping to take the kids back to Mexico next year.

Work

I'm still working at Fuller Seminary in Menlo Park and after a year there I finally feel like I'm getting grounded and know what I'm doing. That said, there is always something new to learn and it is always challenging. I am never bored or out of things to do! The best part about my new job compared to my old job is that when I tell people what I do it leads to theological discussions instead of a conversation about servers, networks, software, blah blah blah. I'm much more in my element at Fuller!

I think that's about all I have to update. I'm off to cook dinner and enjoy a relaxing Sunday evening with Danny, both of which are rare these days! Is this what weekends and Sabbaths are supposed to like? Because I'm loving it!

Holiday Weekend

Now that I'm done with the Fall quarter, life has been full of non-stop festivities. This past weekend was full of Christmas events and turned out to be more fun and less tiring than I thought it would be! Friday night Danny helped officiate a vow renewal of friends from First Covenant who have been married for 10 years. It was really a beautiful event and we had some rare time to catch up with church friends we don't get to see often.

Saturday was the Hall family annual "Tree Day." This event started when my family would drive into the Santa Cruz Mountains every Christmas to cut down our tree at one of the MANY Christmas tree farms, and it's now morphed into the biggest event of our holiday season. Even when my sisters and I were away at college and I lived in Japan, no one has missed Tree Day in about 10 years, maybe longer. There is often bickering about the size of the tree and if it's too thin or full of holes, but we always have a blast. This year we took three cars and brought home three trees, one for my parents and sisters, one for me and Danny, and one for Eve and her roommate Rebecca. We spent the rest of the day decorating the Hall family tree and then Danny and I brought our tree home and decorated it. Christmas trees always look smaller out in the woods so we were a little surprised at how huge our tree was - it barely fit through our front door! We were really happy with how it turned out. Both of us grew up with eclectic and sentimental ornaments on our family trees, so we inherited lots of ornaments from our parents that bring back fond memories! We found FOUR "Our First Christmas" ornaments that people gave us last Christmas, and each is unique so we love all four. We also have Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Rainbow Bright, and several Dallas Cowboys ornaments, as well as a few from trips we've taken together to Niagara Falls and New York.

The hunt...


The Hall family tree before (My sister Grace always does the cutting with her big biceps!)


The Hall family tree after


Our tree before


Our tree after


My sister Trisha is hilarious!


Sunday we hosted about 20 people in our small apartment for the annual youth group adult staff and student staff Christmas party. That was a blast. It gets easier every year to cook for 20 people and we love having our house full. We appreciate these folks beyond words for all they do for the youth group. A tradition at this party is a white elephant gift exchange, and the nature of the white elephant gifts is undefined. Some people bring garage sale finds while others actually buy real gifts. It's not fair, but that's part of the fun. I gave away a glass hummingbird figurine and Santa socks and got back what looks to be a new trifle bowl with mini trifle serving dishes! I will definitely be looking up some fun Pampered Chef trifle recipes to show off my new bowl, haha.



We tried to get a picture with our tree, but the only one in focus makes Danny look half asleep! This one's out of focus but the best we could do!


Merry Christmas to all!

3 suitcases in 10 days, again

My life is generally based on school calendars: that of Fuller and that of the Oakland high schools. So life is somewhat predictable, and every year October and April tend to be a perfect storm of work events, youth group events, and personal events. That's why I found myself traveling to three different cities, with three different suitcases, for three different reasons, all in the same ten days. (If this sounds familiar, check out my blog entry from October 2006 when I had YWAM, a business trip, and a personal trip in 10 days. Sounds a little too familiar.)

YWAM
Our youth group goes to the YWAM base in San Francisco every October to minister to the huge homeless population in San Francisco. This year we had a record amount of teens who wanted to come - 40 kids with only 5 adults. Based on the last time we were outnumbered (that nutty trip to Mexico) Danny was pretty stressed before the trip. But, the kids were fantastic! God really answers prayers (and we have great kids). I was especially thankful to get good sleep, with this group of girls who love each other and love to talk I've had trips when I only get 3 hours of sleep each night! The first night of YWAM I gave the girls a 15-minute warning before all talking had to cease, and less than 5 minutes later it was silent! I was so thrilled I blurted out into the silence how much I loved each and every one of them.


I was really impressed with the high schoolers and the way they cared for the homeless in San Francisco. They approached people boldly just to start a conversation and listen to them without any judgment. We had a large amount of freshmen and new students who had never done something like that, and they all made us really proud.

FULLER IN PASADENA
The Sunday that YWAM ended I came home early to do laundry and pack the next two suitcases. That night I flew to Pasadena for three days of meetings with the other Fuller extension staff at the Pasadena campus. I love these meetings since all the other Fuller staff from around the country are amazing people. I especially enjoy hanging out with my friend Airika from Seattle. Her and I have very similar jobs so we brainstorm a lot, and I love hearing about her wedding photography business she runs with her husband. If you're looking for an amazing wedding photographer in the Northwest, check out http://geraldpope.blogspot.com/

Our meetings in Pasadena are always busy - we get a full year's worth of meetings with all the campus departments in three days - but the face time is great! At times like that I really do love my job, and that's a great feeling. There's a lot of stress and way too much to do, but I'm proud to work for a school and ministry like Fuller.

DENVER, PART A
From L.A. I flew to Denver to attend the wedding of Cass Tallon, one of my Japan teammates and Pepperdine friends, and Alex Huffman, another Pepperdine campus ministry alum. Danny and I also took the chance to have three days of vacation together (the longest time away we've had in a long time!). We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast up in the mountains outside of Denver and really enjoyed being out of the city. We experienced local color, great homemade breakfasts made from eggs laid the same day (yum!) and ... the bird room. Our room at the B&B is called the Bird Suite, and it was full of stuffed birds, both taxidermy-stuffed and cotton-stuffed. It was cozy and very unique and we had a great time. I was sick with a bad cold the whole trip, so we did a lot of napping, relaxing, and just enjoying down time.




We did take an afternoon to explore Red Rocks Park which is famous for both its tall rust-colored rock formations, and for a gorgeous outdoor amphitheater. When we arrived we were looking forward to visiting the Colorado Welcome Center, which is supposed to be open until 4 every day. When we arrived it was closed, and we could not figure out why. Sure, it was a Thursday afternoon, but it didn't say it was closed on weekdays. Maybe it's only open on weekdays in the summer? But the sign says right there it's open from 9-4 every day! After visiting the other visitors center on site, we figured out why the welcome center was closed: it was 4:30! We had napped so long we had no idea what time it was! At that point we really felt like we were on vacation.







The wedding festivities were so much fun, mostly because I was reunited with Pepperdine campus ministry family, some of who I had not seen in years. Unfortunately, I was a dummy and left the camera in the car for the bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, and wedding! If anyone reading this has pictures from the wedding, send them my way! The wedding was beautiful, mostly because the bride and groom have been best friends for 12 years and just recently found romance - they were glowing with excitement! It was also beautiful because it was outdoors with a beautiful mountain backdrop. An outdoor wedding in the Colorado mountains in October was certainly a gamble, but the temperature was in the low 70s and perfect. Two days before it had been 40 and frigid, and 12 hours after the wedding it dumped snow! I'm convinced God plays weatherman for occasions such as this.

It was really exciting for me to have Danny get to meet lots of my Pepperdine friends. I did a lot of introductions followed by a long list of how I know the person and who they are connected to. He was a great sport! Many of those friends I talk about constantly but Danny has never met, including Pepperdine campus ministers (and my college mentors) Scott Lambert and Linda Truschke. I loved catching up with them and they loved meeting Danny. Of course, it was special to see my Japan team: Cass, Leah and Tim (we missed you Timbo!). They are the greatest friends I could ask for and I still can't believe all three of us girls are married! If we had only known what would come when we had late-night talks about the boys in our lives and our hopes for the futures. Cass would always quote Ephesians 3:20 "Now unto him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine" and she was right! None of us would have imagined having the husbands we do now, and in fact Cass was the only one who knew her husband at the time and she never thought they would date! When we let God plan our lives for us he has a better plan in mind than we could imagine.

DENVER, PART B
I split the Denver trip into two parts because it feels a bit surreal as if it were two trips. Danny and I woke up Sunday morning to find it had snowed overnight and our rental car was buried. By buried I mean there were 2-3 inches on it, but to a pair of Californians it looked buried! While he checked out and got our breakfast to go, I scraped off the car and was starting to pride myself on my Canadian blood that knew how to properly scrape snow off a car. I was wrong - my Canadian blood has fully retreated under a California girl driver, and on the way to the airport I ran the car off the road. In my defense, it wasn't snowing when we left, but it all of a sudden came down hard. Where I made a mistake was deciding to stop and fill up the tank at that point. As soon as I nudged the wheel to change lanes, the tires let go of the road. Danny and I both felt it immediately, but at first I thought they would find traction again. As we slid more Danny said "Are you okay?" and I responded "I'm not sure." Then we knew we were in trouble, we were both trying to turn the wheel, and I tried to hit the brakes but we couldn't do anything except sit and wait to see where we landed. Eventually we impaled the car on a guardrail. Looking back, it could have been so much worse, and I'm really thankful. The only injury between the two of us is a rug burn on my wrist from the airbag.



I'm not sure if it's because the engine was so damaged or because the air bags deployed, but the inside of the car immediately stunk like smoke. We didn't think it was safe to stay in the car, so we got out - but keep in mind it was still pouring down snow. And then the thunder and lightning started. We made the phone calls to 911 and the rental car company, but it was snowing so hard that there were 5 other accidents on the same stretch of freeway and since we weren't hurt it was going to be a while before anyone showed up.



Just as we were soaked and starting to shiver, a pair of angels showed up. God is just too good to us sometimes. This sweet couple pulled over (I am still baffled as to how anyone else drove in that weather without sliding off the road) and offered to let us sit in their car until help came. I was hesitant to inconvenience anyone, but we really needed to get warm and dry. We sat in their car (on leather seats, I might add) for the next hour and in between phone calls to insurance, the rental car company, the police, etc. we got to know our rescuers. Their names were Rich and Charlotte, and Rich turned out to be a Pepperdine alum! They were on their way to church, which did not surprise me at all. As we apologized repeatedly for ruining their morning, they said it was more important to be Jesus to someone than to sit in a pew. They were such an amazing couple. When we found out it was going to take the tow truck a long time to arrive, Rich loaded our luggage in his car and they drove us all the way to the airport. I am still amazed by this couple and their generosity and kindness when we were desperate!

So if we recap, I have wrecked a car twice in the last three months, both immediately after attending the out of state wedding of one of my Japan teammates. Good thing I'm not superstitious or I would not be attending Tim's wedding when that happens! Haha. All in all, the Denver accident was traumatic but could have been so much worse! I did have a hard time driving to work the day after the accident - I was pretty paralyzed with fear, which is unusual for me behind the wheel. Old people were zooming around me and shooting me dirty looks because I was crawling along the road. I'm doing better now and trying to focus on the blessings instead of the helpless feeling of sliding off the road.

Mostly, I'm just glad to be home after so many trips! Thanks for reading my novel (if anyone is still with me) and I hope it won't be so long before I update again.

A Colonial Wedding and Lessons in my Lack of Invincibility

Life has been up and down and all around lately, and now that I'm back to some semblance of normalcy, it's time to reflect and share. In the past few weeks I've learned a lot of lessons, all of which point back to how blessed I am.

At the end of July Danny left for a 10-day youth mission trip to Alaska. They had an amazing time and he has some great stories to share, but he'll have to blog about that himself. (A little encouragement from a handful of our readers might help.) While he was gone I realized how glad I am to be married to him! It was no fun being a bachelorette for ten days. Without my sister to come keep me company and listen to my stories I may have gone nuts. Luckily, five of the ten days he was gone I was also traveling. I flew to Williamsburg Virginia to attend the wedding of one of my Japan teammates. Four of the five of us were at the wedding, and we called the fifth on speakerphone to have some team time again (we missed you Timbo). I can't explain how lucky I am to have these friends! Getting together with them is so much fun, and there are parts of me that no one else understands like they do (such as my Japanese vocabulary).

Leah, the bride, was raised in Williamsburg and is very proud of her colonial heritage, so the wedding took place in the Historic Jamestown church. The church is the oldest in the US, and legend says that Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married there (although facts say otherwise, but oh well). It was beautiful! The reception was at the Williamsburg Inn, another colonial historic building, and also where the queen stayed recently for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. Leah and her new husband Frazer were glowing all day and I'm so happy for them! Leah picked a fantastic guy to marry, and you can tell he's crazy about her. He's from New Zealand so I really enjoyed spending time with him and his Kiwi family and friends. Did you know New Zealanders call swim trunks "togs"? Our Virginian hosts were also very gracious (and generous to loan us their van multiple times) and it was great to get to know Leah's family and new husband. We even talked Frazer into getting pedicures with us (no polish of course) and we reassured him he wasn't the first poor guy to be dragged into a nail salon with the three of us. I think Tim is really glad to finally have some more guys around with Frazer and Cass's fiance Alex!




The wedding and time in Virginia was awesome, but getting there was another story. I won't go into the whole saga, but the short story is that my connecting flight from Dallas to Richmond was cancelled so I was almost stranded in Dallas (and the Blocks almost had a surprise houseguest, which would have been fun!) but I really needed to get to Virginia that night to help with the wedding rehearsal the next day. I ended up flying into Norfolk around 2 am, in a different city than both my rental car and my luggage. About 24 hours and a million phone calls later I met up with both the car and my luggage, and I learned a lot of travel lessons in the meantime. Here's a rundown for you future travelers:
1) Don't prepay for a rental car. You might as well have signed the contract in blood and no changes can be made, even if your flight was cancelled and you are stranded due to no fault of your own - unless of course you want an upgrade, then they are glad to change your reservation and take your money!
2) It doesn't matter what flight you're on, what city you land in, or what it says in the computer -- the only thing that matters is what is on the luggage tag, your bag is going there no matter where you end up.
3) Never assume anything a person tells you is true. Call back and talk to someone else and double check. Phrases like "Oh sure your friend can pick up your car" and "I'm re-routing your bag right now so it will be on your flight" cannot be trusted.
4) Don't use Hotwire. They don't understand that you actually want to get to your destination on the same day you left home.
5) Having friends who will: a) loan you their parents car to drive to an airport in the middle of the night - twice; b) drive to the airport to pick you up in the middle of the night; c) search the airport for your lost luggage while you're describing it to them over the phone; d) loan you their clothes and toiletries until yours arrive; e) be worth flying across the country for -- that's priceless!

So the travel problems were my first lessons in my lack of invincibility. I have never packed an extra set of clothes in my carry-on, and for domestic flights I don't even take a toothbrush or contact solution (or expensive items and important medication) in my carry-on. I scoff at the possibility of losing my luggage because that never happens to me! Needless to say I've been a bit humbled.

My second lesson in my lack of invincibility came Monday after returning from Williamsburg. Coming home from work I rear-ended someone in stop and go traffic and did some serious damage to my trusty Honda. No one was hurt thankfully, so it's just a big headache. And I feel like a dummy. After the initial tears and fears and nightmare of logistics, I've been actually calm about the whole ordeal. That's not to pat myself on the back, but I think after my initial freak-out I realized how materially blessed I am to even have a car, let alone three between Danny and me. Additionally, his youth group van, which was going to be my back-up this week, broke down and is now stranded somewhere outside of Chico. So I'm borrowing my sister's car this week and possibly my mother-in-law's next week, which is again just humbling and reminding me of how lucky I am! It's unbelievable how many options I have for transportation and how many people are willing to help. There are people around the world who walk three hours one-way to work, or just to find food. I don't dare complain.

It's been an interesting lesson to examine how materialistic I am. Can I honestly say "it's just luggage" or "it's just a car"? Or am I more attached to those things than I should be? The night I came home after my accident, Danny was still gone so it was even more frustrating to be home alone after a stressful day. I was worried about my car and how I was going to get around the next few weeks, and the beginning of Psalm 23 came into my head: "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want." So I started reading Psalm 23, and when I finished I read Psalm 24 which begins "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." I had to have a few of my posessions taken away (albeit temporarily) to realize that I do have all I need, I should not be in want, and all I have is God's anyway because he has given me everything good in my life.

Sorry this turned into a mini-sermon. I don't blog often but when I do I can't seem to stop rambling. I'll end with a few more fun pictures from my adventures with Cass, her fiance Alex, and Tim in Jamestown. After the happy couple was married the four of us took a day to sightsee (and sweat a lot!) in the historic Jamestown Settlement. We got to climb on replicas of the British ships that settled there, try on colonial armor and tour replicas of a Native American village and Colonial fort.

A trip to Seattle and no cheese for a month!

I'm taking a break from reading Harry Potter (don't you dare tell me what happens) to give another overdue update. This summer is turning out to be busier than I expected!

A week ago I traveled to Seattle for a retreat with the other Fuller extension staff from around the country. It was a fantastic retreat and I really admire and enjoy the people I work with. We did a scavenger hunt around Seattle, one of the few main cities in the US I had not been to. We even got to visit the first ever Starbucks! We also went up in the Space Needle, which was much smaller than I thought it would be. It's dwarfed by the impressive Seattle skyline, but still quite a sight. The picture with the troll was one of the scavenger hunt items, it was the oddest, largest statue I've ever seen tucked under a bridge. We then stayed at a retreat center right on the Pugent Sound and had a great retreat.






Unfortunately, because of an illnes I wasn't able to enjoy any of the Seattle coffee shops - and they were everywhere! After returning from Seattle I went to the doctor to try and figure out why I've been getting sick to my stomach so much in the past 6 months. One thing she asked was had I been under stress the past few months, to which I replied with a list of the life-altering changes that have taken place since last summer. It's a bit overwhelming when you list it all at once, so I'm trusting that 2007-2008 will be much more stable. Most of the changes have been positive, don't get me wrong, but I'm looking forward to a year of not so many "firsts."

The doctor's conclusion was to do blood tests (ugh) and take me off dairy for a month just to see if that might be causing the pains. I'm now hoping I get sick this month just to prove that it's not dairy! On the way home from the doctor's office I went to the store to buy soy milk and soy creamer for my coffee - and of course I was craving cheese, yogurt and ice cream just because I can't have them. I had my first Starbucks mocha with soy milk and it was better than I expected, just tasted a little like wood. If anyone has non-dairy advice, I'd gladly take it, although I'm hoping this doesn't last longer than a month. Dietary restrictions have made me rethink some things that I eat and drink. For example, I assumed that coffeemate, which I put in my coffee every morning, was a milk product, thus the purchase of the soy creamer. But when I read the Coffeemate ingredients, it's mostly high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors. Ick. Margarine is not a milk product but just a bunch of oil clotted together with, again, artificial flavors. Yuck.

On a nostalgic note, my dad called a few weeks ago and asked that I come collect 6 boxes from college that he had pulled out of the attic. I guess now that I'm married he thinks I'm an adult enough to store my own junk. Darn. I had no idea what to expect when I opened the boxes, and I really enjoyed going through them. It was strange to look at the stuff I thought was important 4 years ago, like a 3 liter Dr. Pepper bottle and a bunch of stuffed animals. I found countless pictures of close friends doing goofy things I had forgotten about, and enjoyed looking at pictures of college friends who I hadn't thought of in years. I found jars full of Canadian and Japanese money, which will be given to people returning to those countries soon. Again, what was going through my mind when I packed that away for years? I had a lot of fun looking through stuff from my first visit to Japan, and I cracked up at the stuff I saved because I thought it was so novel. I had no idea when I first visited Japan that a few years later I would be living there. The Japanese newspapers that I wadded up for packing material in one box were carefully folded and preserved in another box just because it had Japanese writing on it. It's fun to look back on things like that and see how I've changed. It gave me goosebumps to read letters from some Japanese friends before they became Christians and how they talked about how fun it was to practice English and learn new words. A few years later letters from the same friends talk about what God is doing in their lives and how they love going to Bible study and learning more about Jesus. So cool!

As summer comes close to the end, Danny and I are both traveling, but to separate ends of the country. He left yesterday for Alaska with 15 high school students. They will be putting on a VBS for a small church in a remote town. I would appreciate prayers for his safety and stamina! Later this week I head to Williamsburg Virginia for the wedding of one of my Japan teammates. I can't wait to see the team again and celebrate Leah's wedding!

Now back to Harry. Leave some love if anyone is still reading my ramblings!

First anniversary Celebration Continued

We milked our first anniversary for all it's worth! Since we couldn't go out of the town the weekend of our actual anniversary, we went the next weekend to Sausalito for an overnight and relaxing day. For those of you not from the Bay Area, Sausalito is a sleepy seaside town right across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It's main street is right along the water with a great view of the city and Alcatraz. That is, if the sun is out. It was 80 degrees when we left Hayward (wearing flip flops and shorts) and this is what the bridge looked like when we got into San Francisco.



We thought we were in a time warp and were suddenly in November. You couldn't even see the tops of the towers! Danny was worried it would ruin the weekend, but the weather was actually really fun to watch. This is the view from our hotel room. We had a corner room with a great balcony. Beautiful views of the Sausalito shore but San Francisco was veiled almost the whole weekend.




Eventually the fog lifted and all of a sudden we could see The Rock right out our window! It was foggy but still cool.


The next day we read magazines in bed until about noon when we had to check out, and as we started cruising around town the sun came out and the weather was perfect. We walked from one end of town to the other, ate fish and chips in a window seat with a great view of The Rock and The City, and did a lot of window shopping. I can't believe I'm posting this picture, but Danny thought this store name was so funny he made me pose with it.



After walking around and seeing all there is to see we randomly decided to go see a movie. We bought a paper and found out that Live Free or Die Hard was playing in a town we knew was about 15 minutes north of Sausalito. The movie started in 20 minutes. We just hopped in the car for a little adventure, crossing our fingers that we would be able to see the theater (or at least the street it was on) from the freeway. It was a long shot. But, it worked! We found the theater and rolled in right as the previews started. The movie was a lot of fun and it was a great relaxing day!

For dinner Danny surprised me with reservations at The Melting Pot. It's this amazing fondue restaurant that I've wanted to try ever since I had dessert at one in Dallas with my posse years ago. It did not disappoint my high expectations! The food was incredible (and fun to cook!) and we had a private booth in "Lover's Lane" which we thought would have made us very nervous if we weren't married. They even gave us a centerpiece of red roses and let us take the flowers and vase home as a gift. It was a five star meal all the way around! See our dessert below - they call it Yin and Yang because it's dark and white chocolate together. It was almost too pretty to wreck by dipping stuff in it, but that didn't stop me. Fabulous!

Week of Celebration

I'm way overdue for a post, I know, but honestly nothing that exciting has been happening lately until this week! Certainly nothing photo-worthy has happened, and I'm sure you're all tired of my babbling with no pictures to break it up. So, finally, some fun stuff to share and I'm even including pictures!

Sunday was our first wedding anniversary. I can't describe how strange that feels! It hasn't been that long, we're still newlyweds right? We are both amazed at how quickly a year went by. Saturday we got to celebrate the wedding of some great friends and fellow servants, and we had the most fun wedding reception table we've ever sat at! Becuase of our friends' wedding, we didn't go out of town for our anniversary so we're going to Sausalito this weekend (more stories and pictures to come, I'm sure). But we still celebrated the whole weekend!

Friday night I arrived from a business trip to Sacramento (complete with the longest Sacramento Rivercats game in history - 16 innings! We finally left at the bottom of the 14th at 11:30 at night, but we had a blast. Moving on...) and we met my parents and sister and sister's boyfriend (Grace, I didn't say "family gathering" in your honor) for dinner. My mom was gracious enough to pick up our free anniversary cake from our wedding baker, so after dinner we came home and got to eat the cake that we never got to eat at our wedding. It was fantastic! I would imagine it was worlds better than a year-old frozen cake. Although, we took the leftovers to church for the high schoolers on Sunday and told them all it was the actual wedding cake that we had been saving for a year.

Sunday Danny and I went to dinner at Shadowbrook in Capitola after visiting friends in Santa Cruz. It was such a relaxing day and we were pleasantly surprised at how warm the coast was. We arrived at the restaurant a little early so I could take some pictures. This restaurant is the only restaurant in the country that you access by cable car. It's so cool. We took a friend's advice (thanks Janelle!) and walked down to the restaurant through the gardens and then took the cable car back up to the road.




My favorite part of the gardens was the herb garden. As I was standing there snapping pictures a waiter walked past us, hopped the fence, and started plucking herbs for the kitchen. That was fun to watch.

Tomorrow, of course, is July 4th, one of my favorite holidays. We're just so glad to have a day off together that we didn't plan much, but we'll be going to the A's game! We weren't even planning to do fireworks, but Danny came home tonight and suggested we drive to the A's Coliseum to see the fireworks after the game. So we watched the A's win on TV and then hopped in the car. We love living only 15 minutes from the Coliseum! I was very impressed with our spontaneity since we're usually about as spontaneous as a snail. We drove right into the parking lot and sat in the car eating more wedding cake while watching a spectacular show. The best part is we get to stay home tomorrow night and relax. We're planning to watch a movie like Gettysburg or Saving Private Ryan to actually commemorate the holiday. I don't know why getting drunk and barbequeing is the regular practice to celebrate our nation's independence, but I'll save that soapbox for later. (For the record, I do love BBQ on the 4th!)

I hope you are all having as joyful and celebrative week as we are! More updates to come, including stories from our weekend away. Happy Independence Day!

Crunch time!

This will be a quick post, but I think short is better than nothing! The past few weeks have been hectic and busy (I know, I sound like a broken record - I should stop being surprised by how crazy our lives are) and the chaos is now culminating in the end of my school quarter. I have to read two books, write reports on them, and write a 10-page paper in the next week. Doable, but stressful! It doesn't help that I'll be working all day tomorrow because it's the Fuller Northern California graduation day. Should be fun!

Even though I've enjoyed my class, I'm really looking forward to the quarter being over. I'll finally have time to do those luxurious things that fall by the wayside -- like laundry and cleaning the bathroom. Besides housekeeping, Danny and I do have a great summer planned. We get to attend the wedding of two great friends, then the next day we celebrate our one year anniversary! Where has the time gone? I keep thinking we're still newlyweds because honestly, I'm not tired of Danny yet! Haha. But seriously, I thought the first year of marriage was supposed to be a lot harder than this, so I kept waiting for the fun to run out before the one year mark. But it's still great! We're planning a quick getaway to celebrate, somewhere near the ocean - woohoo! The details are still being kept from me, which makes it way fun.

July will continue with the birth of our ringbearer's little brother (hang in there Adelle!) a trip to Seattle for me (mixing work and play) then a trip to Alaska for Danny (youth group mission trip). At the beginning of August I head to Colonial Williamsburg for the wedding of one of my Japan mission teammates. The yon-nin matsuri (that's Japanese for four-person festival) will unite again! Can you tell I can't wait for school to be over and the summer to begin? One more thing I'm excited about for summer - this summer I'll be in an office with windows. Call me silly, but the past few summers have been very depressing while all my high schoolers are out in the sun and at camp and I was freezing in cubicle-land with no natural lights for miles. Just another perk to the new job, which is BUSY but so much fun!

Anyway, back to quickly recapping the past few weeks. Danny and I got to host some fun people in our home, including my sisters at different times for some sibling bonding which included getting Trisha addicted to American Idol. Don't judge us, you know you love it too. We also got a huge surprise visit from Tim, another member of the Japan yon-nin matsuri! He came to San Francisco for training and treated us to dinner at the hotel where he was training. Dinner was Asian-Cuban fusion, very unique and really tasty. We had a ton of fun. I love catching up with friends that I've known for years (almost 10? Yikes!) and it feels like you just saw each other the other day. Tim's really a blessing and it was great to see him!

Then it was time for Camp Cov, the First Covenant Memorial Day tradition. This was my first year to experience an entire Camp Cov, and it was really fun. We spent the whole weekend in the Santa Cruz mountains with fresh air. Highlights were napping in the sun while chatting (me) and playing volleyball (Danny) with friends, drive-in movie and Marianne's ice cream with the teens, and getting to know some First Covenant family better. The low was Danny being subjected to the traditional "Dunk the pastor" dunk tank, but that's another story.

Gotta run, will share more soon!

How many people will this feed?

Danny and I had guests over for dinner on Saturday night. Looking at this picture, can you guess how many people we had over? If it helps you estimate, we also made three boxes of cous cous. Does it surprise you that we only had 4 guests? I counted, and we made 5 kebobs per person, and that wasn't even using all the meat and vegetables we bought. I have an issue with being paranoid that we won't have enough food for guests, and Danny is very patient to let me buy enough food for twice the people we invite. In my defense, the three boxes of cous cous was his idea. His favorite line is "I used to eat one box all by myself" and then I remind him that he probably ate nothing but cous cous.
Anyway, dinner turned out to be yummy and we had a great time with our friends from church. Danny and I always enjoy time with other adults when we get it!

Resurfacing

You know how dolphins breathe air but stay under water for a long time and then resurface to get breath before going under again? Well hello, I'm dolphin girl. I feel as though I've been doggie paddling to keep my head above water, and then every few weeks or so I get to come up for air. I don't mean to sound like life is rough -- it's full of good stuff, it's just FULL. My new job is keeping me really busy but I love it. I'm taking a class on World Religions this quarter as I pursue my MA degree, and that has been an amazing experience! Youth ministry is really busy, especially since we had a weekend retreat at the end of January. The retreat was a ton of fun, but it took me a few weeks to recover from the lack of sleep!
Here's a picture from the retreat. Our tradition is to go inner tubing at a snow park, and each year we do one last run with the entire group, all 40-ish of us. I'm the blue dot at the top left, and Danny is the yellow blob at the bottom left!


So that's been my life lately: work, classes, writing papers, and playing with teens. The paper I'm working on next is about Judaism so yesterday Danny and I visited a Jewish temple for their Sabbath service. It was really interesting and a lot of fun, although we really disappointed the rabbi after service when we told him we were Christians. I think he got excited for some fresh blood at the synagogue. It was a neat service and they do so many things I wish we did in church. They had junior high students involved in the service -- even leading the Scripture readings. I think in churches we often make the kids sit still and be quiet, but I wish we let them participate in worship more. Another thing I admire about Jews is the joy they have in worship. Jews know how to party, and for all the right reasons! They ended the service with bread and wine to remember to be thankful for our daily bread and to celebrate life.


Speaking of celebrate, congratulations to Dallas Cowboys Quarterback Tony Romo for winning the quarterback challenge at the NFL Pro-Bowl. Yup, that means my boy Romo is the best quarterback in the NFL. Peyton Schmeyton.

So that's been life lately. This has been a bit of a random post, and there's not much ground-breaking news to share, but thanks for keeping up with us! Now it's back to reading and doing laundry!

A Great Day

Today was one of those days when you get in bed and smile and think "today was a great day." (Danny is now singing the Ice Cube song "Today was a good day" and says I'm missing out because I'm not familiar with it.)

Although I did have to wake my night-owl self up at the unholy hour of 5:45 am, I started my new job at Fuller Seminary and really enjoyed the day. I have a lot to learn and a lot to remember, but it's a great place to work!

After dinner Danny and I scratched off the lotto tickets that his mom gets us every year for Christmas. We've never won more than a free ticket, and on my last ticket I was just commenting on how no one ever wins anything on these, when I won $100! It's not a fortune, but it'll do! Danny thought I was joking so we both had a good laugh over the moment. We'll have to think of something fun to do with the free money!

We hope you all had a great new year's holiday!

Random Happenings

It's been a while since I've posted pictures and random family news, so here is a quick rundown of what we've been up to.

The first ever Fitelson-Hall collaboration Christmas tree is up! Actually, it's been up since Thanksgiving weekend, but I didn't have time to get the pictures onto the computer. We love our first Christmas tree because it has ornaments from both our childhoods as well as new ones we (meaning I) bought this year.

Our tree is leaning just a bit, probably because we couldn't agree on where to put it AFTER screwing it into the stand so it was dragged all over the living room. Danny says it has a "gangsta lean" which his friends think is hilarious and I don't understand at all.

Two weekends in a row we hosted big events at our little apartment, and it all went really well! Danny was the best husband ever since he worked so hard to clean the whole house while I stressed about cooking and baking to feed a ton of people. I hosted a bridal shower (the picture is for the moms, aunts and grandmas) and we were able to use our wedding china for the first time! Then we had people over to watch the Cowboys beat the Falcons (and served bridal shower leftovers) and the next day we hosted the youth group student and adult staff Christmas party. Yup, that means we fed and accomodated about 17 people, but it was a ton of fun! I've said this before and I'll say it til I die: Pampered Chef is a life-saver! All the food I made for all the parties was from Pampered Chef recipes (and using their super cool tools) and they make it so easy to throw a party for 20 people!

Now that the parties are over, we really get to relax and enjoy the holidays, although we're filling our calendar up fast because we don't know what to do with all this time! Plus, I have two days left at work before I start my new job, so work has been really easy and it feels great.

I'll leave you with a little laugh, and although it's at Danny's expense you should know that no one laughs harder at himself than Danny. I'm always telling Danny he should spend more than 6.99 for a haircut, so he sucked it up and went to a nicer place that charges a whopping $14 for a haircut. The day after his haircut, we were driving in the car and I was in the driver's seat with a perfect view of his left ear....and the huge bald spot the lady left on his head! I couldn't stop laughing, and for the rest of the day as we drove around I would turn to tell him something and it would come out like this: "We should remember to...teeheeheehee!" So, we had to share with the rest of the world.