We're alive and well, really!

Sorry for the lack of posts this last week and a half! We have lots to share, but have had a crazy time graduating from ICC, trying to clean and pack and then drive across 4 states to Indiana! We are now in Indiana and having a great time meeting with people and spending most of our time reconnecting with family and old friends. Thank you for your prayers and patience as we try to find time to do it all!

Please pray for us especially as we will be sharing FOUR separate times this sunday at Daniel's church. We are grateful for the opportunities and it will definitely stretch us!

And we're back!

Blogger was accidentally blocked here at JAARS for the past week and a half, so sorry for the lack of posts! I have lots of pictures to share:)

Have you signed up for SWAGBUCKS yet?

I signed up for Swagbucks way back when and promptly forgot about it. Well, lo and behold I signed in last night and have enough for $20 in amazon.com giftcards! Whoohoo!

So have you signed up yet? If you are thinking about it sign up HERE!



Its basically a mindless way to earn points towards fun stuff like amazon gift cards while doing google searches you would do anyway. I wasn't super sold on it until I found out that I had earned so many points (especially because of nice friends who signed up through my link earlier:) Anyway, I am excited because we can order a book or two while in NC since we can't pack much. Sweet!

The coffee hit the keyboard and POOF!

My absence in cyberspace can be explained by someone spilling a very large iced coffee (homemade of course) onto my keyboard yesterday morning. My typing looked something like this: sldkjfaosiojdf hweorii doihek!

Not so awesome. After help from my techy dad and waiting for Daniel to arrive home from work, we got some Isopropyl alcohol from Walgreens and some QD Electronic Cleaner from Shucks and sprayed the keyboard. After many sad exclamations from Daniel outside, he thought he had REALLY broken it. Later we figured out it was a "hydrolic lock" or something of that nature (from Daniel) and after drying all night and reattaching a few keys we pryed off (not our best idea) it is working again! Whoo!

Here are my tips for the day:
#1: iced coffee and keyboards are not friends. Hot coffee and keyboards are probably not friends either for that matter.
#2: Isopropyl alcohol and electronic cleaner are friends with your keyboard, but may not seem like it at first. Don't start ripping keys off the keyboard until you make sure they've dried.
#3: computer keys are very difficult to reattatch. Don't unattach them unless you have to (see tip #2).

The end.

In our new house!

My absence has been due to a happy thing...we finally moved into our new house! Its so cute! Daniel has done a great job. The bathroom is operational, the floors and walls are beautiful and a ton of other things are looking great. We bought a clothes dryer, a built-in microwave and some bathroom accessories at Habitat for Humanity yesterday so things are moving quickly towards a "finished" product. The kitchen is probably the least done part of the house-the only thing in there is a fridge (along with the floors and walls and lights) but with a crockpot and now a grill and some burners from friends we have all we need to cook for awhile until we decide on countertops and re-install the old cabinets.

Its been a little challenging figuring out sleeping arrangements (no doors on any rooms except the bathroom right now) but we're making it work. We bought a fan at a thrift shop and are trying to teach the girls to sleep in the same room (the living room last night). Its gone suprisingly well-I've only had to get up with the girl(s) once each night. So that's why I've been gone. We have internet at the house now so I will be here regularly again soon:)

We're moving!

Because we didn't think we were busy enough with having a baby in 5-7 weeks and raising partners/support to go overseas, we thought we'd also move next month! Are we crazy? Probably:)

We're just moving a mile or so away, but the new place is almost 200 square feet smaller than our current apartment and needs to be totally renovated before we move! Plus we'll need to get rid of/sell about 1/3 of our stuff (if that gives you an idea of the size of our new place:) It's going to be a busy time and a learning experience for us.

Even so, we're excited and hoping that this new little "project" will help time fly as we wait for our baby girl to arrive! All this to say that I will continue blogging, but will be focusing my efforts on the few things that take the least time and prep: menu planning (which is something that helps my life run smoothly), my progress and to-do lists for moving and selling our extra stuff along with cleaning, pictures of our family and my shopping trips if I have time.

I was planning on doing a clean out the pantry/freezer challenge this month to have less to move, but Daniel wanted me to continue to look for "good deals" and said he would be willing to move our current pantry full of food to the new place.

He also decided/agreed to renovate the kitchen first so that I would be able continue to have a place to cook after we moved. I guess his love of home-cooked food beat out his earlier plans to renovate other areas first:) Overall, this will be a challenging time to make our home a haven, but with the Lord's help we'll see that the most important things get taken care of:)

Blogher and Beans & Rice!

You'll probably notice something new on my sidebar...I now am a part of the blogher ad network! I am so excited to be accepted to join!

If you've never heard of blogher, find out more here. I am excited because I have been interested in finding a way to cover the cost of our internet through blogging, but wanted family-friendly advertising(or none at all)and this is it!

I probably will only make a few dollars (or maybe cents!) a month, especially to start, and the way I will do that is when people click on the ads (but don't feel pressured to do so). The ads I've seen on other blogher blogs have been great, so I am thinking they will be things my family, friends and regular readers will be interested in anyway.

Let me know what you think!

Airing our dirty laundry

Not really.

For those of you who know us in real life and need to call us, we have a new phone number! We switched to Vonage and got rid of our Verizon cell #'s. But of course I won't be giving out the new # here. If you know us and have our email, feel free to email us to get the #.

ALSO! We have a blog email address! BeansNRice@live.com

I only check it about once a week or so though. If you have our other one, that is a quicker way to contact us:)

We will be hiking in the Olympics (weather permitting...we weren't able to camp so this is the consolation prize;O) so next time you all see me I will be so buff. I wish.

Training Day

Just a note to let you know that I am here, just doing some training for the school district I (used to) work at. I am training the MANDT system today and tomorrow while gramie Kathy babysits, and that will be my last hurrah as a working woman for awhile;) I will post menu plans and start our "week in beans" tonight!

Messin' w/ the Blog Design

Its about time for me to make my blog look less like an eyesore. Excuse me while I play around with things!

PS. I am a technological moron sometimes, so if you have any sweet tips, I will gladly try them out:)