Shawn And Brooke

The trip was a success. Visalia is a cool little town, with a main street, and that's about it. We went out bowling with some of Kristin's friends. We had a blast. At one point Phil threw his hat after a bad shot. The hat hit the two glasses in front of me which quickly exploded into a pile of glass in my lap. Don't worry, I'm ok.

We drove a few hours north to Visalia today, to visit Brooke's cousin Kristin. She's a teacher that moved to Cali around the same time as us. (You may remember her from our wedding)

The drive was fun. We saw mountains, snow, clouds, and fields. Luckily we didn't see any traffic.

Well we're off to go see what Visalia has to offer.

Hey everyone!! I know it's been a long time since I have posted anything. Well, Shawn and I got back from MI last night and we had a great time at our friend Vicki's wedding. I also went to Chicago for the day to visit my brother and his girlfriend, the drive home was bad!! We got our share of snow while we were home, that's for sure. Shawn got to hang out with his brother Chad and cousin Josh. We were once again bummed that Rob Bell was not the speaker at church. Every time we come home he is gone!! he must not like us :)

Well, an update on CA, our jobs are going well, I had a wonderful birthday and I am now an older 23 years old. :)I got flowers at work from Shawn and my mom. Shawn took me out to a really nice restuarant on the Pacific Ocean, you can't get much better than that. It was nice also because we had a tradition of going to the Piper on my birthday so it was a reminder of home. Our apt is still great as well as our car, its running well. The weather is always in the high 60's so its always pleasant!!!. Our Small group is going well and we love our church. Right now I am taking a class every saturday for two more weeks. Its some extra training for work and I get certification for it, if I pass :).

FYI to anyone that wants to come out and visit let us know when :) My mom is gracing our presence on April 21-25 so sorry to disapoint but we are offically booked that weekend :). well everyone we miss you and love you. post a reply and we will write back. ~Brooke

Well folks, this weekend was great. The weather was sunny and above 70. I went for some exploratory walks and enjoyed doing nothing. We had some friends over for dinner tonight, then went and watched Seatle make it to the Super Bowl. (We had friends from Seatle that were very excited.

Work is still very busy and crazy. It seems like decisions that should have been made a long time ago are still not made, and we are still under staffed. Oh well. Life in Cali is good.

Feel free to leave us comments on any topic, we like to know that we have friends. ;)

We had a fantastic trip in Michigan. Ah, home sweet home. We visited with a lot of our friends and family. After attending about 8 billion Christmas parties, we decided to head home. That's where the trouble began...

Our Midwest flight from Grand Rapids to Milwaulkee left late because of some "weather" in Milwaulkee. They had to redo the paperwork or something. Arriving 30 minutes after our flight had left, we went to the only gate that said it was going to LA. This flight had just closed the doors and the lady at the counter said that if Grand Rapids had only called ahead they would've held that last flight for us. But they didn't. :(

We ended up waiting for five or six hours there waiting for our flight to Los Vegas, which was delayed! Once in Vegas, about 7PM, we looked up our United (we switched airlines) flight which said it was delayed from 8 to 9, but there was another flight leaving for LA. It was doing its final boarding, we talked to the person taking the tickets and she let us on! Finally a break!

The story isn't done yet folks. Once at LAX, we had the chore of finding our luggage. See our luggage had made the flight that we missed in Milwaulkee. We arrived at the United terminal, but had to go over to the Midwest terminal to pickup our luggage. It was 8:30PM at this point. There was a mob of people by the midwest terminal looking for their luggage. After trying desperately to find a Midwest agent, we went upstairs to goto the ticketing counter. We got there to find NO ONE THERE!!! (anger bubbling from ears at this point) Luckily, the airline next to Midwest was there and called around and found our luggage.

We finally got home around 9:30 PM PST after leaving Grand Rapids around 8 AM EST, for a grand total travel time of...

16.5 hours

Well, we are back in Cali now. Brooke and I had a lot of fun over Thanksgiving. We got to see a lot of friends and family. We'll try to post some pictures soon.

We cannot wait until Christmas break when we will be back for 10 days.

Well guys and gals,

We are finally coming home again. We will be packing up our stuff and leaving our 80 degree weather for the cool temps of Michigan. Just a side note, I took surf lessons last weekend (heard you had snow). Anyways, we will be in town from the 23rd to the 27th. Some friends are meeting us at the Brewery in Holland on the 25th (Friday) 'round 8:30ish. Give us a call, hope to see you there.

Sorry for the long delay to all you readers out there. My site has been down for a little bit. My friend Ken that lets me use his webserver accidentally deleted my site!

Look for more info soon.