Catching Up

The last month has been super busy so we have not had time to blog! It's catching up time! Since September 11th, we have traveled to New York, Atlanta, South Carolina, Orlando, Ft. Myers, Peachtree City, Dallas, Southern Illinois, Chicago and then back to Norman. We have visited aunts & uncles, cousins, grandparents, siblings, and friends. It's been a whirlwind of activity and it is nice to rest a bit before "The Texas Tour" begins on Thursday.

We left Norman last night and that is weird. Norman has been our home for the last 5 years and I really can't believe that time has come to an end. We had lunch with Whitney (Chase's sister) before we left town and we were reminiscing on our beginning in Norman, when we had no friends and nobody to hang out with on the weekends except for each other. Thankfully, that didn't last for more than a semester and over the last several years, God has provided incredible friendships for us. After graduating from OU and getting married, we both got incredible jobs that we loved and were sad to leave.

Julie: Republic Bank and Trust was a great place to work. I loved my co-workers, our customers, the atmosphere, the community focus, and the work itself. Jeff Miles was my boss from day 1, even though we both changed positions along the way. We really worked well together as a team and I really miss our sometimes ridiculous, sometimes professional friendship. Under his leadership, we created a pretty great training program for new tellers, and I got to help train probably 30-40 people (one or two at a time) over the year and a half that I was a "Customer Support Specialist". I miss working with my friends at RBT and wish I could take a few of them to Nicaragua with me! :)

This is Becky. Becky used to work at Midland Mortgage with Chase (he helped train her when she started there). Then she came to work at Republic and I got to train her to be my replacement. Becky is awesome - we pretty much became instant friends. She loves Jesus a lot and on my last day, she made me cupcakes that were so delicious - both great things! Jeff brought us all Chick-fil-A chicken biscuits (my favorite!) and we got to go out to lunch as a CSS team (me, Becky, Jeff, Stephen and Darrell). I really love those people and miss working with them quite a bit.

Chase: I worked for Midland Mortgage (MMC) for almost two years and it varied between being premature-aging stressful and rewarding. The last 7 months I was there I felt like the favored child--they created a new position for me that took me off the phones and had me designing/playing with Excel spreadsheets all day while still enjoying the company of my fun co-workers. It was like having privileges and esteem without much responsibility. I really enjoyed the new job, but every time I explain to people what it entailed, I end up boring them. I'm just a nerd, I guess. On my last day, the main team I worked with threw me a mini going-away party, complete with cupcakes, chips and queso, and a goofy poem. They had even taken up a collection for me to help with our traveling expenses! I miss the mental challenge of the job and all the fun I had with my co-workers: finding people with funny names, creating weapons out of office supplies, and coping with impossible policies with laughter. I especially miss Chad, Heather, Laurel, Sergio, and Steven--my accomplices in mischief, and I'm sad that I had to miss the MMC Olympics (which included office supply sculptures, remote-control car races, paper airplane throwing, and a paperclip chain-making race).

We both miss our jobs but look forward to what lies ahead! Speaking of which - our goal for when to leave the country was after we paid off all of our student loans ($40,000+) and... drumroll please...We made our last payment this past Friday! God provided for us in incredible ways and we are so grateful! We celebrated by going out to The Melting Pot for dinner. We love fondue and it was so delicious! Yea for being debt-free! Dave Ramsey would be so proud of us - we did the debt snowball and everything!

Sunday was our last day at Wildwood and Chase's last day to play piano with the worship team. It was bittersweet. We sang "Mystery" by Charlie Hall and when I sang "Sweet Jesus Christ our family, Sweet Jesus Christ our unity", I couldn't help but cry (for the first time) about leaving. I'm thankful that even though our location is changing and everything will be different, we still have unity with our family in Christ. Norman has become our home over the last 5 years, just as much as Dallas was our home for the first 18 years of our lives. We will (and already do) miss our friends there like crazy! But Jesus will sustain us until we're together again.

Thanks for reading all the way through if you made it!