Preface: Married Life

Let's see, where did I last leave off?
Oh...we got married!
Yes, Chris and I had a blissful wedding July of 2008.  Only slightly short of blissful was our first month of marriage.  You see, well, we were homeless.

There's a backstory here.  As of 7 days before our marriage Chris and I were planning to live in a fabulous 1900's home in the historic and prestigious Pinehurst neighborhood of Tuscaloosa, AL.  (The house was shaped like a hexagon...super cool.) Are we rolling in dough?...of course not.  We had a friend of a friend who had a house she couldn't sell and so she offered us to rent it for a very modest rate until it sold...which she assured us may not happen for a while.  The house was empty during our engagement so we started moving our belongings in about two months before our wedding.  We were so excited about the house and our new life together that we got everything as ready as we could.  Like...down to the glade plug-ins, soap in the soap dish, toilet paper on the roll...you catch my drift.

During the weeks before our wedding, Chris had been having second thoughts about continuing his career with Campus Crusade in Tuscaloosa.  He wondered if God was calling him to leave the ranks of vocational ministry and join the business world and have a personal ministry there.  He talked to a friend of his that had a business in Birmingham he was interested in.  As it turned out, they were hiring.  They offered Chris a job on Monday before our wedding.  That same Monday night our landlord-to-be in Tuscaloosa called and said "I'm so sorry, but I've sold the house.  You've got to get your things out this week."  Chris and I knew when we decided to rent this house there was a possibility this might happen, but never dreamed it would happen before we even moved in!  I always had a strange intuition that we would never actually live in that house, and I told Chris this several times.  So the week before our wedding, when we trudged from Birmingham over to Tuscaloosa, packed up all of our things in one afternoon (with the help of some of the dear families from Trinity Church) and stored everything in a friend's basement.
We decided to enjoy our wedding week, and to try not to worry about what we would do and where we would live until after the wedding.
We had a fabulous honeymoon.  (See happy lovebird pictures from previous post)
We decided to leave Campus Crusade and Chris took the job with South Cypress Floors.  He started work right away and I began looking for a job in Birmingham.
We spent one...and ONLY ONE night with my parents.  Being in my childhood bedroom really killed the newlywed romance.  We house-sat one week for the Gregorys (my sister Emily's family), then house-sat another week for a mansion in Mtn. Brook with no TV or comfortable couch.  Then finally we landed at a place that feels very familiar now (more to come in a future post)...The Landgren Family Basement (my sister's liz's family).  We spent two weeks there.  You must understand that the Landgrens have three children who were 8,5, & 3 at the time.  These kids are wild.  Photo to the right is the youngest Landgren child, and a great example of the wildness.  He is referred to as "Crunch" on my sister's blog ThisFunkyJunky.  We love them to death and love playing with them.  But forget you not, we were only two weeks married so it's a strange turn of events to be living with 3 small children who want to wrestle and play hide and go seek all the time!
Finally, we moved into a two bedroom apartment at Mayfair Apartments somewhere around our 1 month anniversary.  We loved Mayfair and we recommend it, by the way.
We had a great first year of marriage.  It wasn't always easy, because any newlywed knows there are a lot of adjustments that come with marriage.  Nonetheless, we have loved being married so far.  More to come in the next post.

Here are some pictures from our apartment.  It's nothing too exciting, but we did our best to make it feel like home!

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