One More Week!!!

Well in one week from today we will have our one year Anniversary and then Dan will leave the next day for Colorado. I think back a year ago to this week and we were crazy busy getting ready for our wedding in just one week. Now we are getting ready for our big move in just one week! God's timing just amazes me! As hard as this is to leave all of our friends/family, God is confirming to us more and more that we are in His will and this is where He is calling us for this season of our life! It's so exciting to watch God write our life story for us! I feel like He is going to use us in some huge ways to further his kingdom out there and I just can't wait to see what He has for us! What an adventure! This will also be a hard week though to let go of Dan and not see him for a month. It's just necessary, so that we can get all the little details worked out in both places. Pray for God to provide a job for me, and strength to be away from each other for that length of time.

MOVING

We have exciting news.....Dan got a teaching job!!! He was offered a high school social studies teaching position in Colorado Springs. This is very bitter sweet for us. We've been rooted in Toledo for such a long time and have made so many deep friendships while we've been here, and not to mention how much closer we have drawn to all my extended family here. There's lots of mixed emotions! We are so excited to see what God has in store for us. We love this area of Colorado. It's absolutely gorgeous and we can't wait to do something adventurous before we start to have kids. We've been praying a lot about this decision and it's just amazing how God has worked everything out! He's such a big God and He never ceases to amaze us! This will be a very BIG adjustment, so please be praying for us through all of this.

Emerine Family Reunion

We went to the Emerine family reunion this last weekend and had a great time! The weather turned out to be pretty good. We had cornhole tournaments, swimming, and lots of catching up with relatives we haven't got to see in a while!

Connor and Caleb playing with the water balloonsI wanted Dan and Bret to look at me so I could get a good picture, instead they both stuck their fingers in their noses.....so I guess that's the best I could get!

Everyone worn out from playing corn hole, just hanging out and chatting

Caleb just loves the water....we had so much fun with him that day!

Here's Maddy pushing Caleb around in the hippo

4th of July!!!

This year we had a really busy 4th of July weekend! We started off going to Dan's Aunt Sara and Uncle Mark's house on the lake. We watched the fireworks Thurs night on the lake and then spent the night. We stayed most of the day friday and were able to experience the big water balloon fight. We went back to Toledo and went out with our friends friday night to watch the fireworks downtown on the river. On saturday we had a cookout at our pastor and his wife's house. Then sunday we celebrated our friend Britnye's birthday and had another cookout! Enjoy the pics!!!

Here we are before we left for the big water balloon fight. There were about 25 boats involved and everyone meets in the middle of the lake and just starts throwing them at each other. We brought trash can lids for shields as you can see!

We had hundreds of water balloons ready and we had such a great time!

This is Dan's aunt Sara and cousin Amy

These are our friends when we went downtown to watch the fireworks!

Ashley and me

Sunday we went to my aunt and uncle's to celebrate Britnye's birthday and have a cookout. We had a great time swimming and hanging out with our friends!

Britnye blowing out her candles:)

Heather and Britnye

The guys had a great time playing cornhole

Colorado Vacation

Well, we've had lots of people asking when we are going to post some pictures from our Colorado vacation. We had such an awesome time there and we absolutely loved it! We were bummed that my brother and sister-n-law weren't able to come due to her being very pregnant, but we had a great time with my parents. Dan's Uncle David and Aunt Polly came up to visit (they live in Woodland Park, CO) and they are just so much fun to be around:) We took so many pictures, so it was hard to be selective with them. So even though I posted a lot of them.....there were so many more we took to begin with! Enjoy!

Our first hike with my parents in Vail and it was gorgeous!

I just love the blue sky in Colorado! The weather was sunny and in the 80's the whole time we were there!

This is dad pretending to be a bird.....he definitely kept us laughing the whole trip!

Mom and Dad hiking the trails!

This was one of the most beautiful views! I loved the lake and the mountains in the background!

Where's Waldo??? If you look closely, you can see dad in this picture making us pull off alongside of the road so he can take some pictures of the fly fisherman. We had to constantly wait for him to take lots and lots of pictures!

This is mom very annoyed as we are all in the car waiting for dad to wonder back to the car from taking pictures:)

This was our resort.....we loved it! The living room was nice with a balcony view of a lake and a fireplace.

This is the dining room area

This was our kitchen....it was also very nice

Here's one of the bedrooms, the place was just so cozy!

One of the days we went to an art festival in Vail. They had lots of tents to check out and the town was just gorgeous!

This is just a picture walking down one of the main roads in Vail.

We couldn't figure out who these two wilderness guys were in the store

Mom and I wanted a picture with the sexy ski man that we saw!

Okay, now this is Mt Elbert. 14,432 ft and it is the mountain you see in the middle. Yes, I hiked this mountain....Dan had been planning this hike for like 6 months! We made it to the top and it was one of the most amazing experiences!!!

Here's me at the bottom of Mt Elbert before we started the trail. Dan woke me up at 5 am to hike it and I was pretty sleepy!

It would have been to much to post pictures of the whole hike but here we are about 3 1/2 or 4 hours into the hike and getting closer to the top, as you can see more snow.

It looks like I am almost there, but that is just a false summit. There were about 4 of those where you think you see the top and you realize there's another summit ahead of you!

Here we are at the top! This picture just doesn't do justice though. The mountains in the background look so close but in all reality they are so far down there and you just feel so high up!

I'm pretty pumped to finally have made it!

We went white water rafting and had such a great time with mom and dad

Before the trip and excited to go!

Here we are in our sexy wet suits:)

Our resort had a game room and we went down to just chill out and play some games one night.

Here we are playing checkers, we each won a game

We took a day with no hiking and just relaxed by the pool.

This is before the sunburn, needless to say by the end of the day Dan was fried!

Mom wasn't so happy about having her picture taken here....sorry mom, just had to put that one on there!

Playing euchre by the pool

This was towards the end of our trip. David and Polly came and spent the night and then took us to Hanging Lake trail the next day. We had such a great time hiking with them!

Me, Polly, and Mom

Who are those beauty queens on the rocks?!?!

If you can see Dan is under the water falls and there is a rainbow in the picture.

This is Hanging Lake at the top of the trail. It was absolutely beautiful and the water was so clear!

Even higher above the lake was this HUGE water fall and it was just amazing!

Here we are with David and Polly

Dan was able to hike Pikes Peak, another 14,000 footer while in Colorado with his uncle David and they camped out. He had such a great time staying out there a little longer with David and Polly and just loves spending time with them!