General Update

Anyone who follows my blog will soon discover two things (as if you didn't already know):

1. I am a night owl. I love the peace of night when my family is asleep, the house is quiet, and I have some strange reserve of energy that comes to life at 11:00 pm. Don't ask what I am like in the morning. Most of you already know.

2. I am long winded. Good luck ever seeing a short entry from me. 

For those of you that I have been out of touch with, haven't talked to in years, etc. I wanted to give a general update of where things are at for the Barnacles. So here goes:

I worked for York College for the last four years (2004-2008) as an Assistant Professor of Psychology and therapist in our campus counseling center.

Bryan has been working for Lincoln Public School for the past six years. He teaches mostly Literature of the Holocaust, Creative Writing, and Writing Essentials. Writing essentials is highschool kids who need remedial help with writing skills, the other two are upper level literature electives. This means that he gets quite a variety of students from motivated seniors to students whose first language is not English so they are behind in their reading/writing. He is so gifted with the students. Seriously, I have visited him at school and he is like a celebrity in that building. Walking down the hall, every other student, office assistant, and librarian is like, "Hey Mr. B," "Mr. B"---wanting to tell him some tidbit about his/her life or day. It is really cool how he related to and connects with his students. Last year he won "teacher of the year" award from Walmart. He has a T-shirt and everything----he will be so thrilled I told you that :-).

Two years ago we had our first child, Corban. Corban's name is taken from Mark 7:11 and means "a gift devoted to God." He was a suprise (thus a gift) and has been the light of our life ever since.

                                                             

After Corban was born I cut way back at York and was only teaching one class a semester and carrying a quarter time client load. After doing that for two years I decided to resign completely and focus more energy on being at home. This brought about several exciting changes.

First, we moved to Lincoln. We had been living in Seward (a small town in between York and Lincoln) and were both commuting  about 35 miles one way. We are thrilled to now be living FOUR MINUTES from Bryan's work. It has literally given us at least eight hours a week of time that would previously have been in the car. We are so happy to also be in the same city where our church is as it allows us to be more involved with different ministries. It is also a blessing to be able to immerse ourselves into one community instead of three. I feel spread less thin.

Second, I got hired by Heartlands Church (our church home) to provide counseling to our church members or people referred from within our church. I am considered a "quarter time" which is a client load of about five clients a week. I am able to do this two evenings a week after Bryan gets home from school. This is so ideal and the hugest blessing---I get to stay current in my field, I get to work in a Christian environment, I get to bless my church family as my job, and I essentially get to do all of this while being a stay at home mom. How perfect!

Back to Corban. I absolutely, positively, ADORE being a mother. Corban bring tremendous joy, love, and yes at times frustration and exasperation into my life. He is a hilarious kid with a lot of his daddy's personality---goofy, social, engaging, and lights up the room with his one of a kind absolutely the best ever "sparkly eyed" smiles. I can't tell you how many people have told me he has the most sparkly eyes they have ever seen. Of course, beyond the fact that he is socially engaging and fantastically handsome, he is also intelligent, artistic, athletic, and . . . . . .OK I'm just joking. He is all those things :-) but I am a balanced mom, I promise! Well, no doubt he will be the most common topic of the blog, so I will not spend any more time on this. His personality will come alive as I share pictures and stories from our daily life. Here are some pics for now:

   

And for those of you who it's been a reeeeeeeally long time  . . .I went to graduate school at UNL and got my master's in Marriage and Family Therapy, have been married to Bryan for 8! years (time flies . . . ) and STILL live in Nebraska despite numerous attempts and promises taht "this will be the last year and THEN we're moving somewhere else." I have to be honest. I love Nebraska. I love the sunsets, the cornfields, the seasons, the down-to-earth goodness of the people, my beloved friends, and our wonderful church home. There has been a lot of love here and if we ever do transition to another place (who knows?) it will not be without a lot of heartache saying good-bye to all we love and have learned to call home here. All in all, we are happy and content. Surrounded by a loving community, relishing the wonderful days with Corban, and enjoying our work and home.

P.S. Incidentally, I wrote another long post the other night but I wrote it out in Word. Can anyone tell me how in the world I can get it copied into my blog? I am having no luck and really don't want to retype it all.