November

Sometimes I do not understand why it’s so hard for me to blog. I’ve written down a few ideas to blog about, but after a few days I no longer care about the topic enough to share it online. So… a month passes with no posts. Mostly we have been going to school and working – nothing news worthy really. We have had some fun get-togethers at our apt complex: Halloween/Birthday Party and Thanksgiving meal. We are very thankful for our neighbors/friends.

I told some of you that we would post our Old Testament midterm for you to read. In my opinion, our essays are a good summary of what we learned and discussed the first half of the semester. I’m not going to post it online. I got nervous that something might be misconstrued, and once it’s online – it’s out there for the world to see forever. Having said that, if you are interested, send either of us an email and we’ll send it to you for your reading. We’d love to discuss you’re ideas after reading it as well.

Another thing we have done since our last post is take advantage of Bank of America’s free museum weekend in November (those with BoA should take advantage of these weekends). We decided to go to the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. The best thing I took away from that trip was this website: www.g-dcast.com

I have not watched all of them, but two of my favorites are Shemini and Vayetze.

Shemini – very catchy and the most entertained I’ve been with Leviticus

Vayetze – story of Rachel and Leah

Remember, these animations are not a word for word reading of the Old Testament but I think they give new life to these stories that I’m used to reading. Enjoy

Well, our Thanksgiving Break is coming to a end and we have two more weeks of classes – this includes finals. Wish us luck!

P.S. Jamie is now writing for another blog (Yes, I am a little hurt that OUR blog has yet to have a post from him in the course of its 6 month life, but he’s has already posted twice to the other one just this week! And, yes I am writing this to hopefully guilt him in to contributing here.) You can read his writings here.

Thank you Church for letting Galileo in to heaven

Seminary is a great experience!

Coming out here I did not know what to expect. But one thing I did not want was to be given “the answer book” for Christianity. My faith and theology has taken a few punches, and it has also been built up. Honestly there have been times when I’ve thought “Professor, just tell me what I am ‘supposed’ to believe because my brain is starting to hurt with this intake of information.” But I am so very glad I am being challenged and forced to reconcile thoughts and theories for myself.

We have been studying for our Old Testament midterm this past week and I wanted to share this nugget of information with all of our readers (though many of you might already know this).

Hear what our great Reformation leaders had to say about Copernicus because he believed the earth went around the sun instead of the sun going around the earth.

“People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon…. This fool wishes to reverse the entire scheme of astrology; but sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth.” Martin Luther

“The world also is stabilized, that it cannot be moved” (citing Ps.93) “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” John Calvin

Don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate these men for their contribution to the Christian faith!

It is just interesting to think about issues we call other people “fools” about today when they might just be right…

I am not thinking of anything in particular, just something to ponder.

(Sidenote: most people/scholars today who hold to the inerrancy of the Bible do include as a qualification that biblical writers used phenomenological language)

Title explanation: Galileo was excommunicated from the church because he also promoted the theory that the sun revolved around the earth… but then they let him back in during the 1990s J

P.S. More Old Testament stuff will be posted once we get our grades back from the essay portion of our tests.

School- 4; Sims- 0

Getting back in to the swing of school has proved to be difficult.

The first four weeks of school we went to every class having not completed all our homework readings.

We are going in to the fifth week and I feel better about it already. I think we are going to be able to get back on track.

We came out here to go to school, but sometimes it’s hard not to give priority to working since that is what supports us. At the same time, we want to enjoy our time in CA and experience as much as we can. But, where is the balance? That is still what we are figuring out. What is the balance for each of us personally and what is the balance for us as a couple.

We are in Monterey this weekend. Jamie has a disk golf tournament. I plan to get out and see Fisherman’s Wharf and Cannery Row this afternoon… right after I read for Old Testament.

Catch up

Wow, I did not realize that we did not blog at all during August! I blame it on being on vacation then spending the rest of August trying to catch up with ourselves, get back in the swing of things, and get ready for school to start.

Now time to bring everyone up to speed. Last time we posted we were in Orlando getting ready to enjoy the last week of our vacation back home.

Here are some pictures of our fun time in Orlando with Emily, Kaitlin and Wallace.

The turtle they saved :)

Being goofy and making goofy faces.

We went to the beach one day and this was the sand sculpture the boys made - must they always be thinking about sports :)

We went to Dixie Crossroads for lunch and it was VERY YUMMY! (seafood)

Wednesday and Thursday we spent with Betsy and Orlando. We went to the Disney parks and also to look at some of the Disney resorts. The themes and decorations are excellent. Disney does it so well!

There were some other good pictures from our time in Orlando, but they are not on our camera...

Thursday we drove over to see PaJim and Mimi before heading back to Athens.

Then the weekend consisted of SETH'S WEDDING!

(the Hardman family)

Congrats you two!

Then we headed back to San Fran. It was a longer trip than we expected, but we made the best of it.

This is the ceiling in the Chicago airport when traveling from terminal B to C. We saw this light spectacular many many times.

This is how many flights we tried to get on from Chicago to the west coast and we did NOT get on any of these flights. After spending 24hrs in Chicago, we flew to Denver. From Denver we were able to get a flight to San Jose and took a train up to the San Francisco airport where our luggage was :) It was a mini adventure. On the bright side, if we had not been stuck in Chicago, we would not have seen...

Ice Cube (for those of you who don't know who he is - I didn't either. He's a rapper and has been in some movies.)

Fast forward to now. We just finished our second week of school. Our classes this semester are Intro to Old Testament, Hebrew, and Counseling. Gonna be fun!

On the east coast now. YAY!

We've been relaxing (lazy) since our summer class ended so there have been no blog posts for the past few weeks. Here is what we've been up to:

July 9th - Dress like a cow and get a free meal at Chick-fil-A. Since the closest Chick-fil-a is over an hour a way, we grabbed our neighbors, Jody and Emily, and made it an afternoon adventure.

July 16th - trip to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Full day of excitement!

July 17th - cookout at Muir Beach with the Martins and the Harpers.

July 20th - on a plane home.

We spent Tuesday through Saturday in Athens seeing Ashley's family and friends there. Saturday we met up with friends from GaTech for lunch and ultimate frisbee then had dinner with friends from Atlanta. After dinner we got to spend time time with Jamie's family at Mark's race.

Much thanks to Brian and Gaan for letting us stay at their place Sat. night! Sunday afternoon Jamie went to play disc golf with friends while Ashley went to stay with Uncle Keith and Aunt Colleen. Sorry we don't have more picures of this time.

On Monday we went through Roswell to see frineds ...

... then down to the GA State BCM to see April! Monday evening we were out in Douglasville having dinner and spending more time with Jamie's family. Tuesday through Friday morning were spent relaxing at Nana and Bigs house (Jamie's grandparents). Now we are in Orlando until Thursday. We will try to be better about taking pictures of our adventures this week!

Happy Birthday Jamie!

Tuesday was Jamie's birthday.

To celebrate, we went to Cheesecake Factory. Yum.

Below is a picture of his birthday present - shoes made for disc golf (by KEEN).

Yesterday we both had the day off of work. We ate BBQ for lunch and went to see the movie Knight and Day. This was the first time we have gone to see a move in the theater since we've moved! Great day!

We hope the fog isn't bad tomorrow so we can watch the fireworks in San Francisco from Chapel hill on campus.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Baby Deer

This weekend we did not do much of anything beside study for and take a test. We did go to the farmers market again after church. Once we took the test on Sunday, we went out to get ice cream to celebrate. On the way there we saw a baby deer. He was on the opposite side of the fence as his “friends.” I got out of the car and walked toward him. The deer here aren’t skittish so I was able to get to close enough to pet him. I stroked him a few times and I was super excited. He finally ran down the fence to the opening and back in to the green field.

In hobby news, Jamie has won the last three times he played disc golf. I have found a hobby – making earrings. A sample is below.

Beach

I had forgotten that we live so close to the beach. To me, that fact hasn’t been all too important seeing as how it hasn’t gotten hot here yet (my opinion). This past weekend however, it finally got up to about 90. Jamie had to work on Saturday and we finished up our homework for our summer class. Sunday after church we explored the farmer’s market for the first time (AWESOME). After we got home and ate lunch, we headed to the beach!! It was great – mid 80s, cool breeze. We sat on the beach and watched surfers and watched people play catch with their dogs. It was relaxing, and the first time, I believed summer weather (by my Southeast standards) could exist here.

In other news, we are finishing up the class part of our summer class today. We still have work to do online and papers to write until July 11^th. The class is Christian Ethics and it’s pretty interesting. If anyone has an ethical dilemma, Jamie and I can solve it for you. Only KIDDING! The class is about ways people approach ethics, how we as Christians should go about it, and knowing that people with the same facts and same Biblical principles can come to different conclusions about issues that are not directly addressed in the Bible, and that can be okay.

Well it’s back to work tomorrow… hopefully this weekend we can get out and do something fun for me to blog about next week J

Love you all.

The Sims

Willits CA

Jamie had a disc golf tournament this past weekend in Willits CA, which is about 2 hours north of us. He came in 4th place (out of 40ish people)- YAY.

Below are a couple of videos of him playing.

While he was doing that, I was doing this...

Fun things that happened on the trip:

*We heard "This land is your land, This land is my land" in Spanish on the radio

*Watched a home run derby at the local ball park where we saw this...

(yes, this man is wearing a

rebel flag shirt in northern California)

*Stopped to take a picutre of a giant (statue?) who seems to be scolding a flower bed. Notice how big it is by the bleachers behind him.

Well, that's about all that happened in Willits. Thanks for reading.

Intro

It was our goal to start a blog six months ago when we moved to CA. Six months later... this is our first post. I'll try to post some fun pictures from the Spring later, but I'll be doing good if I can keep up with what's going on now.