alive and well

Hello out there! Life has been amazingly crazy for me! We are living in our new house now, and I love it! It's so much nicer than the apartment. lol! Get this, it has two bathrooms, a dishwasher, an oven that works, and no downstairs neighbor! lol! We are especially excited about the dishwasher. We've gone without one for the last 20 months. No more paper plates!!! What could be better?? Well, we could use a washer and dryer...I'm back at the apartment right now using the washing machine to clean my mountain of laundry, and then I'll head out for my weekly trip to the laundromat. Ugh. I hate laundromats. I will be so glad when I can dry my clothes in the comfort of my own home. We have a washing machine, we just haven't moved it into our new house yet, and we have a dryer back home that my family is going to bring up this coming weekend when we will "really" move in. It will be so nice to have my own bed back. I am so looking forward to that!! Oh yeah, amazing news: I have my own bedroom for the first time in my life!!!! My lifelong roommate, Bandy, isn't moving up with the rest of my family just yet. We have some horses and a calf that we can't bring with us since we don't have a place to keep them, so she will be staying there for a while to take care of them until we find some pasture up here. So, now that I'm almost 21, I have my own room. I am pretty much amazed since I never thought that would happen. lol! After all, I didn't even have my own bed until I was 19. I guess dreams really do come true.

Life is looking better. I finally made some friends up here. I met them Friday night when we were helping our pastor get ready for a fall festival at his campgrounds. I was so excited. I've been up here eight weeks, and haven't met any godly young people that I felt like I could be good friends with. Turns out they are all about 5 or 6 years older than me, but they don't seem to mind that and let me know that I was welcome to hang out with them. Very cool! Thank You, Jesus! I was very encouraged.

I don't like retail. I know that's random, but it's the truth. I thought I would try something different when I moved up here just to see if I would like something else better than office work. Well, I guess I don't. I wish I had my office job back. I really miss it. The pay, the hours, the co-workers, the actual work itself. Yep, pretty much everything about it. So, I've been aggresively pursuing my bookkeeper's certification. I'll stick with my retail job until after the holidays (because I don't want to ditch them during their biggest season). Meanwhile I'll get my exams out of the way, and be looking for office jobs. Once I pass all the exams I have to have 3,000 hours of experience before I get my certification. I've got about 1,000 right now. I'm just hoping I can survive the next 3 chaotic months in the retail business. *shivers*

Well, that basically catches you up on my life. I don't know when we'll get internet at our new house but I hope it's soon because I don't have time to go to the library. I'll try to keep you posted!

{{{hugs}}}
Lauren