Top 10 from 2005

The Top 10 Things We Learned in 2005

10) If you ever go on an overnight backpacking trip on any of Hawaii’s ridgelines, do not leave your camera in the car!

9) If you choose to drive up a muddy, steep hill that was last traversed by a bulldozer, it's wonderful to have friends who will spend their Saturday night at TSC buying recovery gear and then bringing it out to you 12 miles past the middle of nowhere.
 
8) When you move somewhere new, find some way to make sure you have more than 2 people to carry ALL of your belongings up 2 narrow flights of stairs in the middle of winter.
 
7) Finding a church family to be a part of is essential to moving to a new city where you do not know anyone.
 
6) Charging your little brother rent for the summer may not make him like you more, but it will teach you both valuable lessons.
 
5) Family members in the medical field do not enjoy phone calls such as “I just had a bicycle wreck, exactly how deep does a cut need to be before you have to have stitches?” (Daniel) or “I just had a ladder collapse out from under me, should I go to the ER?” (Cheree)
 
4) Buying and renovating a new home does indeed create stress, especially if one spouse is creative and the other is practical.
 
3) Daniel’s least favorite phrase of Cheree’s is “Can we tear out this wall?” 
Cheree’s least favorite word of Daniel’s is “No.”
 
2) Eating out for EVERY meal for three months till your kitchen is done is not so great.
 
1) No matter what, at the end of the day, our love and God bind us together as we continue to grow in the ups & downs of our everyday life.

If you are interested, here are our Top 10 List from Years Past 2003  | 2004  

Our House In Progress

Life as we know it is pretty chaotic right now. We spend our days working our normal 40 hours a week and our nights & weekends working on our house. We continue to be optimistic that things will get completed sooner or later but this whole project is very time consuming.

We have been working on the house since September and living here since October - we will be glad when it is in a more livable state. Actually I will be elated when we have floors in EVERY room and there is no more dust. I just recently started cooking again, but there is always this fear that we are consuming as much dust as food. It is a miracle that we don't have respiratory problems yet!

Gatlinburg Christmas 2005

We just got back from a 5-day weekend in Gatlinburg, TN. We had a blast with 19 family members all in one cabin! It would have been better except that the water pump went out on Christmas Eve so Christmas day we had to move to another cabin. We can't complain too much though because we did get an upgrade. 

I was told that the best part of trip for the littlest cousins was baking cookies to hang on the Christmas tree. Since I was heading that up, I did not take any pictures!!! I hope someone from our family has pictures of us all baking together! 

We did play pinochle - there are just no pictures to prove it!   

Anyways, I have uploaded a lot of the pictures from our time there. We are looking forward to doing this again in 2 years.  

Life as we know it is pretty chaotic right now. We spend our days working our normal 40 hours a week and our nights working on our house. We continue to be optimistic that things will get completed sooner or later but this whole project is very time consuming.

We have been working on the house for around 5 weeks and actually living in it for 3 - we will be glad when it is in a more liveable state.

Top 10 List from 2004

Here is our year-end newsletter from 2004 that I stumbled on recently (we write this with our Top 10 list at the the end of every year). I love looking back and seeing what we were up to throughout the years.

Dear Family and Friends,
As we come to the close of another year, we would like to wish you Happy Holidays and a very Merry Christmas.

This year has been full of adventures, ending and beginnings for the two of us. Our most memorable adventures this year included a weekend drive to New York City to buy a truck, followed by a five day road trip to Durango, Mexico (the next weekend) for a wedding, and finally plans to end and begin the new year with a one month trip to Papua New Guinea. Our biggest ending this year was that Daniel finally graduated from college. Our biggest beginning this year is that Daniel has accepted a job in Charlotte, North Carolina to begin the middle of February after we return from our upcoming trip.

We have been so blessed to have the love and support and friendships that we have had these pas years and we would like to thank all of you for being a part of our lives.

We would now like to share our Top 10 List of What we Learned During Our Second Year of Marriage:

1)  If you ever drive to NYC, bring a map – a GPS does not work when the sky is blocked by skyscrapers!

2) A 4-wheel drive vehicle will get you nowhere in the ice and snow if all of the doors (including the fuel door) are frozen shut.

3) Stop signs in Mexico rarely mean STOP, think of them as a "YIELD" sign.

4) During your last semester of college, "D" stands for diploma.

5) It is possible to graduate, accept a job, move out of state, visit people for the holidays and pack for a month long international mission trip in the span of ten days!

6) If you work out every Monday night, and then eat fast food because you are too tired to cook, it is nearly impossible to lose any weight.

7) When Cheree goes out for coffee with friends, don't expect her to come home until late...

8) When Daniel goes out to study, don't expect him back at all.

9) Daniel learned that it is a completely different experience to be a passenger on a motorcycle (especially when it is Cheree driving... with her newly earned motorcycle license)!

and finally...

10) If you trust in God, he will take care of your needs.

That concludes our list for this year. Please keep us in your prayers as we will be traveling overseas until February 1st and then completing our move to North Carolina. 

We wish you a very happy New Year filled with much joy and happiness and overflowing with many blessings.

If you are interested, here are our Top 10 List from Years Past
2003 

Top 10 List from 2003

Here is our year-end newsletter from 2003 that I stumbled on recently (we write this with our Top 10 list at the the end of every year). I love looking back and seeing what we were up to throughout the years.

As we come to the close of another year, I look back and am amazed at how quickly life passes. The blessings of this past year have been immeasurable for Daniel and I. We have learned a lot about ourselves and each other and we continue to grow with each passing day. Our first year of marriage has had more triumphs than trials. We can look back and count our blessings and know that God has had a hand in it all.

Daniel has just completed his second to last year at Tennessee Tech University. We are counting down the days until next December when he will graduate and get a job and we can settle down into a more normal life. Daniel made the Dean's List for this past semester (he didn't know what this was at first), but was excited about his high grades.

I continue to work at Trademark Printing, a small family owned printing company, here in Cookeville. Like any job, this job has its share of good and bad aspects, so I continue to try my best to get the most out of it. Daniel thinks that I am going to become a union leader at work because I have been able to lead some group discussions with my boss that have led to an increase in benefits for all of the employees.

Daniel and I have worked on many projects together this past year. This has definitely been a learning experience. We have learned how to express our ideas to one another and then work together to reach a goal. We have built shelves, a kitchen island, and installed a washing machine in our kitchen. We live in a small space so we thrive on making the most of it.

We have enjoyed countless weekends of hiking. One particular trip that began as a normal day of hiking, turned into a spontaneous trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We stopped at a Goodwill to buy clothes and a WalMart to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste and deodorant. We look forward to many more weekend trips to the mountains.

We have been truly blessed by our church family. We officially placed membership at the Collegeside Church of Christ here in Cookeville. The You Marrieds class has given us some wonderful friends. It has been exciting to find our niche and be a part of a thriving group.

To sum up our first year of marriage is a Top 10 List of what we have learned this past year:

1) Daniel's idea of cooking is to order Pizza

2) Cheree does not iron

3) The more spontaneous a trip is, the more interesting a story you will have to tell later on

4) If you are going to check out a camping site, you should not attempt to drive your Nissan Altima anywhere that only a 4-wheel-drive vehicle should be. If you are stubborn enough to do it anyway, you may manage to get stuck for a while or even raise one or two of the wheels completely off the ground

5) Do not decide to hike an 8-mile loop if you only have 3 hours until dark.

6) Driving to Canada for a weekend is maybe trying to do too much.

7) If you are going to cook with dried tomatoes, you should rehydrate them before you try to cook with them.

8) A roll-a-way toolbox in the living room isn't such a bad piece of furniture after all.

9) It really is possible to live in a 450 square feet of space and not kill each other.

10) You really can live off love.

We hope that each of you has a wonderful Christmas, New Year and Holiday Season.