The Adventures of Grant, Lindsey, & Claire...: New Year's Update!

Hello All,

Since I haven't written since July, there is quite a bit to update! Besides the immense blessing from Grant being on days and actually being able to see each other, we have been doubly blessed by finally finding a church home. We have been attending Austin Christian Fellowship for the past 5 months or so and have come to love it! We joined an amazing small group with other couples (no kids amongst us yet!).

We also decided to try to see how we could get involved with the Creative Arts ministry at ACF...myself on the worship/drama side and Grant and on the "techy" side helping with the podcast stuff, sound, computer, etc. We'll see how that turns out as we just started talked to the creative arts director recently. ACF has been a perfect fit as we have been searching for a church with Saturday night services since Grant works on Sunday. They have two on Saturdays to choose from which gives us all sorts of flexibility.

The other "big thing" that we were able to enjoy this past fall was our trip to London and Paris (with a day trip to Belgium). The trip was absolutely amazing and we loved being able to see so many historical treasures. We also were able to catch up with my college roommate, Suzanne. She lives in London...it was SO good to see her! Although we had planned on this trip being our last hurrah before settling down and starting a family, it caused us to realize that we aren't ready for that yet...so a couple more years of satisfying the travel bug and spending time with just each other are in front of us before kids come around. That being said...the travel bug may have bitten again, and I am looking into a possible trip to Switzerland in May for our 2 year anniversary.

The biggest proponent of us travelling this year is that both Samsung and National Instruments are requiring us to take mandatory vacation. Samsung is making Grant use ALL of his 2008 leftovers (140 hours!) plus all of his 2009 accrual by the end of Feb 2010, otherwise he will lose it! That is a lot of time off for Grant. I am simply required to take 5 days in Q2 and 5 days in Q3. Because of this...it gives us the excuse to look for another big trip.
Another big accomplishment from the fall of 2008 is that I am officially licensed as a CPA! I finished all of the requirements and got my license in September!! WHOOP! Of course this doesn't mean a whole lot, it's not like my job description has changed...but I am so glad to be done with it.

For Christmas, we celebrated with Grant's family in Fort Worth for a 4 days and then headed back down to Austin for the new year. We have been extremely blessed to get to know our neighbors better during the course of the past 6-7 months. Our direct neighbors are not super friendly, but a couple of houses down there are 3 really nice couples that have been making an effort to get to know each other more. We had a block party on Halloween along with another one on New Year's Eve. We shot off fireworks, played games, and just had a really fun celebration with our neighbors. It is definitely nice to be in a neighborhood where people actually care that you live within their proximity. It seems like so many people these days don't take the time to actually get to know other people, when relationships are what make the world go round.

Anyway...I need to get going...I just felt like I needed to give a New Year's Update. Attached are some pictures from our trip to Europe! They are only ones from London as I haven't finished sorting through the Paris pictures yet...I will post those when they are ready.

Love to you all and Happy New Year!!