The last three months (in a nutshell).

I mean, I’m sure I’ll leave out some details or even some really funny stories, but I want to catch everybody up as quickly as possible. So, if I forget something, we’ll be sure to key you in on the things I left out.

Pretty quickly after I got the job at Focus, Tiffany got a job teaching Math in one of the best public schools in Colorado Springs…Doherty High School. They’re the home of the Spartans. Not to be confused with the Spartans of Michigan State (what a loss that was for Notre Dame – Jimmy Clausen needs to play better than that), or the Spartans of Sparta (which is a long way away from here). Luckily, while I was interviewing at Focus, she spent the morning with Rachel, one of our friends from college, who coincidentally is married to my best friend Mike. She teaches at Doherty and was able to let Tiffany scope out the school, meet the math department, and make great connections. Funny enough, there was a math teacher opening that they had yet to fill. A phone interview and an in-person interview with the principal is all it took for her to get the job! Well, that and a whole lot of help from God. Funny enough, Tiffany found out that the principal knows within the first two questions if she’ll hire someone. Luckily, Tiffany must have said something really profound that was math or teaching related.

We absolutely love our new home state of Colorado! It's awesome!

We bought an SUV to get into the depths/heights of the mountains - a 2004 Nissan Xterra! It's been great thus far. We've taken it off-roading often – I finally got it muddied up this past weekend. What's great is that since everything is so close to us (work is 10 minutes for me and 7 minutes for Tiffany; church is less than 5 minutes - all a far cry from what we're used to in St. Louis) we'll use the same or even less gas this year than last given the ever-rising prices.

We've been to two different churches thus far, but haven't really committed to one yet. We started at Mike's church, but found that while the worship was awesome (much like we'd become used to in college), the message was a little "off" at times. Not blasphemous or anything, but just not something we could really connect with. So, we've been going to a church called Rocky Mountain Calvary, which is part of the Calvary Chapel network of churches. Thus-far it's good. The worship isn't as good as Mike's church, but still very good. Most importantly, the message is right-on and often challenging. One of my co-workers even goes there, which is nice, and Tiffany has joined a Bible study there.

We're also considering getting involved in a high school ministry called Young Life - it's a ministry that Mike and his wife have been involved with this past year. We went to a leadership retreat a couple weeks ago at a camp that sits at the base of a 14,000+ foot tall mountain. It was quite beautiful. The views left both of us awestruck at God’s beautiful creativity in his creation. We went to their weekly meeting called “Club” and we’re still looking into it.

While we came here with the intention of buying a house almost right away, we gave up on our house search a couple months back. It turns out the houses we'd be able to afford right now aren't really worth buying. We already knew that one of the biggest differences in the standard of living would be housing (the rest of the major categories were the same or cheaper compared to St. Louis). We signed a one-year lease and moved into a decent 2-bedroom apartment. As I already mentioned, it's close to work and church. Then again, Colorado Springs isn't exactly a metropolis, then again, it isn't a small town either. Unfortunately, we’re going to suffer through the Colorado winter without a garage.

Work has been going well for me. Focus is a much different environment to work in than my prior jobs. For one, there are over 1,300 employees (compared to 6 at EmbroidMe and as many as 15 at my first job out of college). I love the people I work with and work around. Once a month we have an all-staff chapel service which is cool - I can't believe I get paid to go.

Oh, my job…I forgot to tell you what I do at Focus. My official title is Email Communications Coordinator. And I know you’re wondering, “Do you get paid for every syllable in your job title.” The answer, my friends, in no. I’m actually at one of the bottom rungs of the organization. But, I’m responsible for creating HTML-based, targeted mass-emails to our constituents. So, I create the emails, test the emails, pull together lists and eventually click the gigantic flashing-red “send” button. I'm learning a lot about email and HTML coding. I'm enjoying the adventure of figuring out the new programs I'm using - this is something that I can look back on my life and see that I've always enjoyed from the first computer I ever used (a really old Epson, I think, that didn't even have Microsoft Windows - it was DOS-based). Someone told me - it may have been Mike - that I'm a "Christian Spammer" - a spammer with Christian ethics and a Christian message. I thought that was kind of cool. Except Spamming has such a negative connotation.

Tiffany is really enjoying teaching. She seems to really enjoy her morning commute – 5 minutes. The fact that we live closer to our work places has given us a lot more time together. More importantly, Tiffany doesn’t have to get up quite as early. She’s adjusting a bit to a larger school – 2,200 students compared to 800 at Windsor – and larger class sizes. But, she’s got this cool course called Topics of Math, which she’s already given a practical project that revolves around loans, mortgages, credit cards, interest rates, etc. Oh, and we went to the big Doherty vs. Palmer football game a couple weeks back. I don’t think I’ve been more excited at a high school football game (not including Chaminade). Doherty was a 10-point underdog and they ended up winning in a come-from-behind, 4th quarter victory. But, overall, I’ve noticed that she’s brought less work home, so at least based off of that, she’s having a great time at Doherty.