Year: 2017

Wow!

What a way to start off August.

As an update to what talked about last time, we begin to think that if a door didn’t open for us to stay in Arizona at Amex, then maybe it was possible God was leading us to somewhere else. In fact, one of the holdouts we had to Arizona was that we couldn’t find a good church. Well, Jeremy Jernigan had just announced that he would be taking a senior lead pastor role at a Portland-area church. This seemed like everything was lining up. It was where a majority of our family was, we didn’t have a job where we were and one of the pastors from our home church was not leading a church in the PNW. How much clearer could it get?

We did keep applying for jobs at American Express because you never know.

Anyway, in the states, in August 2017 there was also going to be a total solar eclipse. Here was a map of how it was going to move. Being based in Arizona it wouldn’t be the same as Oregon – but still cool. Krispy Kreme even had a special “chocolate covered original glazed” that was special for the eclipse that we got.

What else did we do? We went to a Cardinals fan event and even took photos with the bird! Ara had a dentist appointment and there were other cute photos taken along the way (see above). Finally took Ara to Ted’s hot dogs. Yeah, it’s a thing. If you are ever in the east valley in Phoenix – it is worth a stop!

Did more storm chasing, caught some beautiful rainbows, and then made memories with Ara while painting the house. She still talks about that experience that we had in that house. EVERYTHING compares to it, and typically, nothing will match the fun she had during those days.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/29/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of August 2017 to keep chronological order.

August!

Starting in October I would be returning to work. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I returned as they had me hand off all of my active projects to other people while I was out. Makes sense, just not the most secure I’d ever felt about doing. Well, it was during August when I got a call from Ashima (my supervisor) at American Express. She was rather quick to the point. “Hey Jason, just wanted to let you know that we are going to be displacing your job”

What? Displacing my job? “Yes, we will be able to absorb the job now that we have new people on our team in India, and so we will not need you to return to your role”

She also mentioned that none of this would take effect until I returned from leave. At that point, I would have a certain time (30 days? or something) to find another role. If I couldn’t land another role within Amex I would be given a severance package equivalent to a few months of regular pay.

Talk about a gut punch. I have a newborn. I just bought a house last year and a car (which was thankfully paid in full). What should I do? I started to do this thing that we in my family call “pancaking” it really means that you stack one problem on top of another problem like a stack of pancakes.

Okay, okay – let’s get out of town (which was already planned as we had an annual Calimigos ranch trip planned).

Well, when we were in town we said let’s do something else too. Something to really take our minds off of all of this bad news.

Why not Disneyland? Sure, a 2-day ticket. Arabella would get in free, and so would Elijah. It would be the last time Ara would have this chance. Lets do it!

As you can see from these photos we had a blast. It was so ad-hoc that we went and purchased walking shoes while we were in LA (only at Walmart, nothing too fancy).

This was the last time we went to Calimigos Ranch and we made it count. We went every year and even before Ara was born. This time we walked around the ranch and even saw the place they grow their wine.

We didn’t spend much more time than planned in California – in fact, we were there for about 4 days. went to California Adventure on one day, Calimigos on the 2nd, Disneyland on the 3rd, and rested before the drive home on the 4th day.

What a time! We decided that we would continue to post for jobs at Amex and continue to pray about what to do. Until next time..

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/29/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of August 2017 to keep chronological order.

Last-minute stops are kind of our thing.

Outside of the state capitol building we also visited the Lava Falls and the Petroglyph National Monument. They were fun and you got to see some really cool history from thousands of years. Most of it was well preserved due to the desert climate. Finally, we made our way back home!

This was such a really fun month. We took a couple of bad things and turned them around to make something good come from them.

When we got home it was still Monsoon season and we were lucky enough to arrive back to one! Below you have a photo of Ara running in bliss at the cool breeze pushing in. The breeze got a little intense a short time later and knocked over the neighbor’s tree they had (oops). I still love taking photos with my girl, and the one below is when I laid down on her bed to have some daddy-daughter playtime.

We finished out this month by doing more storm chasing (and even if that meant going up to Payson). Went to the pool lots of times and have captured many silly photos. Arabella loves dancing, proof of that is above when she would dance while was getting my haircut. Finally, Lijah was getting to the age of the smiles, boy oh boy what a cute smile that kid has. Even smiles in his sleep. Just look at it. That smile is enough to end this post AND this month with.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/29/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of July 2017 to keep chronological order.

So after we visited Washington we made our way back down to Angel and Louis’ house. We were able to have some fun that evening with the trampoline (image below) but that was where the fun ended. The next day our plans had an abrupt change.

We planned to stay for at least the rest of the week and visit further – also maybe make a beach trip or something too. The next day we were all outside and the kids were playing. One of Angel’s kids had hit Arabella with a stick. Arabella came over to us crying as she was hurt. We asked what happened and she told us. About this time Angel was listening to what was happening too. She called her kid over and had her go inside. We asked Angel to have her daughter apologize to Arabella… however, that was quickly shut down and we were told that public humiliation is not something she exposes her kids to.

Yeah, that didn’t sit very well with me or Maryia. If our kids hurt someone else we would at least have them apologize to them. One thing led to another and then everyone was up in arms about what went down. Angel was telling us how she went to school to be with kids and she knows how to handle these situations. Louis quipped as we left “well we knew someone was about to overstay their welcome, it just happened to be you guys”. We basically took everything we brought with us and loaded it up and made our way back. At least getting out of that situation as quickly as we could. That night we stayed in eastern Oregon. We figured that we would try to turn this bad thing into a good thing for our family. Give us some new experiences.

The next day we visited Elgin, the place the wife was from for the first short while of her life, then we made our way into Idaho (photo below). We visited the capitol building here as well. Not many great photos came of it- however, here is a cute one we took in the elevator!

After spending the night nearby looking at the area to see if in the future we would ever want to live there (we would not want to) we kept moving on. Next up? Utah!

Utah had a really pretty state capitol building, but it was blazing hot when we visited. Not fun to carry a baby in. Thankfully the inside had AC. Where should we go next? Well.. we figured we would visit Grams in Colorado. There was no quick way to do that – so we figured that since we were on this sightseeing tour, we would stop and see the Wyoming Capitol as well. East we go!

The photos below show us crossing into Wyoming. The state capitol was under construction but we got to see it (it was the building with the gold dome and our car outside). We then headed down into Colorado. Ara and Lijah were again sent out for the normal state sign photos that we take. We headed right to the capitol building. It didn’t impress us as much as Washington or Utah (and we couldn’t compare Wyoming, and Idaho was forgettable). The photo below of the inside of the building is the Colorado capitol building.

We also went to visit the Columbine Memorial. In my age group, you grew up with the Columbine event in reality. It happened before our eyes. We took the time to visit – it is a really nice memorial to all of the lives that were lost. The wife caught a moment where I gave Ara a flower. We also stopped by the school, but (not surprisingly) they had security everywhere so it was hard to even stop for a second.

We visited Michael and Sarah (Maryia’s brother and his girlfriend) and met little Gabriel who also met our kids.

We also stopped that day to say hi to Micah (a friend we had from college) as we generally will visit you if we are in your area. We got to visit her and her dad. Elijah peed on her but she took it like a champ. Ironically that was the last time we spoke to her in person – and one of the last few times we have spoken to her at all.

On down to southern Colorado near Alamosa. We surprised Grams and visited her, she was so excited to see the kids. We only stayed the night as we didn’t want to burden her too much. Below is one of the photos that we took with the kids sitting with her. Also had the wife get in for a group photo. It was great to visit her, it helped put things in perspective. I also captured a sunrise photo the next day – it was beautiful.

After we had said our goodbyes to Grams, we started to wrap up the trip by visiting New Mexico and its state Capitol before heading back to Arizona.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/29/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of July 2017 to keep chronological order.

Hey

This month is a doozie and there is a lot going on at this time.

Okay! So since I was still off of work we decided to take a big trip. Not like the last time, but this time first to spend our 4th in Los Angeles (as is normal) but also afterward to take a trip up the coast, visit Amber and then visit Oregon and Washington. Why? Simple – we wanted to give everyone the chance to meet this new love in our life!

Went to Pismo Beach and ended up getting into a discussion with my parents about things that had gone wrong in the past. Lots of things were said and eventually after standing around in the sun for what felt like most of the afternoon we came to an agreement to move forward. This actually happened not too far from the Dinosaur Caves park. We wanted to visit this part in particular because the kids would get a kick out of it and enjoy it. It wasn’t a fun conversation but afterward, things felt like they would start to improve.

We watched the firework show and then we figured that since we had our National Parks Pass we would take a tip over to the Sequoia National Park. It is supposed to have some of the biggest trees in the world in the park. It didn’t disappoint, we saw General Sherman who with a regular phone was hard to capture and take any sort of reasonable photo (at least in 2017).

Once we did that, we said our Goodbyes to Grammy and Grampy and made our way up north. We stopped along the Bixby and Rocky creek bridges (above). The Bixby creek bridge has been in numerous movies and photographed by many professionals.

There is one more photo we took (below, wide-angle view) that really captured the view as much as we could. Anyway, we then went to visit Amber. Met up with her and Josh. Did some touristy things like visiting the state capitol building and going to Lake Tahoe. There are a few images below showing Amber with little baby Elijah as well as the seal of CA (from the cap visit). Elijah looks like he is about to be baptized but I can assure you that I only got his feet wet in the water.

After spending a few days in Sacto we made our way up to Oregon. Elijah’s first visit. One of the people who we made sure to visit with was Domi (the same person who came out to visit us in AZ earlier).

Obviously, that wasn’t the only person in Oregon we wanted to visit. We actually planned and stayed at Angel and Louis’ house while in the area. Doing so allowed us to save on the cost of hotels, but also allowed us to be closer to family. We wanted to see if there would ever be an option for us to stay with them in the future on other visits, or what may have you. There was a big family get-together and everyone came out to a cookout-type event at their place. It was fun for the most part. You can see a couple of photos below – one of Gramps holding Elijah (and meeting him for the first time) and then another of him laying in my lap. The odd thing was this: I held him because he likes being around me and is quiet. It allows Maryia to hang out with Angel a bit. Anyway, hardly any adults came over and said anything to me or Elijah. We went to Gramps and Ellie/Nonnie but everyone else made themselves scarce and watched me from afar. I found out that later everyone was complaining about my hogging the baby the whole time. I thought that was absurd as I would have handed him over to others- if you know, they wanted to talk or say hi or me? There was one of Caleb’s kids who asked to hold Elijah – it was funny. I said, sure no problem – just one question. What is my name? She didn’t know, I told her she could find out and come back but instead, she guessed (wrongly) and never came back.

After the cookout, the family wanted to take some time to visit other parts of the Northwest since we didn’t really know when we would be back. We took a trip up to Olympia, WA to visit the state capitol. It really is a pretty building, if you ever care to visit – I think it’s enjoyable. We found from this visit (and the Texas visit) that when possible we would like to visit the capitol buildings.

just Pray

note: this post was published on 07/29/22 but moved the publish date back to the end of July 2017 to keep chronological order.