Hey, Merry Christmas, Everybody.  

I hope you are all as far along in your Christmas preparations as you would like to be.  I think we are.  In fact, this year might be the most Christmas prepared that I have ever been in my adult life.  That's a strange feeling.  

But it's been an unsettling year, so why should Christmas be any different?  

At the beginning of this year, we were living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Annika was in fifth grade, playing basketball, playing in band and singing in choir, going to GEMS with some of her classmates, and being her quirky artistic self.  Seth was beginning his last semester at Calvin Theological Seminary, and getting ready to be a pastor.  I was teaching part time at Lake Michigan Academy and getting ready to be a pastor's wife.  

There were a few notable things at the beginning of the year.  

• The biggest ice storm in 30 year hit Grand Rapids that February, closing school for a week and a half. 
•  Annika turned 11.
•  Seth graduated from seminary.  

Then came summer.  We commenced fixing up the house, packing up the stuff, and getting ready to move.  

• A cousin from California offered to buy our house.  He is now attending seminary. 
• I taught a short summer school course.
• Seth completed a CPE (clinical pastoral experience -- sort of like an intern for chaplains) at Pine Rest Mental Health Center. 
• We sorted all of our belongings and began disposing of the superfluous ones (why do we have so much stuff?)
• Annika spent lots of time trying to get cat Volpix to walk on a leash in anticipation of moving.  That didn't happen.  

Once Seth was done with his internship in mid-August, we loaded up a moving van with the help of our church friends, and then we camped our way west across the country.  The cat made a break for it at the first rest stop and didn't come back.  She was discovered a month later and brought to a local vet until a neighbor could claim her.  

  We stopped for a week at the Wisconsin Dells, which I had never seen, and we spent a week in Iowa with Seth's grandfather and my sister.  We spent an afternoon in Chandler, Minnesota, meeting the town that we now call home.  We stopped in with my Uncle Jack and Aunt Ev in western Montana.  And we did a lot of driving.  This was our second cross-country trip in two years.  I'll be honest: Northern Michigan is lovely, but it doesn't compare to the Olympic coast.  South Dakota and Wyoming are beautiful, but they are long. Mountains are always a welcome sight, but they make for long days of driving.  And that's just a lot of driving.  

We spent about a month going back and forth between my parents' house in Washington and Seth's family in Oregon.  We moved a lot of boxes in and out of storage. (Why do we have so much stuff?) And in that time   

• We accepted a call from Chandler Reformed Church.
• We traveled to Canada for the first time to visit my sister and brother-in-law and their kids.
• We gave the tent trailer back to my in-laws, and I don't miss it a bit.  

October found us moving cross country yet again.  We loaded up all the belongings once more and set out in some of the worst October weather we've ever seen.  It was a tense week.  I don't want to do that again.  But we got here, moved in, settled all the paperwork, and now, just before Christmas

• Seth is an ordained, installed minister of the Word and Sacrement.
• Annika is in sixth grade, playing basketball, playing in the band and singing in the choir, and being her quirky, artistic self. 
• I am doing a little substitute teaching, but mostly I am focusing on getting to know the community and being a pastor's wife.  Also, you will notice, I blog a lot more.  

That's our year in a nutshell.