God comes through!

So in my my first post I talked about how I thought God had turned his back on us. The rollercoaster of job stuff for Mark has been so stressful. The really good news is that on Friday he passed his series 63 exam. YEAH!! The even better news is that last night he signed his contract to go back to work with Thrivent Financial. He'll be like a consultant to the Thrivent Reps in Western Wisconsin. He'll love that. It's a completely new position...one that was pretty much created just for Mark. In order for it to be permanent, he'll have to prove himself. I have no doubt that he will. That's the kind of work he was doing when he worked for the Lutheran Brotherhood home office in Minneapolis, so I know he'll love this, too. The other part of the job will be a little "sales." So...if you need health insurance, life insurance or need to talk to someone about investments, Mark's your guy. He' so smart when it comes to investing and those of you who know him know he's totally trustworthy. Anyway...God came through...again. Thanks God!

Now that we're on our way to being financially OK again, the talk about residing the house has begun again. Our cedar siding is so "icky." The plan is to do our home in half logs so we'll have our cabin on the Kinni. For those of you who haven't been to our house, we have a home with almost an acre of land on the Kinnickinnic River. That's a class 1 trout stream in Wisconsin and it's beautiful! We'll also have the driveway resurfaced and hopefully put on a new deck so we can enjoy suppers on the deck with our beautiful view. I'll post some pictures of the house as it is now...and then some after pictures once the project is done. Too bad we can't add on to the kitchen side of the house. The kitchen is SOOOOOOOO small. There's no way I'll ever have room for a Kitchen Aide mixer with the current size of the kitchen. Oh well. There are worse things in life.

So yesterday we were invited to go "fondue-ing" with some friends from church. We had such a blast!! I think I convinced Mark that fondue is fun and tasty. Hopefully we can do it again. We had the appetizer fondue (cheese...with bread cubes and broccoli). For a main course we had shrimp, chicken, pork and steak. There was a beer batter that we could dip the stuff in before cooking it in the oil. Oh...and don't forget the cheese curds. YUMMY!! And of course we ended our time together with fresh fruit and chocolate fondue. It was such a great time. In a couple of weeks we'll be going geo-caching with our friends Ron and Beth. That's going to be lots of fun, too! It'll be our first time, so we'll let you know of our adventures. We're even going to take Hope. I'm sure she'll love hiking around in the woods looking for little treasures.

Well, I better close this entry. You're probably bored to death. I'll close by adding a couple of pictures from our fondue party. I'll add more later.

Love,

Melody

Here is a picture of Mark and me taken at our fondue party. Mark liked the shrimp best.

And here's a picture of my friend Beth and me at the fondue party. Beth and her hubby Ron are the ones who are taking us geo-caching in a couple of weeks. We can't wait to spend more time with them. We're REALLY excited for them because in a couple of weeks they should be seeing pictures of the little girl--their daughter--they'll be adopting from China. Check out their blog spot for information about their adoption journey: http://heut-n-holler.blogspot.com/index.html

Ron (as in Beth and Ron) and Eric (what's this talk about a lap dance??) posing for the camera.

More fondue-ers. Bob, Nicole and Jodi (oh...and Eric in the background). Thanks, Jodi, for making this even so much fun!