Top 10 Food Items We Miss

By: Ryan

I have a number of ideas for humorous Top 10 lists that I will be posting today and tomorrow. To start things off, here are the top 10 food items from Pennsylvania that we find ourselves missing on a regular basis:

10. On The Border - a super quality Mexican restaurant in Exton. The nearest one is in Gainsville, two hours away.
9. Wawa toasted raviolis
8. Wawa salads
7. Wawa breakfast sandwiches
6. Produce Junction - while we did find a cheap "farmer's market" style produce place, it's not nearly as cheap as the ever awesome Produce Junction. Alas.
5. Wawa chicken sandwiches
4. Wawa soups
3. Wawa hoagies
2. Genuardi's, Acme, Giant, or any other grocery store back north. Don't get me wrong, the big chain of stores down here is great and actually has better prices than any of the stores in PA, but I just don't like having to shop at a store with a name like Publix. :-)

And the number one food item we (or rather I) miss...

1. Wawa Iced Coffee - the closest alternative down here is McDonalds, which definitely makes a good iced coffee...but it's not the same.

So, um, yeah, we kinda miss Wawa. There just isn't anything even remotely similar down here. There are Seven Eleven gas stations and stores everywhere, and BP gas stations have their little convenience store that's not bad, but...but...sigh.

Anyone who visits us and wants to throw a hoagie or some toasted ravioli's into their bag might get preferential treatment when they arrive. :-)

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Two New Things

By: Shelsy

Well, I am happy to say that I have two new things to announce today. The first thing is already four days old, and that is my brand new little nephew! Mindy finally had her baby! His name is Carter Tyrone and he's adorable. He was born this past Monday night on the 19th at around 8:45pm. Mindy's been neglecting to send me pictures though, so I only have a couple. He's about an hour old in that one. Isn't he awesome?! :-D I can't wait to meet the little guy--hopefully I'll be able to soon, depending on the whole job situation.


Which brings me to my second new thing. As you all know, I auditioned for a singing role at Disney last Friday that didn't work out. I also auditioned yesterday for a character role. That also didn't work out. But, they say the third time's a charm.. I went into the Casting office today and applied for a regular castmember position. I got hired to work in attractions at the Magic Kingdom in Adventureland and Liberty Square. That means I'll be able to work at quality attractions like the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean--two of my absolute favorites. :-) Don't ask me about the pay--it's not really worth talking about--but I've heard that you tend to move up pretty quickly once you get in. We'll see about that. Even if not, though, it'll still be a fun, active, non-office job for me while we're in this season.



So I'm really excited. Especially after those two auditions I was starting to get a little discouraged. But the person who did my interview said I was only the second person to be hired that day so far and he had already seen quite a few. People were lined up for interviews, so I felt pretty good about it. :-) He said he knew right away that I had a great personality and that I would be perfect. I hope so! I have to go back tomorrow to fill out some more paperwork and then I should be starting very soon!

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Beach Visit!

We set off yesterday to pay our first visit to a beach on Florida's gulf coast. Rain was in the forecast, but we decided to chance it. Our destination was Fort Desoto Beach near Saint Petersburg, Florida. Fort Desoto was recently named America's Number 1 Beach by TripAdvisor, so it was a natural first choice for our trip.

Alas, not to be. When we got there, the rain was pretty steady. We got out and explored a little anyway, but with no sun, steady rain, and a strong breeze, it was just not good beach weather, so we got in the car and headed back north, hoping to drive out of the storm.

We found sunny weather at last in Clearwater, near Tampa. As an aside, the Philadelphia Phillies train in Clearwater during the off season, which I knew, but I still didn't expect to see signs with the Phillies Logo. A bit out of place that far from Philadelphia. :-)

The Clearwater beach was excellent. We both really liked it, even though the Gulf of Mexico doesn't produce the same caliber of waves as the Atlantic coast.

Overall, we had a really good trip, and like I pointed out to Shelsy, it was a fun opportunity to explore our new home state a little bit.

Here's a video of our day. Note the clip of the tiny, beach-dwelling fish at the end. This was all shot with Shelsy's underwater digital camera. Enjoy!



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Apartment video

By: Ryan

Okay, at long last, we have a quick video tour of our new apartment. To give you all an update first, Shelsy's audition yesterday went pretty well, she thinks she did a good job, but we don't think she got a part. It's a bit confusing how it was handled, but some people were given yellow cards to schedule a call back audition, and others weren't. Shelsy didn't get one, but so few people were getting them, that we're thinking maybe those people are just the definite ones that will get a call back, and the audition people will review the tapes from others and also call them back. So, who knows. :-)

Anyway, here's the video. Enjoy!




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Disney Audition!

By: Shelsy

Tomorrow is my audition for a singing role at Disney World! (Click on the picture for an awesome promo video. :-) The website says they're auditioning for over 60 shows, so I'm hoping I have a relatively good chance of getting cast in one of them. There was no other information about what shows they're casting for, but I don't really have a preference, so it doesn't matter.

I'm really nervous, though. I don't even remember the last time I auditioned for something--I think it might have been as far back as high school. That's a long time ago. :-) So if you guys could be praying that I just am confident and do my best and that God takes care of the rest. I have to be there at 11am tomorrow.

In other news, we went to our first care group meeting last night (I think down here they're called home groups or something..) Apparently the married couples and singles go to the same groups, but on the second Wednesday of the month (they meet every week) only the couples meet. So last night was the couples only night. It was a lot of fun. We met some really nice people. We actually have plans to hang out with one of the girls tomorrow night--she wants to show us some of the stuff there is to do down here.

We're slowly getting settled in. It helps that now we know at least a few people, and I'm sure we'll meet more on Sunday. I promise there will be pictures or video or something of the apartment up soon. Although, really, there's not much to see yet--just piles of boxes and stuff. But we'll put something up anyway. :-)

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Moving Walkway Spinning

Tom and Aaron, the ever helpful car drivers, box unpackers, and loungers, flew back home on Tuesday night. Before they left, we wanted to do something fun, so we went to Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios. We had a great time riding roller coasters, getting drenched (...or not) and exploring the park.

But on the way out, Tom and Aaron found an activity that might trump even the roller coasters. Behold:



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Our new apartment!

By: Ryan

(note: it has come to my attention that those of you reading this by email don't see the author of the post. So, from now on, we're going to put the author at the top. Those of you reading this in a feed reader or by visiting the site itself can already see the author, so this will be fairly redundant. :-)

Anyway, we are all moved in to our new apartment! That, of course, is a relative term seeing as how there are still unpacked boxes everywhere. But they're all in, the truck has been returned, and we are steadily unpacking. The apartment is arranged differently than our old one, which has made placement of furniture slightly more complicated, but it's coming together.

The picture above is our new front door, and here's a shot of the awesome tree outside our back door:
Our Internet got hooked up earlier today, but the wireless router is packed in box #26 somewhere. :-) So...that'll be a job for tomorrow. For now, we're just plugged in to the router.

Everything is coming along nicely and we really like our new place. We're really excited about getting plugged in at Metro Life and to start job hunting. Should be exciting, and we'll definitely keep you all updated!

I leave you with a picture of Tom putting together our new DVD rack. Yeah. This is our highly qualified moving help at work.


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UPDATE

Well, it has been quite some time since we've updated, so let me just fill you in on everything that's been happening...

Last Sunday after church we went up to Williamsport to visit my family. My mom, Gram, and Mindy worked all day to make a big dinner for everyone. They tried to have all of my favorites: my Gram's drop noodle chicken pot pie, rolls, chocolate pie, and sticky buns. And my mom even had some lilacs in vases around the house because she knows I love them. I appreciated the attention to detail. :-) Everything was DELICIOUS and almost my whole family was there, which was great. Then most of them actually ended up coming back the next day and we had a cookout in the backyard--hamburgers and hot dogs on the fire, corn on the cob... Good stuff. So it was a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed ourselves and loved spending some time with everyone. There was, unfortunately, one person missing, though. We're still awaiting the arrival of little Carter and were really hoping Mindy would have him before last weekend, but no dice. Hopefully I'll be able to see him soon.

We got back home on Tuesday afternoon after a detour to Kutztown to hang out with Shanna for a little while. From then on out we didn't really do much besides pack. We made a little bit of time to hang out with a few people, and we realize that we didn't get a chance to hang out with everyone. To those of you who wanted to spend some time with us before we left, we're so sorry. We really wanted to--we just literally ran out of time. :-( We would have loved to have been able to spend a lot more time with each of you, but unfortunately it just didn't work out. But visitors are welcome, and we'll definitely be back periodically.

We had a bit of a packing adventure, running out of both time and boxes. We made a late night run to try to obtain more boxes and managed to get most of it done, but there was still a decent amount we couldn't do anything with until moving day. Yesterday we packed up the truck, despite rain, two sprained ankles, and the box shortage. Fortunately, we had help--we wouldn't have gotten very far without everyone who showed up! :-)

After a few hours of sleep we were finally on the road by 4am this morning. We're actually still on the road--it's almost 4pm now and we have probably 5 hours to go, including stops. I'm hoping we'll be able to get the place cleaned and most of our stuff unloaded before we crash tonight. Then tomorrow we'll be able to take our time a little bit more and get everything put away.

I still can't really believe we're doing this! I feel like a crazy person, but I'm really excited, too. We'll hopefully be posting updates a little more frequently now that we're not so crazy busy, so check back soon!


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