HEY ladiez in DC

Hey yall!

Just wanted to also say how sad I am that I am not seeing all of yall's faces.. I with, wanda and ellyn, am sad I can't be with yall...but am so glad yall can be together! have a blast (obviously you will)... rock out a dance partttay for me! I'll be thinking of yall as I work through the night friday... please post pics...

love and miss yall!

shaved head

ellyn, i enjoyed that last blog post...and i am totally in support of blogging at work!

in other news, thought i would post a picture of davey's shaved head on here so that you could all see. here we are, sitting on the couch, taking a break from watching 30 rock (on a side note: i can't get enough of 30 rock. it makes me laugh so hard!) do y'all watch it??

anyway, there's the picture! i hope you all are doing well. i miss you dearly and can't wait to hear some stories from the girl's weekend this weekend! i know it will be a blast and i am sad to miss it.

well, i'm off to eat lunch with Bracey which i am SO excited about- i haven't seen her in quite a while! she's currently in nursing school and i think it is consuming all of her time!

lurve you all!

oh herro.

hey kids. just a quick update cause i'm at work and probably shouldn't be blogging but eh, ya know.

i think i told some of y'all this but maybe not everyone. i started going to a small group that's part of a church out here and have been really encouraged by just even the process of seeking it out and going once. tonight is the second night and i'm really pumped to go back and continue establishing relationships with the group. the group is really diverse, people anywhere from 22-35, some married, some not, working at anywhere from the CDC and the American Embassy to the Singapore Embassy and different schools across the city.

it's been really neat to see God bring together his people from across the world (we have a guy from Singpore, a girl from the UK, a guy from India, a girl from Colombia, and obviously some Americans) to a place where they can talk honestly about the gospel and what He's doing here. it's also just been nice to be able to have some fellowship and spend some time in prayer each week with others.

also, the word "grace" has been on my mind a lot these past couple weeks. thinking about how to be gracious towards others, what it means to be receiving grace from God, and how we can feel grace lifting off guilt and shame that we carry. not really sure why it's been in everything i've been doing, but it's been pretty clear to me that it's something i a) need to appreciate and understand more and b) something i don't show enough of. just wanted to share with y'all (c:

so yeah, impromptu blog post. maybe divinely inspired. was that blasphemous? i don't know anymore. i love you all. heartz from cairo.

WHO did you leave her with?

Well, all is normal at the Wise Street house.

Luvs ya.

...and I felt a pinch on my panty-band

What up.  How crazy that it's midway through October and we're only a couple weeks away from Girls Weekend!  So things have been pretty good lately- I'm liking the fall-ish weather and I feel much more comfortable at Langley School and getting around DC in general.  

The highlights from the past little while are- dear Al-Pal turned 23.  We got a group of friends to go bowling in "Chinia"-town (bonus points to BHS grads if you can name that reference).  It was ridiculous & fun, & we went out after.  

Al showing off her bowling class skrills.

Rachel, Whit, Al, and I went out for Ethiopian food the other night!  We asked the waitress everything that we should order, and she did us right.  It was so good and flavorful...and fun to eat with your hands.  

Hannah came to visit Columbus Day weekend!  It was lots of fun- we walked around, shopped Eastern Market (where we tried on those ridic alpaca hats & the man that worked there told us we looked 'so good, we needed to buy them'.....(false)), ate good food, drank fall-esque beers, & just saw the sights.  

Baked & Wired.  A coffee and baked goods place in Georgetown that is de-ricious.  Strawbrerry cupcake : )  DC's version of Ike & Jane. 

I love yous all!

i'm showing signs of ambition and other groundbreaking news...

Y'all. This has been a pretty big week for me! And I'm so excited to tell you about it. Seeing as I have to get up in 7 hours this will be short and sweet for now and I'll fill you in on more of the details a little later.

So for a few months Davey and I have been brainstorming ideas for a side project/business that I could try to start up. The hope is that I could get something going that would eventually be successful, maybe even a source of income, as we begin moving around with the air force and as I start trying to have kiddos (don't worry, not happening anytime soon- but it doesn't hurt to plan ahead!!)

So one of my favorite ideas that we came up with was scavenging thrift stores and yard sales for cute vintage items and then attempting to sell them online. Well, for the past few months I've been contemplating it in my head, procrastinating and only thinking about it, not really planning on doing anything with it soon. But something happened this week and I said "You know what, Wanda, you're gonna do this" haha. So I've been collecting items at a break-neck speed and spending all hours not spent at my full-time job taking pictures and uploading to Etsy.

Now I realize that 1/2 the world is trying to have a business like this on Etsy...but hey, it never hurts to try!! Go check it out. I think y'all will really like the stuff I've found (some of my favorites are in the pictures above). I even discovered that I have a good eye for this sort of thing and scored a couple of collector's items!!

Alright so I'm rambling and this is no longer short and sweet, but please go check out my shop and tell all your friends about it! I'll need support from all of yall to get this thing off the ground. I'm also going to be doing some Facebook promo stuff, so you'll see that soon too!

My shop is called Finch Finds and you can find it by clicking that link or by going to www.finchfinds.etsy.com

#2 groundbreaking news...Davey shaved all his hair off yesterday and HOLY CRAP! This military thing is really setting in now. Honestly, I almost cried when he walked through the back door, but it's already growing on me already hahah. I'll post pictures soon...

I LOVE YOU ALL!!

Love comes to those who believe it & that's the way it is

So I lose at blogging. I'm the worst. I think it's cause I feel like I have to write a long & detailed post with pics and all. I'm giving up on that ambition so hopefully I'll write more!

The main reason for this post is to update you all on mine & Andrew's future plans. I think most of you know that we've been thinking seriously about doing mission work for a couple of years. Well, It's slowly becoming more & more of a reality--which is crazzzy. It started about 2 months ago after our friend Harrison Ford (yes, thats really his name) tried to convince us to come to Romania where he is now based with MTW. We really didn't have a desire to be in Braslov, Romania, but it did help to plant the seed in our minds. Since then, we have narrowed our options to Western Europe, a big city & spanish-speaking place. That led us to Madrid, Spain--where, ironically enough, my good friend growing up John Dewitt's parents are the team leaders! Anyway we've been in correspondence with them some & Andrew spoke with MTW yesterday about starting the preliminary paperwork & stuff. We have no clue what all this is going to look like...there are so many hoops to jump through before we can even begin to start raising support. And for all we know, after interviews & applications, they could say that they want us somewhere totally different. We have been encouraged in our thinking about Spain, though, based on our interests in city ministry, my art, Andrew's music, etc.

SO all that to say please pray for us as we start this process. There is a week of orientation in early March that we want to try & make it to...& we have to have an invite from a team 3-ish months prior to March...meaning basically by end of December, early January we must know where we're going!

We're really excited, but also pretty nervous as well--we're confident that this is where the Lord is leading us. Anyway, just thought i'd give y'all a quick update. Please kind of keep this to yourself...It's fine to say that we're thinking about missions, but it's kind of an awkward thing to not know where we're going & I don't want people in Nashville to think that we're def going to Spain, etc. Just the other day, Missy Cargo came up to me in the art school & said she heard we were moving to Spain...wtf. Apparently Andrew's mom & Mrs Cargo had been talking. You get my drift. Anyway, I love you all and miss you all lots...and for those who will be in D.C.--I can't wait to see youu!!! I'm so pumped. Okay lerve all you gals...

the leaves are changing...

but not here. sadly, there aren't too many leaves here and they're more of a palm frond variety. but i digress. sorry i haven't been too active in the blog-o-sphere, either on here or on my personal blog. it's been a long couple of days and honestly, i'm starting to get the shock a little bit. "the shock", as the egypterns have so lovingly deemed it, can also be called "medina rage" (medina being the arabic word for city or market) but is basically just culture shock that makes you want to freak out. while i'm loving cairo and am so glad i'm here, there's some things that are just hard to adjust to and some days are worse than others. so in order to harness this negative feeling and have a cathartic experience, i thought i'd detail some things that bring on the shock for me personally.

1. an egregious lack of real diet coke. so this one's pretty obvious. we all know i'm obsessed with diet coke and it just simply doesn't exist in large enough quantities here. please see my facebook wall photo for an example of what is unacceptable.

2. my work computer. i wish i was joking when i said that my computer at work crashes almost every 30 minutes. like total melt-down crashes. this becomes a problem when i have 2 drafts of a speech i'm writing for the president of AUC and i lose them both. fml. this brings me to another point.

3. cairo time. unfortunately not a reference to the new motion picture. cairo time is how long everything takes to get anywhere or to get anything accomplished in cairo. so my computer problem is on the way to being fixed, meaning our assistant ordered me a new one and it was supposed to get here september 30th. it is now october 12th. let's get real. additionally, this applies to cairo being worst planned city in terms of infrastructure. 22 million people + their cars + insufficient roadways = traffic. all the time. imagine standstill traffic in atlanta but everyday. everywhere. it's stellar. and finally, this applies to people. in the real world you can email someone who has information you need and they email you back in an appropriate amount of time (in a really busy office environment, like 2 days max- we're talking people that work on the same team here)...in cairo time, this translates to 2 weeks.

4. coffee. there's no such thing as good ole american coffee here. okay, i'm lying. you can find coffee beans that need to be ground and then french pressed at the super market. one certain one by my house. BUT in terms of buying coffee. it just doesn't taste right. and you guys know i don't drink a ton of coffee, but when i wake up at 5:30am to get to work by 8:30 and there's no suitable diet coke, i gotta have something. this lack of beans has resulted in a few grumpy/groggy mornings at best.

5. staring/catcalling. these 2 are a toss up. i can't decide which is more obnoxious, it may depend on the day. so men in the streets will cat call you (which can sometimes be entertaining) especially in the markets. some of my favorites "let me take your money from you quickly" and "i like your hair". however, the women will just stare at you like you're a street walker. and that, i think, is way more uncomfortable. i suppose it's cause i'm dressing like a hussy. but i mean, i gotta be me, ya know?

6. ice. or lack there of. this goes for europe, too. just a lack of ice in drinks in general. i love a good, cold, iced drink. does not exist here.

alright, even i'm getting tired of complaining via the interwebs. overall, i'm obviously loving being over here. but i'm an american and i love america. and that, my friends, won't change...even for the most open-minded of individuals.

i'll follow up this post with the things i love most about cairo to give some perspective later this week.

love you all.

working with the oldies!

Exciting news... I officially started work this week! Sat through 3 days of pure computer training, which was not my favorite thing. I had my first 12 hr shift on the floor yesterday. It was super busy and flew by. I am thankful for a job and it was cool to turn to austin last night and be like saaahweeet i made money today--instead of doing work and writing a paper about it later!! I am definately beginning to realize I am not in school and I LIKE it! i had an awesome patient yesterday...he was old(as most of my patients are). I walk into his room and check out his haircut--yes it was a mohawk! I've never seen an 80 year old with a gray mohawk and I have to say it was hilarious! I wish it was legal to take pictures of my patients, but unfortunately it is not. anyway, please be praying for us next week as I'll work my first shifts on night with my preceptor and actually will work 3 in a row, which might kill me (tues,wed, thurs night). so pllease pray for me as i switch over... i'll let you know what it's like to be nocturnal.

all else is well here... and it actually is cooling off some days!

miss and love each of you

i'll have the cape cod with a side of chocolate please

Oh herro there. I hope everybody is super duper. Everything is going well up here in Boston. Last night was probably the first cold night reaching a brisk low of 52 approximately around 1:17 in the am. (I know that because I passed by one of those electronic signs that gives the date, time, temp when I was walking home last night...) Anywhoozle. This past week I had a lab retreat in Falmouth, MA which is one of the islands in Cape Cod.

The view from the hotel was gorgeous. It was right on the beach and pretty secluded. Since it was the end of September and the middle of the week, not many people were there so we sort of had the place to ourselves and a handful of other people. I am not going to lie, the retreat sort of overloaded me on science, but I enjoyed dinner and getting to know my boss and the people in the lab outside of the work setting. I still am just very thankful that Sean (the bizoss) was so generous to do that for us.

ALSO. I thought I would post a recipe that I recently tried out with my friend Katie. I have lately discovered smitten kitchen, and I lurve it. So being a girl and having what girls have every month, chocolate seemed appropriate. Thus, we chose these: Chocolate toffee cookies. I will post the recipe here, but this woman's pictures are totally better than mine so check out the link.

Chocolate Toffee Cookies

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 pound bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1 3/4 cups (packed) brown sugar

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

5 1.4-ounce chocolate-covered English toffee bars (such as Heath), coarsely chopped*

1 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped

Flaky sea salt for sprinkling (optional)

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl; whisk to blend. Stir chocolate and butter in top of double boiler set over simmering water until melted and smooth. Remove from over water. Cool mixture to lukewarm.

Using electric mixer, beat sugar and eggs in bowl until thick, about 5 minutes. Beat in chocolate mixture and vanilla.

Stir in flour mixture, then toffee and nuts. Chill batter until firm, about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment or waxed paper. Drop batter by spoonfuls onto sheets, spacing two inches apart. Sprinkle with a pinch of flaky sea salt, if you’re using it. Bake just until tops are dry and cracked but cookies are still soft to touch, about 12 to 15 minutes. Cool on sheets. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

Also, I left out the walnuts. However, I must warn you. These are extremely chocolatey. But they definitely get the job done.

Alright. Love to all and to all... love? Yeah that works.

Over and out!