Hello all! Sorry it's been so long since our last post. We are happy to report that we have purchased Mark's new laptop and I am picking it up today at the front office where it got delivered. We'll miss having Stephen's temporary desktop mini in our study though. Since the purchase, Mark and I have been cooking dinner every night so we can try and save money rather go to restaurants. We are trying to use up the majority of our food so the next time we go to the grocery we can restock and not waste anything.  Aren't we just so economical? haha

Not much has gone on this past week. I have been spending time with Mary Rachel, one of my old high school best friends who is living in Memphis again. Mark had a flat tire the day we bought his new laptop online, so my natural reaction wasn't too great. Thankfully Mark's dad had some connections and was able to get the tire repaired without cost from us!  To return the favor Mark and I cooked him dinner and I made a chocolate chip pie. Here's the recipe from Bakerella:
* Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie… Oh My! *
It was pretty delicious, but I ended up throwing the rest away because it's not good for me to keep baked goods in the house. :/ Hence the reason my work gets a lot of brownies and such.

This Saturday Mark is showing a documentary called Worse Than War at First Evangelical Church at 4:00 pm. Everyone is invited! When he first made me watch it, I was honestly really skeptical because the word "documentary" to me means really boring. This film, however, keeps your attention more than most movies can for me.  For people who do not know very much about genocide, it objectively paints a great picture as to what genocide is and where it's happened across the world. Probably the most interesting parts of this film are when the actual criminals who committed the act of genocide are interviewed. The film's narrator/protagonist really aims to get into the mindset of these criminals, and what you find out is shocking and not what you would expect to hear.

Speaking of movies, last week we were out with a few friends and ending up talking about movies and such. This led us to two films that we watched of the weekend: Se7en and The Hunting Party.  Se7en (made in 1995) is a movie I told Mark that he's been needing to watch and he finally did. The Hunting Party is one that he wanted me to watch and I recommend  it to anyone. Go watch a trailer for it! We went and saw Inception too, which is definitely one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Also, on my final note: if you want a cute little coffee shop to go to, there's a place called Square Beans Coffee located in the Collierville Historic District Square that's really cute and has a good selection of coffee drinks. :)

Next Week

Hi! Mark and Olivia here! Here's what we got going on next week!

Olivia is:
going to lunch and a movie on Monday with friends to celebrate her birthday :)
working nonstop until next Friday :(
being amazing :)
watching the bachelorette on Monday night. Mark is not.

Mark is:
speaking at the Hope Experience Youth Conference on Thursday night
working nonstop until eternity
hopefully a double date with some friends
returning to OBS after a week off

We recently got cable! Mark is not used to watching TV so it's a new experience for him. Olivia likes to exercise in front of it and then go ride her stationary bike. The cats don't ride the bike.

Kitty Update from Olivia:
Nutmeg has gotten quitter at night but hyper-needy when we get home. He also likes to sleep in the bathroom sink...
Cinnamon is a little nicer than he used to be but still doesn't like a lot of attention. That's good, Nutmeg is like having a 2 year old around.

Keep Us in Your Prayers

Mark here. Olivia and me are both having issues with work (mine are particularly frustrating) and they don't appear to be getting better anytime soon.

Thanks to all of you for helping during this time:

Stephen for giving me a computer to use for OBS since mine is dead.

Paul for simply asking how I am doing and encouraging me to keep moving forward. 

My core staff at work (primarily Brittany, Amy, and Flexer) for being so great.

Olivia's parents for buying us a new garbage can

For my activist peers around the nation who are helping me prepare to transition OBS into an official non-profit.

Anna for giving us a cable plug.

Our cats for being quieter at night (even if we've forced them to be)

Olivia for being perfect :)

Love you guys. By the way, if anyone feels like donating me a $1,000 Macbook Pro for OBS that'd be wonderful. If you want to throw a few bucks towards it I'll give you a hug. 

New birthday update

As of recently Mark and I haven't been having the best of luck, especially with work. Although I'm not going to go into details, work has been a series of stressful situations one after the other. The last event, however, has changed my birthday donation to charity: water idea unfortunately. Yesterday there was an accident at work involving spilt water on Mark's laptop. Thankfully his hard drive was saved, but his computer was not. :(

We're trying to find the most economic and affordable means of alleviating the problem.  Although we would both love for Mark to be able to purchase a new laptop, that would be too much money.  As of now he is using his brother's old Mac Mini desktop computer, but it's only temporary. The only alternative that we can think of right now is to purchase a Mac Mini desktop that has been refurbished and let him use my laptop for the majority of the time (though it's not in the best of shape it will work). Because of our unfortunate luck, it doesn't make much sense to take donations to charity: water when he can't even do any work for them without a computer.  Getting to my point, for my birthday any money would be so gratefully accepted towards purchasing our desktop computer. 

Here's to hoping that our luck improves and things start looking up. 

My birthday is next Thursday!

The weather has finally cooled off thanks to a mid-afternoon thunderstorm that was much needed.  It decided to start thundering as soon as I was taking up the groceries from my car, but thankfully nobody was electrocuted and the bag with the eggs did not drop.  We have finally developed and put our wedding pictures in albums and frames! The wedding seemed like so long ago!

We spent the last two days celebrating a late Father's Day with my dad and his dad.  Unfortunately we weren't able to make it to either family function on Father's Day (you can thank Starbucks for that). After a wonderful marathon of working 9 days in a row, today is my first day off in what seems like forever.  What your parents fail to tell you when you're growing up is that when you get older and marry, summers don't include sitting around watching tv or reading all day.  Oh the past days of no responsibility when all that mattered in the summer was knowing what time the good tv shows came on. Now as an adult (well, hardly an adult really), summers now mean that work still takes up the majority of your time.  Then when your long awaited day off comes, you realize that you don't even have cable and a multitude of cleaning, laundry, and errands await you. 

All these things aren't bad of course, it's just part of the process of growing up I suppose.  I think you know that you are getting older when you have price tag shock with anything above $20 and no longer even look at the clothes section in stores anymore.  If I go into a store other than a grocery store, it's on a mission to get one item and  I'm headed to the sale/clearance area first--something my mother thankfully taught me. 

Now that it's been a good month coming from the honeymoon, I can finally say that I think (think...not positive yet) that our apartment is decorated how I like it.  Before I got married, decorating was just not an interest whatsoever.  It's funny how fast your tastes can change when it's your own place.  I'm still trying to get a feel for what specific style Mark and I have; right now I would say it's more of a modern/contemporary feel maybe?

My birthday is next Thursday and for anyone who loves me enough to get me a present, this year I'm donating my birthday to charity:water. You can donate $22 for my 22 birthday by clicking here!
 :)

I figured it would be kind of nice for a few people to have a chance to drink some water you know? I just know that not every person in the world gets presents on their birthday, but not even being able to have something to drink on your birthday makes me really sad. So yes, that's that. I am, however, slightly selfish and only want one thing for my birthday--a mountain bike! I want to be able to ride a bike on the trails at Shelby Farms. Now I know that nobody is going to get me a bike and that's perfectly fine, but sometime in the future I'm going to buy a mountain bike. People without water though are just more important this year. :)

20 Things

I promised myself that I would update this blog much more regularly than I used to now that the busyness of the engagement and wedding has finally died down.  I thought that instead of writing a typical blog tonight, I would write a little list of a few things I've learned about being a wife during the first month of marriage. :)

#1. I like to sleep in the middle of the bed. Despite Mark being a whole foot taller than I am, all 5'2 of myself likes to claim the middle.

#2. I have inherited my mother's genes for cleanliness, but unfortunately it has multiplied to a state of neurosis almost. I'm trying to teach myself not to care about having a clean apartment...not working yet.

#3. Clothes will always magically appear in my dirty clothes hamper no matter how often I do laundry. 

#4. Boys eat a lot of food and drink a lot of milk.

#5. Me and power tools do not need to be near one another. Mark had a nice little non-bloody stab in his foot from when I tried to unplug the power drill. 

#6. No matter how hard I try, I'm not very good at hanging up pictures straight.

#7. When your husband is 6'3, everything he hangs up is really high on the wall (as my mother pointed out to me).

#8. Having two cats requires a lot of attention...especially concerning the whole litter box situation.

#9. Every time after I vacuum, my cats both roll on the backs on the floor like its the best carpet they've ever felt.

#10. Boys like to leave stuff out and not put it back in its place (Mark has improved though) :-)

#11. I have a wonderful husband who still is pursuing me and taking me to nice restaurants spontaneously.

#12. Mark loves our kitties more than I do sometimes, though he'll never admit it. :)

#13. I break around 2 glass objects per week.

#14.  It's so much better having a husband to help you bring in the groceries. 

#15. I require more naps than Mark does as he pointed out to me. I also am cranky right when I get up from a nap.

#16. As much as I hate it, Mark can cook asparagus much better than I can.

#17. I love having a husband to run errands with.

#18. Kitties like to take turns sleeping in empty boxes.

#19. Mark and I are both procrastinators about practical things.

#20. Mark reads historical and political literature whereas I read fiction. 

A few wedding pictures