Life Change and Updates

Life is good, and busy these days. A few things have transpired since our last post in the fall of 2011:

1. Amy hired on at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids (December 2011)
2. Sale of House in Indiana (April 2012)
3. Purchase of House in Michigan (June 2012)
4. Carter's 1st Birthday (August 2012)
5. Amy got Pregnant in Summer 2012
6. Jon coached the JV Boys Soccer team in Lowell (Fall 2012)
7. Amy Graduated from Grad School at IWU with her Nurse Practitioner Degree (December 2012)
8. Addison Joy Bell was born (April 2, 2013)
9. Amy began job as NP at Lowell Specialist right next to Impact (June 2013)

Just a few changes in our life. Good things, blessings, and pieces to our puzzle and journey that are altogether faith-inducing. God has been infusing his goodness through a myriad of life events, and we cannot describe how grateful we are for His providence in our lives.

Grateful, 

Jon

Fall is here

Wow, fall has arrived after all! We had been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather for the past few weeks, and today it really feels like a fall day here in Lowell. Sunny, extremely windy and a high of about 50 degrees. Jon was gone all morning coaching soccer, and he said he needed to thaw once he got home. We have been enjoying the beauty of the area, the changing leaves and the crisp air. We find things we like about all the seasons, but it is especially beautiful here and we love it.

Things have really gotten rolling with youth ministry and getting established at the church. We've had several very successful events, and had two weeks of "regular" youth rally and had about 60-70 both times. Jon is enjoying the church and the challenge of starting from scratch with meeting a new group of students and establishing a routine here. As mentioned earlier, he is also helping coach a YMCA soccer team of 7th and 8th grade boys and is able to meet and connect with students outside of the church that way. He also is like another neighbor kid in our apartment complex and plays with the kids outside (along with Barkley) often during the week.

Carter is still doing great, growing, and doing new things each day. We have enjoyed all of his smiling, cooing and baby talk :). He is able to sit up in his bumbo chair, and can sit on laps without much support. He is sleeping through the night almost every night, which is wonderful! He's such a happy and content baby most of the time. We enjoy pretty frequent visits from family members. Grandma Bardlsey (G.G.) is up here right now for a visit and is loving getting to spend time with Carter and see all of his tricks :).

I am in the count down of days until my school starts back up November 29th. I have been trying to establish a clinical site and find a preceptor which has been a challenge so far, just as it was expected. I am applying to a program to hopefully get my site set up. I'm not really looking forward to getting back into it, I know it is going to take a lot of time and work... but for as much work as I've already done it really should be considered the home stretch of my program. I am enjoying my days at home with Carter, especially when I think they will be a little fewer in the near future.

Well, I'll post more later... we are at McDonalds on the free wi-fi :)

One month- time flies!

Carter is a month old today! Amazing! It seems like it has gone fast, but at the same time it feels like he has been a part of our family forever! He is such a good baby. He is so entertaining to us! The past few days we have been getting an occasional smile when we are talking to him, so that has been really fun. I am excited to see him do that more and more! He is usually content, rarely fussing for no apparent reason. He has been sleeping well, only waking up 1-2 times a night to eat and goes right back to sleep. He sleeps in his crib now in his own
room. He seems to be pretty big, we have a doctor appointment tomorrow so we will see how much he weighs! Last time he was almost 9 pounds :) Here are some pictures from today:

New baby and a move

The past few weeks have been somewhat of a whirlwind. Everyone told us we were crazy for having a baby and moving just a few weeks later, but I think we have proved them wrong! Believe it or not, it is something that can be done with some remaining sanity! We have been so blessed to have such wonderful help both packing up in Warsaw, and unpacking here in Lowell as we made the move this past weekend. It has been busy, but not totally hectic or overwhelming. We are getting adjusted to life in an apartment again, and we are actually really enjoying our new place (will post pics soon, when everything is clean :D ). Pretty much everything is unpacked and it feels like home. This week we have been getting things situated, and have begun to meet some

more of the people here. We attended Ignite (another church plant here in Lowell) youth group on Wednesday night, went to the Lowell football game on Thursday night and tonight we are having dinner with a couple and then going to a concert here at the local coffee shop. Our days have

been spent running errands and getting utilities and other things set up. Jon "officially" starts this weekend, and is really excited about being able to help with worship and then get started working this next week. We will meet with the youth leaders on Saturday to help get the schedule established and talk through some other things.

Carter is doing great. He is content most of the time, although the past few days he has been a bit more fussy. He has been sleeping pretty well, has only woken up 2 times the past couple of nights, and otherwise will sleep 3-4 hours at a time, so we are excited about that!

He has been a hit with everyone :). It's hard to believe that he will be a month old next week! We love him SO much! :)

Here are some pictures of the recent goings on:

The week before we moved we got to celebrate Kenneth's 21st birthday with all of my fam:

We also had a nice dinner with Thomas and Bethany before we moved:

We (well, mostly Carter ;) ) have had a lot of visitors:

One picture of our (un-decorated) new place:

We are looking forward to this weekend and getting started at the church!

Baby Carter

Well, we are going to try to be better with the blogging (how many times have we said that??). I want to try to use this to keep the fam and friends updated with our goings-on, especially since we will be a little farther away than we already are. I wanted to go ahead and post some pictures and info about our new addition.

In case someone is possibly not in the loop, BABY CARTER HAS ARRIVED!

We couldn't be more thrilled with our little guy and we love him more than we can say. After about 60 hours of labor and a c-section, he made his debut ( I will spare all of the details). We were lucky enough to have most of our immediate family here to witness the special day.

The last two weeks have been life changing and we can't imagine our life without him now! We

were lucky enough to have my (Amy's) mom and sister here for about the first week and they helped make the transition so much easier. We are so thankful for both of their help!

As many of you know we are also gearing up to move to Lowell, Michigan a week from today for Jon's new position as youth pastor at Impact Church. Saying goodbye to people here in Warsaw has been difficult, but we are excited for what God has in store as we join the ministry team in Lowell. We have been slowly but surely trying to get our house packed up. We still have not sold our house here, so we will be living in an apartment until we are able to sell the house.

It is going to be interesting to downsize to a 2 bedroom apartment after having our house here that we have loved so much, but we realize it is just for a season.

We have adjusted to life with a newborn and are loving it. Hard to believe he is already almost two weeks old! We have been enjoying our time together as a family of 3. We are going to try to get pictures of him in the same spot as he grows so we can compare and go, "I can't believe he was ever that small!" :) This picture is him at 10 days old with his bud Barkley licking his foot!

We also took him out on a walk with Barkley for this first time this past week.

Well we will try to keep this updated! We have a busy week coming up with the move. Please remember us in prayer as we make this next transition!

-Amy

Financial Peace University

Amy and I haven't exactly been the most avid of bloggers, but we're going to try to make our blogging a rather regular occurrence. So here's to hopefulness and optimism.

Tonight we attended FPU (Financial Peace University) for our fourth session. I attended FPU during my senior year at IWU for Personal and Family Finance with Prof Jerry Showalter (affectionately referred to as "Showtime"). The founder and leader of FPU is Dave Ramsey, a Christian radio-show host, best selling author, and financial guru.

Though I have attended FPU before, Amy and I decided that we wanted to attend the classes together and especially learn about investing and financial planning for retirement. However, I've been learning about more than just financial planning for the future. One particular discipline that I have been tweaking since attending the classes has been budgeting. I know, the dreadful word and discipline of budgeting. No one likes doing it, but, when done correctly and with motivation and consistency, it can be one of the best tools for financial peace.

Currently, we budget every month and have a balance at the end of the month that we want to hit in our checking account, which gives us a big cushion. I like this for the sake of having big payments that are coming out of our general checking account at various times of the month (i.e. mortgage, nursing school payments, etc.). However, this makes it difficult for us to truly have a zero-based budget. So, here are some of our goals that we hope to accomplish by the end of FPU:

• Have Amy's Grad School paid for. She will still have about a year and a half to go, but we plan to have enough saved up to pay the remaining balance by the end of November.
• Fine tune and become consistent in budgeting every month. Sometimes we go in spurts - budgeting for a few months, and then off for a few, so we have a goal of being consistent, monthly budgeters.
• Refinance Our House. This goal is contingent on what we find out in research for refinancing - if we'll need 20%, how much closing cost fees will be, etc... Nonetheless, we have a strong desire to refinance for a better interest rate and to move to a 15 year mortgage.

Those are just a few of our goals. We look forward to the rest of FPU and allowing God to use this in our lives to move us towards financial peace so that we can spend, save, and give like never before!

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