[erikavanhuis]

Well, it's been a pretty uneventful week so far. Just regular stuff. Things are slow at work, so that gives me even more time to surf the internet. I feel bad about it at times, but my boss says it's fine because he knows that all my work is done, and as long as I answer the phone and do things as they come in, then it's okay. I still can't believe that I get paid to sit here and not really do anything productive though...I mean, I'm not lazy, I actually work hard...maybe a little too fast for my own good. I get all my work for the day done within my first hour or so of being at the office, unless we've just done a big job and there's a lot of paperwork to finish up and reports to do. Those days make me happy and feel like I'm actually earning my money. Otherwise, the rest of the day, I just wait for the phone to ring, and find small odd jobs to do around the office. Honestly, I love my job. It was truly a blessing to get. I've learned so much, and have a lot of skills now that I can take to any other job with me.
Ummm...that's about it for now. I'm getting so excited for England...we leave in 8 days!!! There's lots to do around the house to get ready for it though. I want to get it all cleaned up before we leave because coming home to a dirty house is one of my pet peeves. I remember coming home from our honeymoon, and the house looked like a bomb went off...we spent the next 3 days cleaning so we could actually see the living room floor. Of course, it doesn't help that our house is stinking SMALL...780 square feet of mess! Mark and I can't wait until we are able to buy a house that is bigger and has enough room for our stuff. Actually, enough room to move around would be great too! But, for now we're content to live in what we've been given.
It's an absolutely beautiful day out today! Ok, NOW I'm done writing for the day!
More to come later...

[erikavanhuis]

It's been a few days, so I should probably give an update...
Life lately has been consumed with getting ready for this trip. We leave on Saturday! Yeah!!! So much to get done before we leave though...packing, cleaning the house (coming home to a dirty house is one of my pet peeves)(*edit* oops, I guess I just said that. oh well), getting mail held...fortunately we don't have any pets to find sitters for!
So, that's about it for now. Yeah, this was a short update, but really, not much is going on. I will have so much more to write about when we get back!
More later...

[erikavanhuis]

Woohoo! The time is finally here! Vacation, here I come! Actually, I've still got to get through the day today, and what a long day it's going to be! We're not sleeping tonight so we can sleep on the plane tomorrow. Oh man, am I going to be tired! So, it should be great fun. We packed most of our stuff last night. All we have left to do this morning is the last of the laundry, and then packing anything out of that, and then packing the little things for our carryons, and then cleaning up the house a little and making sure we unplug everything...no use wasting electricity when we're not there to use it!
Anyway, to whoever reads this...have a wonderful day, I'll update on the trip when I get back, feel free to write anything or ask any questions in advance for me to answer/reply to when I return.
More to come in a week...!

[erikavanhuis]

Hey, I'm back!! We had a wonderful trip, made it there and back safely. I've got lots of stories to tell, but I don't have much time now. I'm at work catching up on my backlog of stuff, which isn't really much. I'll be sure to write about our adventures soon!
In the mean time, I'm adjusting to the time change again... We got home and went to sleep as soon as we got in the door, and then were up way early this morning! Oh well, another day or two and my body clock will be back to normal!
Ok, so I'll write more later...

[erikavanhuis]

Ok, so I've got a little bit of time now. I'll start telling about our trip. It actually started out pretty disaterous! We got to the airport and our flight to leave ended up being 45 minutes late getting there. Then...the pilot and flight attendant decided that they wanted to take a 30 minute lunch break...then they slowly made their way back out to the plane and we finally loaded. We ended up leaving 1 1/2 hours after we should have landed in Vancouver. We ended up having to RUN across the airport to get to our connecting flight, where they were already loading by the time we got there. That flight was jam-packed. We finally landed at Heathrow on time, and went to get our luggage only to find out that it didn't make it there because of our first flight being so late getting in!!! We finally got our luggage about 8 hours later...a LONG 8 hours later. After that though, the trip went great! But, I'll have to add more to this later. Time to get to work.
So, more to come...

[erikavanhuis]

More time on my hands again...here goes the rest of our trip...
Like I said, the flight over was absolutely disaterous! All we wanted to do when we finally got to our hotel was to take a shower and change out of our disgustingly sweaty traveling clothes and into something clean. Well, neither of us really packed a change of clothes with us in our carry ons, so we were stuck until our luggage finally arrived. The people at our hotel were very helpful...they kept calling the airline to get updates, and then let us know what was going on. In the mean time, we decided to sleep, since there was nothing else we could do, and we'd been up for around 48 hours straight. Being tired and cranky and not having clean clothes does not make for a good combination! So, we prayed about it, and God was faithful (like He was on the entire trip), and we finally got our luggage.
After that fiasco, the rest of the trip was a blast! We went to London a couple of days and did all the touristy stuff there. We were staying in Dover, so we spent a day sight seeing there-the castle, underground tunnels, the cliffs, and the lighthouse. We also went to Folkestone, where our swimmer was staying and explored around there, and we also went to Leeds Castle, however, we liked Dover Castle much better! My husband warned me beforehand that over in England they don't believe in ice! I wasn't too sure what to expect, but was shocked when I asked for ice water and got a small glass of water with 2 ice cubes in it! The driving on the wrong side of the road threw me off the whole time too! I paniced when we took a cab from the train station to our hotel. I thought we were going to get in an accident when I saw a car coming at us in the lane we *should* have been in!
Anway, it was a fantastic swim. However, we almost didn't get to see the channel swim happen. They were hit with all the bad weather left over from the hurricanes in Florida. All the other swims that week got cancelled. We just kept praying and believing God that it would happen. Finally, the weather cleared up by Friday, and the swim happened on Saturday morning...the day before we left! She made it across in 10 hours and 21 minutes! She was actually on pace for a world record, but hit a bad tide on the French coast about 5 miles out, and it took her 4 hours to do that last 5 miles. Until then, it took her 6 hours to do the previous 16! She finally finished, and they all made it back to where she started, and we had to book it over to Heathrow! We actually missed the last train from Folkestone over to there, so our swimmers mom drove us up there. She had rented a car for the week. It came in handy. We finally got to our hotel at about 1:30 in the morning, and woke up to catch our flight home at 5:00! 55 pounds for 4 hours in the hotel room...
We got on our flight back home, which was far less crowded than our flight to England, and got some sleep. The trip home was much better than the trip there. We even got fed on that flight, other than our first trip when all we got was a sandwich...for a 9 hour flight!!! Our luggage made it home with us too! We were dead tired when we finally got home, we had basically lived that day twice with the time change and everything. It was wierd to leave London at 8:45 am, fly for 9 1/2 hours, and land at 11:00am in Vancouver! Then we left Vancouver and landed in Seattle at 2:00pm. We go home by 8:00pm after visiting with family, dropped our stuff in front of our door, stumbled over it, and went to bed! We woke up early the next morning, still trying to adjust to the time change. So, we decided to go out to breakfast! Then, we went to work, and things are back to normal now! I actually was able to get caught up on everything I missed the last week at work too! Fortunately, it was a slow week while I was gone.
Well, I guess that's about it for now. I should probably post some pictures a little later. Oh well, back to life as usual, and my more boring entries in this journal now...
More of the happenings in my life to come later...

[Electra]

That sounds awesome, Erika....and you're right about one thing that you said in a previous jouranl entry. The E section is very lonely, so I decided to come over and say hi! Looks like we'll have to keep each other company. Hmm, maybe if our login name started with something like A,B or C we might have some signs of life stirring. But we are the E's. Lol, I'm rambling, so I had better go...hope to talk ya!

[natedawg5280]

hey erika.. wassup? how old are you? do you play an instrument? what's your favorite color? saw you blog an thought i'd drop by. (sorry if you answered these q's in the beginning of your blog im to lazy to read it ) peaceoutall

[erikavanhuis]

Wow! People are reading my journal!! Anyways to answer those questions...I'm 22, I play the guitar and keyboard, my favorite color is a tie between blue and purple (funny, that's what the colors for my wedding were!), and now some extra tidbits: I work full time as an office manager for a small company that does crane inspections. Um, the office is pretty quiet right now, which is why I'm spending more time online. It makes the day go by faster when I've gotten all my work done. Let see, what else...I don't have any kids yet, give it a couple of years...Mark and I aren't ready for it yet. We've only been married just over a year and don't have enough money, or a large enough house for it!
So, yeah...that's just a little about me. Thanks for stopping by!

[Electra]

Wow! So ya'll are still newly-weds. That's cool. So how long have you been playing your guitar? And what brought you to CGR?

[erikavanhuis]

Yeah, I guess we could still be considered newlyweds!! That's fun, except on days when I get sick...then all the "oh, you're not sick, you're pregnant!!" jokes start coming out!
Well, I've been playing the guitar since I was 18. It was a birthday present from my parents. I taught myself. I'm not too gut, but I can play well enough to lead worship when we were leading our bible studies. I've been playing the piano since I was 5. I haven't touched my keyboard in about a year though we just don't have room in our house to keep it set up. Oh well, one day when we have a bigger house. I was actually on a couple of worship teams and I played the keyboard. I'm not sure which instrument I like playing better. You can take a guitar anywhere, but sometimes, there's just more you can do on a piano.
And, to answer your other question...I actually found CGR quite a few years ago...I even think it was before this forum got as huge as it is now. I used it to find chords for songs...this was even back when they still had all the words to all the songs! I ended up registering because I got tired of all the pop up ads! Then, I was searching the site more one day and found the forums, and it looked like fun. I'm hooked now, and other than my e-mail it's pretty much the only site I go to when I'm online! I hope that answers your questions. If you have more, please feel free to ask!

[natedawg5280]

don't accuse me of spam i just wanted to share my laughter..

[erikavanhuis]

I'm going to try to add a picture here. This is of Mark and I on the cliffs at Dover.
Yeah for me!!! I figured out how to get it to work!!
Anyway, i just might have to add more now. But, that will have to be later!

[Electra]

Aww, cute picture. I fell like I've actually met you now that I've seen you, lol. Anyway, looks like you guys had fun. Catch you in a blog later.

[erikavanhuis]

Thanks! Yeah, we had a great time! It was such a busy trip. I often laugh at the fact that people go on vacation to relax and rest, but then often end up doing more than they normally do in a day just because there's nothing else to do and they're some place that they've either never been, or haven't been to very often...hmm...
It took me a while to decide to actually post a picture here. I was sort of content being an anonymous person here...oh well! I guess it's more fun to share pictures that I'm in than pictures of just stuff.
Today has been an interesting day. I've spent the day fixing mistakes I made yesterday. We put up a new website at work, and I went to change something on it, and lost a whole bunch of stuff, so I had to re-do a lot of it. grrr.... Fortunately, I got it all fixed, but it's still not up and running yet. I may have to wait another day before our server recognizes it. I still don't quite understand the technology, but I appreciate it and am fascinated by it. I let our site host deal with all the details!
Oh well, more later...