We've got Sinks!!

the bathroom sink...

the kitchen sink...

the finished kitchen!! woohoo!

and almost carpet too, it's laid out right now, just awaiting it's installment, I think it's really excited to be a part of our new home. We are too! That "should" get done this week.

Don't You Just Love Moms?

We do!! Here's some shots from our mother's day festivities when Will's parents and grandma were down for some family time and we joined families together for the

blessed day's BBQ at the Kuitert resort!

Mother's Day 2007

"And her children rise up and call her blessed." -Proverbs 31:28

Gotta Love the Babes...

Will and I had a little adopt-an-auntie-and-uncle night on Friday evening for Jill and Scott Evans. Noah, Will and I had a nice long walk to the park, played some frisbee and then walked by Noah's little friend, Jonah Knudson's house. View the pics. They are too precious. We love all of our friends and their babes!

5.25.07 Auntie Krystal & Uncle Will

To Kill a Finchingbird...

So picture this...Will and Krystal Irwin enjoying a relaxing Wednesday evening together on the par 3 on-the-river golf course in Dillard, OR. All of a sudden, as Krystal reclines on hole #5, admiring that bravo and stud of a golfing husband of hers, she is completely unspecting of the flying evil that lurked above. All of a sudden a dive-bombing, faster-than-a-speeding bullet psychotic devil finch came crashing through the sky right at Krystal's head. You should have seen it folks. She started squealing and rolling around on the grass, trying to dodge each of the finch's attempt to take out her body. Learning the power of the weapons they wielded, the Irwin's traversed the rest of the course with clubs held high, creating fear in the heart of the wee little finch. The sole finch arrived again on the 2nd round of the game, again on hole #5, right in the middle of Will's backswing. This bird would stop at nothing. Even with Krystal standing guard (as the damsel, she should have been protected by him) while her knight swung away, this little devil continued his multiple swooping descents to scare the Irwin 2 out of his territory. The swinging of the clubs continued as the Irwin male balked at the surrounding enemy. Alas, the 3rd round came with no more attempted assassinations. The Irwin's will never be the same again, and neither will the dead bird. Just kidding, there wasn't really an assassination of the finchingbird, just an attempted one. My man is strong and scary! (Will failed to make birdie on any hole)

Honor the Volunteers...

Just a few pics from over the past year of homebuilding, of our biggest fans and supporters. Thanks guys, we wouldn't have made it without you!! Click on the album to view the saints!!

Our Biggest Supporters--The Volunteers!!

We have a deck!

The latest update on the Irwin casa is that we have a deck!!! OH yes, and we do so love our front deck already, as you can tell in the bottom pic! We can't wait to find some great little porch swing to hang and enjoy our sweetened iced tea on a summer day on this new deck.
But, besides a new deck, our driveway is also having it's final concrete pour today (it took 3 different pours since it's so long), the cabinets are sitting in our living room waiting to be installed and we are awaiting the Mr. fix-it-texture guys to show up to recreate the beauty of the walls that our burglars last week, tried to destroy. For those of you who haven't heard yet, we had some pretty ugly damage done to our new home last week (we thank the Lord that we weren't living there yet) when some people (cops weren't able to fingerprint to figure out who) broke in and left some sick excrements in the garage and spare bedroom and their "markings" behind in our master bedroom of their gang symbols and other lovely explitives. None of it was really lovely actually, pretty disturbing to tell the truth. But we also know that it can't scratch the surface of the foundation that was built for this home with much love, blood, sweat and tears, scriptures that were written all over the studs that can never be removed and a lesson that will never leave our hearts that our treasures are never to be stored up here on earth, but in heaven where moths & thieves can never steal or destroy! Words that came to life for us this weekend.
So anyway, we are now looking at a June 15th move-in date, but as many of you probably know--this is the construction world and timelines don't ever seem to be of the utmost importance in the subcontractor's world. So as we wait, we will just keep posting you with new pics of our updates! Keep praying for us as we perservere to finish this race--the finish line is in sight, which often tends to be the toughest leg!!

HERE HE IS FOLKS...

Mr. Will Irwin, the new Pastor of Children & Young Families at Sutherlin Family Church!!! After speaking (quite well, if you ask me:)) at church all weekend, an all-church meeting and unanimous vote, it was declared that starting at the end of June 2007, Will will begin his new responsibilities (or play time:)) with the children at our church. One of the funniest things about the big night for me...I already had a grandpa from the church come up and ask me after the announcement if "I was ready for all of my new duties?" Haha! Funny how that works eh? He also added on "Don't worry, you have lots of support around me to complete them." I just chuckled to myself. Good thing my "duties" in life are doled out by God and not man.

Here he is in all his glory! I was so proud of him that I took him out for dinner at Red Robin last night!

Here's a few pics of the big weekend:

Will and Paul prepping his sermon Thursday night, for the weekend...


Will giving his 1st SFC sermon "Holding Our Children with Open Hands"...
It was awesome!! We already heard a couple of great testimonies of how God spoke to hearts through Will, that's what it's all about... Will sitting up with Ed on the stage during "grill time" (anyone at the church meeting could ask questions of Will that they had about him and the position, yikes!) He pulled it off with grace and style though, despite his exhaustion from the big weekend...


Us waiting in the foyer, while the church meeting attendees asked private questions about Will & the position and took an affirmation vote on us, awkward (notice the tired eyes from both of us)... We prayed during those "waiting room" moments that God would accomplish His will, not man's and we trusted in Him either way it went. And as we were called back in & found out the big unanimous-vote news, Thank You Lord for showing favor to us, is all we had to say!!
P.S. If you'd like to hear Will's sermon from this weekend, just go to:
http://www.oursfc.org/Sermon/index.html Click on the MP3 icon next to Will's name!

Denver Adventure...

So, I went to Denver, Colorado last week, my 1st encounter with the state (which I have been dying to see for forever) and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it now. It wasn't so much the state or the mile-high sickness I experienced the whole time I was there, but the travel that really got me. Let me tell the little ditty with my pics along the way...
So we arrived to Eugene, OR at 9:10am on Wednesday, April 25th just on time to hear from Timothy the United Agent, who you'll see below, that "no, you are not allowed to get on your 9:40am flight, you are just too late, it would be absolutely restricted for me to allow you and your check-in luggage on the flight."

Here's Kia and Corrie trying to convince Timothy that we really aren't too late, but the sad truth was that the lame United people had already given our seats away. So didn't they make double the cash on that trip?

Okay so we made it on the next stand-by flight to San Fran at 10:16, thanks to Kia's connection to Keelan the luggage boy (an old student from Sutherlin HS). But really an answer to some serious prayers for stand-by favor with the United folks.

Little did I know as I stepped through the security check line that my Nalgene water bottle was about to be confiscated if it did not have less than 3 oz of water in it. So the chugging began, by Kia mostly and me included...

Shortly upon our arrival to San Francisco, Mr. United pilot got on the PA system to let all of us comfortably secure passengers know that our plane was about to run out of fuel and if we had to continue circling San Fran for a lot longer (since only 1 runway was open b/c of foggy conditions) then we would have to drop down to San Jose for a re-fuel before we could make it to San Fran. Comforting thought. So thankfully the pilot (interrupting our very calm thoughts) got back on the PA about 15 minutes later to let us know that we were finally going to be landing with our fuel levels in tact. He had supposedly told the San Fran land people that it was unacceptable for us to fly any longer with the state of our fuel. Number 2 "thank you Jesus" moments on the trip.

But oops, after running, literally home-alone-style running, through the airport we peer out the window of our gate 67C only to see...NOTHING, our connecting plane to Denver had already departed, right on the dot of time it was supposed to depart. What in tarnation?! When does that EVER happen? Well it was the only time it happened on this trip for us. I guess we had lost some minutes with our hovering in the air over San Fran in our poorly fueled plan. So panting back over to the customer service desk we go...

Finally leaving San Fran at 2:15pm (mind you, we were supposed to be arriving in Denver at 2:27pm) we made it on the next flight and safely arrived in Denver a few short hours later. Only to find out as we were watching the spinning luggage rack that our luggage must have forgotten to get on the plane with us, on to the next customer service desk we went (BTW-for future notice, I wouldn't recommend working with the United customer service agents out of anything but desperation, not the friendliest of mates for frantic & tired travelers)...

An hour or so late, the luggage arrives. Finally the blessed conference has arrived. Just a few pics of the fun times had (minus the altitude sickness I experienced the WHOLE time I was there, puky-feeling syndrome overtook me, and no, if any of you are asking, I'm not pregnant, just a little sensitive to sense of being 5280 feet (63360 inches in Will's terms) high in the air.) Spent a lot of relax time in the bathtub, actually. But here's a few pics of the moments I came out to take a few deep breaths of the thin air.

The ladies were all ready for a relaxing dinner w/drinks (me and my virgin-style drinks:)) on the night we arrived. Here's my workmates and hotelmates, L-R: Susan, Corrie & Kia.

We went on college tours to University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado College & University of Colorado Downtown Denver, fun sights and tours to be had!Dinner out a Rio Grande Mexican Restaurante...

A beautiful view of Pike's Peak, part of the rockies! A random visit from an old bible college roomate, Heidi...
Great free conference food, wasn't quite sure how to eat this half a head of lettuce, but just dug right in with one of our 7 knives at each place setting. Wasn't quite sure I had the Miss Manners education and etiquette to eat at some of those meals! :)
Birthday dinner at Lucky Strike bowling for Kia!
And then the trip home on Saturday begins. A full circus (and 2nd 12 hour travel trip) all the way! Fully loaded with another canceled flight (which we weren't told about a month ago), my encounter with the new creepy "air-puffing" machine in the security screening line, an unprepared for 3 hour layover in San Fran, a broken tire that furthered our layover on the 2nd plane from San Fran to Eugene, Kia's quick adventure on the bart underground subway to see her brother's girlfriend who just happened to be visiting San Fran, lost luggage when we returned to Eugene and a partridge in a pear tree.

Kia off on her adventure on the subway during the San Fran layover...Some really tired travelers...


And the partridge in the pear tree (the lost baggage claim which promised our baggage to be delivered the next day by 10am). By 5pm the next day it arrived safe and sound, to finish the trip off with a big bang!

Thanks for reading folks. I obviously lack for much excitement in my life lately, so I guess God was in need of a good hearty laugh!! He knows my little planning, organizing, frantic heart a little too well. I guess you could say that He shook a little bit of that stuff out of me on this trip! I can't tell you how many times I just thanked Him I was alive and well when I finally arrived home.