Easter Weekend
The past two years, Easter weekend has brought with it some pretty huge, game-changing events in our lives. Easter Sunday of 2010 found me in the ER in the middle of the night after being violently ill for hours...and then continuing to be violently ill for another several hours until they finally medicated me enough to make it stop. What we now know (think) to be really, really bad migraines was completely new to my body at the time. Because it had never happened before, the doctors went through multiple scenarios from vertigo to a brain aneurysm and asking me many, many times if I was sure I wasn't pregnant?? I was quite sure. (God help me if I get that sick when I'm preggo. Sheesh). Why am I telling you all of this? For those of you who don't know our story, in our early twenties, Jake and I had a few years of back and forth, back and forth, back and forth serious relationship unhealthiness. As of this particular day two years ago, we had not spoken a word to each other in nearly a year--in my mind, at least, this chapter of my life was closed. So no one was more surprised than me when Jake's sister, Jill, came to pick me up and told me that her brother had been texting and calling her all day wanting to come to the hospital. What? Jake wanted to come to the hospital? HE is worried about ME? Why?? To make an already long story short, my now-husband essentially had his 'aha! moment,' if you will. What was a horribly painful and miserable day ultimately led to the restoration of a relationship that I had long thought to be broken beyond repair. And for that, we are so thankful.
Fast forward to Easter of 2011, and I distinctly remember sitting in my office on a call and seeing my cell phone light up with a 541 number (sidenote: Oregon only has TWO area codes for the whole state. It's so weird). Anyway, I logically assumed it was my mom, who had texted me earlier that morning letting me know that they were on the road to my grandparents house on the Oregon Coast, and that she would call me from their home phone when they got there, as they wouldn't have cell service. I also distinctly remember listening to my voicemail and hearing an unfamiliar voice on the other end saying, "Hi Casey, this is Eileen Kaspar from Oregon State University's MPH Program. I am calling to let you know that you've received a scholarship for next year, and we really need to talk." O.K. Talk about a curve ball. Jake and I had already discussed all of our options, and I had already sent in my letter of intent to SDSU. Oh also, we were given a week to accept the scholarship... and make the decision to quit our jobs and move to another state. Ya know, super easy things to decide on a short timeline. While it wasn't a full scholarship, it was a good enough chunk of change to overcome some of those nasty nonresident tuition rates. After lots of prayer, soul searching, and getting career advice from my boss, we decided to go for it!
So, here we are in 2012, and we're married and happy and living in Oregon! I have to be honest and say that I held my breath a little bit, waiting for some sort of crazy new life change to fall out of the sky. Annndd... the sun came out! BOTH days! And the temperature got up to 70! I don't think that's happened since October. So that was pretty dang shocking. Given that I'm almost through the first year of my graduate program, and it's quite possible that just over a year from now everything could change all over again, we were pretty content with normal. So while we did not have any epic life changes, we did have a pretty amazing weekend. Hiked Silver Falls on Saturday, helped with Easter service on Sunday, had brunch with friends, got the pups out for a walk (it was long overdue--poor pups!), dug our shorts and flip flops out of the back of the closet, and enjoyed chips and guac and shrimp tacos for dinner, finishing it off with a glass of summer ale. We missed our families, but we are SO thankful for the life and community we're starting to build here. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend and I'll leave you with a few photos from our hike on Saturday:
Fast forward to Easter of 2011, and I distinctly remember sitting in my office on a call and seeing my cell phone light up with a 541 number (sidenote: Oregon only has TWO area codes for the whole state. It's so weird). Anyway, I logically assumed it was my mom, who had texted me earlier that morning letting me know that they were on the road to my grandparents house on the Oregon Coast, and that she would call me from their home phone when they got there, as they wouldn't have cell service. I also distinctly remember listening to my voicemail and hearing an unfamiliar voice on the other end saying, "Hi Casey, this is Eileen Kaspar from Oregon State University's MPH Program. I am calling to let you know that you've received a scholarship for next year, and we really need to talk." O.K. Talk about a curve ball. Jake and I had already discussed all of our options, and I had already sent in my letter of intent to SDSU. Oh also, we were given a week to accept the scholarship... and make the decision to quit our jobs and move to another state. Ya know, super easy things to decide on a short timeline. While it wasn't a full scholarship, it was a good enough chunk of change to overcome some of those nasty nonresident tuition rates. After lots of prayer, soul searching, and getting career advice from my boss, we decided to go for it!
So, here we are in 2012, and we're married and happy and living in Oregon! I have to be honest and say that I held my breath a little bit, waiting for some sort of crazy new life change to fall out of the sky. Annndd... the sun came out! BOTH days! And the temperature got up to 70! I don't think that's happened since October. So that was pretty dang shocking. Given that I'm almost through the first year of my graduate program, and it's quite possible that just over a year from now everything could change all over again, we were pretty content with normal. So while we did not have any epic life changes, we did have a pretty amazing weekend. Hiked Silver Falls on Saturday, helped with Easter service on Sunday, had brunch with friends, got the pups out for a walk (it was long overdue--poor pups!), dug our shorts and flip flops out of the back of the closet, and enjoyed chips and guac and shrimp tacos for dinner, finishing it off with a glass of summer ale. We missed our families, but we are SO thankful for the life and community we're starting to build here. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend and I'll leave you with a few photos from our hike on Saturday:
Silver Falls is only a short one hour drive away from our house--if any of you ever come visit us, we'll absolutely be taking you here!
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