only 30 days later....

What to post? I feel as though I don't have anything very eventful to post on here....

The middle of the month Erik's parents came to visit (our first guests since being here). We had a blast with them! We went out to dinner, took them to church and our small group at church, went to Phoenix for the day to watch the Mariner's play the White Sox....it was fun. We were sad to say goodbye...but they can't stop us from praying that maybe some day the warm and sunny weather might draw them down here...oh and maybe eventually grandkids.

Life seems to be full of working and relaxing. I'm pretty beat when I arrive home from work. Right now the restaurant is "in season" which means there are a lot of people going through the park.
With this I thought I would post a few things/tips for people who go out to eat because some people just don't know...
1. Tip 18-20%....tipping is someone's income and most likely your server will have to tip out a busser or expo person so don't think that you are giving them all of that money. If you don't know the math most cell phones have a useful tool to help you figure it out. Please live generously.
2. If you are not ready to order don't have your waitress stand there and wait for you to make up your mind and ask a million stupid questions. Even 30 seconds is valuable time to your server. You can ask questions like: "What is your favorite dish? and what is your top selling meal?"
3. Be observant....if your server is running around like a crazy person...chances are that you are not his/her only table. Take note of the other tables he/she has to go to be sure they aren't slacking off in their responsibilities to serve you.
4. When your server delivers your food and then asks, "Is there anything else you need?" SAY EVERYTHING that you need right then...nothing is more annoying than going to a table 5 DIFFERENT times for 5 DIFFERENT needs (you are probably not their only table).
5. If there are elderly people in your party that don't speak loudly or hear very well... PLEASE HELP THEM!
6. When your server comes to your table please stop talking for at least 5 seconds to acknowledge that they are there. It is really annoying when I walk up to a table and have to wait for the one "chatty Kathy" to shut her yapper so I can take their order. OR...when a server comes to the table to deliver the food...you may think that they have supernatural strength to just hold the plates until you shut up long enough to hear what food is being delivered. Also....please remember what you ordered....you are the one who ordered it so you should know, so your server doesn't stand there with your food announcing what they have in their hand 3 times.
7. Servers are humans too....don't take food our of your mouth and put it in your servers hand. GROSS (yes this actually happened)
8. If there is something wrong with your meal make sure you address the problem as soon as possible so your server can fix the problem. Your server does know how to do their job so if there is any fault....it's usually 82% of the time the customers error or misunderstanding.
9. If you are lacking refills it's not always your servers fault so don't ding them on the tip.
10. Order for your children....although it's nice to let you kids have social interaction with adults, learn manners and decision making skills it's just not always the best environment for them to learn this at a young age. If I haven't mentioned this...your servers time is valuable.
11. They are a server not your servant so don't talk down to them...they are human too.

I thought I would help the world out with these tips. If you have any questions I would be happy to help clarify anything.

All in all...life is going well. We miss people but we hope people up north with get bored with the rainy weather and come down for a visit.

routine

With changing life, routine changes...this is harder than I thought it would be.

In Portland Erik and I had our routine down to a "T"...work schedules, house church, church attendance, laundry, grocery shopping, where we would go grocery shopping, how we would grocery shop, what we would do in the evening, get togethers with friends and family,weekend plans...

Not that I was naive to think that everything would just fall into place here...I knew it would take some time and work. It's just different.

Here I have had to search for a grocery store that has everything I need, AND at decent prices. It's been harder than I thought but I think I might have it down. This may sound dumb to blog about but it made me excited to finally figure things out a little.

Laundry was always done on Wednesday and Saturday...here...it's done when I have days off. (not that you all care about when I do my laundry...but routine is important to me)

Friends...well...we are working on making friends. Family is further away so it takes a little more planning to see and spend time with them (unless they come to us).

Church...still figuring it out. We found some awesome people that we really feel that if something were to go horribly wrong and we needed something we could call them. God has a big picture for us down there and we are trying to not get in the way.

Everything takes time down here...we live super north of Tucson so it takes planning to make routine happen. I think it's actually better for us to plan better and help us not spend as much money with things to distract us and go to.

With planning everything comes the thought of planning our lives...when or should Erik start taking classes?...we aren't too concerned about figuring that out yet. When should we start a family? it's been in the conversation as of lately and that's about all I'm going to say about that...(for those who want to read into this...it's just conversation right now). (My hope is that working from home would become more of a reality so the conversation can become a reality).

That's about it for now.