Our New Home?

We jumped into house shopping right after Christmas, and after driving by lots of houses in various neighborhoods, we were excited to come across this one:

It's pretty much exactly what we were hoping for, a smallish house on a large lot (over 1/2 an acre!). It's much closer to Ray's workplace, and only a few blocks from my family's new house. The house is fairly small, but we don't need much space yet, and the floorplan is nice. The property is very affordable, and the small amount of work it needs would be quite manageable for us. We are moving forward, and hope to make an offer this week.

We are trusting God to guide us through the process and to make it clear if this is indeed the house for us. We hope so!

Interesting side note on real estate listings: this house needs the exterior painted, and the listing said something like, "Exterior in need of paint lets you choose the color you like!"

Christmas Day Shenanigans

Acting Out the Nativity Story

We spent a special, fun-filled day with the Pedersens yesterday.

Guess who got picked to be Mary and Joseph in this year's Christmas play?

A New Family’s Worship

In May of this year, I went to a conference featuring Don Whitney, at North Oaks Baptist Church. Also there was the then-Katie Pedersen. One of the topics discussed at this conference was family worship. I was highly motivated after this conference, to have family worship someday with my family.

Last month, Katie and I were married in this same building, North Oaks Baptist Church. After months of seeing other families' worship times and hearing about its importance, we had the privilege to worship God together ourselves.

The Lord has blessed our desire to worship Him, and given us grace to make it a priority in our home. While there are a variety of elements we 'mix and match', we have been able to be fairly consistent in doing at least something almost every day. Since I leave for work fairly early during the week, we have our worship time in the evenings. I keep the ESV Study Bible, a prayer notebook, and a hymnal right by where we eat so it's convenient to grab after supper. We sing one or two songs from the hymnal (working through the whole book singing whatever we know). I then usually lead us in studying a brief passage of Scripture (we are almost done with Philippians), or we will read a Psalm. We also share what we read that day in the Word during our personal devotion time. We then review our prayer lists and pray together. There are variations: if we have been at another family's home, sometimes we will just read a Psalm and pray.

It has been a great reminder of the importance of a spiritual foundation to our relationship and has given me the chance to grow in being a spiritual leader. We consider ourselves blessed to have been taught early on in our relationship the blessings of family worship and are very excited to see what God will do with our family.

Nutmeg Logs

A Wade family tradition was accomplished successfully yesterday in the newest Wade family kitchen.

(whew!)

:-)

Neighborhood Christmas Caroling

We joined my family and several friends for an evening of singing Christmas carols around the neighborhood on Sunday. It was special to see the responses we received. There was an 84-year-old widow lady who said she hadn't been able to go to church that day and was truly touched by our visit.

We also met a young woman who almost missed us but came down the street after us! We had knocked on her door and gotten no answer, but she eventually came out and found us so as not to miss having us sing for her! She was excited and intrigued.

Christmas caroling has gotten more rare, and it's not unusual to have people trying to figure out what exactly is going on. We get questions like, "Are you a choir group?" At least no one tried to pay us this time!

The evening was topped off with delightful fellowship back at the house. Several people shared testimonies of God's working in their lives, and we had a great time getting to know each other better.

Mrs. Wade Goes Shooting

Tourists in Our Own City

We spent a pleasant evening out driving last night, looking at houses in one of Houston's historical neighborhoods. There weren't as many decorated for Christmas as I expected, but the houses were fun to see anyway.



We also drove through a new neighborhood not far from where we live. We decided that the older houses were more charming, homey, and inviting, but the new ones were more impressive. This picture only captured about half of this massive house! Very few of them were decorated with Christmas lights, but it makes sense. If you were to start outlining the roof with lights, you'd need at least a mile of lights, I think!

We also decided that it doesn't matter what kind of house you live in, because it isn't the house that makes a place a home. We are certain that we'd rather live in a cave together than a mansion alone. All the same, we're excited about looking for a house for ourselves soon.

Orcas Island

We had a wonderful time on Orcas Island. We stayed in a one-room cabin at a resort on the north side of the island. We were only a few yards from the shore. In addition to just relaxing at the cabin, we also did quite a bit of hiking, exploring, and driving around in our rented Hummer H3. What fun!



We enjoyed spectacular views from Mt. Constitution. The combination of mountains, trees, clouds, water, and the sinking sun was absolutely breathtaking. This was taken from halfway up.


From the top (below) we could see Vancouver, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Rainier. It was amazing!

The view of Mt. Rainier from the plane on the way home.

We had a good trip but were very glad to get home. In the week and a half since we've been back, we've had a delightful time settling into married life. We continue to be amazed at all the Lord has done in our lives and thankful for his many blessings.

Trip to Washington

We returned to Houston from our honeymoon and had an early Thanksgiving dinner with Katie's family. It was our first time to visit them as a married couple. What a novelty!

After repacking our luggage and opening as many gifts as we had time for, we took off for the Seattle area. The first part of our trip was spent at Ray's mother's home. It was a good time of visiting, working...

relaxing...

and getting ready for the marriage celebration. We held a service and reception for the friends and family in Washington. It was a bit of a Wade family reunion, and we were honored by how many people traveled to be there. I got to meet a lot of my new family members, and it was also a chance for Ray to reconnect briefly with his old friends.

The service was similar to the wedding, but without the vows and exchange of rings since we were already married. The pastor who was originally going to lead the service was unable to attend, but Ray put together a message to share. It covered attributes of God, the story of salvation, roles in marriage, and how marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. We are thankful to have had the opportunity to share our faith with the people there in that way.

After a whirlwind of meeting and/or visiting with people at the reception, we took off for Orcas Island for what is affectionately known as Honeymoon, Part Two.

Hill Country Honeymoon

We spent our honeymoon at a quiet, cozy cottage in the Texas Hill Country. It was homey and relaxing with luxurious touches here and there. We enjoyed it very much, but it's good that we didn't stay any longer than we did, or we would have gotten seriously spoiled!

More About the Wedding

We are busy settling into our apartment and getting into the swing of our new normal life. We are completely thrilled to be married. We highly recommend it! The blessings continue to pour in as our relationship grows and as we interact with family and friends as a couple.

We hope to get back to regular posts on our blog soon, but in the meantime, visit the Pedersen family's blog for lots of details and pictures of the wedding.

We're married!!

On November 22nd, 2008, Katie Pedersen and Ray Wade pledged their hearts and lives to one another in marriage, before God and some 300+ witnesses. It was a tremendously special day for us and we are very thankful to all our friends who have blessed us along this path.

We do not yet have internet at home, but once we do, we desire to set up the new Mrs. Wade as a blog writer on here. Stay tuned for more information!

In the meantime, for more pictures of the wedding, check out this link: Wedding Pictures