Jake's LandRover

This is Jacob's latest project. With a little backing from his dad, the first Landrover is ready to ship from the UK to the US (soon, he adds). This is a market tester for a possible (serious) business. We'll see where it goes.....

Update and Bridal Shower Pix

Ah, the Service Plunge is finally over. We successfuly navigated 160 freshman through service projects around Portland and logged close to 1000 volunteer hours. While it was great to meet the new UP students, the highlight for me was the student staff. I was so impressed by their hospitality, their eagerness and, by many, their faith. I loved seeing them interact, ask questions and foster relationships with their small group. I also enjoyed bringing Adam and Erin to the final dinner. The transition between my l'Arche life and University of Portland seemed almost seamless. I also got to see some places in PDX I haven't yet, like the Catholic Worker in North Portland.

In other big news, we've got an apartment! I won't be living with the nuns after all, but the same sisters also own an apartment complex which has a few units they rent to "friends of the community." Most of the people who live there are nuns. I think we will be one of three tenants who are not. The rent is cheap and it's in a beautiful part of NE Portland, close to the school. To make things even better, Sister Kate, who used to live downstairs gave us her furniture! This is huge for us since currently we own only a wicker couch and a used mattress.

I'm also adding some bridal shower pictures from the other week. The one at the top is from a recent trip Jacob and I took to Cannon Beach.

Cindy and Shannon chat with Maureen Wheeler. We had the shower in theh Laurelhurst Park. It was a beautiful day and Heather did a great job organizing.



When five year olds are involved you usually end up sharing the spotlight. Here's Jacob's cousin Wren "helping me" open my gifts.


This is a basket I got as a gift. Heather filled with individually wrapped items for our kitchen.


At the end we invited the boys (my dad, Jake's dad and Jake himself) to join us for smores.

phew!

It's the last of my seven-day work weeks. This past week we welcomed student interns on a retreat and now we are into staff training. We end with a Service Plunge for incoming freshman and then get right into Orientation. To make things more exciting we welcomed both the Florers and the Bixlers to Oregon last week. I didn't see them too much but Heather and Jacob held down the fort and took them to the beach, to St Helen's, over to Mt Hood, down the Gorge and through Portland.

We also had a bridal shower while they were here. I'll post pictures when I have a second (whenever that is). Right now Jacob is moving me out of l'Arche and helping to paint my room. I can't wait to sleep this weekend....

Get thee to a nunnery?

It's the last week for me as a live-in assistant at the l'Arche community but I am going out with a bang. Tomorrow we leave for Spokane, a seven hour journey, with all the core members and three assistants in the van. We're going to Regional Gathering, where l'Arche communities come from Tacoma, Seattle, Orange County and Portland meet to pray and party with the Spokanites. I am excited but also wary of the exhaustion that comes from these types of events. I start full time at University of Portland on Monday and go right into a retreat with student staff that weekend. Staff training start the day after we get back which leads into the Service Plunge for incoming freshman then orientation that weekend. All of this was unforseeable when we invited both the Bixler and Florer families to visit right smack in the middle.

The other news is that there is a great chance we have found a new asssitant to take my place in the house. That's great for the house, but it does mean I need to find another place to live. We didn't want to start renting an apartment we would both live in because we would be paying two rents for four months.

The solutions presented itself with Sister Susan, the nun who has been my housemate for the past year. Her convent has several guests rooms which they rent for cheap to people like me who are in transition. So, it may turn out that I will live with three ninety year old nuns for the next few months. Since Jake would be over there a lot, we both went to a meeting with the community the other night. One of the sisters said, "we can tell everyone that we nurtured a romance in our convent!" Hilarious.

SAVE THE DATE

We finally sent our Save-the-Dates (actually, if you are on Jacob's list, sorry. Yours have not been sent yet as Jake is still gathering addresses). It feels good to have some basic wedding things solidified. We're getting married and having a Virginia reception on January 14th. We are also having a reception in Iowa the Saturday after the wedding for family and friends from the midwest who couldn't make it to Virginia. Please come to one or both!

You can start RSVPing even now by going to our TheKnot wedding website (the tab for this is in the upper right hand corner of this page). You can also wait for more details when we send out our invitations in a few months. Please let us know if you have any problems with it. We're trying to avoid using up anymore paper and postage by doing all our RSVPs online or by phone for those who don't use the computer.

Also, when I was at the postal box I noticed that I put Jacob's address as the return but with my zip code.

I doubt it matters too much, but in case you needed to send us something or want to have a correct address it is

Jacob Florer
1316 SE 35th Ave
Portland, OR 97214

A Troop? A Herd? A Pack?

One of my desires for our wedding was to have a large number of flower girls. First, we have about a thousand little girls in our lives. Between church and school friends having babies, we had quite a few options! And since weddings are especially fun for small people and even more for flower girls, and since we want a fun wedding, we decided on six flower girls.

We're trying to decide what you call six flower girls. I think a troop is the best description. We are thankful for the participation of three of the Hanway-Higgs girls, the two Buchinsky women and Jacob's firey red headed second-cousin, Wren Florer.

The only bummer is that Truro, the church where I grew up and where we are having the wedding, is loathe to allow flowers thrown down the aisle. They have a million other picky rules along these lines but we're working with it. Right now we're trying to decide some alternatives. Maybe bubbles? Maybe just holding their own bouqets. Any suggestions, send them our way.