Reflections

The last few months have been "wonderfully hectic" - a phrase that could probably sum up our lives in general. Here is a glimpse of what we've been up to:

Michelle... finished her training period at Florida Hospital in October and made the switch to begin working nights. She is enjoying the more relaxed pace of work that comes with working nights and appreciates having more time to really focus on her patients. The obvious downside to working nights is the sporadic switching her sleeping schedule back and forth between nights and days. I'm not quite sure how she manages to do it - I seem have enough trouble getting out of bed with my comparatively normal schedule.

I (Mike)... officially completed my time as a "Deacon-in-training" in November and was elected as a Deacon at our church (UPC). It's been a rewarding but challenging process that has showed me a lot of what it means to truly serve others and has consequently given me a greater understanding of just how self-serving I can often be.

One thing that has been keeping me busy has been my work on developing a website for the Deacons at UPC that will hopefully allow us to do a better job of keeping track of the individuals we serve and will hopefully start to show us the areas that we can improve in. I've also recently starting serving on the Stewardship team at UPC. As a team, it is our goal to help develop a sense of generosity for church members and for the church as a whole. We want to find ways to encourage people to be generous with the time, talents, finances, and all other resources that God has given them. While it looks to be a daunting task, it will be a stretching (and hopefully exciting) process as we start our work in earnest in January.

Both of us... enjoyed a trip to Bogota, Columbia to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and niece on their home turf in early November. It was a lot of fun spending time with them and having the chance to see what life is like for them. A major highlight was hanging out with Isabella (my niece) who we have not gotten to see a whole lot of. The only downside to the trip was when both of us started to come down with a nasty case of the flu on our last day in Columbia - which resulted in several days of high fevers and missed work. Despite the last-minute illness, we are so thankful that we had the chance to go down and see them.

Looking back on 2007, there is a lot to be thankful for...

• Michelle's graduation from nursing school,
• a new house (and the shorter commute that came with it),
• and God's continued provision of good jobs for us

... to name just a few of the highlights.

As we look ahead, we are excited about all that is yet to come...

• Christmas with our families,
• vacation,
• and renovating our kitchen (although we're also dreading this one at the same time)

... and whatever other [good] things lie in store for us next year.

Merry Christmas!

Creature of the Night

Hello again family, friends and all we hold dear.

This month has seen a lot of progress on the house and new changes at work. We are just about completely done with the pantry, but we have already moved food into it. Mike and his dad worked on the doors last Saturday and they are looking sharp. We also changed a few of the locks in and around the house and got several of the others rekeyed. We went from seven different keys to two. It feels very nice to not have to haul around the MASSIVE key chain that held the several dozen keys to the house. (We didn't find out about the janitor sized key chain until the day we closed on the house)

Things continue to go well with Mike and Assure sign. It sounds like Mike and his coworker are going to have a chance to go back and clean up some of the code that they've worked on in the past few releases of the project. Mike was really hoping this would happen. It will make it a lot easier for them to work with the application in the future because they will make it more streamline for future application. Please be praying that this program takes off. It has the potential to be so nice for the environment and just for general business efficiency in general. Mike is also keeping busy with his deacon-in-training duties. This week and the week before he helped with counting the offering and lock-up of the facilities after service. He's also helping to train some of the other deacons on a new program that will keep track of the help provided by the church.

Things are going well for me as well. As you can see from the title of the post, I've just switched over to night shifts and I think I'm going to like it. It is a very different (more relaxed) pace from days, so it should be good. I'm working 7 in the evening to 7 in the morning. I have a few more weeks of orientation and then I am on my own. However, currently my preceptors have been hands off, so I'm handling most things just fine on my own. It is incredible the learning curve that happens after graduation. There are so many things that they never covered in school. I would almost dare to say I've learned as much since I graduated as I had during the nursing program, and I've only scratched the surface. I'm enrolled in all sorts of classes, getting all sorts of certifications and we're switching to a new computer charting program soon, so my brain is trying to keep pace soaking things up.

In other news, we get to see our niece and sister-in-law briefly this month, but it's a nice treat. We have a few fun events coming up, some camping, weddings, vacation time and the fun of the holidays!! We love this time of year and this year we have the added fun of decorating the new house and using the fireplace and attic fan. We'll keep you posted...

A Long Time Coming

Hello again all. Apologies for the long silence. We have found that being new home owners, both working full time and taking time for family, friends and church leaves us feeling stretched a little thin. Work is going well for both of us. Mike continues to be one of three programers that could revolutionize online document signing. Not only could this project be very green friendly saving so much extra paper, but it has already been an incredible time saver for their clients. The product is AssureSign. It is online document signing that is hosted by a third party, 3PV. This has the potential to completely replace faxing. One of their clients trialing the product saw a decrease in turn around time of their document signing from 48 hours with traditional faxing to 2 hours with AssureSign. Click on the link and check it out. 3PV



I am continuing to learn and settle into the 12 hour shifts on the Mother Baby floor at Florida Hospital, Altamonte. They said when we graduated we would find out just how much we didn't know. They were right. My preceptors, managers and coworkers say I'm doing well, but some days I feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water. In October I'll be transitioning to nights, which will be its own challenge. Please be praying that it will be a smooth transition and that if it is not right for me, God will open up a position for me on days.



As far as the house goes, there is always another project waiting, but we have already accomplished a lot. The new pantry is nearly finished, most of the decorating is done, baseboards are cut and we recently acquired a kitchen table (which happens to be the one that I grew up with, so that's a treat). Things are on their way. In the coming weeks and months we hope to get the quarter round in, the crown moulding up, the wall between the kitchen and dining room down and eventually the kitchen redone. The yard is another work in progress made more difficult by brown dying weeds after a round of Scott's, a lost battle with chinch bugs in the side hard and ongoing mole problems. We think we're going to have to resod at least the side yard, but we'll probably do that in late spring.


Check out the before and after shots of our house under the chynoweth web album.

There's No Place Like Home

After what has felt like a long period of waiting, Michelle and I officially have our own home (and the associated 30 years of mortgage payments looming ahead of us). Thanks to all of you who have been praying for our house hunt over these past few months: the final details fell into place and we were able to close on our new house on June 29th.

While the house was already in move-in condition, there were a few things we wanted to do before we started moving furniture and everything else in. We didn't waste any time, and less than an hour after we closed on the house we were already pulling off baseboards and the wood panelling in the living room.

We were delighted to discover that there are never-exposed-wood floors in every room of the house except for the dining room and kitchen (the kitchen already had tile, and we plan on tiling the dining room as part of a future re-modelling project)! We had several flooring companies come out to do estimates for the floor refinishing on June 29th, and were able to find a really good company to do the job.

Michelle and I spent most of our "free time" (if you can really call it that) from the 29th through the 4th working on the house and getting it ready for the Flooring company that started work on the 5th. Michelle's parents have been a huge help and sacrificed a lot of their time in the last week to help us with everything that needed to be done. We pulled out carpet, tack-strips and baseboards, patched drywall, pulled staples out of the floors, and painted most of the interior of the house. As exciting and fun as it's been, we're also feeling pretty exhausted. Click on the 'Chynoweth Web Album' link to see some pictures of the house in various states of construction (or deconstruction depending on how you look at it).

The flooring company has been doing a lot of work recently as well. They should be finishing up their work tomorrow, but the floors are already looking absolutely beautiful. It will be a couple of days before we can put anything down on the floors, but the timing seems to be just about right: we plan on moving this coming Saturday!

We'll post some pictures of the completed changes and of the move sometime in the next couple of weeks (whenever we actually have another breather). Here's to the wonderful insanity of life!

Answered prayers!!

Despite the big relief of Michelle graduating from UCF in May, we still had the ever-present worry of passing the upcoming nursing exam (NCLEX) looming over our heads. The day of the test finally arrived on Wednesday - leaving her mentally (and emotionally) fried. After waiting anxiously for two days to find out the result - we were absolutely elated to find out yesterday that she passed! What an amazing answer to prayer. There is a great sense of relief in knowing that the long years of hard work in nursing school have paid off and that Michelle is officially a registered nurse. Thanks to all of you who have been praying for us!

In other news, things continue to move forward with our new house. The last details are falling into place now as we eagerly look forward to closing next Friday. We are now in the midst of trying to pack up everything we own while still trying to maintain some semblance of normal life since work and everything else continue as usual. At this point we are targeting the weekend of July 7th to be our final move-in date. We are hoping to have the wood floors refinished before we move in, so that is one factor that may yet affect our schedule. It's a definite relief to see everything coming together with this now.

One other thing to be praying for is Michelle's health. She had elevated liver enzyme levels a few months ago when she went in for annual physical. When she returned to have them retested a couple of weeks ago, the enzyme levels were still elevated. While this hasn't seemed to affect how she's been feeling, it has still been a source of concern for us. She had an ultra-sound last Tuesday and everything came back normal, which was definitely another answer to prayer. She'll be going back to the doctor on Monday to see what the next step is. We'll keep you posted as we learn more.

Our lives definitely seem to be packed with activity and excitement recently. We are enjoying the blessing of a lot of 'Firsts' recently. The first time in our married life where one of us has not been in school. The first full-time position Michelle has had. Buying our first house. Despite the chaos and stress the come with these significant events, we are definitely excited about where God has us and for all that still lies ahead.

We bought a House!!!!!

Woo Hoo! We've been house hunting for several months now, but because of school and waiting for me to have a full time job too, we knew we wouldn't be able to buy until this month. We went house hunting a few weeks ago and found two that we really liked, but they were both snatched up... or so we thought. We arranged to go out again with our realtor, Carol, and one of the ones we liked was back on the market. We looked at it first that day and every house we went to after that was not even coming close. We talked about it and put an offer that evening. They accepted a day and a half later and it's been a whirlwind ever since.



It's an older home (1962) 4 bedroom 2 bath with a 2 car carport, huge screened in porch, laundry room, tool room, shed, and a cute front porch. I'm posting pictures of it on our picasa photo album. There are a few things that we'll need to do: for instance, the teal carpet, though very soft and extremely clean doesn't match our decor, so we'll pull it up and expose the HARD WOOD FLOORS underneath!!! (can you believe they have them covered?!) We're also going to take out a small wall between the kitchen and dining room to open it up, and we'll have the kitchen remodeled as well.

At this point, we're scheduled to close on the 29th of this month, but it could be sooner. Timing could be a little tricky though since I have my state board exam (NCLEX) on the 20th. I've also started orientation, so I have my own patients now (scary) and we have to pack up our entire house (who knew we had so much stuff crammed in here) in the next three weeks on top of full time work schedules and studying. But we're loving the insanity of it all!!!

Seating Pass and Camping Fun

So the wait is finally over. I am unofficially official. For those who are not aware of the fun process that is nursing graduation let me explain the dilemma. I finally graduated from the UCF School of Nursing on May 3, which means I was done with nursing school, but not yet a Registered Nurse. I will be a Registered Nurse after I take and pass the state board test called the NCLEX. However, I cannot take the test until I have received my seating pass or my Authorization to Test (ATT). That wonderful piece of paper makes me a Graduate Nurse (GN), which means I can operate as an Orienting Nurse for 90 days or until I take and pass the NCLEX. So Wednesday the seating pass arrived and was greeted with much excitement from myself and the other nursing staff. I have scheduled the state board test for June 20th at 9am. I am taking a Kaplan review class until June 6th and doing a ton of review questions in the mean time. They say that the passing student has to do an average of 2,000 to 3,000 review questions. I'm not there yet. I'm about half way, but I have time. This week I start full time at GN pay (yeah) but I don't actually start to orient as a GN until next week. So like I said, I'm unofficially official.

The other fun news was our camping weekend. We ran away this weekend with some friends to Juniper Springs in the Ocala National Forest. It was the first chance for us to use the Coleman tent that Mike had gotten last year. Not that we have ANY use for it, but it has a doggy door!

We went on a 4 hour canoe ride where we saw a gator, a whole mess of turtles, a 6 ft. long snake, a yellow jacket's nest, and nearly capsized our boat. Lots of fun. Mike has the scars to prove it. We ate very well and had a wonderful time with a great group of friends.

A whole new world

So this whole blogging thing is new to us, but we are not so good at maintaining the website, so we're going to give this a go. This will be a work in progress for the next few days, more likely the next few weeks. But this should be a better avenue for us to get information out to friends and family.