I have been pleased to find myself already getting in somewhat of a "routine" in my weekly grocery planning and producing. It is as follows:

-Theme meat of the week, which serves as the base of 2 or 3 meals

-A supplementary meal or two using basic ingredients (tuna melts, grilled cheese, pasta, etc...)

-Things for lunch (eggs for egg salad, salad, etc...)

- Always potatoes on hand

- The usual (butter, bread, eggs, cereal, etc... )

-A fruit option or two for the week

- A baked good for the week

This has become my basic plan of attack. Sundays are when Aaron and I enjoy our Sabbath, or day of rest for the week, and I have enjoyed using this day to prepare our food for the week. Often times I will make the egg salad for the week or brew the week's homemade iced tea. But this has allowed me time to indulge in one of my favorite new things: baking.

Since being employed at Jaho Coffee & Tea, I am surrounded by delicious muffins and baked goods, so have made it a part of our weekly food intake to have muffins or the like worked into our meals for each week. Last week, with the help of my kitchen aid (AMAZING), I made my personal favorite: banana chocolate chip muffins! (Thank you Bethany for the amazing recipe)

This week I took the healthier route and made some "Healthy Apple Blueberry Muffins." They turned out great, and are full of awesome and nutritious ingredients, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you all!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup of brown sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/8 tsp. allspice

1/8 tsp. salt

1 egg

1 cup of all natural applesauce (no sugar added)

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 medium apple, peeling on, shredded

1/2 cup blueberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease Muffin Pan/ Put liners into muffin pan.

In medium bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, and salt. Set aside.

In a small bowl, beat the egg with a fork. Stir in the applesauce and vanilla.

Add tot he dry ingredients and stir until moistened. The batter will be kind of lumpy. Fold in the shredded apple and blueberries.

Spoon into muffin cups/ pan until they are 2/3 full.

Bake for 20 minutes until golden or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

These muffins are so good and so good for you!! I highly recommend them. They made my husband a very happy boy :)

Scheduling has worked out very much in my favor. This fall,

both of my classes will be on Wednesday, so I only will have to commute into the city once a week, and it is one of the three days that Aaron will commute as well!

Aaron and I were talking today about how crazy it is that literally overnight, with the new label of marriage, we begin a life on our own, laden with full-fledged responsibilities that we have never before carried. Providing our own full income, setting up school, paying bills, having meetings at banks, having my name legally changed... etc, etc...

Groceries, for instance, are much more of a burden than I had anticipated! I love cooking and experimenting, I am finding more and more, and I do not want to shed negative light on this new role in my life, because I love trying to get creative within my budget and to provide for my husband in that way. But I find myself thinking about food all the time, keeping a constant check on what we are running low on, what I could combine for meals next week - and it is a lot!

But I really would have it no other way. More shocking than the load of new responsibilities is to watch us successfully learn to manage them. As I was being handed my student I.D. card for Boston University today, it finally hit me that I am fully and successfully enrolled in graduate school and I that I navigated the entire process by myself! The responsibilities are rewarding, to say the least.

Anyways, the days are waning towards a schedule, and thank God my Wednesday commute will leave the rest of my week wide open for Turbo classes and lots of work at Jaho.

CHARISMA HOUSE has been bustling with activity. Kameron, Aaron's friend from MI, had an audition at the Berklee College of music this past week and stayed in Charisma house with his two friends for a few days.

Aaron turned our room into a recording studio for a day, and the moved the studio to Cody and Bryan's room to begin recording "The Jack Duvall" E.P., which will be wrapping up soon! The past two days Aaron and I have contributed vocally and musically to this project. It has been very refreshing and exciting.

Having spent my entire life in Mansfield, I now realize how well I knew Mansfield, and how well Mansfield knew me. Getting jobs were easy. My reputation was already in line. There weren't many new people to meet.

But here, my name does not precede me. In fact, my name isn't even know. I really could count my acquaintances on my fingers if I wanted to.

And as much as it seems a daunting situation, it is strangely invigorating.

I started my new job on Wednesday. I work at an amazing local coffee and tea company: Jaho.

With two locations in Salem, it's extensive menu, Gelato and exquisite latte art has really given the corporate coffee shops a run for their money.

There's a lot to learn, and I'm sure it will be quite some time before I tackle the espresso machine, but I love going to work, I lo

ve the people, I love the challenge.

Salem is such a unique little place. It is a tourist town to the bone - with trolleys perusing the town and full-blown witch trial reenactments every weekend taking over the streets. The faces I come into contact with at Jaho every day are either every-single-day-regulars or from another continent. (I speak from experience when I say that difficult accents can lead to embarrassing moments)

I'm definitely the newbie - and I end each of my shifts trying to squeeze my name into as many upcoming time slots as possible - but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my availability throughout this coming school year will aid in the extension of my hours.

Looking back on it now, about a year and a half later, I have no idea how we faced the indefinite distance which initially held no promise of an end. The first months were bearable, with only 5 1/2 hour drives keeping our Ohio and Michigan homes separate, but that luxury soon was lost when Aaron continued in his journey to Salem, MA.

Over the past year we have seen each other an average of every two months. And interesting results have been produced from such unfavorable circumstances.

I have been very emotional. There were many days when I had no desire to be around other people because my need for my boyfriend/fiance would continually go unfulfilled. Tensions were more easily sparked than if we were physically together. Trust was tested. Faithfulness proved. Closeness intentionally strived for and preserved.

We could not merely "hang out": rather, talking was our only option. But we never have run out of things to say. Intimacy could only be achieved through communication. Cell phones dying or being misplaced were not only a frustration, but would prevent connection for a day. And a day without emotional closeness only exaggerated the distance.

Days were verbally recounted rather than experienced together. There were many lonely mornings, days, nights... Every special event was spent wistfully thinking of how much better it could have been shared with the other. Lives were lived apart. Decisions made apart. Birthdays, holidays, events experienced apart.

Yet here we are - after seemingly unending spans of separation, we are sitting four days away from the rest of our lives. Aaron flies to Ohio July 6 and we never will have to be apart again.

The challenges will be over. But challenges alone are not all that our distance has yielded. Aaron and I's love and commitment has been proven: even while living apart, we have learned that we cannot live without each other. We have been trained to talk and communicate about everything. We have learned to dismiss conflict quickly in order to avoid the devastation of its lingering. We have no secrets. Our love is independent of physically being together. And our faith in the Lord has grown to an indisputable belief that God's will prevails even through the impossible.

We did it. We took on something not knowing the difficulties it entailed and now sit at the end of the road, eagerly awaiting the jubilee that has been long promised. And looking back over the relationship, there is nothing I would have changed. Even at the lowest of our valleys, I would not have changed learning to rely on communication; learning to depend on the Lord; learning the ins and outs of each other; and realizing the depths of our love.

Aaron, his brother Cody, and their uncle, traveled to Boston together. (Cody also attends the Berklee School of Music) They left in a leap of faith, following the call of God and the promise of provisions - specifically that of a home and place to live. Well... the boys began their life out east sleeping in their suburban, living at campgrounds, and jumping in and out of hotels. For a short time, they were able to stay with their uncle at a military base. But they could not find a place to stay.

During this time, Aaron felt led by the Lord to get his real estate license, and a few months later got a job at a local firm.

After feeling somewhat jerked around and lost, they made an offer on a house (this was not the first pursued). Although the offer did not make it very far, the boys entered into an unusual agreement to rent the house, while it was on the market, for a very affordable rate - one that could not be matched anywhere else in Salem.

God put a roof over the boys' heads in an unpredicted way while they attended school that year, but they never had security and could have been booted out if anyone else wanted to purchase the home in which they lived in.

On Aaron's last day of school, in the beginning of May 2010, Aaron received an eviction notice because his landlord had gone into foreclosure. The boys had 90 days to figure out the next step. In the past few months, and growing ever closer to Aaron and I's wedding and my move to Salem, Aaron has looked at countless houses and apartments, all of which there has been something seriously wrong with or we have been denied for bizarre reasons.

Aaron and I booked his plane ticket to come to Mansfield until our wedding for July 6. Our time was running out. There were so many houses that we have tried to purchase and apartments that we have applied for that have been denied to us unexplainably. Our offers were simply not accepted, although they were made in full, we have good credit, etc...

When Aaron and I get married, we have chosen to live in community. There will be five of us living together when I first get to Salem, which will grow to seven in January. This has added another challenge in finding a place to live that can accommodate all of us - especially an apartment. But that was becoming our only option because of how little time we had before the wedding... and before eviction.

And then something worked. After innumerable opportunities' doors blatantly being slammed shut over and over again, something worked. We were offered to rent month-to-month (rather than a long-term lease) a 3-bedroom apartment in the safe part of Salem for an affordable rate. I couldn't believe it! It was going to be cozy, and the slanted ceilings of the third-floor apartment made it a little more difficult to take advantage of all of the space, but nonetheless, a door was open. We decided to take it, although it was small, and a few days later were offered to move to the bigger apartment downstairs. I cannot tell you what it feels like not only to have something work after all this time, but then for something good to happen on top of it! We also will have basement space so that we do not have to rent a storage unit for our current refrigerator, washer and dryer, etc...

This is an extremely abbreviated story of the past year of our lives. But it is amazing for a number of reasons.

First, it's amazing that it is over. I cannot tell you the relief of knowing I have a place to live when I move in a few weeks, and that it is nice! And in a safe part of town, and big enough to house five of us comfortably.

Second, it's amazing how God works. God promised, when Aaron followed his call to Salem/Boston, that he would provide. Did it look anything like we thought? Of course not, and we probably should have known that. We thought God's provision was going to come in the form of buying a house - and maybe someday it will be - but the Lord got Aaron and his roommates into a CHEAP, strange, under-the-table renting agreement that kept them housed for exactly as long as they needed. God perfectly timed it so that Aaron could focus on school, and the day that phase was over, the housing search resumed full-force.

And God provided in other ways too. When Aaron decided to get his real estate's license, it seemed out of nowhere. Of course, it couldn't hurt- but that is never what Aaron had dreamed of doing one day. And look at how we have needed it! Not only is it a wonderful job now, but without Aaron's knowledge and work in real estate, I have no idea how we would have survived the past year of our lives.

Third, God's timing is perfect. Even during the school year, Aaron and his parents had continued looking and pursuing houses, but I am telling you- doors were closed for the strangest reasons! SO many times! Doors were closed so much and for so long, that recently we asked the Lord if we were even supposed to be in Salem, or if we were supposed to live in community- both things that we have felt strongly convicted in for quite some time.

But the Lord protected us from purchasing the wrong places, and kept us waiting just until the perfect apartment opened up for us. And he has continued to provide since in amazing ways.

This has been a very stressful year and I have learned even more that I can always trust the Lord, and that sometimes it can be a very scary thing. But his plan and provision is perfect! And this miracle of a house is just the beginning of an adventure-filled life with Aaron that I have a feeling will never get boring. And that's just the way I would have it.

Also, it is amazing to have watched my future husband follow the Lord so faithfully for so long, and through such a challenging time. He has worked harder than anyone else I know to secure a home for his wife and community, and I learn more and more everyday how blessed I am to have him.

But we are also getting into the fun!! My third bridal shower was Sunday, and these parties have unveiled to me another overwhelming aspect of my wedding adventure.

Friends' and families' support. It is overwhelming! I have neve

r before experienced so many of those close to me surrounding me and celebrating with me in

such a way!

Friends and family members are pouring out their love, time, planning, money

and gifts in order to help make this time in my life all that I could have ever dreamed of!

The showers have been beautiful and so much fun! Aaron and I are receiving so many things that are going to make our transition into our new home fun, exciting and comfortable!

I cannot voice how

appreciative I am of all that everyone is doing for us. It truly is overwhelming and I have been very humbled.

Thank you all for making my wedding experience truly a dream! I love you all so much and can't wait for what is to come!

(My first shower was thrown by college friends at IWU, the second by my Aunt Anne, and the third in Ashland by my Aunt Cristy)