From 4 to 2

Aubriella was a pro immediately after taking her training wheels off. She asked us for a few days to take them off while she practiced on Gavin's old bike on the back patio. She's a little wobbly once in a while but for the most part she has it. She smiles the entire time and tries to create challenges for herself already (i.e. driving one-handed, asking to go down hills and not applying the brakes, trying to skid out at stop signs). One time, after much begging took place and against my better judgement, I let her go down a steep hill while I waited at the bottom. Good thing I was there because she uncontrollably plowed into me and I had to make her come to an abrupt stop so she didn't go in the street. Being the little dare devil she is, she keeps asking to go back to that particular hill. She usually chooses to bike to a park about a mile from our house while I jog after her, which has given us some mother-daughter time together. At the park she likes to practice the monkey bars, swing spider with me, or climb the little rock wall.

Arizona or Texas?

The two churches I mentioned before have turned out to be strong possibilies for our future location. I still haven't met the pastor from Arizona yet, but we've talked a lot on the phone. They sent someone to watch me lead worship last week just to make sure I can do what I say I can do. They are flying Sara and I out to the church in Flagstaff next weekend so we can meet the people and get a feel for the city.

On Monday and Tuesday, the pastor and his wife from New Braunfels, Texas came to Colorado Springs to meet us. We spent a lot of time with them over those two days and they decided to fly us down to Texas the weekend after next. This is a much larger church with a lot of responsibilities, but I'm still leaning towards Texas right now. We'll see how everything goes.

We're obviously very excited to have some solid opportunities at the perfect time. School is done at the end of May and both of these churches would like to have the position filled by June, but are okay waiting until July (which is what we'd prefer). It will be nice to have a month to do some final packing, move, take our time traveling, and settling in wherever we end up. The Texas church has already offered to pay for our move and I'm assuming the Arizona one will as well. This will be an exciting few weeks, but then we obviously have a huge decision to make. We're praying that God will make the decision so obvious that we won't even have to think twice about it.

Easter Weekend

My Grandma and Grandpa Hanson (Dad's parents) came to visit over Easter weekend. They live in Sioux Falls, SD but travel to Arizona during the cold season. They stopped by the Springs on their way back home. It was good to see them. We saw The Thorn together, which is a play/musical about the "Jesus story" at New Life Church. I've never seen anything so powerful and well put together... especially for a church! It was amazing!

I've gotten a couple more potential job opportunities in the last few days. One is in New Braunfels, TX, and the other is in Flagstaff, AZ. I talked to the pastor of the Texas church today and things went really well. I'll be talking with the AZ pastor next week. I still haven't heard back from the Sioux Falls one, but we're starting to question whether or not that would be a good fit anyways. I think the children's pastor position is full-time and the worship leader position is part-time, which is kind of opposite of what we're looking for. Although it would be cool to be a little closer to family again there, we were not really looking forward to cold winters again. It's really hard to predict where we'll end up at this point, but it's incouraging that we're at least getting some opportunities here and there. Summit Church, in Castle Rock, CO, (where I've been leading worship weekly since the beginning of the year) is also trying to find a way to keep us there by offering Sara a part-time position in charge of children's ministries. God already knows where He wants us, we're just going through the steps to figure out where.