Life as old married ones

Over a year ago I got the honor of becoming Mrs. John Puig. I have loved married life, and both John and I have enjoyed many life adventures together.
Last month we got to have the unique opportunity of being a bridesmaid and groomsmen in two of our best friends wedding. The unique thing is that these two met on our wedding day as they were a bridesmaid and bestman at our wedding. I had been trying to play matchmaker for 3 years and finally they met at our wedding. On September 27th,2008 Cheryl Ely and Wesley Marthers were married! My Dad officiated the wedding which made it all the more special.
Besides having this special event we have had many more things happen in our life over the past year and half. As much as my Dad wants us to, we are not pregnant nor are we planning on getting pregnant for quite some time. Dad likes to drop subtle hints like announcing to others I am pregnant, or telling us to go to our bedroom, or trying to play the " I am gonna be to old to play with the grandkids" card. Needless to say the Puiglets will have to old off for a few more years. Here are what has actually been going on in our life recently:

John's job changed in August from Road Director of the LIGHT ministries singing team to Campaign Cordinator for LIGHT. What a HUGE blessing this was! John's past position ment lots of traveling and it was overwhelming at times. God taught us a lot of things through his job that year and we fully believe God directed our steps into John taking the Road director position. However, after the first year we were unsure of whether we were to stay for an additonal year. Just when you wonder what God's plan was he shows it to you vividly.
The LIGHT ministries singing team was moved to a different department where it would not become student led, which ment John's position would no longer be needed. This left us wondering what would happen with John's job. Although his boss assured us he would not leaving us hanging, we still had no idea what John would be doing. What a blessing it was when John was offered his DREAM job as a campaign cordinator for LIGHT ministries ( LU's missions department). This is a job that John had thought would be incredible to have as he was a student and took part in a missions trip through the department. Since we want to go into missions full time what could be better than John getting paid to take short term missions trip and be directly involved in missions now! How neat it has been to see God working out his plan through all these things.
John has now been working as a campaign cordinator since August and has loved every minute of it. He is blessed with great co-workers and an incredible boss. In December he will be leading a trip to Asia and in May he will have the opportunity to head to Mexico or India. We are so grateful for the doors God opened.

I am now a SUPER senior and completeing my victory lap at Liberty ;-) I will be graduating on May 9th and anyone reading this is welcome to come and celebrate! I have been attending resedential classes again this Fall ( 18 hours) along with working as a lead 4yr old teacher at a Preschool and Nannying a 3 yr old girl. I have also continued teaching Sunday School at church for the 4 year olds and love having that ministry. In the Spring I will complete my last 3 classes online and hopefully be working at a full-time salarly position in the social service field. I am looking at jobs with Adoption Agencies and the State department. A change in my plan for life has been in school. While I thought there was no way I would ever willing take more classes after this year I am now planning on pursuing my Masters degree. I will be obtaining a degree in Human Services with a specialization in marriage and family to be started this coming summer! Whew, who knew that actually going to school for a victory lap would make me want more school.

I have recently also begun pursuing my passion for photography. I have had 3 photo shoots so far and I have four more already set up. It has been so much fun doing the shoots and I have been so pleased with the picture turnouts. I am hoping to do this as a side job next year and continue it for a long time. Check out my photo blog at http://www.xanga.com/DaniellePuig

You can see the albums on my facebook account. Hopefully after December I will have my own website up and running.

John and I have recently become more involved with missions at our church and John is now a member of the the missions committee. Pray for the continue passion for missions amongst our church, especially globally.

The Death of the Honeymoon Baby

Lately the world surrounding us has been full of babies. Everywhere we go and Everyone we see just seems to be all about baby baby baby....God is torturing Danielle, maybe teaching her a lesson in patience.

Ironically while everyone else's world seems to revolve around babies our own little honeymoon baby has died. Yes it was a sad day as we found Kermit Lewis Puig drifting in the water. The viewing was held today and John will be burying him tomorrow. Kermit lived for 9 months!


Kermit was a wonderful little baby and we loved him so much( one of us a little more than the other) and are quite sad to see him go. Danielle is know raising funds for a name baby..... Flower, the pet skunk. All Donations are gladly being accepted unfortunately we cannot give a tax write off, at least not legally.

Puigventures in China

Tired,Awake, dazed? Who knows what we are right now. Our biological clocks are all out of whack. We arrived home safely at 2 am to our home sweet home here in the Burg. Many Many stories to tell, pics to show and adventures to be heard. The trip was a powerful one, not easy but taught us both many things and has made our hearts and passion burn even more to be overseas.

Big update to come...just keep on waiting.....;-)


So you wanna hear about the trip, eh? Well one blog wouldn't even begin to justify the trip in writing, but I'll try my best to touch on some of the greatest moments!



To list a few.....

1. Singing Amazing Grace with the orphans
2. Staying with the Kids in the orphanage
3. Worshipping with Missionaries and Chinese House Church Christians
4. Walking along the Great Wall of China
5. Having Little Kids grab me just to kiss me
6. Trying to use code words and doing open-eye prayers because of the restrictions in the communist country
7. Getting to hear the testimonies of two incredible missionary couples
8. Learning more about different possible future opportunities
9. Experiencing our first Mission trip together, and with John as a leader
10. Plenty of adventures...car crashes, hospital visits, eating dog, kidneys and tongue!

Stinky

John wandered into the room I was in yesterday and that's when smelled it....

This quite blatantly HORRENDOUS smell. Please tell me that did not just come out of John I thought. As I smelled it some more I realized that smell was familiar- dog Doo-Doo. Yes John had stepped in it and quite a bit. He was upstairs at this point so as you can guess that means the dog doo-doo was on every step and down the whole upstairs hallway. Oh that was fun to clean up, haha! The culprit of this all, john's shoe, is still being punished and remains outside on our front porch ;-)

O Christmas tree O Christmas why are you leaning???

The Puigs officially got their first Christmas tree. It's beautiful looking! Although John and I do seem to have different ideas of what a "full" Christmas tree looks like. John thinks the tree is completely full of ornaments while Danielle see's it as only 50%. One of them obviously didn't grow up with Schmidts in their family.

Mom and Dad Davidson had given us the 'utltimate Christmas tree stand' promising it would save our marriage and prevent many fights. The put there stamp of approval on it as the best thing around. Well about a week after putting the tree up Danielle noticed it was heavily slanted to the front and falling! Yeah what is so ultimate about this Christmas tree stand Mom and Dad? Ha ha. Luckily John with his ' guns' was able to unscrew the tree, twist it around and screw it back in saving our beautiful first tree. O what a wonderful hubby.

Black Friday

2:20 am
Beep Beep Beep

[Groggy Voices]" eh, erhh...Bang(the hitting of the alarm)"

2:45 am Out The Door


As our first year as a married couple we of course had to begin the staple tradition of Black Friday. That is a key tradition to have. Can we count this year and John's first outing on Black Friday as a success? Well that depends on which part you look at and who you ask....

Did we wait in line for two hours to be one of the first 20 people into Toys R us...most definitely.
Did we eagerly rush inside to claim one of the top must haves from the ad ( 30gig video MP3)....heck yes!
Did Danielle make it to the tickets for the item as the second person...duh, years of shopping experience.
Did we than come out empty handed because the first guy there took ALL the tickets...hey let's not talk about the sore spot.
Did we save hundreds of dollars by switching to Geico? Nah.
Did we succesfully spend 8 hours out and come home with 75% of all our Christmas shopping done...yes.

So worth it all? Well are you asking John or Danielle??? ;-)

If you give a Puig a roadtrip.....

.....they're gonna want adventure!!!


Seriosuly what is life without adventure, much more a roadtrip without adventure. Danielle love's adventure but didn't realize that roadtrips were gonna become so much a part of our routine. Since the very beginning of marriage....a week from being back from our honeymoon to be exact ( that was the time when the 12 year totaled John's car all while Danielle watched thinking she had only been married for 3 weeks and already her husband was dead) roadtrips have made adventure.

The last 5 weeks straight the Puigs have traveled. Charlotte, West Virginia, Roanoke, Charlottesville, Deleware and Maryland. John got his CDL so he can now drive the bus...wahoo. So last weekend he convinced the team that they should be fully confident in his driving by praying before hand. It went something like this.......

" Dear God please help me to be ' Awert and 'Alake' as I drive....." It was about that time the team roared in nervous laughter that he was about to take them home on the 4 hour drive. Never the less he did great...his honey kept him 'awert and alake' .

This weekend Danielle and John were seperated as John drove the team to Deleware and directed them there while Danielle traveled to Maryland. On the way to Maryland Danielle realized she was carsick ( yes she was the one driving) and she realized this when she was in the fifth lane over. Luckily she had a plastic walmart bag, which she didn't have to use, luckily. Whew, close one there. Could have been a long road trip with a bag of ...well you know what in the car.

On our way to Charlottesville we watched the near death of an old man as he walked across the road, purposefully in front of a truck while leaving his wife behind on the sidewalk. Then we watched as he did some not so nice things to to the truck that he walked in front of. Whew again!

Really the list can go on. Cause you know the story all winds up at the beginning...if give a Puig a roadtrip, they're gonna want ADVENTURE.