Happy Birthday Payton

First, THANK YOU for all your prayers, encouragement, emails...and even cards and flowers - such a blessing. It means a lot that as we miss Payton we know you remember her too. Honestly I was really surprised at how many people remembered today was her birthday. Thank you.

Aaron and I took the day off work and wanted to be intentional with how we spent it. 2 things happened today that seemed appropriate - the hospital helicopter flew right overhead this morning as Aaron and I walked around our neighborhood, and we got a small pile of mail from our insurance company still processing things from Mayo. There were times this summer and fall we got 25 envelopes in a day. Anyway, Aaron and I took a walk this morning, spent a little time in the Word together - one of the passages we read was Psalm 33. Cory and Cindy came over. We got 4 pink balloons and went to the cemetery and released them. Her tree has leaves and what looks like the start of blossoms. I keep hoping it'll bloom. And related to the Flowering Thunderchild Tree, a friend looked up the meaning of Payton and said it mean warrior camp, which is more than I found when we decided to name her Payton. I just found that it meant settlement. But she definitely had as much fight in her as a warrior camp. We had a good time with Cory and Cindy here. And we grilled brats for dinner - always a sign that spring is here and summer is coming.

So thanks for thinking of us today and celebrating Payton's life with us. She was definitely a gift that was so precious and deeply missed. Much love, the Joneses

New Home

Here's a few shot of our new place. We're excited about it - the Lord really blessed us.

Here's the view from the front door. The living room with the rug is to the left. The kitchen is in the back on the right.

So not only did the Lord bless us with a great place but with a 3 season room as well. I'm excited to enjoy it.

This is Aaron, and his brother Cory and sister-n-law Cindy - 2 of our favorite people. And this is the rug we bought when we were in the Middle East. I'm so grateful to have it (as a friend brought this back for us with great effort!) and love how it looks in the room.

So here's my favorite feature... a dishwasher! I have waited so long for you! :)

Home Owners

We did it! We closed on the condo today. So we're now proud owners of a mortgage...I mean home :). I went for a little time today to clean. Every house we looked at I always asked if it could hold 30 students. Well, now I'm glad I did because all the student leaders are going to be there this weekend for our retreat to help them prepare for next fall. And no, we're not moving inbetween now and then. We'll be comfy on the carpet!...hence the cleaning today. I meant to take the camera when Aaron and I went back tonight to post some pictures. I'll try to remember tomorrow. It's a great place. My friend and coworker is also buying a house, and we were talking about how much the Lord blessed us. He provided awesome places for both of us.

Happy Easter

I don't know if you go to church on Easter, but I always really love Easter service. I left just so hopeful at the reality of heaven. We hope you all had a good Easter. My parents came up for the weekend, and yesterday they kindly helped us pack up some of our apartment. So we have a nice pile of boxes in the kitchen, but it feels good to have a start on things.

A few posts ago, I had mentioned our Chivalry Outreach, 'Who Opens the Door'. That was last Tuesday. It went well. The speakers talked about the ways men and women can act around each other and how God created us uniquely as men and women. The students really enjoyed it. It was fun to have an event like this.

That's the short story of what's going on. Also, there's a few of you that have just reminded us that you're praying for us, and we really really appreciate it. Prayer is definitely what got us through this year. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Late April Fools or Unsuccessful Jello Molds

Just thought I'd share some of the fun we have on our staff team. Because of the car trouble we had last weekend, we were detained from getting home in time to try this April Fools day and instead postponed the fun to this past Thursday. If any of you have seen The Office, Jim takes his boss' 'World's Best Boss' mug and put it in a jello mold. So we decided to try the same. Aaron 'borrowed' a mug off Lefty's desk, and on Wednesday, 5 packs of Jello later (4 lemon with a last minute need to pull a strawberry from the pantry, hence the red color) we got that baby immersed. It didn't come out of the bowl as good as we had hoped, and so it's a little rough. But it was still pretty funny when Lefty found it on his desk Thursday morning. Here's some potential tips for a more successful jello mold: possibly non stick spray or line the bowl with saran wrap. We'll see if either of those works better if we try again. :)

Here's a link to the pictures that my mom took in France.

http://picasaweb.google.com/aaronandheatherjones/France?authkey=ybFVygXu9mU

Weddings and cars

Aaron's best friend since high school, Tim, got married this past Friday evening. So we took off Thursday and Friday for that. Aaron was the best man, and I was a bridesmaid (or as I liked to say, the best woman of the best man :). We had a really great time. I didn't know any of the other bridesmaids, but they were so fun. We had a great time together. It was fun to be with Sarah (Tim's wife) and celebrate with her through the event. She looked just beautiful. (And aren't the flowers pretty! Red roses with purple tulips. I loved it!)

Aaron and I ended up being the last ones out of the church that night as our car wouldn't start when we tried to leave, hence the title of this post. So we were detained on Saturday to get our car fixed. Aaron's brother, sister-n-law, and parents were very patient and helped us and our car was stranded in Edina. Fortunately, we got our car fixed and back on Saturday and were able to come home this morning. The bonus was that we got quality Jones family time throughout the day. Unfortunately, Aaron's parents went to leave this morning too, and their back windshield was smashed - we don't know what happened. So overall, a bad weekend with cars for the Joneses. But our truck was fixed a week or two ago. Two men from our church generously took care of everything. So we're so grateful to have our "old faithful" back :).

We have another full week on campus this week. I'm excited for an outreach that we're doing on Tuesday night called, "Who opens the door?" It's about chivalry and roles between men and women. It'll be fun to see what happens. I'll keep you posted. And on the home front, we have our inspection tomorrow and are scheduled to close on April 25. So we're excited for that. We both feel really good about it, and I'll be VERY excited to have a dishwasher :).