Merry Christmas...............hey better late than never!

SO... we have been a bit delayed in our 2009 Christmas Card.
Here's why: January's seem to bring a lot of change for the Jones family. January 2006- marriage, January 2007- moved, January 2009- moved across the country on a whim :), January 2010- decided to live in two separate cities... and also move again (just to the other side of town for now)!

So here is our 2009 Christmas Card... (see past years below if you have no idea what I am talking about)
2008
2007
2006

(Eryn Here) David has decided to be a Chiropractor! Let me back up a bit to the beginning of last year. You may have read a year ago in our 2008 Christmas Card that David had mono... well it turned out to be a bit more chronic than that. Over the last year he suffered quite a bit of health trials. We tried many things that did not seem to work. I decided to go to the chiropractor in September and David went along with it, getting a set of free x-rays because he was a relative of mine. Then he got his x-rays back and saw that his spine was pretty jacked up. We noticed a change in his energy levels a few weeks after beginning treatment, and now, with living a healthier lifestyle, he seems better than I can remember him being! I am so grateful that he is back to his usual funny, energetic self. He also gets to take in an Ultimate Frisbee game or two on Saturdays.

He is currently staying four nights with his sister Sarah in Atlanta, GA. Sarah and Chris have been so gracious to let him stay with them so much! He comes home on Thursday afternoons and leaves Sunday after church [our church (which we love and feel blessed to have found) is at night]. So I relish my time with him. Even though he is tired from driving, he works teaching a weekend class at a community college (so we can live :). He also teaches an online class in his "spare time". Even though he does all of these things, and is tired from driving when he gets home, he still finds time to serve around the house. I'm so glad I married such a servant-hearted man!

This past year God really blessed him with jobs tutoring and adjunct teaching. He brought home the bacon but didn't have to work a 9-5 job when his health wasn't 100%. His most interesting teaching stories came from the community college. There were government incentives for moms who didn't finish college to go back to school this year. David taught many middle age ladies who called him "son". David, being the polite southern boy he is, would answer, "Yes, ma'am?"! Must be weird giving out grades to people who you feel you should call "ma'am".


(David here) Here’s an update on what has been going on with Eryn in 2009. First, the supportive wife that she is, she transferred from Colorado Christian University to Lipscomb to continue her Master’s in Counseling after I got sick. Once back in Nashville, Eryn committed herself to her studies (4.0, baby!), and also helped to support us by babysitting on the side. As a matter of fact, she basically raised a pair of newborn twins for a few months. Their mom was from Hong Kong, and their dad was in the Italian mafia (we don’t know this for sure, but he would use terms like “I took care of it” and “I know a guy”, and he paid her large amounts in cash saying “I know I would prefer cash, so here ya go”, and he was very vague about what he did, explaining it in a way that sounded suspiciously like money laundering).

Over the summer, Eryn’s mom Rhonda got very sick, having multiple surgeries on a large tumor in her abdomen. This meant that on top of her other responsibilities, Eryn also traveled to Memphis and back every week for a couple of months. Basically she’s amazing. More importantly, though, we were both so glad to be so close (not in Colorado) and be able to be with Rhonda and the rest of Eryn’s family during that hard time.

In the fall, Eryn started an internship at the Agape Counseling Center on top of her other classes. She is learning a lot and has about 10 clients now. I am constantly amazed at her insight into people and her counseling intuition. She has helped me a lot too as I have been struggling with a new direction in life. She asks “how does that make you feel” a lot (not really, but that’s what I always think of when I think of counselors….in fact, she asks very good penetrating questions that always help me to see things more clearly).

Well, I think that’s all that’s been going on with Eryn. She continues to do wedding cakes on occasion, counsels all day long, takes care of me at night, and is all around the best wife I can imagine.

So to recap 2009:

- Moved across the country in one weeks time (from the time we decided to the time we moved into our Nashville apartment)

- Eryn went to Grad school

- David made life-changing health decisions and got his energy back

- David made a career change

- We moved, again (if you count December 31^st move to our new Nashville apt)

- Will move again in a couple of months to Atlanta… oh yeah, move number 6, here we come!