AmandaMoncus.com

This note is to pick up where my previous note left off.

In August of 2006 we were living in Las Vegas and had been there for a few months. It was a very interesting and exciting time, and Chris and I both feel like we learned and grew a lot there. I am so glad that we had the opportunity of living there.

Around mid-September of last year, we started wondering if we really wanted to live in Las Vegas on a long-term basis. Don’t get me wrong, we loved our jobs, loved the church we were a part of, loved the friends we were making, loved the wide range of restaurants and shops to choose from in the city….but a few things led us to feel like itwasn’t for us. Chris’s job turned out to be a little different from what he expected, and though he enjoyed being there, it felt like itjust wasn’t turning out to be a good fit. That, plus the ridiculous cost of living, the dry desert scenery, and the lack of family led us to actually miss south east Georgia. That may sound crazy to some,
but it’s true. It seemed best to go back to “home base” and live and work here for awhile.

So at the end of September, Chris’s mom and aunt flew out to Vegas, spent a night there, saw a magic show and went out to eat with us, then they helped us drive our car and Penske truck back across the U.S. Once we got here, we were able to stay in a family-owned apartment for a little while, and we both got jobs fairly quickly. I
work at an office supply and equipment store helping in accounts payable and other areas, and Chris had several web design projects and was hired at a church as an Associate Tech Director.

Everything has been going very well since getting back. We got to have our birthday parties at our own house with friends and family, spent Christmas with our families, we went to my nephew’s 1st birthday party, my sisters are getting married this summer and fall and I get to be a bridesmaid. Chris will be doing photography for their
weddings and for the wedding of some friends. In June we will celebrate our 1 year anniversary. All in all, it’s been a good year.

I am posting a blog here that I originally posted on Myspace on August24, 2006. Needless to say, things have changed in my life since then, but I wanted to post this again here so that some could see a little of what happened in my life last year. I will be posting a new blog soon to get completely up to date on my life. Sounds exciting, yes?

Here goes….

When I first joined the myspace crowd, I lived in Georgia, where I’d lived my entire life. I was going out with the wonderful Chris Moncus, and had been since September 2002. I worked at ParkSide Cafe, which is now closed, even though I think it had the best food (and service) in Brunswick, then I worked for a realtor on St. Simons
Island. I went to First Baptist Church, sang with the youth band, hung out at the beach, took my kayak to the nearby lakes, rivers, and beach, and had a great time living on the coast of south Georgia. Then things changed a bit…

January 23rd, Chris and I went on a date to celebrate our 4th year anniversary of the day we met, and there he proposed in a carefully planned scheme involving singing a song he wrote for me,dropping his pick in his guitar, and pulling out a diamond ring! It was amazing.

A couple months later he was offered a job at a church in Las Vegas, which he accepted, and flew out to work for about 7 weeks before our wedding, which was June 10, at the Mary Ross Waterfront Park. So, we had a beautiful wedding (even though we’d both been sick for 3 days before it, and I’d been in the hospital)! We honeymooned for a week in the Smoky Mountain area (Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge). We got back from our honeymoon, loaded up a U-Haul on Monday, started driving Tuesday, and arrived at Las Vegas Friday night after long days of fearful, wind-blown, bumpy-road-construction driving. And we still loved and liked each other and had a good sense of humor at the end of it. Married life’s been great so far.

So now we are living in the desert (makes kayaking a little more difficult), staying with friends, looking for a house of our own (we’re almost settled on one), both working and attending Canyon Ridge Christian Church, enjoying no humidity, making new friends, trusting that God is going to use this time to grow us and teach us wonderfully new things. So far, so good. Now if only our friends from the southeast would come and visit us….