The Newport Blog: Daily Life

We don't go on adventures all the time. Here's what Stephen and Ginger do in Daily Life.

Stephen is a Junior Architect at A4 Architecture. He has been there since October of 2009. Stephen works with Ross, the Managing Director, and Kathleen, fellow architect. The company is a full-service design firm specializing in high-end residential, historic preservation, and commercial design.

Some of Stephen's drawings and renderings:

 

Ginger worked a variety of jobs over the year. During the school year, she was a substitute teacher for the Newport School District, K-12. She generally taught at the high school. She also worked for the 2010 Census enumerating group living quarters.

Her home business Gingercakes sold eight cakes and two sets of cupcakes. During the summer, she worked in the bakeshop at Stop & Shop.

Now Ginger is working at Newport Geothermal as a Project Manager. She writes proposals, does research, and some advertising including new web design. (What is geothermal?)

Below, her fab uniform for her last day at Stop and Shop. She made a cake for her sweet co-workers. Fall cupcakes!

 

Ginger's new boss, Hazard, is scouting out sales at the Rhode Island Home Show. Hazard has been in several articles recently; check out our facebook page. To the right, drilling a well at a beach-side project.

 

How does Ginger get to work everyday? (at least while it's warm...) SCOOTER! Found on Craigslist for a great deal. And the engine is so small, no special license is needed. Now she can gas up with pocket change. 

Celebrating Stephen's 25th birthday on a boat!

Our friend Ingrid is a chef on charter yachts during sailing season. Here is her website. She helped Ginger start the cake business and came up with the name! Ingrid bought several cakes this summer for birthday parties on yachts. They met while substitute teaching.

Newport gets some good wind at the point of the island, Brenton Point State Park. An excellent place to fly a kite!

  

Ice-skating downtown with our friends Jen and Kathleen (Stephen's co-worker)

Our friend Phoebe boards her horse, Dolce, at Glen Farm. Ginger helped let out the horses in the mornings and feed them. Phoebe entered her first competion and won several ribbons!

 

Phoebe's great dane Madison was also in a dog show this fall. 

Our little dog Winnie passed away this November. We miss her deeply, but we had a wonderful year with her. Here she is wrestling with her best friend, Madison.

 Of course, Stephen is hard at work on our new apartment. Here's a "before" shot of the kitchen. Stephen started by removing EVERYTHING you see here.

Here he is re-tiling the bathroom. (after also removing everything!)

 Happy Fall!

The Newport Blog: Quechee VT

Camping at Quechee State Park, Vermont
For the Fourth of July, we wanted to go camping and chose a state park in Vermont (because it was one of the last six states Ginger needs to visit!) We forget our cameras. The images below are from a disposable camera, an interesting experience to force us to limit the photos and try to focus on people-shots.

Quechee State Park surrounds a gorge with a deep slow-moving river. All weekend, the swimming hole was crowded with people escaping the 90 degree heat. We also went on a hike, got completely lost, came out in a trailor court, and had to walk back along the highway.

Our dog Winnie came along this trip. She has a new collapsable kennel for the car and was well behaved on the 3-hour trip. At camp, we hooked a 30 foot leash to the picnic table to keep her close, which also worked for swimming. She also wasn't afraid of the fireworks show.

The Newport Blog: Life, continued...

In November, we adopted a 9-month old puppy from our local shelter, Potter Animal League (which we have dubbed: Potter Puppy Pals.)

This is our sweet puppy, Winnie.

(Inspired by Winnie the Pooh, although her name is short for Winifred.)

She is part Boxer and part Labrador, sometimes called a "Boxador."

Winnie has an unusually red coat and is always complemented when we go for walks.

December 26 - January 1, we attended the Urbana 2009 conference in St. Louis. Urbana is a missions conference hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which we were members of in college. It has occured every three years since 1946. (Ginger also attended the 2006 conference.) 

One aspect of our mission work in our every day lives here in Newport is starting a new Bible study at CrossPoint Church. We'll be targeting college students and twenty-somethings and using the same discussion and question-based Bible study that we taught in college. 

Currently, we're working hard on the apartment, so more photos coming soon!

Ginger mixed paint colors to find the perfect tone for the bedroom. 

Stephen ripped up sparkly yellow bathroom linoleum. Beneath two layers of linoleum was plywood, and beneath that, the original maple hardwood.