Who wants to go on an apartment tour? Raise your hands! :D

We were pretty excited when we walked into our new little apartment after hours on the road nearly two weeks ago. It was found through the great Internet machine and booked via phone, so there’s always a bit of a nagging suspicion that we were gonna be gypped. We eschewed more expensive apartment complexes because a) they were more expensive and every extra dollar in our lives goes to the great Pennsylvania State University, yo, b) the only real differences were that those more expensive places had swimming pools and an overwhelming majority of college student rentals. While Brandon is a college student, you can understand why we prefer not to be surrounded by the ‘party-hearty’ crowd… also, college students & swimming pools seem like a bad combination. I may (slightly) regret the lack of an accessible swimming pool when we get into the depths of Arkansas summer heat, but hey, I’ll just buy a little wading pool at Walmart and put it on our deck. At least my feet will be cool. And if I learned anything from my teenage summer job as a greenhouse water girl, it is that when your feet are cool, your whole body stays cool. The wading pool is a great idea! Yeah!… (I suggested this to Brandon and he shook his head & laughed).


See our cozy little living room. The couch is semi-comfortable. Sometimes I give up sitting on it and go sit on the floor instead, because the carpet is niiiiice. Or because I’m a savage who was raised in the wilderness and is actually more comfortable on the ground (maybe I’ve read too many pioneer stories?).

I couldn’t fit the piano in our car so I brought the acoustic guitar. Playing it again is downright lovely. I found a guitar tuning app on my iphone so my #1 objection of the guitar not being in tune isn’t valid anymore. Guitars had a more solitary sound than pianos, so I’m really appreciating the difference. And the guitar is inspiring my too-long-dormant songwriting. Funny side note: Ya never realize how important a blank notebook is until you travel hundreds of miles away from home and have nothing to write on. Really! I had to go to Walmart to buy a notebook!

Like my little travel suitcase decoration? It was a going-away gift from our church and I think it’s so cute! Also, I had to bring it along because it contained emergency food rations… no worries, the rations were consumed and now it is empty. I ate all the marshmallows, Brandon ate all the cookie butter and we both ate the Nutella... and decided that the healthy choice is to NOT BUY ANY MORE. :D



True confessions: This is the only area of the apartment that I actually cleaned in preparation for taking a photo. It quickly because our dumping area for anything and everything random. I had to go through all our electronics, papers and free internship gifts (there was even sunscreen & a beach ball! I’ll put that in my imaginary wading pool)… And we have no lack of laptops. You can see three here. Mine, Brandon’s college laptop and then his (Pennsylvania) work laptop; he’s still working twenty hours a week in the evenings/Saturdays to keep up with his PA job. Then he has his internship laptop that goes back and forth to work during the day with him! *shaking my head at technology*


First view after one walks into the apartment. You can see our balcony. We have a lovely view of… a roof to a gas station. :D



Living room! Dining room!


Ohhhh kitchen! I like the kitchen. I brought essential things along like my cast iron skillet, recipe books (that’s a free cookbook I got from the last church we visited!), coffee grinder and blender. All the important stuff. See the random water glass hanging out on the counter? I leave them everywhere as part of my secret plan to drink enough water. I have to go and collect glasses before loading the dishwasher.
The color palette of this apartment is very warm and neutral. I’m diggin’ it. I brought a collection of favorite books from home. Don’t leave home without Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott and The Chronicles of Narnia (TCON to all fellow enthusiasts).

Other parts of the apartment that just thrill my soul: CLOSETS! There are three! Ohmygoodness, I really love closets. One minor deficiency of our cute little cottage back home is that it was built over 150 years ago, before people had so many clothes. Closets just didn’t really exist. But here, we have a walk-in closet in the bedroom, plus a hallway closet, plus a utility closet. It’s blissful.

And I’d show you the awesome bathroom, but that’s just weird. I love that there is so much space on the bathroom vanity and I can spread out the stuff!

So that’s it! Our cute little apartment. I am thrilled with our little home-sweet-home in Arkansas and I’m sure it will serve us well for the next three months!

When our first full weekend in Arkansas ends up being a holiday weekend, what do we do? Eat, sleep and watch fireworks. Seems so patriotic. Like the American dream.

This internship is cooool ---- also with some weird hours. Brandon’s been up early and working late most days. Sometimes I drive him to work (if I need the car), sometimes I just get up to make him breakfast. He tells me that he can make his own breakfast, because he’s a sweetheart like that… but I wake up anyway when the alarm goes off and I figure I might as well get up and make sure the food/coffee sustenance gets in his belly. Also, I have a weird sense of alarm about stovetops being left on when I’m not the one cooking, so I prefer to be the one cooking. Even if it’s 4:00 am. ;)

Saturday morning breakfast omelet looked like this. Omelets always remind me of sunshine. They’re such happy breakfast items. Also, I am super-consistent at taking prenatal vitamins. :D


Anyway, I ventured out Saturday morning to find the farmer’s market. Not too much happening there… or maybe I just arrived towards closing time. I snatched up some fresh lettuce and a jar of local honey. Brandon now gets a tablespoon of honey in his oatmeal every morning, because I heard that local honey can help with allergies. We are currently testing that theory. I’ll keep you informed on the progress… I was a little sad driving away from the farmer’s market because there were no strawberries. Then, lo and behold, I turned a corner and there was a large banner on a roadside stand proclaiming, “FRESH STRAWBERRIES.” I did a pretty cool quick turn (good thing nobody was following me too closely) and bought 2 1/2 quarts of fresh, delicious, amazing-looking berries.

Simple strawberry shortcake, anyone? :D


Sunday dawned a new day, and that meant visiting church #2. I gotta say, this whole visiting-new-churches-thing has perks. Like free homemade bread last week! Free cookbook and coffee mug and candy this week! If I was more shallow, I’d say we should keep on visiting new churches every week! Maybe by the end of the summer, we’d get a new car! (sillyness here should be obvious).. We did really enjoy church #2. Super-friendly. Greeted by soooo many folks. Liked the worship and particularly appreciated the sermon because it was… about the Bible, from the Bible and firmly on-topic the whole way through. Very good stuff. The consensus in the Schwartz family is that we shall be visiting there again (despite my love of free-visitor gifts. lol).



On Sunday evening, we headed into the city… well, semi-close to the city of Little Rock. There is Little Rock and then there is the river and then there is North Little Rock. I had heard about some big ol’ music festival happening in Little Rock --- which made me abandon plans of going into Little Rock, because we’re not big on crowds. Or music festivals, for that matter. BUT the really-cool-fun part is that at the end of said music fest, there would be fireworks. So we headed to the riverfront park on the North Little Rock side to see if we could catch a glimpse of the fireworks.



The weather was lovely. The heat of the day had passed (and it was HOT!), and there was a slight breeze blowing. We walked the trail for awhile and could glimpse the crowds across the river.



Found an empty park bench facing the river and waited until darkness fell.
Oh yes, and I was being “artistic” while waiting for the fireworks to begin!



As it turned out, we could not have settled on a more perfect spot for fireworks-watching. They were bursting almost directly overhead! We even had to brush fireworks shrapnel off our clothes when leaving. I snapped a few fireworks photos, but mostly rested my head on Brandon’s shoulder and just enjoyed the show. The best things in life are often free. Like date night by the river as fireworks burst overhead (and in my heart).






One last look at the river before the night was over.

Our Memorial Day was slow and restful, but the entire weekend was pretty fun.

How was your holiday weekend? Do tell. I read comments. :D

Our theme song that we always sing on road trips… that sorta-kinda applied to this one!

Side by side, driving the same highway
Leaving behind everything and everyone you love
The cost to pay, to tell the world of Jesus
Hoping that these bridges burned will not just be in vain

It helps to think that somewhere you're feeling just the same
And don't take even a moment for granted
Don't lose heart when the world crashes down

How many miles ahead? I can't count the ones behind
To all the friends that we've collected, all the people we respect
For the hope, the joy that comes with you
Made this up, I wrote it down and dedicate this song to you



We are here… in the great state of Arkansas!


It seems like positively years since finals week and packing up and heading out of PA. It hardly seems possible that it was a short two weeks ago that we left. Finals week was such a blur of change. I had my last day of work (ohmygoodness) which meant all sorts of fun co-worker goodbyes (sadness) and gifts (happiness!). And I couldn’t even enjoy it too much, because I mean, really, I needed to pack up our lives and put it in our Toyota Corolla and leave… all while Brandon was taking four finals in four days and grading final exams, too! Like I said, it’s a blur. I completed the miraculous and finished packing before 10pm on Thursday---we were set to depart early on Friday morning. Usually, my packing before any trip lasts into the wee hours of the morning… so either I was really prepared or really forgetful. It was helpful that Brandon kept saying, “They have Walmarts in Arkansas, too! If we forget it, we can just buy it there!”

Note: Walmarts are everywhere. It’s comforting and disturbing all at the same time. Actually, most chain stores are the same around America. I can see Walmart from the balcony of our new apartment. We ate some dinner at Panera last night, before going out to Dick’s Sporting Goods to buy Brandon some steel-toe work boots. This is suburban American. Just like home. Hehe!


Anyway, our travelling commenced with stops in Virginia and Maryland to visit friends and family. Then it was onward to Tennessee for our Schwartz Smoky Mountain Vacation 2014. I like to capitalize things. It makes them seem so much more important. I will share photos of our wonderful weeklong mountain vacation soon, but don’t wanna get sidetracked in this basic-update-on-life blog post.

So last Saturday, we left our cute little vacation condo with an estimated time of arrival at our new Arkansas apartment of 5:00pm. The driving part of our trip was relatively simple. It was the sitting-in-standstill-construction-and-accident traffic for three hours that KILLED our ETA. We finally arrived, slightly rumpled and annoyed at 8:00pm. We looked around our new little apartment and were basically thrilled. The apartment had a recent renovation so everything looks brand-spankin’-new. My greatest fear in renting an apartment that we had never seen in real life would be the possible smells. I’m sensitive to smells anyway, and being pregnant has made me ever-so-much-more sensitive. But the apartment smelled like NOTHING. What a relief.

Then it was let’s-go-to-Walmart-at-10pm because we need food. You know how Walmart trips happen…. the pile of items in the cart gets higher and higher, while you keep remembering things you need.

Then it was wake up Sunday morning and go visit a new church. Our thoughts are as follows: 1) hey, they give out homemade bread to first-time visitors! YEAH! Let’s come back next week and sit on the opposite side so we can be visitors again! (kidding… mostly… it was good bread!). 2) Wow, this church is big. 3) We really liked the sermon.. and then we realized that everything we liked about the church had to do with the Nigerian missionary who was guest-preaching. It was one of those hard-core reality check sermons where they talk about real-life persecution happening now in the African countries. It tears into the soul and gives perspective.

This work-week has thus-far been about unpacking and acclimating.



My Arkansas revelations:

It’s hot. Going from Pennsylvania cool springtime to Arkansas hot summertime feels like we skipped several months in the year. The weather forecast for this weekend is highs of 90 degrees. Ohman. I’m breaking out the sunscreen and smoothies now. I'm not complaining. I kinda like the heat. Besides, our air-conditioning works GREAT! ;)

I will not be able to miss the tornado sirens. Yesterday, I was just sitting on the couch, working on my laptop, when I heard the most AWFUL, HORRENDOUS, EAR-SPLITTING NOISE. I thought, that is a really loud saw and it is right underneath my window… but it wasn’t. So I googled “tornado sirens in Conway, AR” and guess what? They test the sirens every Wednesday at noon. Now I know they work and it’s ear-splittingly loud and I will NEVER miss a tornado siren because I can hear it everywhere in our apartment…. now I’m still not clear on what I should do if the siren actually goes off for real. Any tornado veterans wanna clue me in?

Apartment living is… interesting. We had a neighbor who likes to play video games REALLY loud late into the night. I hear the thumping bass on the other side of the wall, and honestly, it makes me feel not-very-charitable. I go to sleep while writing angry neighbor letters in my head. Also, my first real grocery shopping trip involved me carrying twenty bags of groceries up to our second-floor apartment and then collapsing on the couch in exhaustion.

It’s a college town. We laughed when we drove into this new town and the sign said, “Conway: City of Colleges.” There are FIVE colleges within city limits. We just can’t get away from college students! We’re actually living more towards the edge of town, so I can’t say I’ve seen too many college students. Though I’ve been pretty much holed-up in the apartment getting settled so maybe I will in the future.
And that’s about it.

We are here, the weather is warm and we are happy as clams. God is good!

Stay tuned for more updates soon! (and perhaps, I will post a baby bump photo one of these days… for all my dear PA friends who are dying to see! Hehe!).

And I love this quote that I saw on the wall of a Tennessee restaurant. For our faraway friends & family!