Things have been going quite well around here lately. We have been very very busy but keeping a good energy level. I am working as the Technical General Manager at a salon in Coralville Iowa (if you are in the area it is next to HuHot by the Coralville mall), and I am loving it. So far I have been working everyday but every time I am there I am learning new things and meeting new people, so I haven’t felt annoyed or tired of going in. We focus mainly on color but we do cuts and have bareMinerals makeup, it’s nice to just keep it simple. If you would like to see pictures you can go to our website, www.blazehaircolor.com. So that is what I have been doing. Peter seems to really be enjoying himself also, he is putting in quite a few hours at Lou Henri’s Restaurant and is now on a journey to find a yoga instructor in town. It sounds like he is on the right path because he has met some pretty amazing people. We were very lucky to bring some Minnesotans down to our town a couple weekends ago, Peter’s Mom, Dad and brother came to visit which was quite the breathe of fresh air. If feels so good to see family and people you love that you don’t get to see very often. They seem to be doing very well and I think they enjoyed the area, it was very fun celebrating a late Christmas with them. Another fun note is that as I am typing this my Mom and Dad are in Guatemala on a missions trip with some people from their community and church. I can’t wait to hear their stories when they get back this week. Peter and I definitely can’t wait for the weather to get a little warmer so we can watch all of the people come out of the woodwork in Iowa City… and to start riding our bikes again!! Well I am off to work now but I hope this finds all of you in a good state of mind and very happy. I hope you had a wonderful holiday and are finding it easy to get back into the swing of things and are staying true to your New Years resolutions. Take care, Peace and Love. Terra.

I hope that everyone is having a good time getting ready for Christmas!  Peter and I made a trip to Coralville mall today to grab a few things, and to say that the mall was overwhelming would be a vast understatement.  I don’t know when the last time was that I went to the mall on a weekend during the holiday season… and I don’t know when I will ever go back.  So I just wanted to say that I hope you are all staying sane and enjoying your family and friends because thats what this is all about right?  Well I am going to get comfortable in front of the TV because the SURVIVOR CHINA SEASON FINALE is on tonight!!  Hooray!  I hope that you are all doing well and enjoying the snow (if you are in an area that has snow).  Love and Peace, Terra

On Thursday, Terra and I became Iowa citizens. Actually, only I became an Iowa citizen, as Terra’s old Iowa I.D. was still valid. So she had dual citizenship, but has now lost Minnesota. That was great because she only paid $1 to renew her license to my $23 for a brand new one. But it is very exciting now that my license is legit. And now we are both registered to vote too, which is good. This morning and still going, is a massive ice storm. All of downtown is closed, parts of highway 80 are shut down, so Terra and I are wearing comfy clothes and staying inside today. We really need to do some grocery shopping, but it’s going to have to wait for another day. We’ll eat random things we can find in our house and hope that they’re good. Iowa is still treating us well and it’s nice to really start feeling comfortable here. Take care everyone. Peace,

Pete

Hello, my name is Terra Hartley, and I am a sugar addict. 

I was biking to meet my manager for a drink tonight at her favorite bar on the edge of town, when my most beloved pair of pants had had enough. I was three blocks from our place when the bottom of my favorite carhartt pants got caught in my chain. These had been my favorite pants since I got them and after all the abuse they took at the box factory, they were still holding up pretty strong, until tonight. So, as most of you know, I ride a fixed gear bike, which means the chain is directly attached to the back wheel, so to slow down I have to slow my pedaling down. In essence, the pedals move with the back wheel so as long as the wheel is spinning the pedals are moving too. So I was going down a hill when my pants got caught and I can’t stop right away so I am forced to try and slow down quickly and stop as fast as I can. This is usually not a problem, stopping quickly, but on a hill it is a little difficult. My pants started to slowly wrap around my pedal and my chain as I tried in vain to stop at a downward angle. My pants started to tear out and get pulled off of me more and more. My pedals were crawling forward, I was so close to stopping, but then my pants had hit their limit. I lurched forward as my foot hit the ground and I fell to the right. I got up quickly since I was still on the road and tried to pull my pants up, since they were pulled down to my knees with the last go ’round. Now I’m in the street, attached to my bike with my resilient pants while they are causing me stand butt naked in the night. I get my pants back to my waist and my bike to the side of the road to try to untangle myself. I pull my knife from my bag and start cutting my pants away. But it seems that my pants only tear when they want to, because I had no luck. So I had to pick up my bike and walk it, very slowly, back to our house. It is not easy to carry a heavy bike that you are attached to by one pant leg. Terra came down to laugh at me on the porch and then had to get the camera to document this, so check out the pictures, I think they can explain the rest. Physically, my bike is fine, I will need to do a little tune up, and yeah, I’m good too. A little cut on my knee was all that I got. But it was the last night of my pants, I crawled out of them and left them attached to my bike to deal with later. And yes, that means I got naked on our porch and had to put on new pants…

Believe it or not we still haven’t seen our pictures from Europe!  I am happy to say that it’s not laziness though… just bad computers.  As soon as we figure things out you will see us on here!  For now though we are still somewhat in Iowa City, we are looking at a place for the second time today after Peter gets off work… thats right!  Peter got a job!  Actually Peter got 2 jobs, one is at Lou Henri where he is cooking breakfast food.  It is a really great place for him, and the other is cooking at the hospital… he is not yet sure if he will be taking that one.  For me, I am trying to figure everything out still.  I have applied at a lot of different salons in the area within the last few days so we will see how this goes.  We have been having a lot of fun jumping houses from my parents to my brother and sister in-laws, to my friend Dana’s… we have really been getting to know Iowa City.  A couple weekends ago Peter spent the weekend with his brothers and AWESOME family members Julie and Karl for BOYS WEEKEND… I’ll let him write more about that but he had a lot of fun.  Yesterday we took the scenic drive to Little Wall Lake to celebrate my Grandpa Patterson’s 75th birthday!  It was such a blast seeing him and family members.  So that is really all that has been going on for the Hartley’s.  Hopefully looking at this house today will give us a lead but we shall see.   We will keep you updated.  Take Care.  Love and Peace,

Terra

Just another note quick… my brother Chris, his wife DeeAnn, and their friend Ren are all traveling to Alaska and I am not exactly sure what they are doing but it has something to do with camping and maybe living with bears?!  hehe… but I know they wrote a bit before they left and I am sure it is going to be an interesting story when they get back so if you would like to follow along with their adventure be sure to click on his name on the right side of our page.  Thanks!

Terra

We are in Davenport now, we went from Peter’s parents to Terra’s parents! It is so nice of both families to take us in. We arrived last night (Wednesday) it was a nice drive and fun to see the calming colors of Iowa. I thought that I would talk a little bit about our last couple days in Amsterdam…

We ended up meeting with Dave and Laurie which was so much fun, it felt so weird to be with them in a different country… so cool! We went out to eat that night then parted our ways to get sleep so we could meet with them the next day. The next morning we met them and Genevieve, who is Dave’s first cousin who he has only met once, so we were all pretty much meeting for the first time. Genevieve was so much fun! She showed us so many things that we didn’t even know were there, a totally different part of Amsterdam. Even parts that we walked past everyday had some kind of history to it… like the first church in Amsterdam, beautiful. So we hung out all day and walked around hearing the history of Amsterdam, then we went to a cafe and got something to eat which is where we met Genevieve’s partner Bart. Bart is from Amsterdam so he was a lot of fun to talk to about the area, so we ate then walked to their apartment and looked at Genevieve’s art. She is an amazing painter, we all really enjoyed looking at all of her work because she is so talented. If you want to see her work we will be attaching her site but for now you can just go to www.genevieveart.nl it is well worth your time. We were so privileged to spend time with Genevieve and Bart, Bart as even nice enough to let us try his herring! (egh! haha) We all had a lot of fun. Later that evening Dave, Laurie, Peter, Jonah, Eric and I all went on a canal tour that took us all around Amsterdam it was really nice to see the city from that perspective, and it was a nice way to celebrate Dave and Laurie’s 28th wedding anniversary! After the the ride we split ways got a bite to eat, then on our way back to our hostel we walked through the “red light district” boy was that an experience… but now we can say we’ve seen it right? It was a very fun last night in Amsterdam… or last night in Europe, it will be interesting trying to settle in and find jobs and a place to live. So our plan for today is to try and figure out how to get some pictures on here…. so stay updated because we promise they will be up soon! Love and Peace to everyone and thank you so much for all of your love and support, this has been a lot of fun!

Terra

We woke up very early this morning, 6.00 Amsterdam time, and went out to the airport so we could fly home. My father acidentally listed me twice for the flight and didn’t list Terra at all. It took us about an hour to sort it out, and it still wasn’t solved. We got through security just fine, so we could deal with the problem at the gate. All six of us, the four entrepid travellers and two parents, got onto the same flight. Five of us in first class too! Jonah took the coach seat to save a little bit more money, smart of him, but I wanted the luxury. The flight left at 10.00 Amsterdam, was an eight hour flight and we got in 12.00 Minneapolis. So in Amsterdam right now, it is 2.00 in the morning on Monday, in four hours we will have been up for 24 hours. It has been a long day. I just wanted to let everyone know that we made it back to the states safely and to say thank you for reading and posting comments, it was a lot of fun. Now, we all have a very different outlook on life then when we left, and Terra and I are determined to make everyday an adventure. Right now that is easy snce we don’t have jobs or a place to live and are moving five hours away from everything that was stable before we went off gallavanting in Europe. I’ve quite enjoyed being homeless and unemployed for the past month, not sure if I’m ready to give it up…but it is a new adventure. Within the next few days we will start to put up pictures, if you want to be amazed, check back soon. Thank you all for traveling with us, it’s been a blast. Cheers! Prost! Yamas!

Much Love,

Pete

Hello Hello Hello!  Boy what a trip it’s been!  We just arrived in Amsterdam about a half hour to an hour ago and it is nice and rainy…. which is funny because that is exactly how the weather was the first time we arrived in Amsterdam, how time flies by!  We weren’t able to really get to internet the past few days, but I will tell you right now they were my favorite few days of the trip… which is hard to say.  We took a couple trains from Rome to Berlin and I have never been so impressed.  First of all it was an AWESOME train ride, Second of all Berlin is the coolest place ever!  We had so much fun!  I learned so much when I was there and that was the first place where all four of us agreed that we weren’t ready to leave.  There is so much to do in Berlin, so many museums, so many parks, everything.  Did you know that there are NUDE PARKS?!  I didn’t until we were playing frisbee and some older man is just strollin through the park buck naked… it was hilarous and quite alarming.  Peter was able to find us an amazing hostel Naturfreundehaus  (Which is Nature Friend House in English) it was a great hostel and was only 13 Euro a night with a shower and including breakfast!  Ohhhh they have such good cheese for breakfast!  This hostel is in a smaller town outside of Berlin so it was great to get to know some of the locals, we met a lot of great people.  I think it was two nights ago we were walking around the outskirts of Berlin where we heard there were supposed to be some good Jazz clubs, we didn’t find any jazz (a lot of overly priced food though) but we did end up meeting some cool guys Jonathen and Ben that are from North Italy and are traveling to Sweden for a month, they were around Eric and Jonah’s age so we all got along great… we ended up staying out late and when we went to catch our train before our pass ran out we saw that the gate was closed (I guess even if the train runs through they still close the gate???) So we walked to a few different gates…. ended up walking around and hanging out and finally catching a train in the morning and got to our hostel around 5:30-6:00 in the morning.  It was such a fun night and we got such good sleep that whole day!  I thought it would be scary being out that late at night but in Berlin nothing really opens up till around 10 or midnight so they have a great night life for all ages… it was a lot of fun.  So now that we are caught up on sleep and are in Amsterdam we are trying to find a place to stay and we are going to be meeting up with Dave and Laurie tonight!  (my parents…. in law..  hehe)  So we are excited to see  familar faces.   Anyway that is the story and we will be flying home of Sunday!  We will then be able to post pictures and everything like that… and hopefully find a place to live and work!  Love you all very much.  Thank you again for all the love and support, it’s so fun hearing from you!  Take care and God bless!

Love and Peace,

  Terra