RJ & Nik Rapelje

Ranger

Rock

Splash

Carlene

June 2008
Our lives have changed drastically in the past few months, so it seemed like a good idea to update our site with what we're up to and where we are.

We sold our house in Golden. Ironically, but not surprisingly, we put it on the market just days after we finished the remodeling. (Of course, we probably would have waited longer on some of the projects if we weren’t ready to sell.) It was just time for us to move on; it was too difficult to see the child’s bedroom that we had fixed up, the neighborhood park down the road, and a million other things that reminded us of what we had hoped for. The house turned out gorgeous and we had a good offer within a week. In a wonderful bit of fate, the young family that bought it has a baby named Sam. It feels odd to be “homeless” after owning our own homes, but it’s also freeing to not have a mortgage, property taxes, housework , etc.. Although we’ll miss many things about Golden, especially our friends there, this was the right thing for us to do.

RJ is seizing this opportunity to pursue his own career dreams of being a park ranger. Plans to attend a Law Enforcement training program got pushed back a few months, but he’ll go to school this fall or winter and get certified as a law enforcement/protection ranger, with hopes for a permanent job in that position. He is currently getting federal experience working as a seasonal park ranger at Lake Berryessa, a Bureau of Reclamation reservoir in California’s Napa valley. The lake is a popular day-use area, with no overnight camping but lots of fishing, boating, and swimming. RJ does a lot of patrolling and is especially busy on weekends. He works four days on and three days off, so there is time to relax and enjoy the area in between work. The Napa area is gorgeous and bucolic, the coast is only a few hours away, and even Yosemite is an easy trip. The lake is 30 miles from Napa, the nearest town, so RJ is living in the on-site dormitory. (See pictures below.)

Nik left GAO in April and is now contracted with Falletti Weber Consulting Group. She's doing information system audit work, the same as she did with GAO, but the clients are international non-profit and non-governmental organizations. There is a lot less overhead, so a job that would take several months at GAO is only a few weeks at FWCG, and the products are somewhat different. It really lets her focus on the aspects of auditing and writing that she enjoys. The work is international and involves a lot of traveling, and for her first project she was sent to the ever-exotic….. Washington, D.C., where she's spent a significant amount of time in the past few years. Although it wasn’t an exciting locale, it was actually nice to start somewhere familiar, and she was able to visit with a few friends while in town. FWCG work is on a project basis, so it’s only about one week a month or two for now -- busy enough to keep her hand in but not so much that she's tied to a desk all the time. While she's at Lake Berryessa with RJ, she has to “volunteer” for 20 hours each week to “pay” for sharing his dorm room. Her volunteer hours are spent staffing the Visitor Center and administration offices, and doing other tasks around the park. It’s definitely different than her other work, but it’s good to be with RJ.

Nik's parents generously allowed us to store most of our worldly possessions in their storage building and spare bedroom, and they are caring for our beloved pets for the time being. If anyone would like a slightly-obese but loving, spayed & declawed black cat, Poly is less than thrilled about the change in her living situation, and would love to have a new home where she is properly worshipped.

Our current plans are that RJ will be in California through the end of September. Nik is a bit more nomadic, and will be splitting time between Lake Berryessa and her parents’ home in New Braunfels for the next few months. We have a post office box in New Braunfels for our permanent address; email us if you want our mailing address. Our cell phone numbers and email addresses haven’t changed. Nik's email is still her first name at rapelje.com, and RJ's is (our husky's name) at rapelje.com.

Several months ago, we said that life had slammed close a door, so we were jumping headfirst out the window. So far, the jump has been really good. We’re happier now than we have been in a long time, and it feels good to smile.