Love and Care

Today I had a root canal but that is not what I want to talk about. What I do want to share with you is what I overheard while I was sitting in the waiting room. A very cute little couple came in and sat down across from me. I would guess that they were in their early 80's. After checking in at the front desk, they sat down beside each other and the husband turned to the wife and asked her "Would you like me to come in and sit with you?" and the wife replied with a smile, "Oh, I think I'll be just fine." This is an office that does nothing but root canals, so I thought it was sweet that he offered his support, and cute that she felt the strength to go in alone. A root canal isn't for babies! He started reading a magazine while his wife sat looking out the window, bobbing her foot lightly to the music flowing through the speakers in the ceiling. It was some smooth, jazzy old song with a bounce and lyrics that warmed your heart. When the song was winding up, she turned to the husband and plainly said "I have a crush on you!" and as the husband turned to her with a shocked look on his face, she then whispered to him "It was the song that..." I didn't hear her finish her sentence, but her face was beaming, and her husband bobbed his head in reply but still looked a little shocked. Then I heard the nurse call "Wilma?" and the wife got up and disappeared down the hallway. What the wife didn't see, was the smile on her husbands face as he watched her walk out of the room and the blush that crept into his cheeks. The blush slowly faded but the smile remained.

What a beautiful reminder. Let us all have this kind of love and care for our spouses and may it last until the Lord takes us to be with Him!

Kirkland and a Six Year Old

One of my favorite places to visit is the waterfront in downtown Kirkland, WA. There are lots of fun memories there, as Kirkland is where my husband was living when we met and also where we lived for the first few months of our marriage. There have been visits with family, visits with friends and visits alone, but each one was enjoyable and memorable. This time we went to the waterfront with The Mr.'s mom. The weather was gorgeous! The air smelled salty from the ocean water and sweet from all the flowers blooming around us.










Then we went to J4's sixth birthday party. Look at the cute cake his mom made for him! I remember when he was just a newborn, it seems like just yesterday that his oldest brother was turning six!

The kids ate out on the deck, picnic style.

I got to know Brooke's little girl Kine a lot better, what a sweetie she is! We played dollies with her brother Ezra while the guys played racquetball.

Seeing this look on J4's face was so much fun. We got him a remote controlled sports car. :)

All Sorts of Stuff

Here are some random photos to answer the often asked question "so what have you been doing lately to keep yourself busy?" Enjoy!

Catching ginormous salamanders in the back yard so that Petra won't bark at them. They play dead and they make her nervous I guess.

Keeping Esther and Luke company while David is at school and Bashful and Shy are helping out at Doc's clinic. It's not really babysitting, as the kids basically take good enough care of themselves that I can look for odd jobs to get done around the house and it's generally a very fun and relaxing time. I want to do it more often as I've actually only done it once recently, but it was so much fun. (Bashful, if you are reading this... give me a call!)

Working on my photography skills. I think I need to work on my stealth skills, because Doc and Bashful's cat had seriously been rolled up in a little ball sleeping on the duvet for hours until he heard the click of the camera.

Reading books while catching a drive to meeting. I often call Luke "Little D" (his first name starts with D, for all you who are confused at this point) and the second line of this page says "little d."

Chomp! Having friends over for BBQ Bratwurst. Drooler ate that whole hotdog, he is getting so big!


Laughing at Petra. :)

The H Family Visits The Bay

After conference, we had some fun guests! Here are the four cute little munchkins all in a row. They were tired from a busy day at the Science Center in Vancouver, BC and climbed right into bed when they got here with their parents T&R.

The next day we went to the beach down at The Bay and boy was it fun! The kids had a blast running around and finding shells, splashing through the water, building a sand castle and looking for sea life.

E posing for her mom. Her mom got portraits of each kid, and then I shot a family photo. Unfortunately I forgot to snitch those off R's camera before they left. I would love to have copies!

Smile!

One of my favorite shots from the day. Silhouettes and stripes.

C and M

Diggin' in.

Our first sandcastle of 2009.

There was a cool wind so jackets were needed, but that didn't stop the kids from wading! Once E got her feet wet, you couldn't keep her out of the tide pools, she would just stomp right through one and make her way to the next, holding her pant legs up the whole time. It was so cute!

The dead crab that M, their oldest boy found. Kind of cool, but also kind of gross because it was dead.

Thanks SO MUCH for visiting us T&R! Please come again sometime soon as the house felt so empty after you left and the beach is calling your children's names!

Richmond Bible Conference 2009

The Bible conference at Richmond over the Easter weekend came and now it is gone. Why do fun things end so quickly?! We took up Ephesians 1 in the reading meetings and I enjoyed it so so much. Sometimes bible readings almost feel rushed because there is so much to go over, but this year it was one chapter and there was time to dwell on the different things that the chapter brings out. It was so practical and edifying. I also enjoyed seeing friends that I hadn't seen for a year or more and my social sister came as well. We got a couple of quick visits in here and there, but didn't really see much of each other. When you squish hundreds of people into our meeting room, you end up bumping into a lot of people (literally) but possibly not even end up saying hi or having a conversation with a few people because of all the busyness around you. You'll see that the photos below are fairly blurry because I wasn't really paying that much attention and just snapping a quick shot when I could. The ladies made nine meals worth of food this year and there were good responses, with the favorite meals being Friday's Greek meal (roast lamb, Greek rice, Greek potatoes, Greek salad, flat bread, hummus, tsatsiki sauce) and Lord's day's roast beef meal with all the fixins.

A busy kitchen on the Wednesday before conference- Food Prep Day! No, all the food was not made on this day, but a lot of the bulk got taken care of. Have you ever made cake for 300 people?! Or roasted 145 pounds of meat? Aunts D and Knittery did all the planning and organizing and were our top chef's and they did an amazing job. I don't know how they do it, but I know they practically lived at the meeting room for a week. Oh yes, and I better tell you all about my thumb. Imagine a huge stainless steel shredder/grater that suction cups onto the counter top and has a hand crank. Imagine what happens when your thumb slips off the apple.... yes. That is all I will say about that. I wore steri-stips all conference and couldn't do any dishes but thankfully the thumb is almost completely healed at this point.

This is one example of how the kids kept themselves busy. Did you know that Ioi's three kids and Drooler could all squish into one apple box? Actually, Lily babysat all the kids on the food prep day, so this must have been after prayer meeting that night.

Here is Esther and her mommy on Thursday afternoon making baklava for the Greek meal on Friday. What a tedious dessert, but oh so yummy! (Hmm, I wonder if you can buy gluten free puff pastry anywhere.)

This year we tried to put as many families in homes as possible. Not only does it mean more fellowship, which is healthy for Christians, but it means less hotel costs! This year The Mr. and I opened our home to seven guys. I learned that guys are easy to keep because they find what they need or make due with what they have and they are more than happy with a large pan of scrambled eggs every morning. Usually I would be making breakfast casseroles and fancier breakfasts, but not this time! Another bonus, is that seven guys can easily share one bathroom as long as you can turn up your water heater. You sure wouldn't want to try and pull that off with seven girls!

After each reading meeting, drip coffee and home made cookies are served but if you know where to line up, you will get a nice hot fresh steaming latté of your choice. My job was to stand at the front of the line and write names and orders on cups, then there were two baristas who would fill the cups, and I would add a lid and hand it out. It was a busy little corner of the meeting room but I think it went fairly smooth. As you can see from these photos, Drooler loves to help. Usually there are two baristas and no room for kids underfoot, but this was during the afternoon of the last day of conference when things were a little quieter.

Check out that concentration! It helps when you stick your tongue out.

The swing set and slide got put to very good use. Kids were everywhere!

Wiggles

Each night there was a young people's sing and a few of the visitors brought their instruments with them. It was so fun to sing along to them. You can see The Mr. up there in his shirt and tie, as he was leading the sings.

Thanks for coming everyone! If you are reading this and you weren't there, you should come next year. :)

Whistler Blackcomb

I took my old camera up the hill with me because my new one is still so new and I was afraid I would ruin it. Anyways, here are the photos I took while at Whistler and Blackcomb. A lot of them are of the new Peak2Peak gondola because it was the first time we had been on it. I must say it is a little strange to be hanging off wires in the middle of the air over a huge valley. At one point you can barely make out any towers and you seriously wonder what is keeping you from plunging down to the rocks below. :)

A map of the world that hangs at the Whistler wax and tune-up shack where you can add a pin to show where you are visiting from. Whistler has had visitors from all over the world, it is amazing. The pins here are also only the visitors that happened to visit the tune-up shack and even then there weren't very many pieces of land on the map without a pin.

The Roundhouse Lodge at Whistler. Look at all that fresh snow coming down, yay!

The Peak2Peak station at Whistler.

A Peak2Peak car.

It's neat to see the ski runs from above. This was in the middle of the week, so it wasn't crowded at all, which was SO nice! I don't think I ever truly waited in line the whole day.

Here's all the info about this gondola. It stretches 2.73 miles across and 1.88 miles of that is an unsupported span that stretches across a huge valley between the two mountains. You are suspended 1427 feet above Fitzsimmons creek at the center point of the gondola. Each car can hold approximately 22 people. Two of the cars hold less because they have clear bottoms, so that area is roped off.

This is so high that some people base jumped off of it. Check out the video here.

I only got a few photos of snowboarding because the snow was too good to waste time sitting and digging out the camera! We had such a good day.

Blackcomb

Glass bottomed Peak2Peak car.