These photos were taken on December 11th on our way to La Conner for an overnight. We drove some back roads from Conway to Skagit City. Skagit Valley is known for their Tulip Festival and Daffodils, too. Next time I’ll share the red barns.
We’ve been so happy to have two sunny days in a row here in Western Washington. Today I enjoyed a walk along the Burke Gilman Trail with my friend Beth after church. This week I’ve been getting out between rain showers to continue pruning our apple tree. I can only do a little at a time, just as much as my neck can take. It’s a looking up kind of job. It was nice to do the pruning in the sunshine yesterday and today. In the photo above the branches that are growing straight up still need to be cut.
The work on our master bath continues with forward progress but we are still weeks away from completion. We’ve picked the tile for the shower and all the fixtures. We also have the flooring chosen. The electrical is done. What’s going on at your house?
This looks like fun. She pulled out a couple of pots so she could fit in there.
This is a bit scarier to see her climb on top of this activity box. Yikes. She has skills.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…there are so many developmental changes in the first year of life! She’s now 9 days shy of 10 months. I’m counting the days until I can see her in action in person.
January at our house is national birthday month! Both our sons were born in January and our daughter-in-law, Jamie was also born in January. Our boys are 2 years apart. Our daughter’s due date was in January but she decided to come early and claim December as her birthday month! She shares December with our daughter-in-law, Laura. Addy shares March with me, her Baba. Dear stands alone in September so far and Andrew is our April son-in-law. Time will tell if we add more members of our family to the calendar and where they will land.
1. January is National Mentoring Month. Have you ever had a mentor? Been a mentor? How would you rate the experience?
Yes. When I was a Junior in high school a Senior took me under her wing to encourage me in following Jesus. When my husband and I were freshly married and attending a church in Huntington Beach the assistant pastor mentored us in a discipleship class which was very helpful. I’d rate both those experiences as a 10. I did some mentoring of a young lady in the alternative education system and I can’t say if it made a difference. My other mentoring experiences were in a group setting, not one on one. I’m never really comfortable in these roles.
2. What current trend makes no sense to you?
Tattooing your whole body. Oh, and ear gauges and body piercing.
3. I saw a cartoon on facebook highlighting a few ‘weird’ things that make you happy as an adult. The list included-writing with a nice pen, having plans cancelled, freshly cleaned sheets, eating the corner brownie, cleaning the dryer lint screen, and sipping coffee in that brief time before anyone else wakes up. Of the ‘weird’ things listed which one makes you happiest? What is one more ‘weird’ thing you’d add to the list?
I do enjoy freshly cleaned sheets. Now if someone would wash them and put them back on the bed for me I’d even enjoy them more. Thanks for the inspiration as I got up after typing this and my sheets are in the wash. I’m sure I was happy when I laid down on Tuesday night.
The one more weird thing I’d add to the list is mowing the lawn, a fresh mowed lawn makes me happy.
4. What’s the last good thing you ate?
Leftover Costco Rotisserie Chicken on top of roasted vegetables (bell pepper, zucchini, onion, broccoli, beets, asparagus). I roasted the leftover veggies from our daughter’s Raclette party then with ten minutes left I threw on the leftover chicken to heat up on top of the roasted veggies. It was delicious.
A whirlwind of life changing experiences with traveling and singing in the midst of becoming a college graduate, teacher, wife, homeowner and mother.
Photos in the collage are from left to right: Cornwall coast; college graduation; Russian Youth Choir; Best friend and me at the White House; Our firstborn and me; My first car that required a loan; Dear and me engaged; Our wedding day; my first class; roadtrip stop in Chicago in 1976; Our second born with Dear; Our Christian Rock band performing in England. (I’m in the checked long dress beside Dear)
6. Insert your own random thought here.
My twenties were in the seventies and they were shaped and influenced by the Jesus Movement in Southern California. Calvary Chapel, the little country church on the edge of town, and the Maranatha Singers made quite a statement in the seventies. This was also when the New American Standard Bible was first published and I bought my first copy which was hard bound. It eventually replaced my King James New Scofield Reference edition. I’ve added a few more Bibles to my library including an ESV and a New King James Version. Here’s a worship song from the Maranatha Singers from the seventies. It was hard to pick just one. I listened to several on YouTube and it “took me back” but that’s another song by another artist. Okay, I’ll share a verse from Andrae Crouch’s song, Take Me Back, too. Andrae Crouch died on January 8, 2015.
Take me back, take me back dear Lord
To the place where I first received you.
Take me back, take me back dear Lord where I
First believed.
A sincere thank you to Joyce From This Side of the Pond for supplying the questions each week for Wednesday Hodgepodge.
…with mist and clouds and barns! When we left Colville on December 18th for our 6 hour drive home we stopped at the top of the kids’ driveway to take our favorite view from this spot.
Here’s a close up of the barn in the previous view. It’s crumbling slowly.
It was a misty moisty morning with low lying clouds or fog which made for interesting backdrops for the barns and farms we flew by.
We were happy to have chosen this day to return home instead of Tuesday since there was a snowfall of 14 inches after we left!
On this past Saturday my Western Washington girls and my sister had a fun day in downtown Seattle. We met up for brunch/lunch and then walked to the 5th Avenue Theater for the Sing-A-Long Sound of Music. This explains the name for my combination post for the Barn Collective and life as it happened this weekend.
It really was a blast. We were given props and prompts to interact throughout the movie and it really was fun singing our hearts out. We hissed, we booed, we cheered, we bowed and of course we sang along on every song. Among our props we were given a popper that we were instructed to pop when the Captain and Maria kissed in the gazebo. So much fun especially since there was a young girl in front of us who kept us entertained with her spot on interaction throughout the show!
When we can’t see her in person and are 6 hours away my eyes light up when I see the little green light on my phone saying you’ve got a message. Our daughter-in-law is good at sending us photo updates of little Addy May. Thank you dear Jamie!
Our two girls from across the state staying warm in their icy cold conditions.
Here she is just chillin in the kitchen while mama gets something done. Dan and Jamie are going to have to make a more secure play area for her since just this week she’s learned to use her play toys to climb up onto the couch and be able to escape her cordoned off play area.
What does all of this have to do with singing?
I’ve been singing all my life and it’s an important part of my life. My love for singing started in church. In my father’s Molokan church growing up into my teens singing was acapella. There were no instruments in the church and the songs were mostly from the Psalms in the Old Testament portion of the Bible. My father was a “songleader” in this church. For Easter and Christmas we would visit my maternal grandmother’s Russian Baptist Church where we enjoyed singing with piano and organ. In junior high school choir was one of my classes and I was introduced to notes and music. After my father attended the Billy Graham Crusade in Los Angles in 1963 he started a new life of following Christ as his Savior and we eventually left the Molokan Church. We started attending my maternal grandmother’s church. At the Baptist church my sisters and I were part of the youth choir which eventually worked on recording tapes of Russian hymns for Far East Broadcasting and Slavic Gospel Association to be broadcast into the Soviet Union over radio waves. During my high school years our youth choir went out every Christmas Eve to carol in Russian and English at old folks homes. We’d choose the homes where folks from the Russian churches were housed. There was one apartment building a couple doors down from Bethany Baptist Church in Los Angeles where several of our widowed grandmothers lived in separate apartments next door to each other. We’d always start our caroling there. I have to add that in my junior high and high school years I memorized and sang along with the Beatles and Leslie Gore and with whatever other group was popular. I was a “songleader” in high school. We were part of the cheer squad at sporting events and mostly yelled chants while performing routines with pom poms. “Push em back, push em back, waaaaay back. LOL!
In my college years our Los Angeles Russian Choir added some Russian voices from around the state of California and we recorded an album in a professional studio. During this time we met a studio musician who directed a Christian singing ensemble that toured the states and Great Britain. My best friend at the time auditioned for his group. She was added and toured England with them in the summer of 1972. I met the members of Tom Keene and the Contemporaries before they left for England and when they returned an alto left and I auditioned and joined the group in fall of 1972. Dear, his brother and sister in law were part of the Contemporaries. Dear and I started dating. We performed most every Sunday evening at a different church in the greater Los Angles area singing and giving our testimonies. We had weekly practices. Dear and my relationship grew and we got married after our second tour of Great Britain.
This was a newspaper article from a British paper about our group touring and singing in local schools.
Chalk church in Gravesend
All this talk about singing was inspired by the fact that today Laura bought tickets for me, my sister Lana and Katie to attend The Sound of Music sing along at the 5th Avenue in Seattle. The four of us are meeting for lunch and then popping into the theater for what I’m sure will be a fun time of singing our hearts out! Have you ever attended one of these sing along events?
Looking forward to spending a few hours with these girls. Wish our girls from across the mountains could be with us.
My semi professional singing days are well over and now my favorite times to sing are still in church and to little Addy May. I sing nursery rhymes and other songs to her. She doesn’t care that my voice cracks and I don’t stay on key or…if I make up the words! Looking forward to when she can sing along with me!
Our kitchen counters before were Formica with an oak trim. The backsplash was a white square tile with a few decorative tiles above our black range top. Our sink was cream colored and slightly oval. The cabinets show up a little too yellow/green in some of the above photos. The actual colors are more true in the following photos.
First order of business was removing all the old tile. The walls where the tile pulled off more than was desired were repaired and then given a primer coat of paint.
The night before the installers were to arrive with the new quartz counters, Dear pulled off the old counters and hauled them out of the house.
The installers came and made quick work of installing the counters plus our new stove top and stainless sink. After a day of letting the counter adhesive dry, Dear started in on installing the subway tile backsplash. We chose a grey grout and a 1/16th inch spacers between the tiles. In the end because the subway tiles we chose were slightly beveled the grout looks to be closer to 1/8 inch. We like it.
A double stainless oven could be in our future, wink, wink.
Now here’s a real blast from the past showing this same kitchen in the year 2000! These counters weren’t new when we moved into this old house in 1998 so they got plenty of wear and tear and were ready to go. I never liked how dark the cabinets were and the effect they had on the whole kitchen/eating area and was happy when Dear painted them later and added the white square backsplash instead of blue wallpaper. The old black double oven was replaced with a new black double oven later in the 2000’s. Too bad I didn’t choose a stainless one when we replaced this old one. Sigh…
Here’s Dear and me in 2017 standing right where Dan was standing back in the year 2000 with his choo choo train cake.
I am thankful for our new quartz counter tops and subway backsplash. They brighten up our kitchen even more.
So my promise to show the before and after has now been kept. I’m starting off the New Year right. Hope all is well and you are warm and cozy in your neck of the woods.
Happy New Year from Seattle! The Space Needle is getting a face lift/renovation. They are saying there will be a glass see through observation floor. too. Here are this weeks questions for Wednesday Hodgepodge.
1. It’s that time of year again…time for Lake Superior University to present a list of words (or phrases) they’d like to see banished (for over-use, mis-use, or genera uselessness) in 2018. You can read more about the decision making process and word meaning here, but this year’s top vote getters are-
unpack, dish (as in dish out the latest rumor), pre-owned, onboarding/offboarding, nothingburger, let that sink in, let me ask you this, impactful, Cofefe, drill down, fake news, hot water heater (hot water doesn’t need to be heated), and gig economy
Which of these words/phrases would you most like to see banished from everyday speech and why? Is there a word not on the list you’d like to add?
I’ve not heard some of these words or phrases. I’m not tired of any of these…yet. I’ve not been following a lot of news these days. I had to look up some of them to see what they mean.
2. What’s something you need to get rid of in the new year?
Stuff…lots of stuff. But what stuff? What stuff will I miss when I move if I get rid of it? What stuff will just be a bother to move? What stuff is junk and what stuff is keepsake worthy?
3. Where do you feel stuck?
See question #2.
4. January is National Soup Month. When did you last have a bowl of soup? Was it made from scratch or from a can? Your favorite canned soup? Your favorite soup to make from scratch on a cold winter’s day?
I had a delicious bowl of Dear’s Tomato Rice Soup on Christmas Eve, made from scratch. Dear makes that soup. The soup I like to make from scratch is Borsch (Borscht) or Spinach Borsch or Lopsha (all soups from my Russian Heritage). The photo above is of my Borsch. My favorite canned soup is Cream of Mushroom to use it as an addition in other recipes.
When someone has a sore throat or a cold at this old house we like to get Hot and Sour Soup from a local Chinese take-out. It a nice spicy burn going down and clears the sinuses!
5. Tell us one thing you’re looking forward to in 2018.
Knowing what property we will be moving into would be very helpful to my dilemma in question #2.
6. Insert your own random thought here.
My favorite word for 2017 is Grandmother/Baba. This little one awarded me that title by being formed by God and born to our son and daughter-in-law. Thank you God and Father for this sweet gift.
I’ll be linking up to Wednesday Hodgepodge with Joyce From This Side of the Pond. She asks the questions and we provide the answers.
This is one of those posts that is for my own brain to keep this past year in a kind of order. These collages are prompts for my memory.
January is the only month I’m giving a full collage to because it was filled with family events in California. Joe and Hannah’s wedding at an orchid farm in Goleta, a family baby shower for Jamie and Addy, the Getty Museum, the funeral of a best friend’s mom where I was reunited with lots of old friends and beach time with family. Vera visited the Pacific Northwest and we went to Snoqualmie Falls and the Chihuly Glass Museum.
Dear and I took some short and long road trips and had some nice walks.
Family times in Colville and in Seattle throughout the year before and after Addy was born.
Josh and Laura
Katie and Andrew
Dan and Jamie and now Dan, Jamie and Addy.
Addy May
Uncle Josh and Addy
Addy May
Mommy, Daddy and Addy
Auntie Katie and Uncle Andrew with Addy
Auntie Laura with Addy.
Gramps and Addy
Gramps, Baba and Addy
Baba and Addy
May in California for Pop’s 94th birthday, Washington tulips, cherry blossoms, Japanese Garden, Magnuson Park, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, summer visits from nieces and nephews and sisters, birthday parties, fall colors.
I’ve had some thoughts about the New Year but nothing that is worthy of sharing yet. Our first day of the New Year was slow for me and as usual Dear was busy working on our master bath remodel while I watched the Rose Parade. After the parade I tried out a new salsa recipe to post later this month and then I watched the Rose Bowl game. That game was one of the best bowl games I’ve seen in years. Hope you had a good day.
I’m experimenting and seeing if I can close comments on this post.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 