Category Archives: Colville

Willow

Andrew and Katie were given permission to bring their cat Willow with them for Thanksgiving. This was a first for us and the first cat in our Country Bungalow.

She had many new discoveries to make and routes to enjoy that no human could.

There were two rooms where the doors were closed and she was denied access. She became obsessed with wanting to get into our room one night and we saw her little paw under our door and then she rattled the door and meowed. Hilarious.

She knew where she could hide when the grands were here and were playing their hardest.

She survived and by the end of her time with us was making a little contact with me and Auntie Lolo. We’ll see if she wants to come back at Christmas.

Welcome to December!

30 Days Hath November Hodgepodge

Here we are at the end of November Hodgepodge. Thank you Joyce From This Side of the Pond!

Our yards have been covered with snow since November the 7th.

1. Sum up your November in ten words or less. 

November had a scary start and a grateful, peaceful end.

2. Are you hosting any holiday parties this year? Attending any? Party pooper, party animal, or life of the party…where do you land when it comes to parties? 

No, we are not hosting any holiday parties this year.

We will be attending our first Christmas Party on Sunday December 4th in Chilliwack, Canada. Hopefully the weather will settle down a bit for our drive to Spokane for our flight on Saturday and then our drive from Bothell to Abbotsford on Sunday. It will be our first time back in Canada since the beginning of ‘you know what’. We are so looking forward to being with the Mennonite Girls Can Cook and their hubbies! We will miss our two girls that live in Manitoba for this event.

The last MGCC party we were able to attend was in early December 2019 and this was one of the amazing desserts we enjoyed at that party.

I’m not a party animal or the life of the party or a party pooper. I do like to decorate for a themed party.

3. Do you purchase holiday clothing of any sort (sparkly tops, Christmas jammies, Santa suit, etc). 

There is a festive holiday top or two in my closet. This year with limited time to shop and limited sources I have nothing new. The old sparklies are too snug for comfort, sigh.

Comfy jammies all the way!

4. What’s your go-to recipe when you’re asked to bring an hors d’oeuvre to a party? 

I like to bring a charcuterie board of some sort. This year I’m trying Charlotte’s Red Pepper Jelly Tarts (Mennonite Girls Can Cook) for a ladies brunch I’m invited to on Thursday.

5. December 3rd is National Play Outside Day…what might you do to celebrate? 

We are flying from Spokane to Seattle that morning and will hopefully celebrate our daughter in law, Laura’s birthday in some way that day or evening.

6. Insert your own random thought here.  

In World Cup news, the U.S.A. advances to the round of 16 playing against Netherlands on Saturday. It was a brutal 2nd half but in the end we eliminated Iran and we move on.

Wednesday Morning Update on our overnight snowfall which is still falling this morning:

As of 7am we have 8-1/2 inches of new snow. Our neighbor has already plowed our driveway before she heads into work. We are very grateful for her and her kindness to us. I did hop out in my jammies and Uggs and slipped her some cash for gas!

UPDATE at 11:15 A.M.: We have a total of 11 inches of new snow. PTL Dear is healthy enough to shovel snow!

Lots of cancellations in Colville today because of snow. Happy we can be home and today is baking day for my event on Thursday. Perfect weather to bake!

Rounding Out November

Our Thanksgiving weekend was completed Monday morning when we said our goodbyes to Uncle Joshie and Auntie Lolo praying for a good drive home especially over the passes. Auntie Lolo shared more of her photos with us on their drive and I’m using them to round out November here on my blog. Thank you Lolo!

Our November has been a wintry one with temperatures in the teens and below freezing for a lot of the month.

Addy has a recital coming up in December. She’s the youngest in the bunch so she’ll start the evening off with this song she is practicing.

Addy is practicing her selfie skills in this one.

Me and my guy.

Uncle Joshie captured this shot.

Thank you for making the snowy drive to Colville and home again Uncle and Auntie. We miss you already!

Monday night I had a Women’s Ministry meeting at church with a light meal of appetizers shared. The meeting was short and then the fun task for the evening was decorating the church for Christmas. Our head of services gal was in charge of that and had already gotten a good start so the task was lighter than usual. I opted out of the decorating and headed home on the snowpacked/icy roads.

Today is a quiet day here at our Country Bungalow. We started the morning off at 10 degrees. Brrr. I’ll be watching World Cup Soccer today as the USA plays Iran. My parents were married in Iran and our oldest 2 sisters were born in Iran. We’ve mostly called that country Persia. So thankful God led our people out of that country back in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Our parents were the first of their family to immigrate to the USA in 1947.

Thankful for this quiet day and hope the predictions of up to 14 inches of snow into tomorrow morning is an exaggeration!

Sunday Last…

On Sunday October 23rd we had a church potluck to celebrate our Pastor’s 10 year Anniversary as Pastor of First Baptist Colville.

We have outgrown our gym at our facility so we rented the Ag Center at the Fairgrounds for this event.

One of the families at our church decorated the tables.

Since it was in honor of Pastor Dennis they went with a manly theme.

We surprised Pastor and Lori by flying in Dr. Jim Tillotson, president of Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Iowa to preach the sermon in the morning. We managed to keep this a secret until Dr. Tillotson stepped up on stage to speak. After the service our church family were to drive over to the Center with their Main Dish or Side Dish to share with everyone. I was way too busy to take a photo of the two rows of 4 tables which meant 48 feet of food brought to share.

This is Dear and Me while we were still fresh before the event began. Since the event wasn’t on our campus we had to haul a lot of things to the Ag Center and when the event was over, haul them back. Our day started at 7am and we were pulling into our driveway at 3:30 in the afternoon. We were going for a solid 7 hours. By cake cutting time my brain was not functioning well. That happens frequently when there are so many details to store in the brain and then the explosion of all the things that need to happen at the same time when you have 100 dishes arriving simultaneously!! When we got home on Sunday we put our feet up and and did a lot of sighing with gratitude. It was a successful event with 300 people fed and satisfied with food leftover.

The important thing was that Pastor and Lori were celebrated well and they enjoyed the love and surprises on this special day.

So thankful for the willing hands to step in and help in any way they could.

Not too Scary Hodgpodge

Time for Wednesday Hodgepodge. Where Joyce asks the questions for us to answer. Join in the fun HERE.

1. In two or three sentences describe yourself to someone who has never met you. 

I’m the daughter of Russian Immigrants and was raised in the Los Angeles area with my seven siblings. God chose to save me from my sins through Jesus Christ, His Son, who is my Lord and Savior when I repented in 1963. Happily married to Dear for 48 years where in the course of those years we have enjoyed our three children, their spouses and our two grandchildren, the cherries on the top.

2. Will you celebrate Halloween this year, and if so tell us how?

We will actually be going to a Reformation Conference Halloween weekend in Sandpoint, Idaho. On Halloween Monday also known as Reformation Day we will enjoy our grandchildren coming over and trick or treating at our door. They will be the only trick or treaters since living in the country on dark country roads we don’t have the usual city trick or treaters.

Let’s play this or that-chocolate candy or fruity candy?

Chocolate

Pumpkin seeds or pumpkin pie?

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Halloween party or scary movie?

Neither 🙂

Hay ride or corn maze?

We have a great corn maze here in Colville and the majority of our family enjoyed it together this past Saturday.

Carve a pumpkin or paint a pumpkin?

Carve a pumpkin.

3. What’s something that scared you when you were young? Are you still afraid? 

The movie King Kong. If I watched it today I’d probably laugh at the animation.

4. Your favorite soothing drink? 

Hendrick’s with cucumber and Fever tree elderflower tonic.

5. Are you thinking about Christmas yet?

Yes because we are planning a family trip in January which caused discussion about Christmas and reminding ourselves that we would not do ‘present overload’ and save our money for the trip.

Does this make you feel happy or stressed? 

Happy.

6. Insert your own random thought here.  

Not only is Ember the new puppy growing fast but our dear Grands are, too!

C is for Colville and The Corn Maze

Action Packed Friday and Saturday in our corner of Washington State.

A pair of our ‘Coast’ kids drove over arriving late on Thursday evening. On Friday morning our Colville kids/grands joined us for breakfast and afterwards they all helped me to clear out our front planters to get them ready for Winter. What a huge blessing that was. And we did that in the rain, another blessing. JJ thought it was fun to stand right under the stream of rain water running off the roof!

95% of the photos I’m sharing are taken by Auntie LoLo! She is the best at capturing the moments.

The guys emptied several cart loads!

We all got dry clothes on. The kids enjoyed trying on Gramps’ Cub Scout caps. We warmed up over a nice hot bowl of borsch for lunch with a loaf of fresh baked bread by Jamie.

Dinner at our Colville Kids’ home with plans to meet at the Corn Maze when it opened on Saturday.

This is the first year of our annual Corn Maze adventure that the guys came, too, since they weren’t hunting this year.

Since Auntie Katie wasn’t with us this year Addy took on the job of Map navigation.

You can see that the weather was perfect for our trudge through the stalks of corn.

Addy had help navigating from Uncle Joshie and her daddy.

Sons

Daughters-in-law and in our hearts!

Checking our bearings…

Making great time finding the 10 stations!

The final post! We made it in record time.

Time to pick out some pumpkins to carve.

Back to the mountain for pumpkin carving and lunch.

Before naptime Dan lit the fire in the pit he built to have some Smores.

A perfect couple of days in beautiful Colville with family. Thank you Auntie Lolo for the photos!

As busy as Friday and Saturday were, Sunday was coming.

My Pumpkin Brain Hodgepodge

Since Joyce brought up pumpkin in her Wednesday Hodgepodge questions for today, I borrowed this photo from our daughter-in-law at the first pumpkin patch visit of this Autumn.

1. Thursday (Oct 13) is National Train Your Brain Day. What do you do to keep your brain in tip top shape? Is it helping?

Bible study keeps your brain sharp. When my Mother-in-law was living with us and signs of dementia started showing she was the sharpest when she was studying her Bible everyday and attending a Bible Study weekly. The Holy Spirit in followers of Jesus Christ illuminates the Word of God for us and helps us to discern and gives us understanding. The Word of God is living and enduring and it keeps my brain in tip top shape while teaching me how to live on this earth.

2. You can sit with anyone in the world and ‘pick their brain’…whom do you choose? Tell us why? 

If we are talking about a living person…

Patricia MacArthur, wife of John MacArthur one of my favorite living pastors who is 83 and still preaching at the same church he started at 53 years ago. She has lived through ministry and suffering and I know there is a lot of wisdom to glean from her.

If I could choose someone who has died…

I’d choose my maternal grandfather who I never got to meet because he was killed in Persia after my parents immigrated here and before the rest of my mother’s family immigrated.

3. What’s something happening in the world (or your corner of it) right now that you have trouble ‘wrapping your brain around’? 

Well you have opened up a can of worms here for sure. There is so much happening in this world that is unbelievable to me.

Calling good evil and evil good.

The whole gender identity stupidity.

The Border Crisis

The escalation of crime with no punishment for wrongdoing.

I can go on and on…

4. On a scale of 1-10 where do you fall in the pumpkin fanclub? (1=blech, 10=make it all pumpkin all the time) Tell us something delicious you’ve tasted recently that had some pumpkin in it somewhere. 

I’m pretty much in the middle. I enjoy some things pumpkin but mostly baked items like cookies and bars or a good spicy soup. I’m not a fan of drinking pumpkin flavored coffee or any kind of flavored coffee, etc.

5. Share a favorite song, book, or movie with an autumn title, setting, or vibe. 

I drew a blank on this one. I know I’ve read books or book series that included fall but nothing with that theme in the title. I did find this song by Nat King Cole…

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Speaking of Autumn…

I took this photo in Woodstock, U.K. on the grounds of Blenheim Palace on September 22nd of this year, the first day of Autumn. Winston Churchill was born at the Palace in the Autumn, on November 30th, 1874. He didn’t live at Blenheim but his parents were visiting Blenheim and the Mrs. went into labor and he ended up being born there. There are many tributes to him at the Palace and on the grounds and in the village of Woodstock, too.

Thank you Joyce for the Hodgepodge.

 

While We Were Away

While we were across the pond two of our Coast kids drove across the Cascades to visit our Colville kids. We were happy that they could use their key to use their guestroom in our home as usual even though we weren’t home.

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Uncle Joshie is such a good sport!

My blog is my journal and scrapbook and photo album of our family events and I wanted to document this time with our Daughter-in-law’s wonderful photos! Those little ones grow so fast.

I’m at our Women’s Retreat that started last night at a Bible camp at Waitt’s Lake which is about 50 minutes away. Hope your weekend is going well.

 

Smoky Sunrise

On Saturday morning we walked the Rotary Trail at Sunrise.

The skies reflect the fact that there are fires in our area.

Our conditioning for walking in England is going well. Hopefully we can continue these walks after we return because it’s good for our overall health.

The small white streak against the mountains above is a plane taking off from the small Colville airport.

At the end of our walk is this section of wild flowers blooming. It’s fun to see the poppies.

We walked the trail again on Sunday at dawn and the sun came up above the mountains at the end of our walk.

It was good to be in the House of the Lord on Sunday to declare together with the ‘Body’ that our Lord and Savior is Worthy of all our praise and adoration.

Hope your extended Labor Day weekend is going well and you will have rest from your labors today!