This is another tribute to Dear/Greg upon his 70th birthday. Some photos with our children in their growing up years. Some are out of order and I haven’t transferred all the photos from when our kids were young onto the computer so these are limited but more than you might be interested in. 🙂
Joshua’s baby dedication at Huntington Beach E.V. Free church with pastor Bob Thune.
Daniel’s baby dedication at Huntington Beach E.V. Free church with Pastor Bob Thune.
For those who don’t miss a trick there isn’t a photo from Katie’s dedication but it did happen.
Our kids appreciate their dad and his wisdom, integrity and faithfulness.
We gathered in Colville with our local family and friends to celebrate Greg on his actual birthday.
Our kids made fish tacos and delicious salsas and guacamole to enjoy. We had bread pudding for dessert.
The ‘Grands’ enjoyed watching Gramps open his gifts.
Requests were sent out to friends and family to send a greeting to Greg and to send those greetings to our kids’ home so they could surprise him with a stack on his birthday. It worked and what a great stack of cards he received from siblings, nieces, nephews, friends and his own kids and grands.
A very special surprise gift from Canada arrived, too.
So thoughtful and generous. Thank you Terry and Lovella!
After we got home and were able to read each card I decided to display them so we could enjoy them all.
We loved the special artwork created by Addy and JJ.
Our sister-in-law, Kelly, is becoming quite the artist, too.
Several verses from the Bible were shared in the cards that Greg received from friends and family near and far.
Romans 15:13
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 41:10
fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Funny cards and serious cards were all appreciated!
Isaiah 40:31
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
Jeremiah 17:7-8
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
This next card made both of us laugh out loud!
It was quite a wonderful gift to receive all of these cards and to read the special greetings and memories in each of them. If any of you who sent cards are reading this post, thank you so much for taking time to write and send Greg these encouraging greetings!
We will celebrate with our ‘Coast Kids’ in Ireland!
A very Happy Birthday to my dear husband. He finally has entered my decade. Since this is his big 7-0, there will be lots of photos and memories of many of the seven decades of his life so far. He started out his life in the fifties. His only brother is four years older than him. He was raised in a Christian home in Southern California. His father was called up to heaven in 1985 and his mother joined his father in 1997.
Early years living on Cattaraugus in Culver City.
The bottom left photo has a description written on the back of the photo by his mom.
His maternal relatives lived in Colorado and came for visits.
Great Aunt Matilda from Kansas. She never forgot the birthdays of her nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews and sent a card on time. She even sent birthday greetings to the spouses of all. I was the recipient of many birthday greetings from her.
Uncle from Denver and Greg’s dad in the background.
Maternal grandparents and an uncle from Denver.
They moved to a house on Centinela and this was the house they lived in until after we were married.
When this photo was taken, he had no idea he’d end up marrying a Russian girl from the eastside of Los Angeles.
G-enerous with his time and talents and tools
R-eliable
E-xcellent work ethic
G-rounded in God’s Word
O-perating Engineer
R-esourceful
Y-ounger than me. 🙂
There will be much more to share in celebration posts to follow this one.
Happy Birthday, Greg. I’m so glad God created you and brought the two of us together to celebrate many birthdays together.
Getting photos ready for Greg’s milestone birthday tomorrow I came across this one of our boys and their dad. Puts a smile on my face.
Laughter is good medicine.
Thank you, Laura, for capturing this one!
The 2023-24 school year begins! So grateful for this Mom and our Grands.
And she will start the school year with one less tooth. The first tooth to come out! A second one will probably be ready to pull soon. Praying for God to bless them with knowledge and love of learning and that the learning will draw them closer to God and all He has done for them. Also praying that they will be obedient for their teacher!!
No Wednesday Hodgepodge this week.
Our annual Vacation Bible School was in the evenings the week of August 7th-11th. All the kids were divided into age groups with lessons appropriate to their age group.
The whole church was decorated to look like a medieval castle.
The lessons were all on The Armor of God from Ephesians 6.
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.
Our daughter-in-law was a helper each night along with over 125 other volunteers and 218 children throughout the 5 evenings. I was the t-shirt sales lady.
Everyone was exhausted after the five night 6:00 – 8:30 fun and games centered around the Word of God. We attended the closing program on Friday night and volunteers stuck around to take down all the VBS decorations. Hats off to all the volunteers! It was an amazing time for our church family to love and serve our community.
Then on Saturday night the 12th of August we met downtown at the Spaghetti factory for a birthday party for our Grands’ Granny.
It was a milestone birthday and we all enjoyed celebrating Linda.
JJ and Addy didn’t last long on the way home from Spokane and had a nice sleep as they were both exhausted from a busy week!
This week has been slow and quiet and uneventful which is a blessing.
Happy Friday everyone. The last couple days we have been socked in with smoke here in our area from fires mostly in Canada. Ash is even settling here. The air quality is not healthy and we have been staying in. Our Grands soccer and other outdoor activities were cancelled this week. We are hoping for improvement soon. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods.
Summer has been full of sunshine and some usual events and unusual events, too.
Fishing on the shore and throwing rocks is always fun.
Soccer camp is over but soccer teams have now formed and continue through August.
Our son Josh signed up for his first ever triathlon and his goal was to ‘not drown and to finish’. He achieved both and finished well. Laura was there to see it in person and document this epic achievement.
He was being cheered on from near and far!
We were all so impressed and happy that he could accomplish this goal. I was particularly happy he didn’t drown!
After all that excitement we were ready for a week of Vacation Bible School and that will be a separate post.
We are already at the middle of August and so many have started back to school already. It’s always hard for me to get my mind wrapped around that since I’m such a traditional school year kind of gal. Start up after Labor Day and end by or shortly after Father’s day! Happy days of summer to all of you.
On Monday of our Twins’ birthday long weekend celebrations seven of us piled in two vehicles and drove south to Waco. I was the driver of the ‘sisters’ car. The other car had Leonard as the driver with Greg and our niece Michelle.
Both Leonard and Lana were with us on this trip and they both told us we had to stop at Czech Stop for Kolaches on our way to Waco.
We were all so glad we stopped. I was amazed at the variety of baked goods, something I haven’t seen in a long time, and the prices were so good compared to bakeries I’ve been in lately.
I chose the cream cheese apricot kolache. It met all my expectations.
My brother expertly navigated us to the Silos, the Magnolia property. We found good parking on the street. As we walked the one block to the first building we heard my name called out and amazingly met up with Ken, Heidi and Nikki as they arrived the same time we did from a different part of the Dallas suburbs.
We’ve been the best of friends since the early 70’s!
Let the shopping commence…
Some of us found more to buy than others of us.
That Sweet Tea was a must and a lifesaver on this hot day. I bought the Mason-Dixon, half sweet and half not. 🙂
On the way back to our cars we stopped at the Magnolia Bakery to buy some baked goods.
Before we got back on the highway we met each other for an afternoon meal at Milo. The restaurant served us well.
Our cars switched around passengers so that we each could go to our prospective lodgings for the night.
Greg and I spent our last night in Steve and Lana’s guest suite and headed out for the airport on Tuesday morning for our flight home. We were able to drop our sister Vera at the airport, too, since our flights were close together but going to different parts of the USA. No delays and we made it all the way home after our hopper from Seattle to Spokane and 70 mile drive up to Colville.
Thank you, LORD, for an amazing time in Texas with so many of our loved ones. We do not take it for granted that we can gather and enjoy each other and encourage each other in our Faith. Thanks be to God for his goodness to us through thick and thin.
On Sunday in Texas twenty three of us gathered at Watermark Church for the 9am service.
The service was excellent with worship songs that glorified God and a message from the Word of God that challenged me. It was good to be together and to worship together.
After the service we toured part of the area where Leonard and Mandy work at Watermark. Such an impressive property that functions well.
From church we gathered at Leonard and Mandy’s for brunch. We had Mandy’s famous John Wayne Egg casserole and fruit and our sister Kathy had her hand in making blintzes for all of us, too. (Thanks for the picture, Michelle) This shows the first stage. After this stage they are filled with a lightly sweetened cheese filling (ricotta, or dry cottage, or farmer’s cheese) and rolled up and put into a baking dish and baked with butter and half and half. Rich and delicious. We were all full and content.
Photo above is from another time to show what the pans look like before they are baked. The photo below is how they might look when they are on your plate ready to eat.
We played a game answering questions about the birthday twins that Leonard and daughter Hope created on a phone app. We all logged in and answered the questions on our individual phones. It was fun and easy to include 20 people in a game sitting all over the living area.
Sunday evening we went out for Mexican food at Mariano’s Hacienda, two tables of eight and one table of seven.
After dinner our niece and nephew took us to the airport car rental center and I rented a car for our trip to Waco on Monday. More about that day in another post. Another good long day in Texas.
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The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 