Category Archives: Grandchildren

Feis Day Two

Day Two of the Feis was Deirdre Haran Abeid Day.

The Haran School of Irish Dance was founded in Kettle Falls by Deirdre Abeid over 45 years ago. Her daughters Caitlin Trusler and Claire Worley have continued in her footsteps, running the Kettle Falls and Spokane branches of Haran for the past 25 years.

All signed in and ready to dance

 

There are breaks between the soft shoe dances and hard shoe dances.

Both Addy and JJ appreciated Uncle and Auntie being at the Feis on Sunday. I appreciated it, too, as Laura could get up close and take photos and videos that I was not able to.

Soft shoe, hard shoe and then it was time for another soft shoe competition.

There is a trick to lacing the soft shoes!

When all the traditional jigs and reels and treble and Hornpipe were completed it was time for the creative water/sea dance. The dancers who wanted to participate in this dance had to come up with their own costume and dance.

This is the outfit conception that Addy came up with thinking about water, ‘under the sea’. Here was the completed outfit Addy and her Mom created.

It is so good to have the support team of mom and dad in the dancers corner.

Waiting for their solo performances. I wish I could share the video Auntie Lolo took of Addy’s dance but I’m unable to on my blog. It was a wonderful performance and we found out while we were out to lunch that Addy had received a 1st place for her outfit and dance!

We gathered for lunch before taking Uncle and Auntie back to the airport for their flight home.

After lunch on their way home Dan and Jamie stopped by the convention center to pick up Addy’s prize for her creative under the sea dance and costume.

Her 1st place trophy!

After getting home Addy donned all her awards from her first Feis!

Well done, Addy. Your hard work was rewarded. Hmmm, I wonder if she’ll want to sign up for another Feis?

Thanks for coming along and for all your kind comments.

Adieu to Summer Hodgepodge

A summer sea scape dinner party to celebrate the end of summer from our deck in our former home. This is also a nod to Addy’s creative under the sea outfit at the Feis. (End of post)

It’s time for Wednesday Hodgepodge and Joyce has a fresh batch of questions to prove it.

Dinner parties were mentioned in one of our questions so here are a collection of dinner parties from the past with the Mennonite Girls Can Cook in Canada.

1.  Are you more life of the party or more party pooper? If your answer is somewhere in the middle which side of the middle do you lean towards more? 

I think I’m a little above middle, more toward life than pooper. 🙂 I might be one of the first ones to say goodnight these days.

Birthday party, beach party, cocktail party, dinner party, charity fundraiser, surprise party, costume party, garden party, Christmas party, reunion...what’s your favorite kind of party? 

Dinner party and Christmas Party are my favorites!

2. Cheese, wine, and balsamic vinegar all improve with age. What would you personally add to the list? 

Personally I believe human beings, relationships, marriage, and friendships should all improve with age. Most importantly, my faith and trust in Christ should improve with age and I should be more like Christ each new year. This is challenging and humbling and something I’d never attain to without the Holy Spirit, our Helper.

3. How do you feel about your birthday? How do you want to be celebrated? Or don’t you? 

I enjoy my birthday regardless of fanfare. I do enjoy having special meals with loved ones to celebrate my birthday. I’m past needing or wanting gifts other than good times with family and friends. A card or note or text is gift enough.

4. What remarkable feat, interesting piece of trivia, or historical event occurred on your birth day and month? Not necessarily your same birth year, just the same date/month. 

March 14th: It is Pi (π) day, 3.14.

In 1942 Anne Miller became the first American patient to be treated with Penicillin on this day.

5. Share two good things about your life right now. 

Right now my health is good (I do have some typical old lady aches and pains) and my life in the country is good. I’m where I’m supposed to be. It is so good to be in the same town as our grandchildren.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

On Friday I’ll share more about Addy’s first Irish Feis!

This outfit isn’t representative of an Irish Feis but it played a special role in a creative dance challenge (Water, Under the Sea) at the end of the festival (feis).

NE Washington Parade and Fair 2025

Our kids enjoyed the parade and fair on Saturday the 23rd of August. It was a hot day.

Dan had to work and Greg and I stayed home to livestream John MacArthur’s memorial service.

After the parade on Main street, these 5 walked a short distance to the fair.

In the evening we were together at our place. Everyone was tired from the full sunny day and we ended early with plans to meet up at church on Sunday morning.

We filled a row at church and after the service we took one last photo in the lobby!

Josh and Laura had a long and arduous journey home because of some road work and tire issues and we were all happy to get the text that said home at last!

Thank you to Josh and Laura for all the photos!

Friday Last

The next couple of posts are catch up posts from our family times August 22-24. Friday August 22nd dawned with a trip to the golf course for the guys. After breakfast, Laura made her way to Dan and Jamie’s with some projects for Addy and JJ to enjoy. I stayed home to bake a dessert for Friday’s dinner and our celebration of Josh and Laura’s anniversary.

After golf and craft projects, the rest of the day was spent at Dan and Jamie’s playing, walking and having meals together.

An after dinner walk is always good.

 

After the sun set we enjoyed some table games, Phase 10 and Skyjo.

We are really enjoying this game and recommend it.

We introduced it to our family earlier this year and continue to introduce it to others, too.

Hooray, Laura shared the actual shot of all of us playing Skyjo on this Friday evening on Bayles Mountain. Thank you, Laura, for this photo and all your photos!

Saturday was a full day with the NE Washington Fair  and parade. That will be a full photo post tomorrow.

One Day At a Time

Three days of nonstop fun here in Colville. I’ll cover one day at a time. On Thursday morning, Addy, JJ and a friend had the great experience of the local escape room. They managed to escape in 42 minutes. They had to find clues, crack codes, solve puzzles with a time limit. Addy felt she could have cut that time down if she was alone.

Jamie was able to watch them via a computer screen while they worked in the room to escape.

On Thursday evening we met at the fields for Addy and JJ’s soccer games. As per usual, Dan was called on to referee JJ’s game. Josh and Laura had rolled in from the other side of the mountains in time to be able to enjoy seeing both JJ and Addy play and to have other fun at the fields, too. What fun to see all ‘our boys’ on the same field!

JJ was ready to protect the goal.

Addy’s team played their game on a field just beyond JJ’s field and it made it easy to switch between the games at half time. Addy’s game started late because of a referee snafu so we were all able to be on the same field for a good portion of her game.

What a special treat to have Uncle Joshie and Auntie LoLo at the games.

Jimbo’s Ice Cream truck knows just where to come for nonstop business. We ended the evening with ice cream treats.

That was Thursday August 21st. We still had a few more days to fill with fun while Uncle and Auntie were visiting. Those posts will appear later this week.

Here we are in the last week of August. For summer lovers it’s a hard pill to swallow. Hope whoever you are you can take each new day and all it has to offer you in stride and in peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

 For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

2 a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3 a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4 a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5 a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6 a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7 a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8 a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

News in the Neighborhood

Another year of swimming lessons are in the books!

Our museum unveiled a new mural that was recreated from a black and white photo taken 100 years ago of Kettle Falls area on the Columbia River as it was before the Grand Coulee Dam was completed downstream in 1941. This area is now under water.

In other news Greg replaced our aged and failing gate this past week.

As usual he does great work!

The 2025 soccer season is on full kick ahead. Addy and JJ are busy on the pitch.

It’s a ‘kick’ to see their dad referring, too.

Hope y’all have a great Friday!

Oh Deer

We’ve had many visits from bucks, does and fawns lately.

A regular stag party on this evening.

This little one tried to crash the party but was called away quickly by it’s mother.

On another day there was another gathering.

Then we had several visits from the fawns and their mother.

We also had a visit from our hawk.

On to our humans!

Our Grands had a great week of Vacation Bible School.

Jamie worked hard as a leader all week! Marvel at Jesus, Live for His Glory!

The weekend ended with a birthday dinner party for our Grands Granny. Our Grands are blessed with lots of adult love.

Things are heating up around here again this week. I’ll have to resume some watering. What’s going on in your corner!

Of Boats and Birthdays…

Tuesday July 29th was my brother and sister’s birthday. They are twins. It was fun to have one of the ‘twins’ with us to celebrate his birthday this year. Our Colville kids own a boat and the plan for this Tuesday was for them to treat their uncle and cousin to a day on the water. Their boat is not a yacht so Greg and I stayed home for boat time.

While the crew were boating I baked a cake and prepared our taco dinner. The candle on the cake had a small explosion of edible confetti that was fun. Note to self: read the directions before you light the candle. For the first candle I didn’t read the fact that I was supposed to put in the edible sprinkles ahead of lighting the candle. Thankfully there were two candles in the package and Jamie loaded up the second candle and Dan lit it for a successful ‘second take’ on singing and lighting and exploding!

The evening was capped off with a game of SkyJo which has become our ‘go to’ card game this year.

Wednesday morning was pack up day with a trip to the airport for our visitors. We stopped for breakfast at Frank’s Diner and another stop at Spokane Falls for a quick view before we continued on to the airport.

The Spokane International airport was a short ten minute drive from here. We dropped off my brother and nephew with hugs and good wishes. ‘God be with you till we meet again’.

We still had to make a couple shopping stops on the way back to Colville for supplies for our Vacation Bible School. After stopping at the Chef’s Store and Costco we drove the rest of our 70 mile trip to Colville with views of clouds that warned of Thunderstorms that were ready to burst at any minute.

We are thankful for the time we could all spend with my brother and nephew in our corner of the world.

Dallas to Colville

My brother and our nephew traveled to Colville to enjoy a Father/Son time with us. Leonard is the youngest of my siblings being born 6 minutes after his twin, Lana. Andrew has an older sister, Hope. Hope was enjoying some cousin time in California. We stopped at The Master’s Brewpub in Deer Park on the way home from the airport for a meal.

As we continued home, we passed many sunflower fields. Andrew was born in the Ukraine so we pulled off the highway to get a photo of him with the sunflowers. They are Ukraine’s national flower and are associated with peace, the sun, and the warmth of the Ukrainian spirit.

Once home we had a walk about and played some Corn Hole.

On Sunday we met up with our family at church.

After church we enjoyed Greg’s famous Swedish Pancakes.

Sunday dinner was on Bayles Mountain. What a treat we had, lamb gyros with homemade gyros and tzatziki. Homemade Ice Cream with huckleberry sauce was our dessert. Our kids picked all the huckleberries themselves.

Jamie remembered to take the group shots and we are grateful for them. Andrew is our children’s cousin. He is cousin once removed to our grands.

Driving down our kids’ driveway for home we stopped for our traditional spot for a photo.

I’ll share our Monday and Tuesday doings in another post.

We had some intense thunderstorms yesterday and our temps dropped by 20 degrees by the time the storms ceased.

Happy August to you all.

Wrapping Last Week Up

At soccer camp last week we had intermittent showers and winds and a beautiful rainbow!

It was a very full week with soccer camp in the evening and golf camp in the morning, not to mention Irish Dance practice, too!

Our road is being asphalted from highway 395 all the way to highway 25. That’s about 20 miles worth. There are times where we have to wait at our driveway for a pilot car to let us out. We have to plan our trips wisely and also leave plenty of time in advance if we have an appointment. The road is looking real nice and it will be great when it is all done.

We have been enjoying my brother and his son being with us since Saturday afternoon. I will have lots of posts to share soon.

I’ll leave you with some flowers that are blooming in our planters right now.

Enjoy the final days of July!