Category Archives: Jaymison Joshua

Time is Passing Hodgepodge

The two guys in this photo above celebrate birthdays this week.

Thank you Joyce From This Side of the Pond for Wednesday Hodgepodge! Click over to join in the fun.

1. April 13th is National Scrabble Day…are you a fan? 

Yes, I enjoy Scrabble. Haven’t played in ages!

Do you enjoy word games in general? 

Yes, mostly.

What’s an eight letter word that tells us something about your life currently?

Peculiar; unusual, or particular or special. We are heading into a period of hospitality at our Country Bungalow that does not involve biological family. We are confident that it will be a blessing as we adjust in the month of May and into part of June.

2.  Do you have a junk drawer? Is it full? Do you know what’s in it? What’s in it? 

Yes, yes, and yes. It’s full of things like keys, tape measures, charging wires, and junk! Thank you so much for this question as it caused me to clean out that junk drawer and make it more useable!

3. When does time pass quickly for you? When does it pass slowly? 

When our family is all together, time passes quickly.

Time passes slowly when I’m awake in the night at 2am and not able to get back to sleep.

4. These eight vegetables are in season during spring-asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, celery, collard greens, garlic, herbs. What’s your favorite? Any on the list you refuse to eat? Last one on the list you ate? 

Favorite would probably be carrots. I wouldn’t refuse any of these but I’m not a fan of collard greens. On Monday we had some asparagus, carrots and new potatoes roasted.

5. What’s the oldest thing you own? Tell us about it. 

Dear has a French Violin from the 1700’s. That is old and probably the oldest thing in our home. Dear’s dad got it from someone when Dear was 10 or 11 and decided he wanted to take violin lessons. Dear’s dad Rex has always acquired interesting things. Our baby grand piano which we got from Dear’s folks is over a hundred years old.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

This little guy turns 4 this weekend and we will celebrate him with Dinosaurs. Time flies when you have Grands!!

All of our kids will be together this weekend and on Friday evening we’ll start things off celebrating our Son-in-law’s birthday which happens to be today. Happy Birthday Andrew. Can’t wait to celebrate you on Friday!

Thankful that you stopped by to read this post and leave a comment.

Easter Monday

Recovering from a glorious Easter day.

We had a little rain just in time for the Easter Egg hunt. That didn’t deter the Grands at all.

When I get my photos together I’ll share more. Didn’t take one photo of the Easter Brunch we had at church. It went well and we had good help so that was a huge relief. We had close to 200 come through for the brunch. For the service we had a full sanctuary and overflow in the gym.

Hope you all have a good week!

The Rest of Last Weekend

On Saturday the 18th, we moved from the birthday party of one of the youngest in our family to celebrate the oldest in our family, me. Our kids made soup and salad and even baked a loaf of marbled rye for us to enjoy for dinner. After dinner we enjoyed strawberry shortcake. Before the cake was cut we had the obligatory blowing out of a few candles.

I had the best helpers to help blow out the candles.

This guy had a full day of watching others open presents.

I got puzzle piece sorter trays, a puzzle subscription, a framed bouquet of flowers that represent all the months of our family birthdays. Names are written on the stems and some leaves.

Josh asked for silly faces and two of the five obliged. Time for the littles to go home with their parents and for the older folk to hit the sack after a full day of celebrating.

We gathered on Sunday for breakfast at Dan and Jamie’s and we all enjoyed some time outside ending with a nice walk down the driveway and up again.

Our Westside kids hopped into their car and headed back across the mountains for home.

I’m adding this next collage for my benefit.

Love the delight captured in Addy’s face at her ‘friends’ party a week prior to the family party. The bakery owner made those cute unicorn cookies.

Back to the Present: After a few sunny days with temps up into the 50’s we are having a brief cold snap with possible rain in the mix. Looking forward to warmer days next week and hopefully I’ll be able to finish clearing our planters of their old growth. It will be a quiet weekend after our very busy one. Hope you all have a nice weekend.

Cake, Presents and Party Games!

This money roll from Granny Great and Jim was sooo much fun!

It was so sweet that she tried to read each card before diving into the gift.

Our card read, “Baba and Gramps thank God that He made you and that we get to love you forever!”

Auntie Lolo and Uncle Josh bought the birthday dress, amazing sequenced unicorn jacket and shoes for Addy which was her birthday outfit.

We played a game where we had to hold a plate on top of our heads and attempt to draw a unicorn or a rainbow without taking the plate off of our heads. Addy was the judge and she looked at each drawing carefully and chose the unicorn winner and the rainbow winner…

The winners!

Outside for unicorn ring toss!

Brother preferred riding his jeep.

This party was over and we went home where our kids had planned another meal for dinner and cake for my belated birthday celebration. The fun was constant from our Friday St. Patrick’s day meal through Sunday breakfast before our ‘Westside’ kids drove home. That will be another post.

Addy is Six!

Addy had a wonderful family birthday party on Saturday a couple days before her actual birthdate. We gathered at noon and enjoyed good food, a couple of games, birthday cake and presents. This is the people post. Tomorrow will be the present, cake and candle post.

We love you dear Addy and are so thankful we get to celebrate you in person.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

Putting together the balloon arch. Thank you Aunticorns!

Aunticorn: Like a Normal Aunt, But More Awesome.

Uncle Joshie and Auntie Lolo.

Addy’s Mommy created this amazing Unicorn Cake. If you haven’t guessed already, Unicorns were the theme for this party.

Granny and Granny Great

4 generations on the top and Uncle Scott and Aunt Rhonda on the bottom.

Gramps and Baba

Charcuterie, rainbow veggies, and rainbow fruit.

The birthday girl, food, company, and weather was magical, just like unicorns. More birthday fun tomorrow.

Looking Back Seventy Two Years…

Some thoughts and collages looking back on my Seventy Second Birthday.

Lived in proximity to the Pacific Ocean for 72 years anywhere from a couple miles away to now over 400 miles away. I’m a West Coast Girl.

A city girl for 67 years.

A born again believer in Jesus Christ for 60 years.

Sadie Sadie married lady for 48 years.

A most thankful mom for 44 years.

A grateful grandmother for 6 years.

A country gal for 4-1/2 years.

Thanking the LORD for His steadfast love to me and my family. The best eternal gift I have received is my redemption with so many added blessings through the years some in the form of trials. Many sweet earthly gifts, too. Pressing on and looking to my future hope.

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever, Amen.” Jude 1:24

We had a lot of rain on Monday and today we might get some sunshine breaking through. That will be nice for our day in Spokane for shopping and eating at a new spot to us.

The Kneelers ~ Woodstock

One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to walk through the older churches and cathedrals. This is the easiest when traveling in England because there are so many and they seem to be more readily open to visitors. One of the things that has stood out when walking through are beautifully stitched kneelers. At St Mary Magdalene in Woodstock there are over 200 kneelers! That is the most I’ve seen anywhere in my travels and visits to churches.

The brochure I picked up in the church about the kneelers was photographed so I could share the information easier for my record here. I was going to make collages of the kneelers that caught my eye but after reading about all the work involved in creating one of them it seemed to me they were worthy of being presented singly.

Here is the church tower kneeler, the Winston Churchill and one I think might be part of the Blenheim Connection

The following give honor to the Lord, the Bible and Prayer.

Then we move on to more community minded themes…

 

And from the state where Dear and I were born and raised. We were surprised when we spotted the California Kneeler.

 

That’s just a small sampling of the kneelers during our visit on Wednesday September 21st, 2022.

Do you enjoy needlework?

Back to the Present: On Sunday we enjoyed our Sunday services and made a stop on the way home to buy some Deli Salads to go with the 2 racks of ribs we put in the oven. The ribs were pre-seasoned from Costco and turned out fall off the bone delicious. We watched the first half of the Super Bowl game and then hit the record button. Since 2 racks of ribs are more than we could eat, we dropped a rack off at our Colville kids for their dinner before we headed to our Evening service at church. Back at home after church we watched the last 10 seconds of the game and saw that the Kansas Chiefs won. Congratulations to them. I’ve got to say that I really didn’t understand half of the commercials and we didn’t watch the half time show. We got a text with photos of our Grands enjoyed the ribs!

Ribs enjoyed in two households for the win!

Catching Up

It’s time for a little catch-up with my two favorite Grands.

This little guy was under the weather and finally was feeling good enough to smile.

Homeschooling ‘hands on’ experience in learning, E is for Explorer. So thankful that our DIL is committed to this Labor of Love.

Hooray, it’s Friday. Have a good weekend everyone.

Love in Action Hodgepodge

It’s Wednesday and time for the Hodgepodge where Joyce From This Side of the Pond asks the questions for us to answer.

1. Something you’ve done recently that might be considered a labor of love? 

There are lots of obvious things we do everyday that are more routine and learned like Dear making me coffee every morning or me washing his clothes.

One recent thing that isn’t routine is helping at a funeral. There are a lot of behind the scenes tasks that need to be done. If you’ve never been part of these tasks you wouldn’t know about what they involve. For the service you need a memorial table set up. You need to be around to receive any flowers that are delivered before the service. You need to pick up and make sure the sanctuary is clean after the service. When a meal is involved for the family there are preparing, setting up tables, setting out the food, and then waiting till all the eating and visiting is over to clean up. Washing up, drying up, taking tablecloths home to wash, breaking down tables and putting them away, folding chairs and putting them away. Just an average assessment of the hours it takes for volunteers to help in this way is 6-8 hours. I think that qualifies as a labor of love for the grieving family who need extra care and comfort at this time.

2. What’s one thing you love about being the age you are now? 

Being at the age where grandchildren are a part of our lives.

3. What do you value more: careful planning or the freedom to be spontaneous? Elaborate.

My husband reminded me of all of our car purchases and how spontaneous they were. Yikes. No planning. Here’s how the ‘planning’ went; we need a car that will get us safely over the mountain passes, we like Toyotas, let’s look at Rav’s, the dealer has a couple good used ones on the lot. We pick one of the two. We drive away with it. All in one day with no serious planning and investigating, etc. etc.

For a trip with the two of us I’d say careful planning leads to more spontaneous freedom. If we know where we are going and where we are staying our brains are free to enjoy things along the way that haven’t been planned. Does that make sense? I can enjoy spontaneous freedom in small doses on major trips.

4. A home cooked meal or a fancy restaurant? pink or red? watch the sunrise or watch the sunset? wine and cheese or champagne and chocolate? 

There’s a time and a place for all of these choices. We’ve enjoyed home cooked meals and meals at a fancy restaurant when the timing is right. Sometimes pink and sometimes red and sometimes the two together. Starting the day with the sunrise is amazing and rounding a corner to see the sunset is glorious. Let’s start off with a little wine and cheese and end the meal with a chocolate and champagne.

5. What’s your definition of romance? Are you a ‘romantic’? 

Romance is more touchy feely and emotional to me and I’m not that. I do love deeply and my actions speak from that realm and not the romantic realm.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Even though I don’t count my self as a romantic, I do enjoy setting romantic tables.