Category Archives: Jaymison Joshua

Easter Day 2021


It was a wonderful Easter Day because we were able to gather and worship our Risen Lord with our church family. We came home after a service filled with joy and a clear message of the Truth of the Gospel and God’s love for all.

When the rain ceased we went out to hide Easter eggs for the grands to hunt.

It was a very casual Easter table this year with paper plates for the first time in the history of our home.

Dear and I dressed up for Easter service and we had many in our church family taking a second look. We are generally very country casual.

The kids and grands arrived after naps and the first thing on the agenda was to let Addy and JJ hunt for the eggs we had hidden in the back area of our home.

Addy is a pro being 4 already and was off to the races. JJ found a good number, too. Next year he’ll give his big sister a lot more competition.

Finally JJ managed a slight smile for the camera.

Our kids on the ‘coast’ snapped this photo and sent it to us. They were able to gather at their church for Easter service, too.

It was a glorious day!

A Few More…

March is almost over and it’s going out like a Lion!

Auntie LoLo takes the best photos and then she is kind enough to share them.

Let’s dance Baba!

The photos were from Addy’s 4th Birthday party on March 20th.

On Sunday the 28th of March we enjoyed a Raclette meal with a family from church. After our meal their 3 elementary aged children enjoyed our Ninja Warrior Obstacle Course. Our grands will enjoy that for some years to come. Sunday night we had a wind event that lasted into Monday and most of our area lost power off and on through Monday. When we lose power here at our country bungalow we lose everything including the flow of water because we are on a well and the pump requires electricity. Thankfully we only lost power for a couple hours. During the outage I made some good progress on the Owl Puzzle. There is light at the end of that tunnel!

Happy Easter Week everyone. We are fortunate here in our neck of the woods to be able to have a Good Friday Service and a service on Easter Sunday. I’m so thankful that we can gather this Easter unlike last Easter.

Ninja Warriors

After church on Sunday March 21st everyone came over for Pelemeni (Russian Dumplings) with Spinach and fresh bread. After lunch everyone went out to work on setting up our new ninja obstacle course.

Testing…

Boys and sticks…

Mush baba, mush!

It was time for the littles to go home for their naps so we put off testing the course until Monday after breakfast.

Hope your weekend is going well.

Family Celebration for my 70th

A week ago nine of us met up in Spokane for my birthday dinner.

Three vehicles made their way to Spokane for our dinner reservation. Two from Colville and one rental car from the Spokane airport. My dear friend Jeanie sent me the 70 and Fabulous tiara and sash and I wore it happily. When we were directed to our table for 9 this beautiful bouquet of flowers was on the table.

Reading the card I was so surprised to see that they were from Lovella all the way in Canada. She arranged with our daughter in law to have them delivered to the restaurant by a local florist. A very sweet and thoughtful surprise. Thank you, Lovella.

Addy looked carefully at my tiara and then proceeded to draw a likeness of me with the tiara while we were finishing up our dinner at Churchill’s. I love it!

Laura’s mother sent me this apron for my birthday. How very thoughtful was that!? Thank you, Pat!

From the restaurant we all traveled north 70 miles back to Colville. We met up at Dan and Jamie’s and they had me sit down and get comfortable on the couch to watch a video of greetings from the 9 Mennonite Girls Can Cook in Canada, my siblings, Dear’s brother’s family, my nieces and nephews and some life long friends. I was overwhelmed and grateful. Jamie had the idea and Laura was able to contact everyone and put it all together. Laura added songs that my family have sung and she had recorded them a few years ago. I told my kids afterward that it was a lot nicer to view a tribute like this now instead of having that kind of video at my funeral. So remember no video at my funeral instead Sing together in worship, share the Gospel and then go eat!

When you are 70 you need posts like these to help you remember all the good times!

Party Fun

At the party some outdoor activities required safety goggles and safety ear muffs.

Peek a boo fun and someone has mastered the pouty lips!

Presents!

Time to try out a birthday gift before cake!

Another Happy Birthday for the books!

Our deer/dear Addy, we are so happy to be close enough to watch you grow. You are learning so many important things and we pray the things that are true will stay with you your whole life. We love you and Jesus loves you!

Deuteronomy 6:6-7

6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not depart from it.

It’s been a whirlwind 4 days here in the country. Our ‘Coast’ kids are back home. We got a lot of quality time in and we look forward to the next time we can be together. The dishwasher has been working overtime.

I have had very few minutes online and hope to catch up with you all in a day or two!

The Weekend

On Saturday we arrived to watch our grands at 8:00am and said goodbye to their mommy and daddy at 8:30. After playing for awhile boredom set in and since it was still drizzly outside we pulled out the Play Dough for some creative endeavors.

The sun broke through so after cleaning up the dough we bundled up for some outdoor time.

Our son rigged up a way to add a second swing so JJ and Addy could swing at the same time. It’s ingenious and we enjoyed singing lots of songs like Old MacDonald, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Jesus Loves the Little Children, 6 Little Ducks, The Wiseman Built His House Upon the Rock, The B-I-B-L-E, The Muffin Man, This Little Light of Mine.

Off the swings and into the sand.

Sand is nice but mud is muddy.

We played until it was time for lunch so we kicked off as much mud as we could, washed up our hands and got lunch ready.

Hide and Seek, A non Easter Egg Hunt, pretend play in Addy’s room and then it was time for a relaxing time watching Pippa the Pig until Mommy and Daddy arrived just before nap time. We said our goodbyes and headed home with our trailer.

We decided to have an early dinner at our non-favorite Mexican Restaurant in Colville. It was fun to see a couple of our friends there and my cousin with her family. It was good to catch up with them.

Later in the day our Daughter-in-law on the Coast sent these beautiful images with the snow geese congregating in Mount Vernon, Washington State.

Thank you Laura for sharing these amazing captures with me and letting me share them.

Our Sunday was quiet. We had a guest speaker at church and then we bumped into a couple from church and had lunch with them in Kettle Falls. Home again for more quiet looking out the window at hail, snow, hail and rain. Very undecided weather. Looks like we’ll have a lot more mud to deal with for a while.

Hope your weekend was good.

The Color of Our World

We are in that time of year where our world is predominately brown and green with a little white here and there. We live in the evergreen state so we expect to see green all year round.

We call it our muddy season.

Our grands are blessed to have parents that aren’t afraid of a little mud.

Soon enough lots of pretty color will be added to our world.

Adieu to February. Looking forward to March.

Sunny Snow Day

We had a sunny day on Wednesday. It was a good day to venture out and enjoy some vitamin D! Temperatures were going to reach 40 degrees on this day which was a treat from the below freezing temps we’ve been experiencing. Our daughter in law sent us the photo above via text on Wednesday.

After working in the shop and running some errands we decided to drive to Chewelah which is 27.5 miles south of us. A beautiful day for the drive and worth the gas and time to get to our favorite Mexican Restaurant this side of the Cascade mountain range. It’s been three and a half months since we were able to sit down and enjoy a meal here. Some restrictions were lifted as of Monday and they could open at 25% capacity. We gave our favorite server a hug and had our own mini celebration.

Do you have a favorite restaurant that you miss being able to enjoy a meal in?

We are supposed to get another inch or two of snow Thursday evening into Friday morning here.

A Quiet Beginning

It’s been a relatively quiet start to the month of February at our Country Bungalow.  The biggest excitement was this delivery we had from Home Depot on Thursday.

We would have had to make two trips to Spokane to be able to haul this material and we were thankful we could have it delivered for a $79 delivery fee. Forty sheets of drywall, some 2×4’s, primer, paint, drywall compound, tape, screws and nails! It would have cost Dear around $100 dollars in gasoline to do that trip to Spokane twice in his truck, not to mention loading and unloading. 2100 pounds of stuff. Dear’s truck is rated for 1500 pounds.

And…he doesn’t have a nifty forklift to unload all that drywall! We are so thankful for this delivery service and what it saved us in time and labor. The driver managed to set that stack of drywall inside the new shop with a little maneuvering. It was below freezing here for this delivery.

Earlier in the week we had a warmer than freezing day and we got this photo via text. So thankful to get texts with photos from our Daughter-in-law!

Today in Colville we are suppose to get up to 47 degrees!! Quite a change from the 20’s and 30’s we have been experiencing. As you can see from the photos most all of our snow has melted. Today is definitely a day to spend outdoors before the next snow pattern comes our way. While Dear takes advantage of not having his fingers frozen while working in the shop I need to come up with an outdoor activity to enjoy the warm 40’s and sunshine!

What’s new in your corner of the world?

The Snowball Effect Hodgepodge

A new month of Wednesday Hodgepodge. Thank you to Jo From This Side of the Pond for coming up with the questions for us to answer.
***
1. Feb 2nd is Groundhog Day in the US of A. Tell us about one day you wouldn’t mind living over again, and why you chose that day. 
***
 I’ll pick July 9th, 2014.  This was a day Dear and I spent in Oxford, England. I chose this day because it’s impossible for us to visit Oxford at this time in virus history and it is something we dream to be able to do again. Here’s a link to part of our day in Oxford in 2014.
***
 2. Something you know beyond a ‘shadow of a doubt’?
***
God created me a woman and he created my husband (Dear) a man. Those are the only two genders that God has created. 
***
3. Give us an example of history repeating itself in some way, in your own life or the lives of your children.
***
It’s fun to see our little grandson doing some of the things our son did when he was little. 
***
4. Snowed under, snow job, not a snowball’s chance, snowbird, on thin ice, snug as a bug in a rug, tip of the iceberg, snowball effect, run hot and cold….choose a wintry idiom and tell us how it best applies to your life right now. 
***
I’ll choose snowball effect. Building a shop on our property has had it’s own snowball effect. Once I think the hard part is over and done with another hard part presents itself. One thing leads to another. I think I should plan a huge completion party to celebrate once it is all done and all our stuff from our son’s shop finds it’s way into Dear’s shop. 
***
5. Your favorite sign of spring? 
***
It’s hard to choose just one. 
***
There is Easter and all that it means. Easter is my favorite holiday to celebrate. So much promise, so much hope because of Jesus’ resurrection. He is Risen, He is Risen Indeed! 
Our very first grandchild was born on the first day of Spring four years ago. We get to celebrate her at the beginning of Spring every year!
Our grandson was born in Spring, too, in April of 2019. We have so much to celebrate in Spring! 
***
6. Insert your own random thought here.
***
All this talk of Spring makes me want to go out and find a bunch of daffodils to bring in for cheer and the good promise that Spring is on it’s way!