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!
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.
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 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.
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.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you and a special Happy Birthday to you, Beth.Â
Here are my favorites who I love and hold dear everyday not just this special day.
Hope you are the recipient of lots of love today!
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!
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.
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?Â
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?Â
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?Â
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’?Â
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.
The finale of our DisneyCaliFam vacation was on Thursday January 19th, which is the birthday of our firstborn, Josh. His birthday was spent in service to the rest of us. He made an early morning run to the Orange County Airport to deliver our Daughter-in-law’s mom and granny for their morning flight back to Spokane, Washington.
The remaining ten of us packed up and cleaned up our VRBO and headed to my sister Vera’s home in Huntington Beach to see what leftovers we had that she might be able to use. She definitely wanted the 18 count package of eggs. Our flight out of Orange county was at 8:40 pm so we had some time to kill. Vera joined us for a trip to Fiesta Grill for our reminiscent Mexican meal. All the years Nick and Vera lived down the road from this great Mexican Joint, we enjoyed walking to get take out to bring back to their place. Nick is with his Savior now in heaven and Vera is in a new home but we cherish the memories.
Back at Vera’s, JJ and Addy were laid down for a nap and the ‘kids’ enjoyed playing UNO.
Vera had a meal in the slow cooker for us for dinner. Our sister Lana would be joining us for dinner.
Up from their naps there was a rainbow to enjoy. JJ was in Lana’s room napping and quietly got up and went about discovering some things like her radio to which he declared “I did not touch any buttons”. When I walked in the room he had a water bottle with the top off and declared to me, “Baba, this water tastes funny.” He also thought the 20# weights were too heavy for him, but the 5# weights were fine. OYE.
When Lana arrived she had animated stories of some events at her new home in Dallas and everyone gave her their full attention.
From bursting water pipes to destructive squirrels, she had everyone’s attention.
Three of our four sisters, Me, Lana and Vera.
Too soon it was time to head to the airport to turn in our trusty 15 passenger van and check in for our flight back to Washington.
Did you know there was a pilot shortage these days?
These two enjoyed meeting the pilot and sitting in the co-pilots chair!
The flight home was non eventful which is the best kind of flight and we made it into Paine Field in Everett at 11:45ish and home in bed at Josh and Laura’s by 1am. We would still have a 5 hour drive to Colville later that day, Friday the 20th. We slept as long as our bodies allowed, got up, packed the car, had some breakfast and got on the road at 9:30am. We were home after a stop in Spokane for gas and a meal in Chewelah. We made it home before dark.
A very meaningful trip for all of us. Thanks for following along.
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 