Some Painless Therapy…

Dear and I have decided to “cut our losses” and give up on the bathroom renovation being made right by the company we hired. It is better for our peace of mind to give it up and let Dear fix things that need to be done better. After several tries to get them to do things right we’ve decided no more. When you see the photos of the bathroom you will wonder what we are complaining about because you will see the beautiful cosmetic fixes. Unfortunately we had to live with the process and it will take some time for me to bond with the beauty of it all. When Dear finishes the painting and the rest of the window parts come in I promise to show you the before and after. Until then here is a sneaky photo of some wall art that is going to go up that I bought at Hobby Lobby today.

shop therapy 011Yes, a little shopping therapy was in order for today so I made stops at Hobby Lobby, Goodwill, and Trader Joe’s. Hobby Lobby had a 50% off sale going for all their wall art so I bought that metal piece to mount on one of the walls of the bathroom. A tree branch with birds.

shop therapy 009Their fall decor was on sale for 40% off so I bought these Place Cards that I’ll enjoy using at Thanksgiving.

shop therapy 008These Le Creuset ramekins were in the collector section of Goodwill marked at $14.95 for all 6. Because Wednesday is Senior discount day I got 20% off and paid $12.50 for all 6. I saw them at Williams Sonoma for $13.00 each. Now I’ll need to come up with a fun recipe to use them for. If you click on these smaller photos you can see them in their larger format. Speaking of Senior Discount day the employee at Goodwill who came on the sound system to remind us what discounts were available on Wednesday said “If you are 62 or Better you get 20% off” I love that and when I went to the register I told them I was better!!

We had a very nice evening on Tuesday celebrating Dear at a restaurant in Bellevue called Lot #3. They had the most interesting names for their drinks. I had a Left Turn at Albuquerque.

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After dinner we took a couple family shots outside the restaurant.

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Our son Dan is off hunting in the wilderness so he couldn’t join us.

Tomorrow is the 13th anniversary of 9/11, I’m praying that God protects us against evil…but that prayer is nothing new at this old house!

 

E is for Ellen…

ABC Wednesday is already on the letter E. Thank you to Denise Nesbitt the proud founder and to the whole ABC team!

E is for ellen b. and a few of her favorite things…

This is a theater on Main Street in Bozeman, Montana spotted by daughter Katie on our cross country road trip back in April.

2012-12-031Ellen loves and enjoys spending time with her family.

Mom's services 180Ellen loves her brothers and sisters and her dear old pop. This photo was taken last September at my dear old mom’s funeral.

Mom's services 172Ellen loves her nieces and nephews. These cousins have so much fun together!

IMGP9112Ellen b. with her sisters and mom enjoying each other 6 months before her mom died.

BP03112012_586cEllen loves Dear’s brother’s family to the left of the groom and below.

California 2011 011

BP03112012_584cEllen loves her whole big family including her brother in laws and sister in laws.

Ellen loves the girls from the Mennonite Girls Can Cook and is so thankful to have them as her true blue friends.

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To Windsor 123Ellen loves to travel to England and all of the United Kingdom.

Man U 034Ellen loves Soccer/Futbol and has been to games in Manchester and Milan. Her favorite team is the home team, the Seattle Sounders.

P1030567Ellen is a Seattle Sounders season ticket holder along with her son and daughter in law.

Ellen loves Dear. Their 40th wedding anniversary celebrations have begun already.

Oxford Day 6 089Ellen B. and Dear started celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary with a trip to England in July where they spent one of their days in Oxford.

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Oxford Day 6 086Ellen likes to read Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers and a little Chesterton so it was a treat to eat in the Pub where these authors were known to meet.

The Thames 107Ellen loves God and His son Jesus who has given her eternal life through his death and resurrection.

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this very long post!

Hither and Yon…

hither and yon, from here to over there, especially to a farther place; in or to a great many places:

That pretty much sums up the state of affairs with our family right now.

10514646_10204580905868399_9064631396302298278_nOur oldest, Josh, and our DIL Laura are in Cabo right now with my nephew David and his wife Kristin.

P1050064Our middle son, Dan, is working 2500 miles away from his home and his girlfriend is counting the days until he’s back where he belongs.

BP03112012_194cOur youngest, Katie, and our Son in law, Andrew have started their journey this morning from Jacksonville, North Carolina, to the state of Washington. Andrew has started his terminal leave from the Marine Corps after serving over 4 years with 2 deployments to Afghanistan. They will settle close to us so Andrew can finish his schooling.

I still feel like a fish out of water while the bathroom construction continues into the third week. Thankfully the end is near.

My brother and his wife are making their second trip today to the Ukraine to finish the legal work to bring their new young son home to his forever family.

2014-08-02 Bath - seafairWe had some interesting sky views this past weekend. The Blue Angels were in Seattle for our SeaFair and to put on a air show during the hydroplane races. Along with the Blue Angels we had Fleet Week and the Marines put on some great demonstrations. I was able to capture some of the Osprey as they flew over our house on the way to the air show. Besides the great loud noise from the Blue Angels and the Osprey we had thunder and lightning from these amazing skies.

Sunset 003Couldn’t help but quote part of Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

So this is some of what is happening in my world. What’s happening in yours?

Laughing at Myself…

2014-05-023…and this random post.

I have this sweet little hanging sentiment in my powder room master bathroom that is the size of a powder room. I am all for laughing and laughing often. We are busy campers at this old house these days. Today I mowed the lawn and did some weed wacking and some weed pulling. I love the way the yard looks after it gets it’s weekly cut. So neat when the weeds are mowed down. I especially enjoyed all the rich greenery around the yard at this time of year. My lavender is blooming already and I’ll have to take a photo soon.

On Thursday we have our end of small group barbecue. Of course we are suppose to get some good rain on Thursday. The first real rain in many days. We’ll be eating inside instead of on the deck. After that event the rest of our main floor bathroom will be torn out. The tub and shower surround are gone already. I’ll post some updates soon…maybe.

On Thursday World Cup begins. I’ll be watching a lot of soccer. Since the opening game Brazil v. Croatia is on at 1:00 Pacific Time I’ll be able to watch and still get organized for our barbecue. On Saturday my niece and her new hubby arrive for 4 days and good thing my sister isn’t doing a bathroom renovation and has a room and bathroom all ready for them. My sister lives across the big road from us. Very close as the crow flies a little farther if you are walking the meandering roads. We’ll be busy showing my new nephew by marriage Seattle since he’s never visited here before. I could go on and on but I’m probably boring you already so I’ll just stop.

Do any of you use Cloud Feedly to organize your blog visits? I haven’t been able to log in to my feedly to see if anyone has posted something new. I checked on the internet and they have been attacked overnight. I hope they are back on line soon!

Here’s what I read online: Not only has Evernote been struck by a DoS attack overnight, but now RSS news aggregator Feedly reports that its cloud-based service is suffering from a distributed denial-of-service attack that could impact users’ ability to catch up with the latest updates from their favourite websites.

Very inconvenient when I’m in the midst of busyness already, Oye! If I haven’t visited you in the last few days blame this feedly attack!!

A Joyful Heart…

…is good medicine.

I never want to lose the ability to laugh at myself. After complaining about my new hairdo last year a memory of a photo kept coming back to me from my early years.

2013-11-018Here’s my 6th grade photo from Fremont Elementary School in Montebello, California. The photo from November of 2013 isn’t the clearest but it does show how similar my hairdo is to my 6th grade years. Gave me a good chuckle.

We’ve had a relaxing weekend at this old house. Dear took Katie to the airport before the sun was up on Saturday. When I finally got up we had our coffee and I slowly got ready for the day. Our dishwasher is telling us it’s not long for this world so we went out to investigate what’s new in dishwasher world after 10 years. We had a good education and are considering a Miele to replace our Maytag. After church we tried a new spot for  brunch. I’m getting a little excited for Season 4 of Downton Abbey tonight. Are you a fan?

Do You Measure Up?

We thought we had measured the inside of our closet well before I headed to Ikea to buy some new storage pieces for our T.V. and a 2nd closet in the guest room.

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The T.V. stand is working perfectly and just how we planned. The storage units for the closet were another matter. I picked up this large square piece and another section that was narrower and taller to put on one end.

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Seems our measurements were 3/4 of an inch off. I knew my handy dandy Dear would figure something out or we’d just stick the tall unit in the basement. The figuring someway to squeeze it in was the more favorable option because I wanted to maximize the storage in this closet. The solution was to take the support for the upper shelf completely out. See that white upper board at the end of the closet with the hole in it that was a hanger bar?  Of course that also meant we had to take the entire upper shelf out during the process, too. We still had to partially disassemble the tall unit to get it in and then to lift the unit while it was in it’s place to tighten the screws. Are you confused yet? Too bad I didn’t YouTube the process.

Ikea storage 002It’s quite the feeling of accomplishment when you can enjoy the fruits of your labor and know you conquered assemble yourself furniture! That is one snug fit let me tell you. Oh my aching back…

I’m also quite pleased that I have some empty cubbies to add things to in the future. Have you had fun projects go south on you?

My mom and pop are doing well being left alone at night. My mom has had some tough days with her heart feeling very heavy. When I talked to my pop this past week one day he told me my brother had made homilets for them for breakfast. On Tuesday he said my sister Kathy had made something Mexican for them with beans… saucekitos or something. My family loves to document what we call “Moisiisms”.

mom pei wei

My mother and father have never had lobster, scallops or shrimp so my brother Steve made lobster and scallops for them last week and my sister Lana made a shrimp dish for them to try on another evening. My mother really enjoyed the lobster and left the scallops for my brother to enjoy.  I forgot to ask how she liked the shrimp. I really can’t remember having much fish growing up. Maybe once when my pop went deep sea fishing and caught Yellowtail. I do remember camping at San Clemente Beach in California when the Grunion were running and catching some and running up to the campsite to cook them fresh. The Grunion running experience was a great one for me. “The grunion are running, the grunion are running, was chanted down the beach after waiting in the dark for them to appear. You could see little silvery fish emerge from the waves onto the beach and they would start digging into the sand to lay eggs. Wow this post has really gotten away from me.

Here’s a short explanation from Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, “Spend a night sitting on Southern California’s sandy shore waiting for the “grunion run.” Grunion are small sardine-size fish of the silversides family, which are among the few species of fish that actually come ashore to lay their eggs on sandy beaches. They are found from Southern California south to Baja California and arrive at night after the high tide around the new moon and full moon. Cabrillo Beach is one of the better places to observe the fish.”

So you see if you don’t measure properly you will find your mind being random and scattered and full of fond memories of carefree days…

Here’s that Yellowtail I mentioned earlier. This was taken in our backyard in Montebello Gardens (Pico Rivera). That’s me and my brother Tim watching my pop clean the fish.

028_28-001Hope you have a perfectly random day!

Random Updates

I pulled up this collage from 2008 because I just wanted to have something cheerful on my blog.

Things are pretty much the same for my mom in California. I’m able to talk to her everyday. She reminisces and lets us all know that she loves us and appreciates our uniqueness. I have 7 brothers and sisters and we are all pretty different in many ways and similar in other ways, too. My father is restless and needs to have things to do so my sisters try to keep him occupied. My sister Lana gave the apartment a thorough cleaning from top to bottom and got rid of some things that were taking up too much room.

To make room for my mom’s hospital bed the family moved out my parents queen bed and brought in a twin bed for my dad. One of my sisters or brothers spends each night at the apartment with my mom and dad and they sleep in the living room. The apartment is small with just a kitchen, living area, bathroom and bedroom.

Back here at this old house our remodeling continues with Dear putting in the baseboard and trim around doors and furniture is slowly getting put back into place. We are also busy emptying out the bedrooms and living room where our new carpeting will be installed on August 7th.

Thanks again for all your kind comments and prayers for my family that are highly appreciated. May God return the blessing to you!

 

If It’s Tuesday…

…this must be Belgium Chilliwack! Do any of you remember that film from the 60’s? Anyhoo my life seems to be on a whirlwind tour right now so I thought this title appropriate. Today Katie and I are on our way to Chilliwack, B.C. (not Belgium)  to pick up a little gift I ordered for my niece’s upcoming bridal shower from Wink’s .  We are meeting up with some special residents of Chilliwack for lunch while we are there!

These next photos have nothing to do with our trip North across the line. These are random shots, one from the past and new photos from what is springing up around this old house.

It seems I have always wondered what to do with my hands when someone is taking a photo of me. This is a photo from the 50’s in front of our home on Oak Street in Pico Rivera, California.

What a fun surprise to see these on Monday morning. I sort of remember replanting them from containers I had inside last Spring. Are they Narcissus?

My Lenten Rose never ceases to delight! What an appropriate name as it always blooms during Lent!

Such a humble plant with it’s face looking down. I have to get on my knees to take photos…another appropriate stance for this season and always!

More than usual this season of Lent has brought some significant sorrow to the door of friends and to us. We stand with them in hope for better days ahead and ultimately for the Hope we have as believers for what Christ has done for us and what He promises us.

My dear sister-in-law Nina who passed away in 1993 from complications due to Cystic Fibrosis had these verses highlighted in her personal journal.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Praying for God’s light to shine through his presence in us to the world around us.

Hoping your week is going well and that you have hope for your future…

This and That…

We’ve had a little bit of sunshine and good thing I grabbed my camera in time to capture it for all to see.

On Tuesday I made a trip to Costco after Bible Study and was happy to see they had Season 3 of Downton Abbey that was just released here in the U.S. Now I won’t have to wait until Sunday to see the next episode.

I’ve heard about this series from a few people on Facebook, too and decided to give it a try. Have any of you seen this series?

Lest you think all I do is watch T.V. let me share that I’m also reading a Biography on Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxes. What an extraordinary man he was.

We have rain and more rain in the forecast for a few days. How about you rain, snow or shine?