Category Archives: Travel

Twins 60th~Part 2

First things first here are the twins’ families.

Lana and her husband of thirty five years, Steve.

Leonard, Mandy, Hope and Andrew. Leonard and Mandy have been married 17 years this month.

 

Lana and Leonard each had words of appreciation and love to share with us before we sang a family favorite, Bless Thou the Lord, O my soul. 

Lana was emotional all day long and we cried and laughed with her.

Leonard shared these verses for us from 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20:  For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you?  For you are our glory and joy. 

A prayer for our meal and then we enjoyed a delicious plateful of barbecue brisket, sausages and all the trimmings.

After dinner, we were called up for Line Dancing.

Getting ready to Line Dance!

After Line Dancing it was time for cake!

It was a wonderful party from beginning to end.  After cake we had a chance to speak up and encourage Lana and Leonard with affirmations of their contributions to making our lives better. Both Lana and Leonard have been so generous with their time, advice, prayers, talents and resources over the years to their spouses, children, nieces, nephews, siblings and friends. It was good to hear several speak up and share special memories.

The joy continued on Sunday and that will be another post.

60th Birthday Part 1

This will be the 2nd of a few posts covering our time in Texas the last weekend of July.

We started with photos at the hotel before our drive to the party at Circle R Ranch in Flower Mound.

Josh and Laura above.

My sister Kathy with her daughters and granddaughter.

 

The twins with their nieces (and my niece’s, too). One of Lana’s nieces is twin Leonard’s daughter. She’s in the white boots. For the record the twins had many nieces and nephews from their other sides of the family at the party, too, along with brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and Lana’s Mother-in-law. Friends of Steve and Lana’s from Washington and friends from Leonard and Mandy’s church were also in attendance.

Our son, Josh, with his cousin Andrew. Andrew is Leonard and Mandy’s son, one of our nephews.

More niece photos!

Moisi and Nadia would be thrilled to see so many of their people together.

The siblings in order of birth starting with Kathy on the left and ending with twin Leonard who is the youngest by a few minutes. Two of our brothers were not at the party. Our brother Steve planned on being there but got sick at the last minute. Steve would have stood between our brother Tim and our sister Lana. Our other brother would be between me and Vera.

All the sisters with our dear friend Heidi. We all grew up in the same Russian Baptist church. Heidi has been a dear friend for years! She was also the twins Sunday School teacher about 55 years ago!!

My younger brothers, so dear to me.

The youngest and the oldest!

Nephew David and our son Josh, friends since they were toddlers!

Josh, nephews Lenny and David.

Our son with Nikki who is the daughter of Ken and Heidi. Our kids have been friends from birth! Nikki and her brother lived across the street from us in Huntington Beach back in the 80’s.

Our brother Tim and his dear wife Letty.

Dear and me with our forever friends, Ken and Heidi.

A huge thanks to Josh for being our ride the whole weekend and to Laura for so many great photos.

Next post will be as full of more photos including line dancing.

This World Is Not My Home Hodgepodge

 

It’s Wednesday and I’m rolling in a little later than usual for Wednesday Hodgepodge. Thank you, Jo!

1. Hello August. What’s one thing you’re looking forward to this month? 

I’m still soaking in the last four days of July. So much to share about our time in Texas.

In August I’ll enjoy watching our Grands play soccer.

2. What are you doing to beat the heat right now? If you live in the southern hemisphere are you enjoying cooler temps or counting the days until summer? 

Oh goodness me. When we stepped out of the airport in Spokane on our way home from Dallas last night, we were relieved to be in 90 degree weather instead of 100+++ weather. What I do to beat the heat is to work in the early morning hours and stay inside in air conditioning for the other hours. If I’m outside I always navigate to shade!

Today the high in Colville is supposed to be 95 but right now it’s a cool 53 degrees! Woohoo!

3. How do you see the world? 

I see the world as a training ground in my Faith and walk with Jesus. The song that popped into my head when I read this question is the title I used for this post. I’ll share the full song here because another thing we enjoyed the last 4 days of July was singing together at my sister’s home, at the Twins birthday bash and in church on Sunday morning.

This World Is Not My Home

This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

Chorus
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
If Heaven’s not my home, then Lord what will I do?
The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

They’re all expecting me and that’s one thing I know.
My Savior pardoned me and now I onward go.
I know He’ll take me through, though I am weak and poor.

Chorus
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
If Heaven’s not my home, then Lord what will I do?
The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open door
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

Just up in Glory Land we’ll live eternally.
The Saints on every hand are shouting victory.
Their song of sweetest praise drifts back from Heaven’s shore
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

4. What food product do you think is better store bought than home made?

Fried Chicken or donuts. I don’t or wouldn’t even attempt to make those items at home.

How about something you refuse to buy because it is so much better homemade? 

So much is better homemade and fresh from the stovetop or oven. Anything my mother made could not be bought. Growing up our family always had homemade. Once in a great while our Pop would bring home pizza.

5. Are you easy to get along with? 

For the most part, yes. I do hold my ground on my strong beliefs and don’t appreciate being identified with movements or ideologies I’m opposed to.

6.  Insert your own random thought here. 

We are home from a wonderful birthday celebration with family and friends in Dallas, Texas. We also took a side trip to Waco in the heat while in Texas. I’ll be gathering my thoughts and my photos and photos from family and friends of the wonderful time we had and will be posting soon. Here we are on this last Sunday in July singing along with 3500 voices praising our LORD! It was glorious!

Thanks for stopping by. I’ll try and visit between laundry loads!

Simple Pleasures Hodgepodge

Jo is back this week with some new questions for us to ponder for Hodgepodge Wednesday.

1. Is your life simple? Elaborate. 

For the most part my life is simple since I am retired and do not have every day responsibilities. The only set in stone activities in a given week are prayer meeting on Wednesday mornings and church services on Sunday. The rest of our schedule is free for us to fill in the blanks with weekly keep up of our home and property and any church activities that involve the church kitchen. We typically have our Colville kids over for an evening with dinner once a week. We will throw in a card night with two other couples maybe once a month. We always welcome overnight company that happen to travel our way. We just started up walking on the Rotary trail again with a 3x a week goal. We want to add in 3 days of strength training for our arms/shoulders.

2. What simple pleasure are you are currently enjoying?  

I enjoy summer fruit, especially nectarines.

3. Travel by…

Plane or go on a cruise? Plane

Walk or ride a bike? Walk

Swim or ski? Swim, although I’m not a fan of putting on a bathing suit these days.

Ocean or mountains? This is a tough one. I like to walk along the ocean and drive through the mountains.

4. What’s the last thing you bought online that you really loved? 

The latest is this ‘Sing’ Cd by Keith and Kristyn Getty which I’m enjoying but recently we ordered our new internet service totally online and installed everything to get it up and running. We are so happy with the purchase of Starlink and the improved quality of everything to do with the internet.

5. What’s your ‘back in my day we__________’ story? 

Back in my day girls had to wear a dress or skirt and blouse to school. Those dresses or skirts could not be shorter than knee length. If our girls vice principal thought a skirt or dress might be too short, she’d have us kneel and if the skirt or dress did not hit the floor we’d be in trouble! Photo is of some of my high school friends. I’m taking the photo.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

These two have super powers! Love the slippers they find when they come over for dinner with their parents! Super Heroes love slippers! It makes me smile and thank our Lord when I find those slippers under the dinner table.

Quatro, Cinco, Seis, and Siete!

We traveled to the West side of the Cascades for 338 miles to visit our kids on Thursday the 4th of May. We met up with friends in Kirkland at La Corona on the way and the Mexican food theme began. Good time catching up a bit then we said Adios and headed to our kids home with a stop at Fred Meyer on the way. We had a nice quiet evening recuperating from our drive.

On Friday Laura drove us to Business Costco and regular Costco. Friday was Cinco de Mayo and we met up with our other Westside kids and we all enjoyed a meal at Viva Jalisco.

Saturday morning we baked up some Lemon Scones to enjoy while watching some of the Coronation. Laura pulled out a puzzle for us to work on over the course of the day.

The girls enjoyed a dry spell in the morning at Pickin’ at the Barn in Monroe. A market of all things vintage, antique and artisan. We all made some purchases. On the way home from the market we stopped at The Maltby Cafe and Laura and I split Huevos Rancheros. Another day of enjoying the Mexican theme. Saturday afternoon we worked on the puzzle before we headed out to an early Mother’s Day meal at Feast and Fire in Edmonds.

I had the Osso Buco (Pork) which was fall off the bone delicious. The others enjoyed Halibut and pasta dishes.

 

You can see the Edmonds/Kingston Ferry loading at the dock if you squint.

After a stop at the waterfront in Edmonds we went back to Josh and Laura’s. I opened up some sweet Mother’s day gifts and we continued watching some of the Coronation while finishing up the puzzle.

On Sunday we went to Josh and Laura’s church and were encouraged by an amazing sermon by a visiting Pastor from Southern California. “God’s mercy is God’s goodness to us despite our sin.” What a blessing that was along with Communion. We also ran into friends from our former churches there. An extra sweet encouragement to see and talk to them.

We packed up the car and headed back to Colville after church with Laura as our passenger. Laura traveled back with us so that she could be in town for Addy’s Piano Recital Monday evening. We stopped in Cle Elum for a fill up of gasoline and lunch at El Corporal…if you guessed Mexican food, you guessed correctly! That’s why the title of this post is cuatro, cinco, seis and siete because I enjoyed Mexican food on the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th of May! After lunch Laura took the wheel and drove for a couple hours and then we switched back to me for the ride into Spokane. Dear drove from Spokane to Colville. We dropped Laura off at Dan and Jamie’s and it was a great surprise for Addy and JJ who had no idea Auntie Lolo was coming to stay a couple nights with them.

I think they are thrilled to have Auntie Lolo in town!

 

Thankful for a wonderful weekend from beginning to end.

A Taste of Britain

We had a wonderful weekend on the Westside of the mountains with good easy trips both ways. Thank you, Lord. While at our kids’ home we started off Saturday watching some of the Coronation while enjoying some lemon scones with lemon curd and clotted cream.

We just got home Sunday evening and this is a quick post with more about our weekend to come.

Pass the Torch Hodgepodge

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It’s Hodgepodge time again and Joyce is celebrating Hodgepodge #500!! Congratulations to Joyce and Hodgepodgers everywhere. Click over to join in the fun.

1. Last time you drove/flew 500 miles (ish)? What’s a place you’d like to visit that lies approximately 500 miles from your current location? 

In December of 2022 we drove to Abbotsford, B.C. Via Bothell Washington and once we arrived in Abbotsford we drove on to Chilliwack with friends for our Mennonite Girls Can Cook Christmas party. That was just under 500 miles worth of driving.

It would be a nice vacation with Family to stay at Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast for a few days and enjoy the sand and sea just beyond our doorstep. Cannon Beach is 500 miles from us.

2. Tell us about a time recently it felt like you were ‘racing against the clock’. 

Being retired and older I don’t race much. I have felt the need to clear out things and let things go before our kids have to sort through it all.

3. Have you ever attended any really large sporting events?

Yes!

What was your impression of the experience?  

We have enjoyed memorable experiences at some large sporting events. I attended my first Rose Bowl Game on January 2nd in 1967 (USC v. Purdue). The Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game are always on New Year’s Day unless that day lands on a Sunday. When January 1st lands on a Sunday the parade and game are moved to Monday. My second Rose Bowl Game was in 1992 when Greg was a student at the University of Washington and the Huskies played at the Rose Bowl against Michigan. The Huskies won this game which made the experience very exciting.

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In 1984 the Summer Olympics were hosted by Los Angeles and we were able to get tickets to some rowing events at Lake Casitas. The most exciting part of these Olympic Games was the fact that my husband Greg was able to represent his company as an Olympic Torch Bearer!

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In 1994 our sons got tickets for World Cup games in Los Angeles and Stanford. The USA was hosting that year. The photo above was at the Rose Bowl for one of the games we attended.

Dan and I attended Brazil v Camaroon at Stanford Stadium. Attire was colorful and the party atmosphere was very lively. Both those countries know how to celebrate.

We were able to track down where the US team was staying and training and our sons met every player on the team and got all their autographs. That’s Alexi Lalas with our sons. That’s not a cigarette in his mouth.

When Dear and I were traveling with Josh and Laura in England in 2013, Josh got us tickets to a Manchester United game v. Crystal Palace at Old Trafford. That was a great time! Josh also made it into an Arsenal game on that trip.

The Superbowl, The Kentucky Derby, The World Series, FIFA World Cup, The Indianapolis 500, The Daytona 500, The Olympics, The Masters, Wimbledon, The Boston Marathon, March Madness, Tour de France, Monaco’s Grand Prix, The Open (golf), The Ryder Cup, The Stanley Cup Finals..of the events listed which would you most like to attend in person? Or maybe one that’s not listed? 

Fifa World Cup, it will be hosted by the USA/Canada/and Mexico in 2026.

4. Are you an iced tea drinker? If so, do you drink it year round, or only in the spring and summer months? Do you make your own or buy it bottled? Sweet or unsweet? Flavored? Lemon or no lemon? How about a Long Island Iced Tea? 

Not a usual for me. If I do have an iced tea it would be lightly sweetened with some fresh lemon squeeze or the last variety.

5. April 20th is Volunteer Recognition Day…do you volunteer in some way? Tell us about it. If not, tell us about a volunteer you appreciate. 

I volunteer at church under Women’s Ministry. I’m the branch leader of Hospitality serving the church family in planning, supplying, and carrying out fellowship opportunities involving the entire church body. Responsibilities include: Maintaining the kitchen and supplies. Helping with food serving and cleanup for church events like potlucks, Easter brunch, pie and praise, and funerals.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

We celebrated our grandson’s 4th birthday this past Saturday. We had a T-Rex crash the party and we had a cute dinosaur and delicious dinosaur cake. If you want to see more of the surprise T-Rex entry click here.

I’ll be sharing more from JJ’s Dino-wonderful party on Friday.

Thanks for stopping by for #500!

Kenneth Grahame ~ Wind in the Willows

From the Wind in the Willows ~ by Kenneth Grahame

“The weary Mole also was glad to turn in without delay, and soon had his head on his pillow, in great joy and contentment. But ere he closed his eyes he let them wander round his old room, mellow in the glow of the firelight that played or rested on familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him, and now smilingly received him back, without rancour. He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He saw clearly how plain and simple – how narrow, even – it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one’s existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome.”

 

“This has been a wonderful day!” said he, as the rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat in all my life.”

“What?” cried the Rat, open mouthed: “Never been in a – you never-well, I-what have you been doing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leaned back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

“Nice? It’s the only thing.” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leaned forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing.”

I read The Wind in the Willows for the first time in 2008 and that same year Dear and I went to the Rose Bowl Flea Market where I saw and purchased this teapot by Sadler from their Classic Stories series.

While we were in Oxford in September of 2022 we took a stroll through Holywell Cemetery.

The friends of Holywell Cemetery need some more friends to help keep up this cemetery.

 

The reason I’m adding photos from this cemetery in this post about Kenneth Grahame is that we stumbled upon his gravestone in this cemetery. We saw a few gravestones of note. This one is Kenneth Grahame’s. His son is buried here, also. He died tragically when he was just 20.

To
The Beautiful Memory
Of
Kenneth Grahame
Husband of Elspeth
And
Father of Alastair
Who Passed the River
On the 6th of July 1932
Leaving
Childhood & Literature
Through Him
The More Blest
For All Time
And of His Son Alastair Grahame
Commoner of Christ Church
1920

Another headstone we took note of was this one for Charles Walter Stansby Williams.

Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group associated with C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien at the University of Oxford.

Have you ever read The Wind in the Willows? I found it to be very entertaining and heart warming. I’ll leave you with one more quote from this children’s classic.

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing!”

Enjoy your horizons!

Keble Chapel Mosaics

Noah and the Ark

Abraham and Isaac

Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers.

Joseph reunited with the brothers who sold him into slavery not realizing who Joseph is.

These are not all of the mosaics that line the walls of Keble College Chapel but all I will post. I’m thankful to be able to hold the inspired and inerrant Word of God in my hands to read and not to depend on an artists representation of the Bible.

We left Keble and we were still early for our Lodge check-in.

On this last full day in Oxford we made our last visit to The Turf for Fish and Chips.

Before we settled into our Lodge room for the night we made a stop at Gail’s Bakery in the Jericho area of Oxford for some sweet treats to enjoy in the evening.

 

Finally we could check in to our little room and prepared our things for our trip to the airport the following morning.

After breakfast at our Lodge on Saturday September 24th, 2022 we took a Taxi to the bus terminal for our ride to Heathrow. We met a couple from Washington State who were on the same bus and enjoyed exchanging our experiences in England with each other. Till next time, Lord willing, it was a wonderful trip to Oxford, The Cotswolds and Woodstock.

Thanks for reading along. This post completes our Oxford September 2022 holiday.  Cheers!

Back to the Present: 

We got some fresh snow on Thursday and they are talking about more.

Sunshine makes it a lot nicer. The fresh snow melted nicely since we got up into the 40’s. We are supposed to get a couple more inches of snow today.