Twins Birthday ~ Waco!

On Monday of our Twins’ birthday long weekend celebrations seven of us piled in two vehicles and drove south to Waco. I was the driver of the ‘sisters’ car. The other car had Leonard as the driver with Greg and our niece Michelle.

Both Leonard and Lana were with us on this trip and they both told us we had to stop at Czech Stop for Kolaches on our way to Waco.

We were all so glad we stopped. I was amazed at the variety of baked goods, something I haven’t seen in a long time, and the prices were so good compared to bakeries I’ve been in lately.

I chose the cream cheese apricot kolache. It met all my expectations.

My brother expertly navigated us to the Silos, the Magnolia property. We found good parking on the street. As we walked the one block to the first building we heard my name called out and amazingly met up with Ken, Heidi and Nikki as they arrived the same time we did from a different part of the Dallas suburbs.

We’ve been the best of friends since the early 70’s!

Let the shopping commence…

Some of us found more to buy than others of us.

That Sweet Tea was a must and a lifesaver on this hot day. I bought the Mason-Dixon, half sweet and half not. 🙂

On the way back to our cars we stopped at the Magnolia Bakery to buy some baked goods.

Before we got back on the highway we met each other for an afternoon meal at Milo. The restaurant served us well.

Our cars switched around passengers so that we each could go to our prospective lodgings for the night.

Greg and I spent our last night in Steve and Lana’s guest suite and headed out for the airport on Tuesday morning for our flight home. We were able to drop our sister Vera at the airport, too, since our flights were close together but going to different parts of the USA. No delays and we made it all the way home after our hopper from Seattle to Spokane and 70 mile drive up to Colville.

Thank you, LORD, for an amazing time in Texas with so many of our loved ones. We do not take it for granted that we can gather and enjoy each other and encourage each other in our Faith. Thanks be to God for his goodness to us through thick and thin.

Twins 60th~Sunday

On Sunday in Texas twenty three of us gathered at Watermark Church for the 9am service.

The service was excellent with worship songs that glorified God and a message from the Word of God that challenged me. It was good to be together and to worship together.

After the service we toured part of the area where Leonard and Mandy work at Watermark. Such an impressive property that functions well.

From church we gathered at Leonard and Mandy’s for brunch. We had Mandy’s famous John Wayne Egg casserole and fruit and our sister Kathy had her hand in making blintzes for all of us, too. (Thanks for the picture, Michelle) This shows the first stage. After this stage they are filled with a lightly sweetened cheese filling (ricotta, or dry cottage, or farmer’s cheese) and rolled up and put into a baking dish and baked with butter and half and half. Rich and delicious. We were all full and content.

Photo above is from another time to show what the pans look like before they are baked. The photo below is how they might look when they are on your plate ready to eat.

We played a game answering questions about the birthday twins that Leonard and daughter Hope created on a phone app. We all logged in and answered the questions on our individual phones. It was fun and easy to include 20 people in a game sitting all over the living area.

Sunday evening we went out for Mexican food at Mariano’s Hacienda, two tables of eight and one table of seven.

After dinner our niece and nephew took us to the airport car rental center and I rented a car for our trip to Waco on Monday. More about that day in another post. Another good long day in Texas.

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!

L & L Yeehaw

So much fun and so much to share. Stay tuned for more than you bargained for…

Thursday Was a North Day!

Our Land That We Love Tour took us north from Dallas into Oklahoma and then into Kansas. We left in the dark and missed the Welcome to Oklahoma sign. This sign lit up the darkness. We traveled 35 north.

I was driving when we entered Kansas so we missed the Welcome to Kansas sign, too.

We stopped at Costco in Wichita and when we got back on the road north we noticed there was a Mennonite Heritage Museum on our route we pulled off and enjoyed a visit there. More to come later.

We made it to our hotel in McPherson, Kansas for the night. On Friday we have a longer day of driving north to Nebraska and then west to Cheyenne, Wyoming. 569 miles which should take us 8 hours.

Tex-Mex

On our Land That We Love Tour we went to the fanciest Mexican restaurant we’ve ever seen on Tuesday night, Mariano’s. It is owned by the Martinez family. Mariano Martinez is the inventor of the World’s First Frozen Margarita Machine.

The first machine is now in the Smithsonian.

My youngest brother’s familia.

Dear and me.

Poblano Carbon

Tex-Mex tacos.

It’s Fall y’all!

Today we are meeting up with a dear friend from California who happens to be visiting her daughter who now lives in Texas. Serendipitous to be able to see each other in Texas.

Fun times today and then we hit the road early on Thursday heading north, then west, then north and then west, then west and north to our home! Did you catch our route?

All the Way to Dallas

On Monday The Land That We Love Tour took us out of Tennessee through Memphis then into Arkansas and on to Texas.

Memphis Bass Pro Shop!

We crossed the Mississippi River to get to Arkansas.

The Mighty Mississippi!

We stopped in Texarkana on the Texas/Arkansas border to fuel up the car and us before heading on to Dallas.

We got off on the main drag which has establishments in Arkansas on the north side and Texas on the south side.

The Arkansas side of the road has Arkansas flags on the light poles and the Texas side of the street has Texas flags on the posts.

We are having good fellowship time with my youngest brother’s family.

We are thankful and grateful to God for another safe day on the road.

2016 January-June in Mosaics…

January: Dear started a consulting job from home. We celebrated January birthdays. A business trip to San Francisco with reunions with old friends from my college days.

February: Our Lenten Rose bloomed early. We had a Superbowl party with a Chinese New Year theme with souvenirs I bought at San Francisco’s Chinatown. We also enjoyed a Valentines day lunch with a view in Bellevue.

March: We had a sister’s weekend. We celebrated my Medicare birthday in Bellingham with the Mennonite Girls and our hubbies. Dear and I had an overnight in Vancouver, B.C. to continue celebrating my birthday. Katie and Andrew celebrated their 5th anniversary!

Easter landed at the end of March and deserved it’s own mosaic. Our family was all together. Kulich baking, Seerney Paska, Easter egg hunts and Raclette all happened during Easter weekend.

April: We took a quick trip to Eastern Washington to work on some projects at Dan and Jamie’s. Late in the month I went along with Dear on a business trip to San Antonio, Texas. While there I drove to Austin to meet up with my brother’s family for a few hours.

May: Mother’s day with the kids on this side of the mountains. Dear and I took a road trip to Whatcom Falls and on the way home enjoyed stopping at a restaurant on Chuckanut Drive for lunch.

May: Two trips across the line to Canada to meet our play writer and later to meet a favorite blogger who gives so much encouragement to us Mennonite Girls, Rosella.

June: I flew down to be with family and enjoy my sister’s open house in her new digs.

June: A trip to Leavenworth where our family and our new daughter in law’s family enjoyed a weekend together eating and river rafting.

June: Father’s day brunch downtown Seattle with a photo op on Queen Anne Hill overlooking downtown Seattle.

June: We finished off June with a road trip to Yellowstone National Park and Cody Wyoming with stays in Montana coming and going. June really was packed full!

Six full months of blessings with people we love and trips to places we had never seen before. I’ll share July to December later. Dear’s consulting job ended in June and we began our time of wondering if we were unemployed or if we were retired.

How are you spending the last days of 2016? We are planning a little get together on New Year’s Eve after the Peach Bowl between our Washington Huskies and Alabama. We are the underdogs and will be cheering our Dawgs on to victory. Time will tell. Win or lose we will ring in the New Year with gratefulness to God for all He has done this year in our lives and the lives of our friends and family.

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Texas