Tag Archives: Family

From the Farm…

…to the Farm Market!

We so enjoy the relationship the Mennonite Girls Can Cook have with Charlotte at Lepp Farm Market. Many of our girls were raised on farms and now live off their farms. We are always treated well at Lepp and Sunday was another great day here. Our day started with a very good and challenging message from Lovella and Anneliese’s pastor on being sacrificially generous. After the service we all headed to Lepp Farm Market to enjoy brunch before our book signings began.

Lots of  delicious options plus ingredients to choose from for the chef to make your own personal omelette.

The weather was gorgeous and Charlotte had tables set beautifully for our outdoor brunch.

While having brunch I looked up and spotted Josh and Laura walking up to the market. I was busting at the seams with joy to see their faces and to know they trekked all the way from Seattle to bless me with their presence. It was so much fun to introduce them to all the girls and the husbands. Joy, Joy, Joy down in my heart.

Our Josh is a real “people person”, can you tell? I’m glad Marg captured these moments! Thank You Marg! Josh and Laura joined the men and Amy on a grand tour of Lepp Farm Market while the girls got busy signing books.

After the farm market tour Josh and Laura picked up their books that were all signed and headed back across the line.

Then we had a another special visitor arrive!

Marg’s 101 year old Father in law arrived to see what we were up to.

I think he is quite pleased with his daughter in law.

We all decided we should take a photo with our oldest supporters that came to Lepp Market. Along with Marg’s Father in law and Helen, Bev’s dad who is 90 drove over for the event, too. What a blessing!

Another sweet moment from the weekend that made me tear up was when Marg’s grandsons came to Wink’s with their personal cookbooks in hand.

They had marked their favorite recipes in the book and wanted us authors to sign on the page where their favorites were pictured.

It seems little Silas really likes my Blintz recipe and requests them at Oma and Opa’s house. For the record Marg and Silas call them crepes. Don’t tell my Russian friends! This little guy made my day!! Thank you to Judy for capturing these moments!

Another guy that’s going to make my day shortly is Dear. He’s on his way home from the airport right now. It’s been a long 5 days without seeing him. Blessings on your day!

Debbee and Lenny

The day turned out so lovely with the sun shining brightly.

Perfect for the bride who grew up in Huntington Beach and loves the beach and her flip flops!

These are 3 of my nieces. Debbee is the bride and Michelle and Melissa (sisters) were 2 of the 5 bridesmaids.

My niece Hope and grandniece Avery were the flower girls.

Brother and Sister, my nephew David with Debbee.

My sister Vera’s family.

My mom and dad with the bride and groom.

My nieces, nephews, grandniece and grandnephew.

The grandparents with their grandchildren and great grandchildren. 12 grands are missing in this photo.

The wedding party.

Mother of the groom, mother of the bride, and the groom’s sister helping Debbee to the bride’s room to wait for the ceremony.

Father of the bride getting ready for the walk down the aisle.

The rest of the photos I’m posting here are random shots of my family that I took before the ceremony began.

Here Comes the Bride!

The bride and groom are big sports fans. The ceremony was relaxed with lots of funny references to baseball and Debbee’s favorite team, the Angels and Lenny’s favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. At least both their teams wear red.

Next post will be all about the reception at Newland Barn in Huntington Beach.

My lower back is trying to freeze up on me so I did not mow the lawn yesterday. I did get some laundry done and have started on the “list” for my trip to British Columbia. The big news here in the Northwest is the glorious weather we have been promised for the next few days and into the weekend! I’m smiling…

Dear’s Side of the Family

The days here at home are short for me before I take off to Canada for our book launch so I’m going to try to capture the beauty of our time celebrating with family and friends in Southern California in my next few posts. There will be a lot of photos because a lot happened and a lot of people were together that aren’t together very often. So get your scrolling finger ready!

They arrived in waves to John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana on Thursday. Katie had to fly into LAX and I’m happy to report that the freeways proved smooth sailing for my drive to pick her up. We arranged a meeting at the hotel to get together with Dear’s only brother’s family. The only one who was missing was our oldest niece Jenna who lives in New York with her husband and grandniece.

The restaurant at the hotel was very dark so you’ll have to excuse my photos!

We had such a good time together catching up and laughing. It was good to hug and console My SIL Christina as her mother Virginia Wicks just passed away at age 92. Chris shared some things she has come across while she and one of her brothers have been sorting through Virginia’s papers. You can read about the amazing roll Virginia played as a publicist and in the jazz world in particular by clicking here and  here. She was also one of the Goldwyn Girls and was featured on one of the covers of Look magazine in 1954.

Our beautiful nieces and sweet grandniece and more shots of our families together in the past year…

Great Is Thy Faithfulness!

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We’ve had many celebrations, an emergency room visit, dinners, breakfasts, lunches, birthday parties, singing, reunions, and there is more to come. It’s Sunday and I’ll be back to my speedier connections Tuesday evening and will share many photos of all our celebrations. Consider yourselves warned. For now I’m just chiming in to say as my dad would say…”we are praizing duh Lorrd for all he does to us” God is good. Blessings on your Sunday!

Mixing It Up!

Hope you aren’t tired of tulips! Today I’m sharing the variegated and mixed up tulips. We have had rain, rain and more rain this weekend. Finally on Sunday afternoon we got some blue skies and sunshine!

We had some fun news this weekend. Our nephew Caleb asked his sweetheart Marie to marry him. Looks like our family will be having another wedding celebration come August! Reasons to celebrate are the theme of this year!

A friend of Caleb and Marie was hiding out to take this photo and others of this fun moment.

Congratulations on your engagement Caleb and Marie!

Anything new in your neck of the woods?

Happy Birthday Andrew!

If you and Katie were here I’d bake you a cake!

We’d have Josh and Laura over, too, and sing Happy Birthday to You!

We’d take you someplace fun to have a meal.

It would be another good reason to get the whole family here to celebrate you!

Hope the birthday card we sent arrives today. If not we only have the U*S*P*S to blame. Glad the “kids” are coming over tonight to celebrate with you and that Alex is making his famous burgers for y’all!

We love you and thank God for you and pray that God continues to bless you richly.  We ask that He will continue to protect you and keep you safe at home and when you are away serving in even more dangerous environments! Semper fi! May you always be faithful in your service to your country and God and in your marriage to Katie! Looking forward to being with you at one of your birthdays in the future!

A thank you to Jeremy Leffel for this last photo.

Celebrating Sixty Two!

This year we celebrated my birthday on two different continents and 2 states! We arrived in Milan on my birthday but after being airborne for many hours and arriving in Amsterdam and then Milan, Italy I had to be reminded it was my day. After we arrived back to Seattle our oldest and our lovely DIL decided we should head out to celebrate after the fact.

Josh and Laura picked a restaurant for brunch in Seattle close to Queen Anne Hill. They offered several great dishes to choose from.

The name of the restaurant was Toulouse Petit Kitchen and Lounge. There was a long line up but it was worth the wait.

This is the front door to the restaurant. I’m not sure what the story of the cross in the door is. I like it!

We headed to Kerry Park after brunch to get a view of Seattle from above.

Someone was blowing bubbles at the park and I was happy to catch this one on the bottom of the photo!

Before my birthday we celebrated a wee bit early with my family in Southern California along with celebrating Katie and Andrew’s 2nd Anniversary at Julienne in San Marino.

This is my brother Steve with Katie and me.

My nephew Joe, nieces Michelle and Melissa, and grand nephew Jack.

Katie, niece Debbee, and Laura.

My sister Kathy. My sister in law Kelly and grand niece Avery were at breakfast, too, but I failed to capture them in a photo.

Here’s what my kids ordered for my birthday gift …

They delivered it to me on Easter. I thought that was so appropriate bringing our celebrations full circle from the birth of Christ to His death and resurrection. Now my nativity scene with Wee Forest Folk is complete except for one wise man.

We are looking forward to a weekend of celebrating with friends at a wedding on Saturday evening and a breakfast on Sunday. What do you have planned?

It was all about the Son and…

…the sun on Easter Day!

We celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s son early on Sunday morning and then came home to prepare for our Easter meal and the sun shone brightly on us.

I walked about the yard and brought in some color from my Forsythia and Lenten Rose.

We had our traditional lamb barbecue (Shashlik) and sides for our meal. We were so happy the weather was perfect for a barbecue.

I have a confession to make. I did not bake our traditional Russian Easter Bread (Kulich/Paska) this year.
When I was in Italy I saw these in all the grocery stores advertised for Easter and decided to buy one to bring home. It worked perfectly with a texture and aroma very close to Paska.
 

 

Lombardians came up with colomba pasquale (literally “Easter dove”) and its popularity spread throughout the country until today it is an unofficial national Easter bread.There are several stories about its origins. (We have to say “of course” again; we’re talking about poetic Italians, after all.) One version has the colomba dating back to 1176, commemorating the Lombardian victory over Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. During the deciding battle, according to this version, two doves representing the Holy Ghost miraculously appeared on the battle standards.

After our meal we headed out into the sunshine to enjoy some much needed Vitamin D!

For us fair skinned people a portable umbrella was needed to shield our skin from the hot rays! It’s a bit too early for our patio covers to go up here in the Northwest. We usually pull out the patio equipment for Mother’s Day weekend or Memorial Day weekend.

Here we are in April and today I’m checking the calendar to see what’s coming up. We have 2 weddings to attend, one local and one that involves travel the end of the month. We are also getting plans finalized for a 90th birthday party for my parents the end of April. How does April look for you?

 

I’m Melting…

…or the time in between Winter and Spring in Chewelah. There was a lot more snow on the ground at our son’s place before we arrived. I was happy to visit after the fact. I shared Fall scenes from his property and here are some winter scenes.

This was our daughter Katie’s first visit to her brother’s home so we all trekked about the property for her to get a good picture of his property.

We ended our stay with breakfast at The Chalet Restaurant and Alpine Room in Chewelah, a great place to eat.

We had a wonderful time together at Dan’s place. After breakfast we said our goodbyes and reminded each other that we’ll all be together again in late April when we travel to our niece’s wedding in Southern California from 3 different airports. We’re at that stage in life when our kids are a bit scattered and enjoying life as they should apart from us. We always welcome the times we can come together and enjoy each other. Do your grown children live far or near?

The Season Begins…

Although we didn’t win it was nice to get rolling again. It was especially nice to enjoy the game with 3 of our 5!

For those of you who aren’t major league soccer fans this was the Seattle Sounders opener against Toronto. It was nice that Katie could join us while she is in town.

We’ve gotten to be friends with the season ticket holders around us. It comes in handy when you want them to take a photo, too!

I love that we always begin with National anthems and that the military in our area is so well represented. I’m a little partial to the Marines!

Since we were playing a Canadian team, their flag was represented, too. We listened to a beautiful rendition of “O Canada” in English with some French thrown in. They could have been better guests, though, and let us win. Aye!

Another fun season of “raising our scarves”…and wearing our rave green!

Our Emerald City Supporters really go the extra mile. The other Major League Soccer clubs have learned a lot from our Seattle Sounders supporters. This next photo does not represent most of the fans.

I don’t know how they were able to fall asleep but I’m glad I was able to catch them in the act! Speaking of sleep, I’m going to be sleeping at our son’s home in Eastern Washington for the next couple of nights so you probably won’t be hearing from me.

Have a great week!