A little bit of bragging

I’d like to take this opportunity to do a little bragging while catching up on my Photos-of-the-day.
October 7: My beautiful Katsura tree in the fall, with the morning sun streaming down. We have 3 of these trees and we LOVE them.
Is that gorgeous or what?
October 9: Sarah helped paint some sets for her 6th grade musical. She did a great job! And thanks to my dad for building “The Doors.”

October 11: I baked chocolate chip cookies. I used my mom’s recipe. I did everything the same as I always do. Mine are never as good as hers. My mom is the queen of chocolate chip cookies. Except this time, THIS time, my daughters said the cookies were (should I shout this or whisper it?) better than grandma’s. Whoa.

October 12: We had some gorgeous mornings here before the rains started. We pass by these trees every morning on the way to the bus stop. I just had to take a picture. The colors actually got more vibrant as the days passed, and now it’s raining and blowing and I doubt there are any leaves left, but I loved the fog the day I took this shot.

October 13: I’ve done a little fall decorating with the pumpkins and other treasures I found in the “Fall Box.” The porch looks cute this year.

October 14: I finished up the little baby book for our new niece. So cute.
   Just one of my favorite pages. All Reese’s lovely mama has to do is add pictures and they’ve got a cute little baby-sized mini-book of Reese’s first year.
October 15: Hydrangeas are one of my favorite flowers. I know I’ve said that before. My purple & blue & pink flowers have dried into this luscious raspberry color for fall. I can’t get over the colors around this fall. God must have used all 128 crayons this year. ;)

October 16: FINALLY! Elise finally wrote her entire name all by herself! Woo-hoo! Way to go, 3-year-old!

October 17: Saturday was one productive day around our house. Bethany worked hard on her leaf collection for school. It’s not done yet, but she made some major progress.
 
Ed also installed our new faucet in the kitchen. The previous one was broken, plus for some reason had practically zero water pressure. So, we bought a really, really, nice one (as in, expensive) and it was almost a breeze to install and it is super and beautiful and not broken and we now have awesome water pressure! Kitchen faucets with no water pressure make it really a pain to wash dishes, let Ed tell you (if you want).

October 18: We skipped church this morning because Sarah was running a fever last night and had a cough and sore throat. She’s quite a lot better today, thankfully, and her fever has been gone since 9:00 a.m. Ed did go to church long enough to sing in choir, but then came home. A no-church day, combined with an off-lunch day, makes for a very different Sunday than we are used to. We had an early lunch, then all headed outside to rake up some leaves and work on the yard together. Not everything is done, but we had a good time working for an hour or so and now the girls are playing, Ed’s watching football, and I’m catching up on my blog. Here are a few pictures I took after we raked up the leaves and then the girls got to have fun in them. Notice how there aren’t very many leaves? Another beauty of the Katsura tree – tiny little leaves.

   (That’s where I was wishing I could turn down the brightness outside like I can in Photoshop so that they would stop squinting their eyes.)

 


Update: after I posted this, I noticed Sarah was back in the house from playing outside. She looked a little pale. I took her temp - back up over 100. :( She's staying home tomorrow, I guess.

I knew it would happen

Honestly, I did. I knew that once I started trying to say happy birthday to various people on my blog, I would forget someone (or more than one someone). And now I did forget at least one that I know about. So sorry, Susanne! I did remember to say Happy Birthday to my fab sis-in-law on Facebook, but somehow neglected to blog about it. So, a belated Happy Birthday tribute to Susanne...

Susanne is married to my baby brother and is his wonderful wife and the best mom ever to two of my nephews. Susanne is so easy-going, fun, caring, and so very compassionate. We miss her (& her great family that she takes such good care of) so much. My girls love their Aunt Susanne and I love Sus's laugh. I also think she makes the best corn casserole around and she can hold her own a lot better than I can when our family gets in one of their "intelligent conversations". We all love you lots, Susanne!

I must also give a shout-out to our newest niece, Reese Harper, born one week ago today. I don't have an adorable picture yet, but as soon as I do, I will post it. Congratulations E,J,K,C, & R on the newest tiny addition to your family. We can't wait to meet you Reese and we love you all!

Lessons from Haystack Hill

1. Halting chores in the middle of a Saturday afternoon to take a quick family hike is a good thing.

2. The sound of leaves crunching under one’s feet is surpassed only by the sound of Becca giggling while running and listening to the sound of leaves crunching under her feet.

3. Fall is truly a beautiful season.

4. We live in a beautiful area and have an amazing creative God. Sarah noticed everything while we were hiking.

5. My 9-year-old still has the mind of a curious scientist. She looked for spores, inspected moss, and asked “why?’.

6. Fresh air does wonders for a mind bogged down with to-do lists, checkbook balancing numbers, tasks to organize, and future worries.

7. Sticks are cool.

8. Trail mix tastes amazing when one is on the trail.

9. My impressions of Elise are correct: that is one determined little 3 year old. She climbed the entire way up all by herself, and it was VERY steep! 10. Who needs Boston in the fall when you’ve got this right outside your own backdoor?

The Fall Day

Once upon a time, a family moved to a new town, a new school, a new church. One fall day, some new acquaintances invited that new family on an apple-picking, goat-feeding, pumpkin-choosing outing. That  day was a special day in which new friendships began to feel more like old friendships, in which the new family thought maybe, just maybe, this new town was going to feel like home in every way. And every fall since, those same friends pick apples, feed goats, and choose pumpkins together on a special fall day. There are more kids and there are older kids. The friends feel like sisters to each other. The Fall Day is one of the best days of the year.

My girls, who have blood sisters.

I pray they are someday as close as I am with my girlfriends. And thankfully, I now have sisters through marriage. When I am with any of them, it feels like not a day has past since the last time we were together. I love them. But my girlfriends, the ones I talk to on a daily basis, the ones I e-mail and call when I need help with my kids or with buttons or with ideas for dinner or a prayer request, those girls are my every-day sisters. There’s not a bigger compliment I could bestow upon any of them.

I would make a bad farmer

It’s true. I’m not into messy stuff. But even worse, I get tired of the harvest. Seriously. Any farmer that gets tired of harvest…well…that farmer wouldn’t make very much money.

I was informed by my family this weekend that we had more red tomatoes. Seriously? I’m so tired of tomatoes. What on earth is my tomato plant doing producing more tomatoes in October? Goodness. I thought I had made my last batch of salsa. Apparently not.

I’m really behind on my Photo of the Day business. So…here’s a little catch-up with the missing photos:

September 26: This little musical has been consuming a lot of my life lately:

It’s Sarah’s 6th grade musical. It’ll be performed November 19 & 20. Until then, I’ll be reading that book pretty much every day. It’s a lot of fun and a lot of work. I wouldn’t miss being involved for anything.

September 27: I am soooo loving my Bible Study this year!

 

September 28 was those pictures of Katiebug.

September 29: I’ve been walking with a friend a couple times a week and it was so cold one morning that the girls begged for hot cocoa when we got home. They love hot cocoa.

  September 30: Life has been so busy. This is how I can tell:

Countertop full of JuNk. Ooooh. But see that? That’s a coupon for free chocolate. You can have one too. You just go to the M&M website on Fridays and sign up and you’ll get a coupon for a free candy bar in the mail. You can even use it on Dove chocolate. Mmmm.

October 1 was the picture of Ed & I from 16 years ago.

October 2 & 3: I was at our church women’s retreat. It was AWESOME. I’m still processing. I might blog about it more eventually. The main thing I want to remember from it is that God’s grace is like warm blankets, being piled high on top of  us in the cold of winter, over and over. And when we share God’s grace, or give someone else grace, we are piling those same blankets over them. What a great image.

Our retreat committee. Love these gals. They worked hard and prayed hard with me for this retreat for months now. It’s been good.

  Our local retreat center serves the best meals. That dessert is a classic and one of my favorites. They make everything so yummy and pretty.

October 4: Now that school is in full swing, our “wall of fame” is getting full. Fun stuff.

October 5: Last night I had a counselor meeting and those GEMS Counselors did it again – they had great ideas, lots of energy and willingness, and we were so productive! We pretty much covered everything we needed to cover. We planned our theme night using our theme resource book:

Our theme is on prayer. It’s gonna be good.

And so, now we’re to today, which is back to those tomatoes. Anybody want some salsa?

Sumas Mountain

Guest blogger: Ed

Julie promised that I would blog my hike two weeks ago, so I’d better make good on it. She wanted to make my 35th birthday as special as possible, so she asked for things that I’d like to do, and one that kept coming up was that I wanted to hike up Sumas Mountain.

Why Sumas Mountain? Well, because it's there, right there out my front porch:

My good friend Todd has been up once before, and brought back a picture of my neighborhood from the mountain, so it seemed like a great way to spend a day. We used an iPhone app to track our progress up the mountain. Here's our route, overlaid using Google Earth. (That's Mt. Baker in the background.)

It took three hours to get up there; the hike was pretty steep, at least for me. I'm sure Todd would have made better time if he hadn’t been dragging me along, but I just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

I suppose, with some math, I should be able to figure out the average incline. Let's see... We climbed 3,308 feet. We traveled four miles, which is 21,120 feet. Trigonometry was never my strong point, but I think I can use an inverse tangent on the ratio, which gives me almost 9%. That's steep, right?

Anyway, on the way up, we stopped to look at an old vault of some kind, an old coal mine, and an old log shack with a nice view.

At the top, we first got to look north into Canada. It was a very pretty day. Apparently there's a different Sumas Mountain on the Canadian side as well. I suppose we must be looking at it, but I don't know which one it is.

Finally, after a short trip along the ridge of the mountain, we got the payoff – a bird's eye view into my hometown, not to mention a beautiful view of the Puget Sound off in the distance. I loved the clouds, though they did put a shadow over my house, which made it impossible (for me) to actually pick it out. Next time I'll have to bring binoculars, or at least Julie’s zoom lens. But it was an awesome view and well worth the trip.

The trip down was uneventful and an hour shorter. Probably a bit more dangerous, but we managed it without any injuries, and had a nice conversation to boot. Thanks again to Todd for leading the way, and to Julie for giving me the day to do it. I’ll have to do it again one of these days. Maybe we’ll see if any of my girls can make it up!

October 1, 1993

That was the date. It was a Friday.

I knew something was up because Ed was taking me to the Beltline Bar (it’s a Mexican restaurant, not an actual bar) for dinner. For real food. Our normal dates consisted of going to Chi-Chi’s, eating tons of free chips and salsa, sharing a bottomless Coke, and then sharing fried ice cream (which we have yet to find any that compare). So if we were actually going to spend more than $10 on dinner, I knew something was up.

Since I knew something was up, I had my roommates take our picture before we went out for dinner.

Does Ed look nervous to you? I think he was nervous.

Because that’s the night he proposed to me!

There was nothing wild or extravagant about his proposal, but if there had been, it wouldn’t have come from Ed, and I wanted it to come from Ed. He had worked all summer to buy me a ring, which, by the way, he designed and had made just for me. Really. My ring is one of a kind, designed by my beloved.

And I still love my ring as much as I did on that day when he proposed. And I love my beloved even more. 16 years later.

And just for your viewing enjoyment:

My brother took our engagement picture on Calvin’s nature preserve a couple of weeks later. Oh, how I love fall photographs. Thanks, Randy!

Change of subject:

 

Katie-bug spent Monday morning with us. We had a good time. The whole in and out of the box thing was pretty popular, as was climbing on the box. I wish she could have spent the whole day, but I was grateful that she could nap at another friend’s house so that I could run the errands I needed to run for GEMS that night. Thanks, Lea and John & Dee for being flexible and helping me out!

One quick funny story about her visit with us: On our way home from picking her up and dropping the girls off at school, I decided to run through the car wash. The van was filthy. I had all sorts of hearts and names written with little fingers in the muck on the side. It was time. Elise was sure Katie would be scared. When the sprayers passed by Katie’s window the first time, she kind of squirmed and looked a little scared and tried to get out of her car seat. She didn’t cry, though. I gave her some toys to distract her and she seemed fine. When the sprayers came past her window the second time, she threw the toys into her lap and covered her eyes with her hands. As soon as the sprayer was gone, she picked up the toys and was fine. The next time the sprayer came, the same thing. Throw the toys down, cover the eyes, then pick the toys back up when the sprayer was gone. I think she did it all 6 times! It was so funny. Elise thought Katie was hysterically funny. As soon as we drove out, Katie thought it was funny too, and they both giggled for the next 5 minutes. So cute.