#GEMSConference2014

With almost everyone getting into technology more and more, our GEMS conference this year even had a hashtag! Thankfully, it was not used as often as you might think. We were busy!

I was blessed to be able to go a day early and stay a day longer in order to spend time with my MI family. It has been over a year since I had seen them last, so I loved EVERY minute of it!

I taught my nephew how to take selfies! What are aunts for, if not for that?

Got kisses from my niece – she’s a sweetie!

Except she doesn’t smile when you hold up a camera and say, “Smile, Claire!”

But she smiles when you tickle her!

 

I got to see my 91-year-old grandma while I was there, too!

Then I headed to Calvin for the conference. The committee had written with sidewalk chalk all over the campus – really fun!

My dorm…not the one I lived in as a student back in the day, though.

Two of my great loves had their signs right next to each other! Just needed to put in a little Logos sign (which could have happened, since Logos was a presenter at this conference for the first time!) and maybe a Lynden Christian sign and then I would have been simply in heaven.

I presented a workshop this year on Creative Ways to bless your GEMS. I was super fortunate to have my workshop be in the first workshop time slot of the conference! Woo-hoo! All attendees were fresh and NOT SLEEPY! I had a super great time at the workshop & I pray the ladies who came did, too! The picture above is a picture of some of the cute samples I made and then gave away throughout the workshop.

Some of our great praise & worship leaders…what a blessing they all were!

My small group table during theme night.

One of the workshops I was able to attend was to Kids Food Basket, a non-profit organization in Grand Rapids that provides sack dinners to poverty level students in the Grand Rapids area. They provide 5000+ dinners per day! Their building isn’t large, but it is efficient. The tables above are used in assembly line fashion to put together all those sack dinners. They like to have the brown paper bags they use decorated for the students, so as part of our theme night service project, we each decorated 5+ bags, so we got to drop off those 3000 bags when we went. It seemed like a lot until we found out that 3000 wasn’t even enough bags for one days worth of dinners. Wow. Anyway, we got a quick tour, and then we got to portion pita chips into snack size baggies to be used in the next days dinners. Since the workshops are only 75 minutes long, by the time we drove there and allotted time to drive back, we only had about 15-20 minutes of “getting our hands dirty.” I would have LOVED to be able to have this workshop cover 2 workshop slots so that we could have felt like we actually made a difference, rather than just causing an inconvenience of the workers setting up something we could do really fast. They get a lot of food donated, but they also purchase non-perishables from the local food pantry for something like 17 cents/pound. They have an ambitious goal of including fresh fruit & vegetable in every dinner as well. It’s a great organization and I’m so glad I got to find out about it.

At every conference, there is a Women’s Night Out. This year we were able to go to the Meijer Garden in GR…we got on a bus to be shuttled there and our bus driver took a VERY roundabout way to get there (I know, because I know how to get there!) to go through the back entrance…which ended up to be closed! Aack! But, once we got there we could roam through the indoor garden and take a very abridged version of their sculpture tram ride (I’m glad it was abridged, although I would have liked to be able to walk around the sculpture gardens and other outdoor garden areas.) We ate dinner in the outside café, admired the Chihuly glass, and listened to both Tammy Trent and Allison Allen, both of whom were DYNAMIC and MEANINGFUL speakers to hear, both that night and the other times we heard them at conference. SO blessed by them!

Me & my roomie, Brenda, who is the Leadership Trainer in southern BC. I knew her previously, but we didn’t know each other super well before rooming together…but NOW we do!

We titled this statue, “Words with Friends”…which you will only find funny if you are familiar with Words with Friends.

My sweet GEMS sister, Amy, from New Jersey. Adore her. Her trust in the Lord is inspiring.

After the conference was over I headed back to see my family. We went to Lake Michigan and had a great time!

And ice cream after the beach, OF COURSE!

Ended my time in MI giving the babe a bath and then a very early morning flight back home. So thankful for safety while traveling, my MI family, & the GEMS staff & volunteers.

More July stuff

In July there are lots of really delicious berries in WA. Our county is the largest producer of raspberries in the country. And our blackberries are  pretty amazing. Those yellow berries are called Golden Raspberries. They taste pretty much like regular raspberries, only maybe slightly tropical. We enjoyed this selection of berries one night when our dear friends the Boon’s came for dinner.

Their oldest daughter stayed for the weekend to hang out with Sarah. We didn’t do anything special, but they kept themselves entertained. They had themselves a little photo shoot and I was invited to go and take pictures of the two of them together. These are just a few of my favorites.

This little robin fledgling lived in our backyard for a few days. It hopped around and waited for its momma to bring it food. One day I scared it when I started watering near where it was hiding and it started to fly! It flew a few feet at a time and then flew up to the top of the wheelbarrow. It rested there for a bit and Ed & I decided at that point to leave it alone, lest we scare it to death. The next time we looked, the bird was gone and we never saw it again. We HOPE it learned to fly and flew over the fence and is now a beautiful robin living all on its own.

That’s the back side of my forearm after I encountered stinging nettles while weeding the garden. THAT HURTS! I had no idea stinging nettles would hurt that badly. Even more than a day later it still felt like 100 bee stings all at once. Aloe Vera Gel was awesome on it (which I happened to have on hand after that BAD sunburn I got at the bay earlier that week) and the Benadryl made me sleepy so I had a nap or two, which is always nice in the summer.

Next up: my trip to Michigan!

Day at the Bay

Sheesh…go on a couple vacations and have some family visit and the blog just gets forgotten! Playing catch-up again…

Back in mid-July we had some REALLY HOT weather…as in 90* weather…which is REALLY REALLY HOT for us here in northwest WA. Actually, we have had a lot of that kind of weather this summer, which is even MORE unusual. Anyway, I wanted to escape the heat and so I sent out a little email to some friends – “Hey, anyone want to go to the bay for a day?” A friend whose in-laws have a cabin at the bay said, “Let’s go to the cabin” and then we all decided to invite dads for a BBQ in the evening after work, in addition to spending the afternoon there together. It was a BEAUTIFUL AND HOT day – perfect beach weather!

People came and went as their schedules allowed, kids swam and dug, moms talked and got sunburnt (or maybe that was just me?) and then we wrapped up our evening with a BBQ and s’mores on the shore.

Yeah, those are clams. LIVE clams. The kids went clam digging. They were highly successful. Thankfully, clams were not on the menu for the BBQ.

See those itty bitty little black spots all together just to the left of the middle of the picture? Those are our kids. We told them to hurry and rinse off because the tide was coming in quickly. Somehow, they missed the hurry part of what we said and they went WAY the heck out there and proceeded to swim around, leaving the moms and the toddlers to clean up all the beach toys before they floated away…but I’m sure they had a good time.  

Bad picture, I know. My iPhone isn’t awesome at into-the-sun-shots. Such a good day.

THIS was not at the bay. THIS was in my dad’s shop. I’m including a few extra pictures here that don’t really go with anything at all. The girls asked grandpa what that roll of plastic was for. It’s actually for wrapping windows for transporting them. But he used it to wrap their legs together. Very funny memory for them.

Also not at the bay…these were some of Bethany’s first harvested carrots!

It’s been a great first year in her garden!!

Summer Stories

I was looking back at pictures today to see what needed blogging yet and I found a fun assortment of pictures needing to be documented, with stories to tell.

The day after the 4th of July we went to the lake with some of our oldest & dearest friends. It was a little chilly, but the kids (& adults!) still had a great time. Unfortunately, their little boy started not feeling so well, so the evening ended differently than planned, but the “big kids” had fun eating pizza & watching The Lego Movie at our house afterwards.

For some reason I have all magenta dahlias this year…and this one is solid on one half and striped on the other!

Fun in the creek & at Edaleen with friends.

On a walk with my big girls…I was apparently too slow or not interesting enough because I got left behind. But I loved my view.

FRESH cherries arrived IN THE MAIL from my amazing friend in Eastern Washington whose son rented a cherry farm and raised his own as his summer job. Amazing!

Work on the patio extension has begun…but it will conclude while we are on the road to Yellowstone. Not so happy about that, but we have had several set backs (including rain, flat tires – two! – and very busy schedules!) along the way, so I think we will all just be glad when it is finished! I’m especially excited for the concrete steps!

We are working on completing the Couch to 5K program…but we are not very consistent. I think it will take us 8 months to finish the 8 week training course…

A SWEET reunion – at the Razz Fest I just happened to bump into my dear friend from high school who lives out of state. Would have loved to have had her over for coffee…but her visit was a short one this time, so maybe next time around. And now I have her cell # so we can text! LOVE technology for that reason!

So I had another painting project. As you can see…it didn’t go awesome. Painting Sarah’s desk did not turn out as wonderful as we had hoped…apparently you just can’t sand and prime weird laminate enough before spray painting…no matter what Pinterest says…especially when it’s hot out. Thankfully, the final product wasn’t this bad. I don’t yet have a final picture because I painted the knobs turquoise and Sarah has decided she wants them black, so…that will come in due time! But at least her desk is now basically white, somewhat distressed, and it looks way better in her room than the weird laminate.

Took a Sunday afternoon picnic to Cornwall and the girls braved the creek…they were freaking out about crabs in this picture…I’m guessing they saw some kind of crawdad/waterbug.

I love summer stories.