Our Trip to Washington, Post 1

Chase and I just returned from a wonderful week of vacation to the Seattle, Washington area.  Chase's only cousins moved up there about 7 months ago, and we finally had time to go and visit them!!!


What a beautiful place they call home....BUT, it was on the colder, wetter side.  We never did see the infamous mountains that supposedly circle the area.  It was a great introduction the Pacific Northwest and we will still have plenty to explore in the future.


We had lots of cozy days indoors playing and visiting.  But there were also several outings and adventures along the way.  I will be posting over the next several days our visit.


You can also visit Anna's blog to see her beautiful photography that she captured.

The first morning we stayed around the house and Anna opened her hair studio...we got ripped using a Jillian Michael's DVD (we exercised many of the days using this video, it was fun, Anna loved every minute!), then it was off to watch Ellie at her horseback riding lesson, a drive up through the country and daffodil fields which happened to be in bloom this week, and on to Num Num and Papa's house.  This is our cousins' other grandparents.  I've heard about their quaint country home for years,just a few miles from the Canadian border.  It was so fun to finally visit. It was Anna's birthday the day before when we arrived and Num Num had fixed a delicious birthday dinner, complete with locally caught salmon!  It was a perfect day and night.  The little girls fell asleep in the car on the way home while watching a movie.

You can see we had a lot of fun at the farm and enjoying the countryside.

The picture below is at Num Num's.  Then my battery died :(

Have you ever done a double take when looking in another car's window?  We did with this truck!  Look at the rolled up window and then the picture below with it opened!

This dog's name was Chow-Chow and his owners have little kids and they have a saddle that they can ride on him!  He weighs 180 pounds and is still a puppy.  He'll get up to 240!!

Thanks Hitchcocks for all of the fun!!  Stay tuned for more fun photos...

Service ~ Good for the Soul

I've now been home for 4 consecutive weeks.
It's been good.  I feel like I belong here again.
One area that feels weakened by being gone is my faithfulness to our church.
It's hard to feel connected when always passing through.
I can see why people would want to go to a big anonymous church and not become part of a church family, in some ways...less busy, no body is in your business, etc.
But, we've chosen to be involved and involve ourselves in the lives of others.
It is good to live in community.
So, this month has been good for my soul. 
I've loved others, cared for others, watched others' children, cooked meals, run around...
all in the name of loving others like Christ has loved me.
It's also tiring.  It takes work and effort to be purposeful in living.
We are a part of a small church with many needs.  I can become overwhelmed if I stop and dwell on it.  But I press on and do what I can.


There are many hurting people out there, many going through difficult circumstances, challenging financial times...if I can take some of my time and resources and use that to bless others and encourage them through their dark times, then I've had a good day loving others. 

This week Chase and I head to Washington to see our family up there!  It is an exciting time for us.  She is so thrilled to see her cousins.  We will also have the chance to see my brother as well.  It is going to be a great week!!

Second Hand Goodies

It only happens twice a year...the Just Between Friends consignment sale!!

Let me tell you, out here in Southern California, consignment sales are NOT a big thing, this is the only one around here that I've even heard of, and it is tiny in comparison to other parts of the country.

My friend Lisha, that just moved back to Atlanta and had a baby girl said that she's been to TWO in the past two weekends and is thinking about going to another THIS weekend!  Crazy!  But I've heard that about Atlanta.

So, I must take what I can get!  Here are my goodies:

I must say, I probably spent more than I needed to.  Our good friend Sue is always sending us hand me downs and Chase truly has a full closet that way.  But there is that little maternal thing inside me that wants to buy clothes every once in a while!

Chase gets so excited when she sees anything Hello Kitty, so I bought her a t-shirt.  How this 2 year old that isn't exposed to much in this world knows about HK is beyond me!

There were tons of Gymboree sets and single pieces.  I never buy anything new from that store, so those are always a fun find.  

The most exciting non-clothing find was The Little Mermaid DVD for $4.00.  Chase is loving Dora books these days.  We have one from the library that I'm certain she won't want to relinquish.  

Can you guess what the grand total was??????????

I think that is pretty fair, not great, but fair!  It was a fun night though.  I took my friend Steph with me and that was her first time at anything like that, so she stocked up on clothes for her twins. We had some good laughs, ran into some friends, and then had some frozen yogurt at Golden Spoon afterward. 

I'm also consigning a bunch of clothes, so I hope that I break even!!  It's a lot of work to get ready for, but it's always nice to make a little bit of spending money!

Until the Fall, we must say goodbye to our Friends!

~Lately~

::  We've had some beautiful weather here lately  ::

::  It's urged me to at least try and help our backyard to look presentable  ::

::  We won two free tickets to the San Diego Safari Park  ::

::We invited a new friend with her mother, they are a Turkish family that John works with ::

::  Every time I visit this park I can't help but laugh because this is what my safari in Africa looked like  ::

::  Burrito Baby ::

::  Ailing family members; first Chase, then John  ::

::  Another birthday party, this one at a paint your own pottery place ::

::  Date night :  dinner and a movie  ::

::  Dear friends to keep our little girl  ::

::  Disaster striking, 3:30 and 6:30 am phone calls from concerned parents  ::

:: Watching a friend's baby so she can rest  ::

An Escape Artist

A while ago we figured out that Chase had figured out how to unlock the locks on the doors.  So, John installed those hotel type locks up high on our front door.  

The other day I mentioned to Chase that we were going to walk to the mailbox or something and the next thing I heard was a chair scraping on the floor.  I poked my head from in the kitchen to where she was, and lo and behold, she even figured out how to open that lock.  She is so darn smart!!  To put together climbing up on a chair to unlock the lock, AMAZING!!!

Here is the sequence of events, of course I was trying to be inconspicuous so she wouldn't realize that it was a pretty big deal that she'd figured it out!!

So, the moral of the story is, just when you think you've outsmarted your kids, YOU'RE WRONG!!!

How have your kids outsmarted you lately???

:: This Weekend ::

We had a nice, quiet weekend.  It was about the first Saturday that we've been a family in a long time.  It felt kind of weird.  Friday night I got to go have a girls night with my friend Kathryn.  We hung out at her house as her hubby was in Europe for work.  We talked, laughed, did some church work, had a bottle of wine...it was delightful.  John and Chase stayed home and watched Alice in Wonderland, which I had rented from the library. It's interesting as adults now watching these Disney movies, not fully remembering them from childhood.  John said this movie was completely crazy and trippy and just plain WEIRD!!  Guess that is one we will not be purchasing.  We also checked out the Fox and the Hound this weekend.  Chase liked that one.  It's ok, still kind of sad, but maybe she doesn't know that?  Chase had a blast calling herself the fox all weekend and daddy was the dog.


Saturday Chase had a birthday party to go to for one of her classmates.  It was at a music school for kids.  I went this weekend as she has another next weekend and John will take her to that one!  She had a wonderful time. It was a music lesson with different "instruments" like the egg shakers, 2 wooden sticks, teacher playing the guitar, singing.  It gave me some good ideas of things we could do at home.  I'm not ready to sign up for more activity in our lives.  The party theme was cute with brown and pink polka dots.  I love to see her interact with these school friends.  I really do think they enjoy playing together.  Minus the minor scuffles like Chase wants the yellow ball that Suzie has!  

After nap time, I felt like we'd been homebound for days(ironic compared to my earlier comment, right?), so we decided to go walk around the mall and then eat dinner out. Chase loves to go to the mall and look in the pet shop and play on a germ fest of an indoor play area.  Then we ate dinner at Macaroni Grill.  It'd been a while since we've eaten there.  And we typically don't eat at "nice" restaurants with Chase, because it's mostly rushed and not enjoyable wondering if she'll be set off by something.  But, she did rather well.  Not great.  And I felt that we'd completely devoured our food in less than 45 minutes!  But it was delicious, they have wonderful homemade bread, and I got a night off from cooking.

Sunday was my first time to church in 4 weeks.  It was nice to be back in our Sunday School class that we are teaching.  Those kids didn't notice I'd been gone, but I'm glad that I'm impacting their lives anyway!!  We have found that teaching multiple quarters in a row really helps us feel like we are getting to know our covenant kids and they are getting to know us.  We always try to have some discussion about what is going on in our world too, that is always eye opening to me for many reasons.  I enjoyed seeing friends that I haven't talked to in a while.  Chase has new Sunday School teachers which I was thrilled to learn about because they are a very dear family to us and I love that they will interact with her regularly.  We tried taking Chase back into church with us (we've been practicing church at home briefly, but taken a break for the last month or so) and it was kind of a flop.  A friend had given her a balloon, how do you take a balloon away from a 2 year old??  She ended up back in nursery after about 20 minutes.


In the evening we had a fun reunion of our founding church's Pastor and wife.  They now live in Uganda, Africa as missionaries.  They were back for an annual reporting trip of sorts.  We had a nice reception before and after the night service.  It was nice to see other familiar faces of people that have connections to them as well but don't go to our church.  One of our church ladies decorated the fellowship hall so nicely.  She used all of the red and gold colors from the Ugandan flag.  There was plenty of delicious food for all.  I had fun baking a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting from scratch for the occasion.  It was delish!!

Our Second Annual Trip to Big Bear

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then here are many thousand words worth.

We went up to the mountains east of Los Angeles, about a 2 1/2 drive under normal conditions.  Nothing was normal about our conditions.  The fastest way up there was closed due to a portion of the road sliding off the mountain back in December from all of the rain.  We took the scenic route which was about 3 hours.   

We went with 2 other families.  Last year there were 4, but this year one family had to opt out.  We found a new house this year.  It worked out well but wasn't quite as luxurious.  And we found it funny that there was no dining table...but there was a pool table.  To get to the hot tub we had to walk out to the street and under the carport!  

Each pair or part of a pair got to go skiing or snowboarding each day.  The other adults would stay behind to watch the kids.  The first day it was just nice weather with snow already on the ground.  The second day it snowed all day.  It was beautiful!  This was the day that John and I went skiing.  John rented a snowboard this year due to his boot breaking on the first day for him.  He was actually pretty good due to his newest hobby of surfing.  Yes, he really is becoming a Californian!

I, on the other hand am not a very practiced skier.  I basically ski with my "breaks" on, leaving me with very sore thighs after about 5 minutes.  Once I got over that and decided to just be sore and live in the moment, I had a great time!  John and I were almost at the same level with him boarding.

We had delicious dinners each night, each family taking turns to cook.  We had more food than we could have ever needed for 3 nights!

Chasey and Emilie (pictured at the way top left together) definitely acted like sisters and were constantly picking on one another!  It was kind of funny day one but by day four, they were making us crazy.  It is a blessing that they feel so close with each other.  At one point they snuck a box of fiddle faddle and were eating it; neither of them having eaten popcorn before.  They are a bit mischievous when together!  Have to watch out for them!!

We were very thankful for this little getaway.  It's always nice to have a vacation to look forward to.  It took us almost 4 hours to get home as chains were required and people were driving slower.  It was a little nerve wracking at times as we'd come to a dead stop and sit for 15 minutes not knowing what was happening ahead of us.  We were so happy to be home and out of the car.

We couldn't have asked for a better weekend or better friends to be enjoying the mountains with!

Until next year, thanks for the snow and the memories!!