family of five: 2011

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

we're back from china!

we're back from our two-week vacation to china and hong kong! it was an amazing experience, for sure! we have quite a few pictures to share, which i will do soon, but just wanted to post and let everyone know that we are home safe and sound, praise God. the last few days and nights have been pretty terrible, with all of us up and not able to sleep even at 3 am in the morning (ugh!), but we are slowly working our way back to u.s. time. to keep ourselves awake on our second day back, we headed out to get our christmas tree and decked our halls so that we are now ready to celebrate Jesus' birthday!

our first day in beijing, at the Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan)

our last day in hong kong, all of us inside one small hotel room

with ALL of our luggage (Packed Sardines)

Monday, October 31, 2011

halloween festivities and a pinch kindness

so, as last-minute as i was, we still pulled off some halloween festivities tonight...yay! we made a quick run to target this afternoon to pick up candy and the kids dressed up for the trip. we got some looks, but it was fun. a little while later, my cousin and her kids came over and we had our traditional halloween dinner -- pizza! after some face-painting and costume-selecting (they each dressed up as something different than what they wore to target), we hit the streets for some CANDY! at the end of the night, we had quite the loot. at one point, three girls came trick-or-treating at our door and they were each holding a boxed barbie doll. allan asked them what that was about and they said that some house was handing them out instead of candy. interesting! when they saw our girls, they offered the barbies to them. our girls were ecstatic! thank you to three kind young girls who blessed our girls with dolls! now maybe they'll forget about the candy. :) this is just one example of why allan and i think that the tri-cities is unique. we've lived here for 10 years now but continue to be surprised, impressed, and blessed by how nice the people here are. let me give two more quick examples; an employee who was helping us at home depot this weekend held emma in her lap as she was looking up information for us on the computer. not many people will do that. then, today, a serviceman came out to fill our propane tank and ended up helping me start up our fireplace. he gave emma a piggyback ride before he left, and this was after he patiently answered a multitude of questions my girls asked him. you could tell he was a grandpa...we found out he has 9 grandkids. :)

we hope everyone had as safe and fun of a halloween as we did!

my beautiful baby emma!

my pretty little elise!

the motley crew!!

Sunday, October 30, 2011

click-clack, ding!

sometime near the beginning of last summer, i began a search to find a good, old fashioned, manual typewriter. don't ask me what it was that started me on my hunt -- actually, scratch that, i just remembered. i wanted a typewriter to type out bible verses that i am memorizing onto cards that i store in a little wooden address file. yeah. so, i started with craigslist (where i always start my searches), then went to ebay, then to the internet to do some more research, and finally back to craigslist to see what i could find now that i had a better idea of what i was looking for. this is what i ended up with ...

my hermes 3000

my favorite color is green, so naturally i really like the color of this machine (the keys, especially). i really like the shape of it. i also like that it is manual and portable so i don't need to plug it in to use it. the click-clack sounds that it makes when i type and hearing the "ding!" when it comes to the end of the margin is pretty neat. i told allan that i would type love letters to him on this thing. i've typed him a total of 1. :)

in the process of getting this typewriter, i sort of befriended the person who sold it to me. his name is michael. he took immaculate care of this machine (which i am thankful for) and gave me a bunch of tips and articles on the on-setting trend of typewriters. after i mentioned that i had sewed a cover for my typewriter, he asked if i could sew one for his and i gladly said yes. here are the before and after pictures he sent me ...

before

after (it fits!)

and here's my own cover

my lovely green hermes 3000 sits in my new office!, which i will share about another time. i will say, though, that it is a space i can call my own. and, what i appreciate about it most is that it has a door that i can close. :) more on that later!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

batman and robin??

we're only 9 days away from halloween and we haven't done a single thing to prepare for it. no candy, no costumes. we don't even know what we are going to do - take the kids trick-or-treating? ... or ... stay home and pass out candy? since we haven't given a single thought to costumes yet, we will most likely pull something out of the kids' dress-up trunk. anyway, in honor of the upcoming festivities (whatever they may be), here's a picture i dug up recently that was taken back in june 2010 (lucas - age 5, emma - age 3). so STINKING CUTE!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

from pasco to minneapolis and back

towards the end of september, allan and i got the awesome opportunity to travel to minneapolis, minnesota to attend a conference put on by desiring God. the theme of the conference was finish the mission, bringing the gospel message of Jesus Christ to people who have never heard it and/or do not have access to a local church. hands down, allan and i thought this was the best conference we've ever attended! our hearts and passion for global missions were re-ignited and we are excited about the day when every people will confess that Jesus is Lord! allan and i have a hope that one day we will be able to be a part of global missions by being a "goer," living abroad somewhere and sharing the message of Christ. for now, we will do our best serving as "senders." :)

in addition to the conference, we got to spend some time (5 hours!) at the mall of america. it was pretty overwhelming, even for a shopper like me. there is a theme park smack in the middle of it, complete with roller coasters and even a water ride. i have to say, though, that it wasn't all that i thought it would be. there were multiples of the same store scattered on various levels of the mall, which was a waste. my feet were aching by the time we decided to call it quits. i think we spent more time walking from one store or escalator to the next than actually shopping. nonetheless, i am glad to have visited the largest shopping mall in america and more glad that i didn't walk away broke. unfortunately, i don't have any pictures to show for it. so, hopefully you'll enjoy all of the ones we took from the conference (mostly self-portraits!).

our comfy bed in our hotel SUITE. sweet! you can't see it, but our room was huge. we had to walk through a sitting/living room to get to our bedroom!

finish the mission ... here we are!

second self-portrait at the conference ... all smiles!

pastor john about to intro louie giglio ... so excited!

a pic of the conference from our vantage point.

a fighter-verse knight we picked up from the conference. it's standing on the bar of hell's kitchen, an awesome underground restaurant we had lunch at while enjoying some live music. the food was delicious. (btw, the purpose of the knight is to remind us that we are putting on the armor of God every time we memorize scripture. awesome! and, pretty apt, too, for being in hell's kitchen and all!)

got to meet JP after lunch!! mission finished! totally kidding! he was gracious and asked us to keep praying for him. we also got his autograph for his newest book, bloodlines. still need to read it.