Remember Pong?

How many of you remember Pong? This was the BEST game! We had a ping pong table when we were growing up and my family played a lot. Put electronic Pong?? This was unlike anything else I'd ever seen. And I spent way too much time playing this.

 

I'm reading a book called Imagine Heaven by John Burke. Chuck's mom had it and I found it when we were cleaning out her room after she passed away. I don't know anything about the author but my dad's name was John Burke. 💓 Anyway the book is about people who have had near death experiences and Mr. Burke compares what they've seen to descriptions of heaven in the Bible. It's been pretty fascinating. One thing most people experience during their NDE is a feeling of belonging. Of knowing EXACTLY who they are. There's no trying to please others or trying to live up to their expectations or being someone you're not, just to fit in. They just knew deep down who they were meant to be. When I read this it reminded me of what I'd been reading:

 

This one made me think of my struggle with food. I actually do really well during the day, eating healthy, staying active. But at night? I usually eat too much during dinner, then I never stop! I eat all evening!

 And one for the road:

Ravioli, Old Age, Facing Fears

After church on Sunday we went to The Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch. I forget how much I love that place! The food, the interior design, it's such a fun place to eat.

After lunch we headed to Target and JC Penney to look for more wedding accessories and just general things. You know, socks, Chuck needed a new belt, all those little things you put off buying until it's critical? 😊 

First was Target. I always come out spending a lot more than I planned!

Then at Penney's Beth tried on some cute shirts and when we needed to head up the escalator she got on first! I was shocked! She's always been nervous about going on the escalator. She's always had me go first. When it's all three of us Chuck will go first, then Beth and me and I see how she mimics him. But yesterday she just hopped right on like it was nothing! She was even holding her new shirts!

So we finally got everything we needed and headed home. 

We. Were. Exhausted. 

Then I looked at my phone and started doing the math. From the time we left the restaurant to the time we got home, it had been a little over 2 hours. We had only been shopping for two hours! And we were beat! Our knees ached, our backs were sore, our feet hurt... gosh we're getting old.

Nice and Quiet

Not much happening this weekend. We've spent today doing chores around the house and watching the Olympics. My favorite sports are swimming and gymnastics. I could watch those all day! 

The extreme heat we had a few weeks ago really did a number on my hydrangeas. I went out and cut back a lot of the dead, dry flowers (you should always cut those so the plant doesn't spend it's energy on them, correct?) That night on the news Seattle gardening guru Ciscoe Morris tells us not to cut them off! Oh well. I did get a few nice flowers this year.

 

Chuck and I went out to eat last night. We've decided we've got to try to have more date nights. He worked nights for a year and even though it was during covid, we just stopped going out. Even just to go sit in the car somewhere. We're going to try to change that. Chuck has been craving ribs lately so we went to Moonshine BBQ. It's a sports bar and grill and their BBQ is so good! Plus it was nice to just sit and talk.

 

That's about it. It's been a nice, relaxing weekend. Just what I've needed.

Are you watching the Olympics? Do you have a favorite sport?

Around The House

This is a picture of me and my mom, around 1971. We lived in San Diego, I was 10 years old and we had just moved to this house. This is a story about the picture behind us. I know it's kind of hard to see but it's a field of daisies and each petal and stem is made with yarn.

 

My sisters are six and eight years older than me and they said this was a kit that our mom bought and she'd work on it at night after I'd gone to bed. It's fairly large, around 22" x 18" and they said it took her quite a while to make. Course she had 3 small kids at the time and was going to school to get her high school diploma.

We moved out of this house the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school and I never saw this picture again. It never hung in any of the homes we lived in, I never saw it with any donated things... I actually never even thought about it again.

I got married and Chuck and I moved from San Diego up to the Seattle area. My mom moved up here for a few years but ended up going back to San Diego. She eventually moved to an assisted living facility and passed away in 2005.

About a year after she died I was walking through an antique store here in Seattle and saw this hanging on the wall. 

 

I just stood there staring at it! I called Chuck and told him that no matter how much it cost I was going to buy it! (Thankfully it wasn't that much!)

I remember as a little girl touching the flower on the far right because a few of the 'petals' were a cream color while all the others were white. I remember that so clearly. And this one is the same! You can see one flower has just a few cream 'petals' on the bottom while the rest of the flower is white. That's exactly how my mom's was.

I was in that same antique store a few years later and saw another picture just like this and I immediately checked out the flower... it was all white!! 

Now, I don't know if this is the exact kit my mom made. Maybe many of the kits didn't have enough white yarn... maybe there are hundreds of these around and I just happen to find one. I don't know.

But I like to think it is. 

I think this is the exact one my mom made, sitting in our living room all those years ago. It now hangs in our den, along with the small photograph of it hanging in our dining room in 1971. 

Do you have something that brings back memories of childhood? 

Mishmosh

The week is over and things are finally calming down a little at work. Whew!

I visited a friend a few weeks ago and got to see all the models he's been making during covid. He just turned 90! He started out with the paper models and now he's doing wood. I was very impressed.

 

Beth had another dentist appointment. This time though it was just the dentist and his office is right by our house. They put on a temporary crown, we'll go back next week for the permanent one. Look at all those tools!

Ally came over the other night. I went outside to water and told her it was time to put down her phone and come outside. She brought out the sidewalk chalk and after a few minutes remembered her bike was in our garage! The house behind us is empty right now so she was able to ride all the way back to their garage.

 

Then last night Sharaya had an appointment so we took Ally with us to buy a suit for Chuck for the wedding. Only 2 months away! We  were  thankful she had her phone. It would have been awful boring if she didn't!

Chuck found a suit and some shoes. I'm so glad that's done. Then Ally and I went into Claire's and she bought some earrings and I found a full-sized Uno card game! The one we have is travel size and the cards are so small! We stopped at Starbucks then came back here to break-in the cards. 

Well, it's been unusually dry here so I should go out and water the plants. I hope you have a wonderful week!

Have you ever played Uno?

What's the weather like where you live?

That's Why

It's 7am and I just finished doing payroll. It's been a full week of work events and it's not over yet.

In the span of 9 days we will have had:

*A memorial with a reception

*A VBA team rally

*Apologia (A community discussion on current events)

*4 days of VBA (500 kids on the first day!)

*Family party (All the VBA kids families invited outside for food, inflatables...)

*Encore (an event for our senior adults) 

*Two days of a Promise Keepers Simulcast 

*A missions lunch

Along with all our regular church services, group events, Bible studies... we've got 3 more days of events and then things should quiet down a little. I'm so exhausted but it's times like this I have to remind myself why we do what we do: A bunch of kids gave their hearts to the Lord during VBA; I spoke with a man who has recently started coming to our church and he told me he's here because he's desperate for the presence of the Lord. He's sat behind Chuck and I a few times and we can hear him worshiping and crying.

It's not about vacuuming and emptying trash and cleaning bathrooms. (I'm the Custodial Supervisor.) It's about people's hearts and their relationships with the Lord and with one another. When they stop you in the foyer and ask for prayer, the stories of what they're going through are enough to make you weep. But the presence of the Lord envelops them, they break down in tears and then you see the Peace of God come over them. By the time you hug goodbye they're filled with joy and they leave with a smile on their face. They know the Lord knows their name, knows them personally and has a plan for their exact situation.

That's why we do what we do.  

So This is What it Feels Like

Diana flew out Father's Day weekend to celebrate Chuck and Sharaya's graduation but also because I was turning 60.

Yep. The Big 6-0.

When I say that number in my head I imagine... well, I imagine my grandma ~

This is my dad and his mom. She was in her early 60s in this picture. 'Nurses' shoes, rolled stockings that hooked with a garter... 

Yep, even while camping! Me and my two older sisters with our grandma. This is what I think of when I hear "Sixty years old!"

 

They surprised me at work with a coconut creme pie (my favorite!) and serenaded me as I stood at my desk. A friend told me a bunch of them were making their way to the front office to surprise me and saw me come out into the hall. They flew into the children's ministry quad so I wouldn't see them! When they thought it was all clear they started down the hall again only to see me pop out of another office so they all rushed into the work room... I guess I didn't make it easy for them! 😂

Chuck had a bouquet of flowers delivered to me at work. One of the custodians found out it was my birthday and bought me some flowers. Sharaya brought over some flowers with a small balloon... by the end of the week our house looked like a florist!

Diana flew in the day after my actual birthday so she had some cookies delivered to the house! They were so good! We nibbled on them for days.

 

I got so many cards in the mail! Chuck posted on FB and friends spanning 55 years of my life commented and sent greetings! You go about your life, day by day, year by year not really knowing if you're making any kind of difference at all and then something like a major event comes along and... well, it's just very humbling.

I'm still learning: about life, about myself. It seems every new decade brings new insights and I tend to see the world a little differently. And the older I get the more I know how little I know! There's always more to a story!

If this is any indication of how it's going to feel being in my 60's, bring it on! I'm ready!

How The Girls Did It

All weekend the girls were sending us pictures. This is how they did the 4th of July ~

Peter is working in St. Croix for the next few weeks so Diana went with him. St Croix!!

And Sharaya - her and Ally went to the river with friends. Floating on the river for hours, making blackberry cobbler...

They sure know how to do it right!

Well Bummer

Probably like most of you our town didn't have a 4th of July parade last year. Earlier this year they said they would cancel it for this summer too, so we were so excited when a couple of months ago they announced it was on again!

Saturday night we took our chairs down to stake out our spots on the parade route. Do you do that too? Chuck picked an area under some trees so we wouldn't be in the heat and then we sat in them until 6:00. The rule is - if you leave chairs out before 6pm the city will remove them and you have to pick them up another day. So most people begin setting them up around 5:00 and then we all sit around and talk for an hour. We parked and sat in our car until about 5:30, then set up our chairs. By 6:00 the streets are completely lined with hundreds of chairs! We love a parade! 😊

Our church only held one service and we headed down right after that. It was so good to see it again! There was one truck (like an F150) with a young family sitting in the back with a large magnetic sign that read, "No agenda. The kids just wanted to be in a parade." Now that's a small town parade!

There were classic cars, horses, drill teams...

Beth's favorite was of course the Star Wars characters. Although in one picture she's yelling at them, "You're my sisers favorite!!" (Because they were Diana's favorite... when she was 8.) 😊 But you can tell by the smile on her face that she loves them!

 

Sunday night we decided to go watch the fireworks, something we haven't done in years. Chairs, blankets, jackets, and we headed to the roof of the library. There's a great view of the fireworks and you beat some of the traffic out of town.

Our little town by the water ~

We got there at 8:00. Fireworks started at 10:00. There were about 200-300 of us up on that roof and I was so excited to see them live this year! Then 10:00 came and went. Then 10:15. We figured they were singing the National Anthem, maybe the mayor was thanking all the people who made the day happen... the fireworks happen down at the ball field and we don't hear anything up on the roof. We'd been talking about how long we were willing to stay since Chuck had to get up to go to work the next morning. Finally about 10:40 we left. As we're pulling out of the library parking lot, the fireworks started. The streets were packed with cars, large groups of people out on the sidewalks watching them, there was no place for us to pull over. So disappointed!

I do have today off though and am thankful we got to see the parade.

What did you do over the weekend?

Do you usually go to a parade? Watch fireworks?