Saturday, November 29, 2008

Celebrating Thanks!

The Keena family spent Thanksgiving at the home of Steve and Vickie. What a treat! These fine folks are the ones that also invited the Keena family boating, soon after we arrived in Bozeman. (The story of Andrew and Emily jumping off a 50-foot cliff that day was recanted at the meal table for those that had missed it.) Along with the DeBoer's and the Keenas, there were other guests as well. A total of 15 of us, I believe.

The meal was crowned with a 30-pound Hutterite turkey. "Hutterites are a communal branch of Anabaptists who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century." And apparently, the Hutterites really know how to raise turkeys! It was the first fresh turkey I've ever had. Yummo!


Steve carved the turkey right at the table. A first for me, as well.


My contribution to the meal; whole wheat butterhorn rolls and pumpkin sage buns.



The weather was sunny and cold. Vickie and I went on a two-mile stroll after lunch. I was one frozen popsicle by the time I got back.


We are thankful for these people!

Monday, November 24, 2008

My Project

In the past, when Jim has gone out of town for several days, I've found some sort of project to do, i.e. painting a room, ripping up carpet, planting a garden. Well, that's a little hard to do in a rental. So when I found myself with five Jim-less days, and no project in mind, I realized that our house is getting colder as the temperature drops, and maybe some curtains on our windows would help. So I dashed off to Target to browse the domestic section, only to realize that to cover our two living room windows was going to cost me about $100. $75 for curtains. $31 for one curtain rod for the large window. That would never do, not in these tight economic times!

So I turned to my next option; buying curtains or material or anything I could make into curtains from the thrift store. So I went to three thrift stores. No luck.

My last option was to buy material and make them. I felt sure this was out of the question, because you really can't make anything cheaper than you can get it second-hand. But there it was. A bolt of lovely red material for only $2.00 a yard. Now, if you could have seen me trying to do the math in the fabric section, you might have thought that I had never attended math class. Armed with a pencil, the back of some receipt, the window measurements and my rusty math skills, it took me a good fifteen minutes to figure, and refigure, and refigure how much of this material I would need. I hestitantly took the material to the clerk and told her I needed six yards, no better make it six and a half, no better make it seven! Cut. Done. Thread bought, and I'm on my way to see if my sewing machine even still works. Purred like a kitten!

Since I had no pattern to work with, my usual sewing method, I measured, and remeasured, and remeasured. Cut. Done. Now I needed the curtain rod. Mistakenly I had not looked for rods at the thrift stores the first go-round, so back to Bozeman Community Thrift I went. Success! I left with 5 curtain rods (they were bundled) for $1.50. Woot! The longest of the rods, the one I would use for the front window, was missing the end "decorative" pieces. As you may or may not know, these end balls, or globes, or whatever they are called, are not only there for decoration, but to actually hold the rod in place. So off to Ace Hardware I go. "May I help you?" the fine gentleman inquired. With rod in hand, I told him I needed a miracle. "Something to rig up this rod." With great prowess, he galloped from aisle to aisle until, sure enough, he had a great idea for rigging my rod. Two bolts, two cabinet pulls, and I would be in business. I was right there with him, understanding everything he told me to do, until he said the word "drill". I inquired "If I have a drill, and I do, does that mean I have drill bits?" He assured me I did. But at this point Gorilla Glue was looking pretty good to me. Instead, I took a deep breath, made my purchases ($1.21) and headed for home, wondering if I even remembered what drill bits looked like. Jim's tool box was full of lots of heavy, shiny, metal things, and one drill bit. The exact size I needed.
So approximately $20 and six-trips-to-the-store later, VOILA! New curtains. And a pillow. And enough material left over to make various and sundry Christmas presents of some sort. So much for my math!


Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A Lot!

Here's a brief overview of our recent trip to Tulsa. In case some of you have not heard, the purpose of the visit was to see my new grandson, Caden James. Oh, you already know? Just making sure! So what did we do for 10 days in the Sooner State? A lot!


We looked at this one a lot!


Can you blame us?


We took a lot of pictures.



We posed a lot for pictures.


We laughed a lot!


Christa and Jason started a mosaic business.
Emily was impressed a lot!


Andrew, Kelsey and Emily decorated a lot for Christmas!



There was a lot more posing for pictures.



Oh, yeah. And I held the baby a lot!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Church on Sunday

Jason and Christa are attending a new church since they have recently moved. I got to visit on Sunday, and in sure tourist-fashion I took the camera along. Mostly to take pictures of them, but I was so surprised/impressed with their church building, I thought I would share.
The church meets in a former mall. This is the center of the mall-now-church, and you can see that this church has things marked far better than any mall I've ever been in!

The booths set up are in preparation for a Christmas market that the church will host,
for all of Tulsa.


This shot is for Jim. They have their mission statement clearly and creatively visible. "Glorifying God by helping all people, all ages, all the time advance in their journey for Christ." I also saw this statement in their bulletin.




So to not look to touristic, I had Christa sit by the mall fountain turned baptismal fount.
No kidding. This is where they do baptisms.



The worship service was very rock-star.




This is the check-in station for the Nursery. The small machine prints out a "receipt" for your child, that you absolutley must show in order to remove your child from the Nursery.



This was the first impression I got, when I walked in.
Any wonder I snapped a few photos?
As impressed as I was with the facility, I must say how impressed I have been with the people. Christa's small group has been bringing meals a couple times a week, and will continue to do so all November. Seems like a great place for Jason and Christa to be!







Monday, November 10, 2008

Time Travel

Today I visited Siloam Springs. It's a different feeling everytime I go. Over the four years we were in Chicago, our visits to Siloam brought everything from we-are-glad-we-are-outta-here to we-really-miss-this-place kind of feelings. Today we basically drove to Siloam to see Andrew and Trish & Sam. Our plans were to make a JBU stop, a Steph stop, a Youmans stop, a Happy Birthday, Mrs. Caldwell stop, and of course, a Barnett's stop. We were planning on seeing about five people we knew.

Our first stop at JBU we not only saw Megan, our Financial Aid assistant, but in the same building saw Terri, Don, Susan, Rebekah, and Hannah.

At the Steph stop we saw Steph, Jill, Pam, Wanda, and Barb.

The Youmans stop included all people Youmans, minus the doctor.

The Birthday stop included Barb and Deborah.

The Barnett's stop included Reid, and some fine AAA stangers who gave our dead battery a jump.

Just as when we lived there Siloam was more than we bargained for, so our trip today was more than we had planned. But tonight I sit filled to the brim with the wonderfulness of the people of Siloam. I am glad to have called that place home, yet I am also glad for the new home we have, and the wonderfulness of people there. I'm thankful that God leads us to wonderful people.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Love This


Sugar and spice and everything nice?!

Monday, November 3, 2008

One Question

"Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?"