Zach and Andrea's Christmas Card / CD

Here's a link to Zach and Andrea's blog to see / hear their Christmas CD that Zach made:

Christmas CD

Click on the link above to get to Andrea's blog and once there, scroll down to get to the songs Zach composed and performed.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZACH!

Singing a song of gratitude today in celebration of Zach's 26th birthday.

Looking over old family photo albums and remembering days gone by...

first baby - only son, early mornings in front of the fireplace, trip to Brazil, play rooms and bunkbeds, traumatic bike accident, scraped knees, bumps and bruises, dinosaurs and Legos, play loft in the garage, first computer, inventions, tree houses and race cars, street hockey and basketball, broken arm, best friends, braces, playing piano, laser tag, learning drums, first job, driver's license, West Coast Revival, college, air traffic control, courtship, engagement, wedding, first apartment.

Sure do love you, Zach! Thanks for 26 years of delight!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

December

Started the season with getting out my favorite books for preparing for Christmas:

• Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case for a More Joyful Christmas

• Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season

• A Simple Christmas: A Faith-filled Guide to a Meaningful and Stress Free Christmas

We made Advent Bags this year by printing out the dates of December 1-25 and gluing them on little white bags tied with ribbon. We have them on a cedar chest in the living room - so it's a visual reminder of the countdown to Christmas.

Inside, we've placed candy for the kids, a Jesse Tree Ornament, a slip of paper with a Christmas Activity and a Christmas Hymn on it.

Each day, we read a devotional from Jesse Tree Journey, do the activity that's written (see a Christmas Movie, go out for hot coco, get a Christmas tree... etc.) and listen to the hymn and learn the words. It's been fun - even though the kids are getting older, they still enjoy the tradition.

To celebrate Advent - the waiting for and anticipation of celebrating the birth of Jesus- we've been using a little devotional from my favorite writer: Ann Voskamp.

Here's the Jesse Tree Journey that we're using. (Click on the purple link).

This has been a great tool to use to direct our attention daily to the reason for Christmas.

We're also listening to Christmas Hymns during the day. What a wonderful treasure trove of biblical truth!

Wedding at Aquinnah Lighthouse

Martha's Vineyard

Ron and I just returned from a weekend on Martha's Vineyard. Our friends from church, Chris and Stephanie, were getting married there and asked Ron to officiate the wedding. Since we were already on the East Coast (Maryland) for a Pastor's Conference, we just flew up to Rhode Island, took a shuttle van to Massachusetts and then got on a ferry from Wood's Hole to the island.

We had an absolutely wonderful time! Although the weather was rainy and cold, we got to tour a couple of the towns - Edgartown, Aquinnah and Menemsha. We stayed in Oak Bluffs in a quaint, beachy cottage B&B, Isabelle's, right on the ocean.

Behind us was a little neighborhood full of Victorian "gingerbread" homes. Ron and I braved the cold and blustery wind Sunday morning and strolled through the gingerbread neighborhood to the little downtown and had breakfast in one of the few restaurants opened during this off season.

The wedding was held in Aquinnah next to the lighthouse- overlooking dramatic cliffs towering above the oceanside. In a week of rainy days, Saturday was the only dry day - allowing Chris and Stephanie to have the wedding they dreamed of and planned for.

I think we've found a new favorite place. We're already planning to go there again next year, if we can. We had a great time at the wedding - meeting new people, making friends and hanging out with Chris' family and enjoying the lovely scenery. But, we'd like to come again with just the two of us for another get away.

Quick Update

Realized that it's been so long since my last post... we have so much going on - not necessarily exciting things- but our days are filled with lots of good stuff.

We're working on getting into a regular, disciplined routine with early rising, daily exercising, keeping up on maintaining the house/ meals / chores and school work... and fitting in all the stuff on the church calendar (youth group / pastor's and wives dinners / couples' meetings... etc.) September is our "re-entry month" - getting back into our regular routines after a lazy summer. :) 5:30 AM comes early so we're not keeping late hours anymore. :)

We've finished our 1st month of school with a new curriculum - it's going very well, but it's rigorous and demanding for the girls and for me. We start our school day at 8 AM with everyone at the table to do a few subjects together and then I work individually with each of the girls for different subjects like math and we come together again in the afternoon for writing. We usually finish by 3PM.

The girls are taking a few outside classes: writing, Latin 2, PE, violin (Taylor) and a Worldviews class, Ashley is in a cooking class.


I'm teaching a beginning Latin class with 12 students at our Friday School at SGA. I'm learning along with the kids - studying a week ahead of them to master the material before teaching it to them. Keeps me on my toes!

We're eating less processed foods now - so I spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing meals (and doing dishes!) We are seeing a difference in our health and energy levels.

We have an exchange student from China who's attending school in La Canada - it's about a 7 minute drive from our house. He stays in the middle bedroom - Paige has moved into the girls' room for this school year. Tan Wei is a nice, quiet boy who keeps to his room when he's not eating meals with us. So, my part time job this year is to drive him to school and cook him dinner - not bad, I think! (We're hoping he gets his license so he can drive himself soon - he's already bought a car.) It's a little inconvenient with giving up living space, but I could never earn this kind of money if I went out and got an outside job. This way, with just a little sacrifice, I get to be home with my family, help out with finances and still be able to keep up with my priorities at home / church. Pretty sweet deal! But, I think we'll be ready to be "just us" again by June. :)

I'm leading a Women's Bible Study- a small group of ladies who meet 2x a month. We're going through the book of Colossians. I don't have to teach it - just facilitate it. For Women's Ministry this year, I organized 7 small groups to meet in different locations and at different days/ times so that more women could participate. I think we have just a little over 50 women participating - so we're pleased with this new system.

Ron's been busy getting the church ready to go to 2 services - we start next Sunday. He is doing such a great job. He's an awesome pastor~ a good shepherd who loves, cares for and feeds his sheep. He's doing an excellent job leading, preaching, preparing, training, counseling... I'm so proud of him!

For his birthday our theme for gifts was "stress relief" - Paige refinished a chair and made a chair pad for him to sit by the table next to the fireplace. We bought him some coffee, Starbucks mugs and a puzzle. Now he can sit in his favorite chair, drinking his favorite coffee, relaxing in front of the fire by doing a puzzle. We're hoping that it will help with the extra work / stress he's taking on this fall. :)





Next month, we're going to Maryland for a Leader's Conference for 4 days. And then after that, we go to Martha's Vineyard for the weekend where Ron will perform an (outdoor, next to a lighthouse!) wedding. I'm so excited to go to New England! We'll stay an extra day after the wedding to celebrate our anniversary. Hope to get some good pictures!

We just had five glorious days of camping in the wilderness - Sheep Creek in King's Canyon National Park. We pitched our tents here: waking up each morning to a sweeping canyon view, falling asleep each night to the soothing sounds of the rushing river.

To just be here, to sit and think, read, pray, meditate, write... to soak up the quiet and isolation... to watch the sun rise over the canyon walls each morning and play in the river each day, was absolutely awesome. To be surrounded by such majestic beauty that daily shouts its praise to The Creator was a pure joy!

There was a small forest fire that had been going since July from a lightning strike - they were allowing to smolder and burn the 100 year old underbrush and extra timber. When we arrived, we saw a few "hot spots" that were burning along the road - nothing huge or alarming, the firemen sat in trucks next to it, just keeping an eye on things.

The campground was nearly deserted. It seems the fire had been pretty bad a few days before we got there and many people left. So it wasn't hard to get a gorgeous spot! :) We weren't sure if we should stay or try to drive back to Grant Grove and find another site. But, since the smoke wasn't apparent when we arrived, we decided to try it out for the night. Turns out the smoke settles in the canyon during the night - so we did have a difficult first night trying to sleep with the smoke in the air. Next day - it was windy, clear and beautiful - with no hint of smoke, so we decided to stay - so glad we did.

Pocket Meal Planning

Had a craft night with Paige last night.

She made some stationery and I made this meal planning pocket for the side of my cupboard.

A few sheets of fun, coordinating paper from the scrapbook store, a paper cutter, laminator and sewing machine....viola!

Since we have a big family, meal planning can take a BIG chunk of time each week. Sometimes, just trying to figure out what to eat for dinner takes too much brain power - especially after homeschooling all day. Meal planning and grocery shopping each week is one of the least favorite parts of my job.

I saw this idea on a homemaking blog and decided to try it on my own. I know I can meal plan on the computer, but there's just something about seeing it on the wall that helps me. I've made plans like this before, but it's gotten lost in notebooks or in files on the computer, and I end up not utilizing them.

I wrote out 8 weeks worth of meals (made 4X6 recipe cards for each meal) and then grouped them into 8 separate weeks with grocery lists of ingredients needed for that week. Each pocket holds the week's menu, recipes for the dinners and grocery lists for the week.

I think this will make life a little easier.

Savoring Summer

Now that:

• lesson plans and most things related to school are reasonably planned out,
• my daily schedule has been wrestled into a manageable one page chart,
• a new routine for meals and meal planning is in place,
• my household notebook has been revamped and updated for the new year,
• Women's Ministry is planned and just about launched,
• our Japanese exchange student has left and our household is back to normal
• the house is clean and organized - laundry is done (having guests has its perks!)
  
• camping lists and meal plans are all waiting on the computer ready to be printed out
  

I am now free to savor the last two weeks of summer!
And no better place to do it than in King's Canyon National Park!

This week we get ready for vacation, collect and pack the camping gear and head out on Saturday morning. I'm planning on some serious "communing with nature" next week!

Summer is slipping by - and so is this short season with my girls still at home. I'm looking forward to a wonderful time in King's Canyon with the family - enjoying nature, creating memories and celebrating God's gracious gifts to us.

Exchange Student

We're saying good-bye to our Japanese exchange student, Azumi, today. She's been with us for two weeks while attending Renaissance Academy in La Canada.

We've had an eventful couple weeks:

• Concerts and picnics in the park
  

• An afternoon and evening at Huntington Beach - swimming, playing volleyball, cooking sausages and smores over a campfire.

• A night on the town at Universal City Walk - buying souvenirs.
  

• A picnic after watching the morning Regional Swim Competitions at El Cariso Park

• An evening of learning Origami - folding paper cranes

• Going out for ice cream

• A sleep over watching movies and inviting Paige's friend along with her Japanese exchange student.

It was fun making a new friend and helping her with learning English.

If. I. Can. Just. Hang. On...

Besides taking the girls to swim team 2xs a day and swim meets on Saturdays and hosting a Japanese exchange student - and driving her to and from school 2xs a day- I've been planning for next years' school - which starts in 3 weeks!

When I'm not driving kids, cooking or cleaning, I'm glued to the desk poring over books, dividing up a years' worth of school into bite size, daily and weekly chunks, and creating lists and charts: Daily Schedules / Lesson Plan Pages / Courses of Study / Grading Sheets / Reading Lists...

My head is spinning! I've planned out:

• Courses of Study and Lesson Plans for Three grades: 7th - 9th - and 11th

• 6-7 subjects each: Math, Latin, Ancient History, Ancient Literature, Composition, Science - they'll take a Latin 2 (Paige) World Views class and PE (Paige & Ashley) / Violin (Taylor) at our co-op.

• Reading Lists and a schedule of when to order holds on library books throughout the year.
  

I think I'll be done in a couple of days... although this season is intense, it makes the rest of the year so much easier - everything's done and waiting for me in my teacher's notebook. Everyday, we just wake up and there it is - every subject is planned for each day and the kids know exactly what to do.

I just need to hang on a little longer...it's almost over!!

Last Pics

Kollen Park

We lived just 2 blocks from here when Zach was a baby.

Downtown Holland

Our first apartment was in the clock tower building.

Wedding

Photos taken from Kristi's Facebook:

Michigan. Memories

Sure Do Love Them!

Michigan.

• Powerful thunder and lightning storms with blazing streaks of electricity in the night sky
• Gathering in our favorite room of Grandma and Grandpa's home - a second story windowed family room surrounded by trees - listening to stories of their childhood in the Netherlands during the war.
• Strolling down memory lane - visiting our childhood homes, high school hangouts, first apartments and favorite spots along the lake
  
• Tulip lined boulevards
• Cobble-stoned sidewalks lining quaint (and upscale) downtown Holland - coffee at JP's and wandering through art galleries and gift shops
  
• Holland State Park - seeing "Big Red" - the beautiful lighthouse faithfully standing sentinel by Lake Michigan
• Sail boats gliding in the channel setting out into the glistening "Big Lake."
  
• Reconnecting with family - while joyfully welcoming new members (Andrea and Kristi).
  
• A walk in the woods, and over sandy dunes to get to Kirk Park - having family church, flying kites and enjoying a warm, summer afternoon, a welcomed relief from hot, humid days
  
• Quiet farms, lazy cows in the fields, big red barns and miles and miles of pasture
  
• Unattended blueberry stands next to the road with packages of blueberries lined up in a row - farmers unconcerned with dishonesty.
• Celebrating a beautiful wedding - and the joining of two families
  
• Three generations talking, laughing, sharing, and enjoying each others' company.

Michigan. Family.