The Best of 2017

came in the last three months. I am so grateful to God that I was able to enjoy these times with family and friends.

Isabella, my little Hawaii baby, turned 3 in October 2017. We weren't with her, but I love this photo.

In November we flew to Portland to be with Sam, Liane, and Luci for Thanksgiving. Daniel has a teaching position at Santa Barbara City College but surprised us by flying up to Portland to spend the holiday with all of us. The day after Thanksgiving we went up into the hills above the city to a tree farm, helped Sam and Liane pick out a tree, and decorated it back at their apartment.

Then we flew to Hawaii to spend a some time with the HI Giles kids, Ben, Vanessa, and Isabella.

This was taken at an upscale mall in Wailea, Maui.

Then we flew back to Portland in time to celebrate Luci's 14th birthday.

Back in Florida we were blessed with a visit from our good friends Mike and Diane Bloom, who celebrated Christ's birth with and our other friends, The Brothers and Irene Pabst with dinner at our house. They also celebrated my birthday with a trip to the movies. 

It was a wonderful ending to a great year.

Julie, My Friend and Activity Director

Tim and I just returned from a long vacation. Part of that time was spent on Lake Superior in Minnesota where we rented a log cabin right on the lake with our long time friends, Joel and Julie. This trip was Julie's idea, something she has wanted to do with us for a long time and I am really glad she put it all together. So here she is at each of the places we went together. More pictures will follow on a later post.

We visited Tom's Logging Camp which was just down the road from our cabin. There are reproductions and actual artifacts from Minnesota logging camps and we were able to learn about life for the loggers at the turn of the 20th century. I am sure they did not have llamas there back then, but there were a couple you could feed(something for entertaining little ones, I am sure.) Julie really enjoyed feeding them and I enjoyed watching her feed them.

Julie prepared a picnic lunch and we drove north along the lake to visit Two Harbors. Here we walked out along the breakwater, watched a huge ship come in and park along the iron ore loading dock, and toured the old lighthouse.

Next we drove further north along the lake and toured Split Rock Lighthouse. This lighthouse is high above the water and, when it was built, they had  to use a derrick to lift all the parts to build it. Because there was no road in the early years, lighthouse keepers, their families, and supplies were brought by boat and came up on an inclined plane further down the shore.  We learned lots of history on this trip.

Here is a shot of Julie on the downstairs porch. There was another on the second floor and sometimes Julie and I would rock in the chairs upstairs while Joel and Tim sat together downstairs. We also played cards, watched movies with popcorn Joel popped, and enjoyed meals prepared by Julie. We loved the fresh vegetables brought from their garden, too. I refilled the bird feeder with sunflower seeds from the local grocery store. I loved watching the black capped chickadees and nuthatches that came. They did not seem to mind that I was just on the other side of the screen. 

Another great idea Julie had was getting a fire started in the fire pit in the yard beside the lake. We enjoyed watching the stars come out as well as the fire.

This was taken on the trail behind the Glensheen mansion. That is Lake Superior in the background.

Christmas story

There is nothing like looking at my blog posts to make me realize how delinquent I have been in posting here. I was stamping with a group of friends recently, making Christmas cards, and commenting I am just not "in the mood" for Christmas yet. But then I happened upon Matthew 1:21, a page in my coloring journal that I had not completed yet, and was reminded of what a great thing Christmas is and how we should be in the "in the mood" to thank God for this blessing, the birth of our Messiah, all year long.

Here is the page. Besides using colored pencils for the letters, I also used pastels to color on and around the page, stamped the holy family and colored them with pencils, stamped and heat embossed the Magi and a star on vellum and attached it with sparkly tape, and added blue pastel around them and white gel pen stars.