27 Days of Summer Vacation: Day 1

~erica

Took Jonah to school and then met a friend for breakfast. Then ran home to get Arin to get him to Bartel's to get fitted for a tux. Thankfully they didn't freak out on me when I walked in on Tuesday and said I needed a tux for Saturday, they said no problem. Did you know that are about a gazillion tux options to choose from? We just wanted a basic black tux, with a vest. Thankfully not only could I order it and pick it up in town, but it was a lot less to rent it than I was expecting. I also need to add "order a corsage" to my to do list for the week.

Got Arin home to finish his school work. We had gone early just in case we had to take the tux search to Olympia. Isaac has to be in Centralia at 1 to go to Seattle with PATH. They are celebrating the close of Persuasion with a night out in Seattle to see Phantom of the Opera at The Paramount and dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. Ryan was supposed to go but was scheduled to work. Sharlene is going but we weren't sure they had a ride and I didn't have to take them...Rides are all worked out and off they went. Saw lots of pictures on Facebook of their adventure. They had about 30 minutes to spare between dinner and the show so they let then loose at the Barnes & Noble. I'm amazed they got them all back!

We grabbed groceries while we were in town and made it home just in time to run Tovah to play with a friend and get to the high school fastpitch game. It was their last league game and Ryan had promised several of the girls that he would come to a game. They won but let a huge lead slip away.

Tuesday night is always Taco Tuesday. The Gillaspies came as well as Allyson and a friend. Isaac usually does the bulk of the cooking so I had to do it. After dinner I had to cook chicken and eggs for the baby shower luncheon I'm doing on Wednesday. Shar brought Isaac home around midnight.

27 Days of Summer Vacation

~erica

*May 4th I finished up my first year of the MATESOL program (that's a Master of Arts Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at Multnomah University in Portland. Fall Semester starts August 31 but I have to go full-time this summer to make my schedule work out with commuting and the kids' sport schedules. So, this summer I'm taking Survey of Theology online, World Religions in a 1-week intensive course at the end of June, and I'm going to do my practicum (student teaching) here locally for 6-weeks starting July 6.


I feel like Phineas and Ferb, I need to make every day of these 27 days count for something....

So far my list includes...

• print photos
• clean the bathroom
• Isaac Eagle project and finish required merit badges
• Jonah needs to finish Star and get started on the next set of merit badges for Life
• write long letters to friends
• read a whole stack of books that are just for fun
• finish a baby blanket and maybe knit a pair of socks and a hat to go with it
• finish the pair of socks I started last fall plus another pair
• graduation party for Arin along with Senior pictures and announcements 
• take a picture every day

 * I graduated from Evergreen State College in June. I didn't walk because I'm not finished yet. I do plan on walking at Multnomah and then having a big party and then we are flying off to Hawaii to celebrate all the occasions we haven't had a chance to celebrate since I started school in 2010.

Coffee Break

 ~Erica

Ryan's cousin called to see if I wanted to run away to Canada; she had a passport she'd never used and I have a brand new enhanced ID so we both can cross the border. I told her it would take me several weeks to plan such a spontaneous trip so we decided to go after school started during a week Ryan was off so he could get everyone to sports and such.

 

 

 

First stop was Fiddler's Coffee in Centralia

 

 

2nd stop was at Krispy Kreme in Tacoma. At this point I decided that maybe I should put our destination into Gladys the GPS. Gladys is not familiar with Canada. She had no information onboard to route our trip. Emergency Plan B was a quick trip to AAA for maps. The lady in the office also printed us a TripTik to the hostel in Jericho Beach where we were staying that night- we went Old School! Problem is, I was driving and Shar can't read a map to navigate....

 

 

  I like to stop at places we don't have in our Tiny Town and the surrounding area, I knew there was a Five Guys in Marysville and I'd never eaten at one, so that was where I was headed for lunch. Shar was just along for the ride and didn't really care what we did as long as I drove. You have to love a place that has grilled onions and mushrooms as standard toppings!

 

At 2:00 we were passing through Ferndale, just in time for Sonic Happy Hour. Shar claims I gave her whiplash as I pulled off the freeway...

 

 

Waiting at the Peach Arch to cross the border into Canada.

 

 

Gladys is lost...

 

See that beach area between my fingers? That's the nudist beach, I didn't mean to end up there but they had a bathroom and we had drunk a lot of coffee and Shar can't read a map and it was pouring rain and I just had to stop. On the upside- we didn't see any nudists, everyone had raincoats on, and I was able to figure out where we were and where we were going. We're supposed to be up there in the green area in the top right corner, just under that blue frame, that's Jericho Beach.

 

Jericho Beach Hostel

 

It's an old army training camp and its right on the beach in a really neat old neighborhood. We didn't get to do much exploring since the weather was really bad (at home they were having thunderstorms and the power was out for hours) but in the evening it cleared up enough that we did get to walk a bit on the beach and hear the waves and it was enough for me to be refreshed. I stayed in a Hostelling International Hostel in Seattle last winter with my program from Evergreen and was impressed by their cleanliness, convenience, and especially their price, $30 Canadian.

 

I think there is a TV crime drama that is filmed in Jericho Beach and Vancouver but I didn't go look up the particulars since I remember it as rather dark and gritty and I didn't want to freak myself out if that was truly where it was supposed to take place.

 

Looking towards downtown Vancouver in the setting sun. I never really got my bearings on where I was looking, I think Stanley Park is off to the left of downtown in this picture and the beach we were walking on was really the Fraser River.

 

The next morning we hit a couple of Starbucks for breakfast and to look for a mug for Ryan that we never found (when I was cleaning up my car I realized that the sleeve advertised a specialty blend that is only available in Canada and that would have been a great souvenir to take home but we were across the border when I figured that out). Due to Gladys being on vacation and Shar's map skills and Canada's non-existent highway signs it took us longer to get to the border than I planned (and we saw a lot more of Vancouver's suburbs and I have no idea if we went through the areas that I promised my mom we would avoid...) We still made it to the border by 10 a.m. so we could have lunch at Pike Place Market and be out of Seattle by 2 or 3 in order to miss the Friday traffic.

 

September is looking a lot like January as we drove through Whatcom County- gray and foggy.

 

It was fun to introduce Shar to my favorite parts of Pike Place Market- we had Chinese BBQ pork skewers and French pastries for lunch. And I bought half a dozen macarons to treat myself later. We stuck our heads into the original Starbucks so she could say she's been there but the line was too long to wait to get any coffee. I still can't believe she's lived in Washington most of her life and never really explored that part of Seattle- when I was a kid we always took out of town guests to the Market and the Curiosity Shoppe and since the kids have been little almost all trips to Seattle include Westlake, the Market, or the Waterfront.

 

Our last coffee stop was Dutch Bros. Coffee in Lacey. Dutch Mafia coffee is my new obsession and I hear rumors that we may be getting one and while I'm excited to be able to get drinks I also am afraid the novelty would wear off if we had one readily available...

 

We had a lot of fun and did a lot of driving. I packed books and knitting and got to none of them. I didn't get to Murchie's Tea or a grocery store to buy digestive biscuits. But I got to walk on the beach and sometimes that's what I really need. Maybe we'll plan our next coffee break to Kona?

 

Just kidding.

 

Maybe...

Bible in 90 Days- Complete!

~Erica

 

I finished my reading September 8 which is actually 89 days. Stepping back and looking at the history of Israel chronologically was interesting. I didn't like the reading but looking back the thread was more apparent. What really stood out to me was the continuing disobedience of Israel, even when they had a good king and were worshipping in the Temple, they still maintained their idols and their high places and their worship of foreign gods. Once they return from exile things seem to be better but by the New Testament I think that they have replaced one form of idolatry for another- legalism. And this carried into the early church, most of the letters dealt with the difference between outward worship and inward relationship and that sin is in the heart not in the action.

 

A friend asked me what I learned and this was my response to her on Facebook, "Reading chronologically made me crazy with all the fiddly flipping and turning and reading in fits and starts but, when I stepped back and looked at what I read it made the "story" line much more apparent. The continuing disobedience of the people and their kings in spite of the prophets. The law was never truly followed until the time of the New Testament and then it was the new idolatry of the Pharisees. Their hearts were hardened to just loving the Lord their God. It's that simple. But on the flip side do we do any better? Rules and religion are easier to maintain than a personal relationship that calls for service and sacrifice to love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself."

 

I was asked about teaching a Bible survey class as a Women's Bible Study once I am done with school. I've really been thinking about what I would teach- I think there is a real lack of Bible K

knowledge and how all the parts fit together but then would it be too knowledge based and not reach the hearts of the students? I guess I have time to wrestle with this (and to be honest I wrestle with this balance in my own life- the difference between knowing about God and knowing Him...)

 



Bible in 90 Days- Weeks 2-5

~Erica

Today I am finishing Week 5 of the Bible in 90 Days. I've gotten behind each week but have finished each week on time. It's harder to read when you are jumping through 3 books. I really thought that I would be in the flow of history in the Bible reading it chronologically, but I've found that it's choppy and it's almost like the thread is tangled. Reading straight through, yes, you get different threads going at different times but they come together and the story is stronger for those times that they are plied (I'm not sure my yarn metaphor is working but I'm not sure how to explain the disconnect I'm feeling.)

One thing that stood out to me is that David refused to sacrifice something that cost him nothing but Solomon had no problem building the Temple of the Lord that cost him nothing (it was paid for by David and the offerings of the people). There is a huge lesson in here that I am still pondering about the cost of sacrifice.

Another crazy thought that I had is that next summer, instead of reading the entire Bible I would read just the New Testament, in Spanish. It will either make me totally crazy or I'll spend a lot of time seriously pondering what it actually means...

Instaweek June 23-29

~erica

Finished the 3rd Doctor Who scarf before we left | Spilling Water at Grand Coulee Dam | Looking down the spillway from the top of the dam during the Dam Tour

Sonic in Post Falls, ID makes me happy even if lunch is at 9:30 | When the raft is at the red flag you can drop a quarter in the machine and it will spray the occupants | Dinner at Texas Roadhouse

Sunset over Lake Roosevelt | Dawn over Lake Roosevelt | Sunset on our way home Friday

 

We spent the week camping in Eastern Washington then home to a fastpitch tournament. We worked the tournament so I got 3 pictures before the 2nd game and that's it.

 

Fastpitch Tournament in Selah

~erica

We drove to Eastern Washington this weekend to play in a fastpitch tournament in Selah. Another mom and daughter rode over with us so that they didn't have to take 2 cars.

 

A stop at the top of White Pass for ice cream. One of these days we'll have to take the kids up to see the snow, they only get to go over passes in the summer when its all trees and dry meadows.

 

Other teammates were already in the pool when we checked into the hotel so the girls were ready to join them. It was cloudy at home when we left but it was hot when we got over the mountains. In the next hour most of the team arrived. Surprisingly we were the only U-10 team staying at the hotel, especially since it was right across the street from the fields.

 

There was no way I would be within 10 miles of a Sonic and not get a Cherry Limeaid. The other family had never eaten at a Sonic so they joined us for dinner.

 

The North Park Lodge definitely had a lodge feel. The lobby was decorated with antlers and pine furniture. This is our king room with a peeled pine bed and log cabin quilt. It had a good-sized fridge and microwave in the room and the breakfast was good too, with biscuits and gravy and waffles. The cable was limited so there weren't a lot of kids choices available outside of normal cartoon times but we had brought the mini DVD player and the laptop so we had some options. This was our first travel tournament and I didn't really know what to expect. I do know now that I need to bring a power strip when we stay in a hotel and I packed a lot more food than we wanted to eat since we ate breakfast at the hotel instead of out of the cooler. The fruit and fruit juice were her first choices, then cheese sticks. She didn't want yogurt or chocolate milk as she usually does between games. We didn't touch any of the cookies or sweet stuff that I packed. I brought chicken strips that worked well for lunch; cold the first day and reheated in the microwave the second day.

 

Downtime really needed to be rest time, playing in 90-degrees is hard work and the girls played 3 games each day. The mantra of the weekend was "water, water, water" and "shade, shade, shade."  Saturday we stayed at the field over lunch and it was hard to get the girls to settle and rest in the shade. Sunday I got a late check out so we went back to the room and ate and relaxed in the AC before returning to the field for the last game and the 3-hour drive home.

 

I made hair ribbons for each of the girls in Thrashers colors of lime and black.

 

Playing 3rd base.

 

Enjoying the shade of the new pop-up I bought at Costco. It's not much bigger than a chair when its folded up and it goes up and down almost instantly. It will also be nice for soccer in the rain.

 

Watching coach for signals, if the pitch gets past the catcher be on 2nd...

 

Some of the brothers found a great hill to roll down except they came back covered in grass and itchy the rest of the day. I'm blessed to be able to leave everyone else at home for tournaments.

 

Stealing home.

 

We ended up taking 3rd Place. The two games we lost we could have won, they were both close games. The girls have a lot to be proud of, they played well.

 

It rained yesterday and Tovah's comment, "it's nice that it's raining, we needed it after all the sunshine this weekend." She's definitely a Washington girl...

 

 

 

School's Over! Time to start the Bible in 90 Days...

~erica

I just turned in my final self-evaluation and faculty evaluation at my end of program conference so I am done with my first year at Evergreen State College. I will reflect more on it later but now I am excited to get started reading the Bible in 90 Days again. This year I will be doing it chronologically for the first time. Let me know if you want to join in.

Friday Phone Dump 9-28-12

~erica

Friday was my little brother's 40th birthday. We're so old...

School started Tuesday. I go Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. By Friday night was I too exhausted to do anything fun with the kids (we had planned on going to the college to see Madagascar 3) so I told them they could eat all the junkfood in the house and watch Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

 

I finished the first of my Zora socks last Sunday night. As of this morning the second one is on my needles but it'll be slow going, I can tell. Time is at a premium right now.

 

I didn't like the texture of the Maple Granola from the bulk bins at Winco. So I got marshmallows and chocolate chips and made it into granola bars. Chocolate and maple are really good together! Next time I'll try a cup of peanut butter in the melted marshmallows.

 

These are only half my books for this quarter. Used books at the bookstore beat the prices on Amazon and worth driving to Olympia an extra day to get them (good thing cause they ran out of the Spanish textbooks and half our class had to get copies from other students to do their homework this weekend). There are 7 different sessions over the 3 days- lecture, seminar, language study, and film. Lecture and language study are completely in Spanish! We have seminar twice a week and each one is over a DIFFERENT book- we are reading 2 books a week!

 

 

That purple folder at the bottom of the pile is excerpts from El Libro de buen amor  that I have to read for this week. There were about 7 cartoon drawings with nude figures. I knew the 4 teen-age boys would have gone ballistic if they had seen them; so I finally covered them with duct tape- it does fix everything! They were totally gratuitous naked pictures, obviously they were not in the original medieval poem, the style reminds me of the 70s Good News Bible (is that blasphemous?)

 

5-A-Side soccer on Saturday. I was a bad mom and forgot my real camera. I took a few pictures with my phone. Her team is waiting for the next match by playing all of them against the ref. Wednesday night she jammed her finger stopping a goal at practice, Thursday night we were getting it checked out, Saturday she goalied with it buddy taped. I still have the x-ray order if its not feeling better tomorrow (she needed ibuprofen this morning). Our pediatrician didn't tell her to not play or to be careful, just said it probably wasn't broken, buddy tape it for comfort, and go get the x-ray if it didn't get better or got reinjured. She's a mom of 3 now grown athletes...

 

Jonah's math program came with in a box of cornstarch peanuts. Tovah spent last night making jewelry and crowns. Totally worth the $7 shipping for the book.

Friday Phone Pictures

~erica

This has been a busy week- I started indoctrination orientation at Evergreen with 2 very long days and 2 half days. I was glad to get to Friday when I had nothing but family and fun stuff.

Sunday- Jonah's 13th birthday, he played Minecraft all day | Do you recognize any of these socks? Please claim them, they have spent the summer at my house after your boy left them... | "Please hang me on the wall instead of leaving me languishing behind the door in the office since Spring Break"

Tuesday- Convocation speaker, Carlotta Walls LaNier. She was one of the Little Rock Nine in 1957 who went to Central High. Her book is good and she was a good speaker (but the Drug & Alcohol speakers were better) | Wednesday- this girl has no fear, she jumps on the ball as its being dribbled down to the goal | Thursday- Jonah's football game. He's #8 on the sideline (last week he played a minute and was SOOOO excited). They lost by 3 pts. this week because they had a TD taken away for excessive excitement or something like that- BOO!

Friday- I got up and went running. The first time since July. I made it home and needed chocolate milk before I could get up the stairs | Mini Cheer Night at the football game. | Rush (in the gray hat) playing the bass drum at the football game- We won!

Ryan didn't work until late last night so he got to go to the game with us and he got to see Tovah cheer, he missed last year. He leaned over at one point, when she was down on the track doing jumping-jacks with the cheerleaders after a TD and said, "you know cheer costs more than any other sport." Um, yeah, but she'll be the only one at home by then and I should be done with my Masters...

2012 Summer Bucket List

~erica

Maybe if I post this at the beginning of the summer next year I'll be better about getting it all done, or not...

The stars are post-it notes so they can be moved down as they are completed

• Pedicure
• Skate Park
• Tie-Dye -this project is sitting on my desk, I'm hoping to do it Saturday
• 5K
• Disney StoryBook
• 2011 & 2012 Albums
• Catch up Baby Books
• Paint our bedroom- to be fair this can't be done until we change out windows and then finish the siding on the outside of the house as we are changing window sizes and the wall will need to be fixed
• Merit Badges a few got done but not as many as I would have liked
• Bowling
• Bible in 90 Days
• Drive In Movie
• Eagle Project
• Sonic Happy Hour Forest Grove, Or and Post Falls, ID
• OMSI
• Seaside
• Spruce Goose
• Disney pictures on the wall
• One Man Band
• Movie in the yard with friends
• Birthday socks for Grandma
• Summer Reading Program
• Magic Quest at Great Wolf Lodge

On the High Adventure I had Sonic Happy Hour 3 times- it made me very happy!

A lot of things that didn't get done were my projects. Maybe next year I'll keep them separate from the summer fun stuff. Now we need to make our Winter Bucket List....

Bible in 87 Days!

~erica

One of my personal goals this summer was to again read the Bible straight through. I started June 16 and finished September 10- 87 days later. Ryan was a little concerned that I started as we left on vacation but I wanted to be done before I started back to school. Let me tell you, it was easier to keep on track on the go than it was on the days we were home. I loaded the Bible on my phone using my Kindle app- I found it last year as a free book, its English Standard Version. I always had it in my pocket- we had a few minutes waiting for something I could read, I could read in the car, I could read in line, any few quiet minutes I could read a few verses. I didn't need to be online to read since it was a Kindle book. At home it was harder to get to- I found myself going to do it "later."

I got really bogged down by the poetry- Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, I think the despair behind the writing was more apparent, because I had just read the history, the feelings and the circumstances really stood out to me. Job also was really hard to read- he lost all his children and that really hit me this reading, I've found myself bargaining with God "You've got two, leave the rest with me." and He really wants me to trust Him with all of them. Nathan is preparing to return to the sandbox this winter in a much more dangerous job description in a more volatile area than the last time.

On a less heavy note- I enjoyed reading the Old Testament history in the ESV but in the New Testament some wordings struck me as cumbersome or just wrong. I don't have specific examples but several times I was unsettled by how the passages were interpreted. I'll be looking for another version to load onto my phone...

 

Now I am ready to tackle my program at Evergreen and the 250-300 pages per week of reading that is required. In the past 4 weeks I've already read the first 3 required books, I've finished 2 this week since I finished reading the Bible. Today is the first day of 4 days of mandatory orientation...

4 Teenage Boys!

~erica

I was thinking about how I never thought this day would come,"Just wait until they are all teenagers." Tomorrow these 4 will all be teenagers!

Playing at the Pacific Science Center- 2000

Those 4 little boys in the bright orange shirts who are dressed alike are now 13, 14, 16, and 17!

A friend stopped by this morning with her 5 who are 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 and I had to remind her that it won't last forever, "one day they'll all be teenagers..."

Knitting Catch-Up



~erica



I realized its been a year since I did a knitting update. Last year I got a lot of yarn for my birthday and its partly knit up but I added some projects to the queue...

The big project for the year was the Seasons Shawl (Spring). I finished it in February in time to give it to a friend for her birthday- I decided I am just not a shawl person; no matter how lacy and pretty, it still makes me feel like a babushka. My friend, she's a shawl person and always cold so it worked out well. I am now knitting myself a long, lacy scarf with the leftovers plus an extra skein of the main rose pink color. Hopefully it'll make me feel cheery in the cold, gray winter.

I blocked it on the bed in the trailer and then took it outside for pictures.

Just looking at the colors makes me happy.

I finished the opossum socks. MaryLinda brought the 2 skeins back from New Zealand 2 years ago. It took me a long time to find a pattern that showcased both colors. This spiral heel is the start of the socks and caused a lot of cursing and throwing of yarn and knitting needles. I finally found extra yarn and larger needles and watched the youtube video over and over again until I got it. The second heel wasn't quite the ordeal of the first but still made me anxious. The yarn seems to want to felt but they are so warm and soft. I wish I had made them a little taller but I didn't want to run out of yarn.

The pattern is Double Heelix from Knitty Spring/ Summer 2011

After much reading online I decided to dye my wool with Wilton food dye in the crockpot rather than using Kool Aid. Kool Aid dyeing is pretty limited to reds and oranges, there are a lot more color choices with food dye and it seemed less work. Then I decided I wanted stripes... Our school and little league teams are all blue & gold.

 

This made me happy. I managed to twist it like a real yarn dyer.

 

 

Ready to knit

 

This is the yarn knit up in my first Crazy Ribs fingerless glove I only have one knit because it goes halfway down my forearm and I wasn't sure I wanted such long gloves. Now I either need to make the decision to keep it that long and knit the other one or frog it and start over. Its a silk merino blend and very soft and warm. They'll get lots of use for football, soccer, and baseball practices and games

 

This is some alpaca/ wool blend that I picked up at the knit shop in Lakewood. The colors are just right for my mom and I figured I had plenty of time to knit her a pair of Dragonfly Socks for her August birthday (I bought the yarn back in January, just before I finished the shawl).

 

I started these on the plane down to Disneyland and had to start 3 times because they just weren't playing nice. 10 days later I had about 2" knit. The first sock (knit on size US 1.5 needles) turned out too big so I knit the second sock on smaller needles (US 1) then frogged the first sock as I knit the third sock. I did work on them at Family Camp and managed to get one sock completed as we watched the Olympics. The second sock went more quickly but it was too hot to work on while we were in Idaho and Montana (and when you haven't showered and its 100-degrees you don't want any wool touching you anywhere). On my mom's birthday I had the cuff done of the second sock- that day I turned the heel and I finished them the day after her birthday. The lace pattern was easy to memorize and the repeats went quickly. I added an Eye of Partridge heel as the pattern was plain.  

 

Not pictured: I knit about a dozen mini socks for Christmas gifts and then knit a pair to give as a baby gift. I used up a lot of my leftover sock yarn and they were very cute with some chocolate and a candy cane in them. They have a provisional heel that was easy to add, you knit half a row in waste yarn, then in the main yarn, after you have finished the toe you go back and pick up the stitches on either side of the waste yarn and knit the heel. Each mini sock took me about 2 hours and I was slightly obsessed with making them

 

Still to come: I need to knit my second fingerless glove and finish my scarf, hopefully before school starts for me on September 25. Then I still have 2 skeins of sock yarn to knit for myself to replace a couple of pairs that are wearing out. I'd like to knit some fingerless gloves for a friend for Christmas and a pair of socks for another friend's birthday next August. We'll see how much I can get done with my school schedule- I got an email from the instructor and I can expect to have to read 250-300 pages a week... the first 2 books came from Amazon today and I'd like to be done with both before school starts (the first one is assigned to be done by the first day).