Crazy Size!

Our old DVD player quit working recently, so Ken ordered another one.  We were very surprised to see how small it is.  Here, I compared it to the size of a DVD case...

...and here I compared it in size to our former DVD player.  We're blown away by the difference in size!  Who knew DVD players were so small and light now!  (It's almost small enough to take with us on a trip!)

Rings

 As many know, I lost the diamond out of my wedding ring while I was doing jury duty in June.  Then a few weeks later, I lost the stone out of my other ring.  This is what they looked like without their stones.

This is how my ring looks now with it's new diamond.  They not only replaced the main diamond, but also re did the prongs that hold the diamond, so hopefully, I won't lose it again.  The jewelers recommended that I bring it in to be checked and cleaned every 6 months, and I'm going to try to remember to do that.

Young's New House

The Young Family is moving to a new house.  I took pictures of some of the rooms last Friday when we got to see their new house for the first time, while helping them move some boxes.  This is the office area, which has a lot of built in shelves already there.

This view is from the living room, looking back toward the kitchen...

...and this one is taken from the kitchen, looking at the living room.

This is the garden area in the middle with the living room on the left and a hallway to the bedrooms on the right.  It has glass on all sides of it.

The guest bathroom.

Annika's room.

The kid's bathroom.

Master bathroom.

Moving some boxes into the new house.

I'm anxious to see it with furniture in it!

Marysville Pilchuck Memorials

 When I was in Marysville last week, this is some of what I saw.  Red and white, their school colors, were all over the place.

 I also drove out to the high school where people had put all sorts of articles, signs and flowers on the fence beside the school.

 The memorial fence by the school.

 A red and white heart on the memorial fence.

 The cross walk sign by the school.

 A house fence down the road from the school.

 Bridge railing over the freeway.

This is a rock beside the freeway almost to Bellingham where people paint things all the time.  It's different almost every time I go to Bellingham, and this time it was giving support to Marysville Pilchuck High School.  Such a sad thing to happen, this has been a really rough year on this side of the state!

New Car

 We got a new car yesterday!

 It's a 2015 Subaru Forester to replace our 2003 CRV.

It has a lot of features that I'm having to learn how to use, things inside cars have really changed in 12 years!  I'm really liking everything about it!

Stay at Home Projects

 Before Ken had surgery, he knew he was going to need things to do while he waited for his knee to heal.  He decided to get a balsa wood model airplane kit to work on.  This is how far he's gotten on it.

The scar 2 1/2 weeks after surgery.

 This is the first year that we have ever had a decent amount of blackberries growing wild on the edge of our property.  This is the results of our 3rd time to go out picking.  The other 2 times, we didn't get very many, but they are really ripening now.  There's still a lot of berries that are out of our reach, but we're pleased with the amount we've been able to get that are within reach!

I really didn't think we'd get this many berries, next time I'll take out a larger container!

Red Cross

 The Red Cross has moved their headquarters for the Oso relief to our church.

 They are using this building which houses the library and several classrooms, along with the reddish colored building in the background for processing people and also for people to stay in if they need to.

The covered tunnel between the 2 buildings is so anyone staying over in the reddish colored building can go into the main building in privacy, where the bathrooms have showers.  Our church has had to do a lot of re-arranging things/classes to accommodate them, but we were more than willing to do so, in order to help out the victims of the mudslide!

Breast Cancer Awareness

 This is the display of bras in Wenatchee for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Painting a Dragon Fly

 This is what the dragon fly I painted looked like before being fired and before I added eyes...

 ...and this is what it looks like after being fired!  Quite a change!

Trip to Bellingham

As I made the detour around the bridge, I was able to take a couple of pictures out the car window of the gap in the freeway.  (Luckily, there was enough traffic on the detour, that I was going slow enough to take the pictures!)

Saben had a long paper chain that he had made and he decided to drape it all over himself.  When I showed it to Ken, he thought Saben looked like a famous picture of Houdini draped in chains.

The reason Saben got his paper chain out to show me, was because Annika had decided that she needed to make a paper chain to countdown the days until her birthday.  Here she's displaying her chain that shows 43 days until her birthday.  Saben made a new paper chain also, to count the days until the 4th of July.

An Almost Lost Bible

This is a picture of Ken's Bible, with the snake skin cover that he got when he was on a mission trip to Mali.  A month or so ago, Ken put it, my Bible, and my notebook on the trunk of his car after we got home from church.  He did something in the yard, then came inside, forgetting that those items were on the trunk.  A little later, he drove his car out of the driveway and took off down the road.  I looked out the front window later and saw some things lying in the middle of the road by our driveway and went to see what it was.  It turned out to be my notebook and Bible, but Ken's wasn't there.  He had driven to our church, about 15 minutes away, when I called him on his cell phone to tell him what had happened.  His Bible was no longer on the trunk, so he drove back the way he had gone on his way to church to look for it.  Unfortunately, he wasn't able to find it.  He continued to drive the route several times that day and in the following week, searching for his Bible, and had given up on finding it, he almost ordered a new one the day before it's return..

At church the following Sunday, we were contacted by a person that attends our church, who asked Ken if this was his Bible.  The story told to us was that someone along Kackman Road had found it.  Ken's name wasn't in his Bible, but he had a paper with the name of a couple that goes to our church inside the cover.  The people that found it, contacted the couple and told them they had found a Bible and that they would bring it to our church on Sunday.  When the couple received it, they discovered that there was a picture of me in the back cover of the Bible, and proceeded to look for us to see if the Bible belonged to us.  We felt very thankful that Ken got his Bible back and both of us have our names in our Bibles now!

Heirlooms

A few years ago, Kari introduced me to heirloom tomatoes, by giving me an heirloom tomato plant, so I could try and grow some of my own. I really liked them and now whenever I can find them, I'll buy them, even though they are more expensive than "tomatoes on a vine". This winter, I discovered heirloom oranges! Again, they are more expensive than other oranges, but, boy are they good! They are really sweet and juicy, at least all the ones I've had so far, have been.

So far, I've only seen them at the Haagens store in Arlington, but I haven't looked for them in to many stores. Hopefully, they'll start showing up in other stores soon.

Arrived in Arlington

We had seen that this artifact from the World Trade Center was arriving on Saturday at about 12:30pm, so we decided to go down and watch the arrival. It was not a really exciting event. I thought they would slowly drive down main street and there would be a lot of people out to see its arrival, with cheering and flag waving. In reality, they drove fairly quickly down the street, there were a few people attending with some flags and not much cheering. I also thought we'd see the actual artifact, not the container it's in. Oh, well, maybe we'll see it when they dedicate it in September.

Neighborhood Logging Show

A couple of weeks ago, our neighbors started taking the branches off a tree they were going to have cut down. Another neighbor that has experience in logging agreed to take care of cutting the tree down and Sunday evening, he started the process. (Even though it looks like 2 trees he is taking down, it was really just one tree that split into 2 trees. Actually toward the top, one of the trees split again, so there were three tops to take off.)

As he started up the tree, several neighbors gathered to watch the show, it was like being at a logging show! You can see how far above the roof tops he was.

He cut this first tree top off, but it didn't fall down because it was caught in the branches of the other piece. After he got the tops of the tree off, he started cutting off firewood sized chunks and letting them fall to the ground.
He finally got the tree down to this size and decided to take a break by sitting on the top of the tree. Notice the chain saw dangling down the tree. It was roped to his waist and several times, he let it drop while it was still running, which seemed kind of dangerous to me, but I guess it wasn't because nothing happened whenever he did it. The only casualty of the whole event was the basketball hoop, which had a big log fall on it and caused it to be pulled out of the ground.