Letter from Home

I got the best letter in the mail today! My brother, Andrew sent me this letter with a great hand drawn winter scene on the bottom. It makes me so eager to be home again! Only 50 days to go....the count down has begun. 

I can't wait to be home for Christmas - it has been a couple of years since I was home on Christmas day, so this year is going to be wonderful.

Thanks for the letter, Andrew - it is up on our fridge now beneath our Durango magnet. Love you so much. 

Learning to skateboard

Our nephew Andrew got a skateboard from his parents for his birthday. So first thing Saturday was riding lessons out front. We spent a bit of time trying to get Andrew covered from head to toe in safety gear...and a good thing too, I don't think that he needs any more broken bones. Then Robert and Vince tried showing him how to ride the skateboard without falling off, which took a while for the guys to even succeed at demonstrating!

Not to be outdone by his older brother, Jacob decided he wanted to learn as well. The poor kid was having a hard time sharing the attention with his big brother and kept saying, "It's Jacob's birthday now too!" He learned quickly that the easiest way to ride and guarantee not falling off is to just lay down on the board - it brings the center of gravity to a much easier to manage level.

By the time Vince and I left back to Olympia Andrew was riding like a pro.

Andrew's Birthday

Saturday was our nephew Andrew's 9th birthday, and we were so excited to be able to spend it with him and the rest of the family down in LA.

We didn't let Jacob and Andrew know we were coming in town, we thought keeping it a surprise would be more fun. When we drove up to the house on Thursday, Andrew was just walking around the corner from school. He had been told that when he came home there would be a surprise waiting for him, when he saw Vince and I he ran to give us a hug and said, "I thought it was going to be a puppy!" I'm not quite sure if he thought we were better than a puppy or not.

What happened to the sunshine?

Vince and I are so blessed to be able to make a quick trip down to LA. It was very last minute, because we were waiting on cheap tickets - but we are currently in LA with Vince's family, about to celebrate our nephew, Andrew's, 9th birthday in a couple hours. Vince is playing dominoes with Andrew right now, waiting on all his school friends to show up to the house.

Leaving gloomy Olympia we were excited at the prospect of sunshine and warm weather, unfortunately I think we carried the weather with us on the airplane. It rained yesterday in LA as we landed, it has been drizzling all day today...what happened to sunny southern California? Maybe God didn't want us to feel too homesick coming down here, so he let it rain so it wouldn't seem better than Washington! To top it off its supposed to snow back in Olympia when we land Monday morning. We just can't win.

All in all, sunshine or cloudy weather, it is wonderful to be with family. I am so thankful for our weekend trip - it was just the break that we needed.

Happy Birthday to My Beautiful Mother

Happy Birthday to an amazing woman. My mother is not only incredible because she has a dozen children, she is amazing because she has loved and sacrificed for each one of us untiringly. The example she has given of strength in the midst of heartache, trust in the face of uncertainty, courage to take on battles bigger than her, and a constant love for the broken are lessons that have not only shaped her children, but everyone who has the blessing of being a part of her life.

We love you, Mom.

The Family Visit!

There is nothing quite so nice as moving to a new state and having the chance for your family to come out to visit (it also helps motivate you to finish unpacking all your boxes and get the house set up). The Quiz family had already planned a visit to the Seattle area to visit my grandparents but since we had just moved into town we got to see them too.

On Thursday Vince and I drove up to Bainbridge Island and met up with our family before taking the ferry across to Seattle. Once we made it across the Puget Sound we visited to the Seattle Aquarium, Pike Place Market and the Space Needle. The best part of the day had to be Anna realizing that her ice cream cone from Pike Place had been melting all over her clothes for the past couple of blocks on our way to the Space Needle.

All in all it was a nice couple of days, after the Seattle visit we all drove up to have dinner with Gramma and Grampa Quisenberry and then on Saturday the family drove down and stayed in Olympia for the night and we got to show them around our new neighborhood. Let's just say that the tour of Olympia was considerably quicker than the tour of Seattle a few days before.