Canyon Life

I forgot I had a blog. Here's the last two months in pictures. And we'll be going backwards in time, since that's the way my pictures loaded and I'm too tired to fix them. Blahhhhhhh.

By the way, today was disgusting. This world is awful, I'm glad we only have to live here for maybe 80 years or so. Maranatha.

Have you ever seen a baby camel. Oh my word. They are really cute! Eight week old right here.

Highlight of the month, my friend won tickets through PBS to go see a preview of Downton Abbey Season 3 and meet the cast. It was fun, there were only about 350 people there and it was neat to see. We got to meet them and get some swag. Fancy fancy.

Cody might not bounce back and walk again, so we are letting him try his wheels out a bit.

Candice, my super weird niece and friend. She lives close enough to hang out regularly now.

Also came back from Thanksgiving to my dog becoming disabled again.

Came back from Thanksgiving and plucked a tree from the earth.

Thanksgiving in the desert. A week of bikes, fire pits, dirt and fun.

King of Schematics. Dislikes Disneyland. Loves me enough to take me there.

See these beautiful lines? Brett made them. He is the king of creating schematics and maps for such things. This is Fall Fest, we put on this even with our church every year. This year we had about twenty thousand people show up to our completely free event . It was crazy!

My younger, dressed more normally. Harry Potter.

Halloween. These are my two older boys, clearly dressed as........ ??

These girls. One of God's most awesome blessings would have to be friends. The ones that will call you out on your nonsense. Tell you when you are being ridiculous, wrong, mean, whiny, cranky, lazy, rotten, emotional.... you know. All those lame things we girls do sometimes. And then they'll walk you through the issue with love. Because these girls care more about my walk with Christ than they do my feelings, even if it means causing pain, even if it means making me angry, even if it means walking away from a friendship with me. Their main concern is my relationship with a holy God. They're more fearful of God than of man. Sacrificial, unconditional, not based on emotion. That's love.

It seems like every year I get all cranky about the fact that it's almost October and the weather is still pretty warm. Then I remember it's always like this. Even when I think back to school clothes shopping a long time ago in elementary school, everything in the stores was geared towards cold weather. So that's what I would buy. Then I would wear it to school on the first day, determined to look cute in a new fall outfit, and sweat my butt off. The next day I was back to shorts until well into October. That was northern California. Here in the southern part of the state its even worse, I can wear flip flops almost year round. I do miss the changing seasons of Nevada, but then I remember driving (sliding) around in snow, freezing to death in my car every morning, and I think, eh, maybe I don't miss it THAT much.

Summer was so busy, I thought Fall would have us slowing down. Nope. The calendar is full, and I can't keep track of all our commitments. A few trips are in the works, lots of ministry, and then there's the holidays. Yikes. We are creeping up on Christmas again. Ugh. 

Just got back from camping with our junior high group. Brett and I ran games for the few days we were there. So much fun. This was Matt's first retreat, and despite his non emotional response, I believe he loved it! You never can tell with Matt. This was also Brett's first time serving in the kids ministry, and he was totally in his element. We nicknamed him the "Enforcer" since he wound up being the main disciplinarian to all the kids. He also set up everything, got everyone tucked in with lights out every night, organized activities, you name it. Brett was all over it. We'll do it again for sure next year.

Here's Matt's group. Good bunch of boys.

Zip line, Matt getting ready on the left.

My boss, Rob Biagi leading worship with the students. Rob is a professional performer, look him up. He's fun and the kids love him. We're blessed to have him call our church home.

Ah. This right here was dinner last night. It was my best friends birthday, and her husband got us reservations at Club 33 in Disneyland. Most expensive dinner I've had to date. 

Sitting on the veranda at Club 33.

Once again, my pictures are way out of order and I just don't care. This was games at camp.

Night games. I love it when I get to hold the microphone. 

Matt and Brett hiking back to the car from the zip line so we could go set up for lake games.

See how excited Matt is? Such emotion playing across his face.

Awwwww, here's the last sports camp of the summer. Basketball.

August. It's August already. Yikes. My youngest son turned ten yesterday, we did a little party for him, almost against his will. Matt's not the most social kid we have, he's a bit of a lone wolf. He doesn't like attention. It only took about five minutes and the realization that people brought him presents to snap him out of his funk though. Coincidentally, Matt is the most like his father. He carries a pendaflex in his backpack, reads at a tenth grade level, maintains honor roll status, and asked for a filing cabinet for his room. I think he got my sense of humor, but that's all. He also looks like his dad mostly. Both Ty and Matt are pretty similar.

Here's my oldest son wakeboarding last week at camp. He got up at 6am every morning to ensure his spot on one of the boats.

July saw lots of my friends having babies, and there are still more babies on the way. This is a little girl I had the pleasure of visiting in the hospital last week. She's a cutie.

Baby shower for another friend, who's due in another few weeks. Both friends opted to not find out the sex of the baby until it was born. Seems to be the popular thing to do again. Makes shopping a tad difficult, the baby winds up with a lot of yellow. This game here below was new to me, though I've seen some similar ideas. Basket full of corn pops, blindfold, find as many tiny toy items as you can. 

Here's the birthday boy.

Here's Matthew again, he helped me set up for art camp. This is his favorite camp, he really enjoyed painting and clay. It's the only camp that we do inside, and it was lovely. Tomorrow starts football camp. High temperatures are expected. Woo hoo! I had better plan some good water games.

Last week the older boys were at camp in Lake Havasu, so it was just Matt and I. We stayed up late playing games, he slept every day on the way to art camp.

Tyler at Revival in Havasu. It was his first time at Revival, he loved it, of course. 

I love how none of my pictures are in order. This was art camp too. 

Small tiny picture of Team Australia at Revival, Ty is second from left. Their team won the week of competition. They scored best in all memory verses and game points. Tyler was pretty excited about that.

 Here's Ninja. Doing what she does. 

I got home from Amman, Jordan two days ago. Yesterday I was down for the count with a serious case of jet lag. I didn't think it was a real thing, jet lag. I guess when you don't sleep for 48 hours and the sleep you did get over the last few weeks ranged from 3 to 6 hours a night, it can all creep up on you. Plus we all seemed to catch a stomach bug, one of our group was throwing up on the plane. Yikes. No good. But we made it home safely! I am very happy to be back with my boys.

The trip was amazing. If you know me, you know why I went. I won't throw out the details here. I'll just toss up some pictures of the highlights. We left on the 5th of July, and landed in Frankfurt, Germany on the 6th, just in time for dinner. Which was weird, because we had just eaten breakfast on the plane. We had a short layover, so we ventured out into the city via train. We walked around Frankfurt, got some fun food (bratwurst, kidney sausage, pastry, marzipan) and headed to the river. It was beautiful, the atmosphere was fun, and I would love to go back someday. 

That night we jumped on the next flight to Amman. We landed around 2am and got picked up by our friends and a few taxi's. By the time we made it to our destination and our rooms, it was 6am. Long night! The next day, the set up for our camp began. We had three days to prep.

Here's the breakfast we woke up to most days, hummus, fruit and vegetables, olives and flat bread.

This is the area where we set up the stage.

Got the posters up!

Jordanian fast food, shawarma. It's a wrap with hummus, vegetables and chicken or lamb.Very good.

The Dead Sea, where if you shave your legs and then go swimming, you die. Not really, but it burns like crazy. The floating was fun, you can't sink if you wanted to. I felt like a buoy. It was hot too, probably 110 that day. They had a pool nearby, it was lovely and refreshing.

Angela and I. She was my roommate for the last two weeks. I love her.

Cat in Arabic is bissa. I love that. Cats are vermin in these parts. They scavenge and jump out of trash cans to scare you when you get to close. We had to chuck the trash in from afar.

Breakfast again, this time I added eggs.

Stage is set, decor is done!

This was fantastic, 9am, this guy comes around! Traffic jam.

Oh, the food at the markets was fantastic to look at. So many olives, so many spices and dates and figs. Always fun to explore.

The front of our church, after we decorated it a bit. This was the first night of registration.

Here they come!

Awww, Angela is tired.

Driving out to Jerash, passing a mosque. There are mosques on every corner. Literally. Here's the fun thing, all those towers have speakers attached to them. Four or five times a day, they do the call to prayer. Starting at 3:45am. It's loud. You can't escape it. It will wake you up. Sometimes they chant, sometimes they talk, sometimes I don't know what they are doing.

The coliseum entrance at Jerash, where they did the chariot races.

Main entrance to Jerash. Beautiful. Jerash, or Gerasa, has many biblical ties. They think that the parable of the Prodigal Son was based here, as well as the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, and Jesus sending demon possessed swine into a river to drown. The Jabbok river runs close by, the same river where Jacob wrestled with God. For a country that worships an entirely different god, they have no trouble believing any of this history happened.

Outside walls of coliseum, stables and entrances, tombs were off to the right.

Amphitheater. Very large, very hot.

Temple of Artemis. Artemis was the patron goddess of the city. The other was Zeus, but most loved Artemis. She was chosen because whatever god they had before her had similar attributes.

After the fourth night of camp, Angela and Jim earned back rubs.

I love you old rock from ages past. I also really loved that Brita water bottle. I think I drank 50 bottles a day.

This guy, he's our tech guy at church, he runs all our systems. We call him the renaissance man. Know why? Because in addition to all the tech stuff, he was a professional ballroom dancer, helped produce things on Dancing With the Stars, and he's a biblical archaeologist. Say what??? I know. Who'd a thunk? We had the best tour guide ever. But he kept wanting to dig everywhere. Here he is getting into leading worship at camp.

I was in charge of games. Jordanian kids are competitive. These little guys weren't, they just wanted to play, but the big kids. Wow. I threw a tug of war at them and chaos erupted. In a good way. I think. Barely any injuries.

Arabic hymnal. So pretty.

Amphitheater at the Citadel, downtown Amman.

Smaller little baby amphitheater, right next to the big one.

Halfway up one billion stairs to the top of the Citadel ruins, I turned and saw this view. Almost worth the climb. Our tour guide said he knew a short cut, I thought the best short cut would have been a taxi.

View from the top, Amman is huge.

Temple of Hercules and some pretty stones I saw.

After the trek to the top of the Citadel, we had lunch at this fantastic place call Jafra. They had Turkish coffee. This stuff I stocked up on and took home. Oh dear me. It was heaven.

Angela hugging headless statues, me and Melani, and our delicious lunch.

Mount Nebo, the mountain where Moses led Israel to so they could see the promised land. Moses was not allowed to enter and died on Mount Nebo.

Minus the smog, this is the view Moses had.

This is the team right after we got back to church from our trip. We don't look too bad!

These were just a few of my favorite memories. We are still sorting through the rest of the pictures. I am so glad to be home. My mom is here visiting and my brothers are due here Sunday. My 11th anniversary is tomorrow, so hopefully Brett and I can get out and do something together before the mob arrives. Brett was so awesome about this whole trip, he stayed here with kids, fixed up the house, did some projects to surprise me, and I think he actually missed me. Nothing like two weeks away from your spouse to make the heart grow fonder. I seriously hope he'll consider going next year though, I think he'd love it.