Thursday, October 7, 2021

The Big 5-0


Blog About Fall 2020

Doug was about to turn 50, so Kylie and I thought it would be fun to surprise him for a weekend visit. She hadn't been gone long, but we already missed her and wanted to take advantage of seeing her when we could while we were in America.

I wasn't home the day she flew in, so a friend of mine picked her up and delivered her.
I let Caleb in on the secret so he could video the moment Doug opened the door, but we didn't tell Keira or Karis so we could surprise them, too.

Kylie arrived and was able to help Keira get ready for Halloween and take Keira trick or treating with Doug.



The next day we had planned a surprise party for Doug, which was disguised as a dinner at a friend's house. It was the day before his birthday, so he still didn't suspect anything.









































The best gift I could think to give him was to let him know how many people he had impacted in his first 50 years. We shouldn't wait until someone is gone to verbalize what they mean to us, right?

So many of you graciously wrote him a letter to tell of how he had impacted you or what he had meant to you, and it became a beautiful book, full of almost 150 letters.

You guys were amazing!  Thanks!







































Peanut Butter Pie is a must!





























The hosts of the party have been friends of ours for close to 28 years. In fact, Doug performed their wedding ceremony 25 years ago!






































More friends from our early days in college.



Eight of these people were in the student ministry Doug first worked in when he was 19 years old, and the man next to Doug was his first employer in the ministry world. These guys have all remained close to us over the many years that have passed since then.




Our three oldest serenaded Doug with "Happy Birthday," sung in two different languages from our overseas country.



And while all of this was happening, back across the sea, our host country was still doing school online.
I hate to say this, but it was a blessing for us, because Keira could attend school online and not miss anything while we were in America.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Homecoming on Halloween

Blog About Fall 2020

Karis and I flew back to Houston on Halloween, but we had a hour and a half drive back to Houston, so I missed Keira getting ready to go downtown for Halloween. There was someone who WAS there to help her, and I'll tell you about her in the next post :)

(By the way, today is Keira's actual birthday in 2021)


However, we did make it back in time for Karis to get ready for her first (and only) homecoming dance. She was invited by some of her friends, and she had such a good time.










































 

Sunday, October 3, 2021

The Painful and Delightful Memories of Colorado


Blog About Fall 2020

Keira and I got back from Virginia on a Tuesday, and Karis and I left for Denver, Colorado, the next day!

We were meeting another mother and daughter there, so we sent them a picture of us in the airport.


They kindly reciprocated :)

We met in Denver, rented a car (which is going to be a big part of this story), and we found a middle eastern place to eat.

I still get amazed at digital maps! I remember driving with my family every summer, and I loved being in charge of the map...the paper map! But on those handy-dandy maps, it didn't say, take this exit for great middle eastern food. There was NO way to know what was in the city!






























I can't remember if the food was good or not :)

I think we had problems getting it down.


October 28, 2020

We drove to Breckenridge. It was the off-season, and we had so much fun walking around without it being crowded.



































Narnia vibes


October 29, 2020







































We walked everywhere the first day, but the first morning, when we wanted to drive around and find a coffee shop, the car wouldn't start. We were in a garage, and not many people were around. Karis and her friend walked to town, and I walked down the road where I saw intermittent traffic, and I stopped 8 cars (3 wouldn't stop) to ask for a jump. Most of them had rentals as well, but one nice gentleman stopped and said he could help. I told him where my friend was waiting, so he drove to give our car a jump. He even gave us his construction business card in case we needed him again (since we didn't want to bother him, we never did, but we should have). We drove into town, did some sight-seeing, and after a few hours, we went back and the car wouldn't start again.


I'm not going to drag this out for you, but let me give you the highlights. I found a family in the parking lot who helped us, but we were concerned about making our drive back to Denver the next day. The car rental company said we could take it to the nearest rental place and switch it out for another car. The kicker was the rental place was in the OPPOSITE direction of Denver by an hour. 

SO, we opted to get a jump in the morning from some maintenance men and drive straight to Denver without turning the car off. When we stopped to eat lunch, someone remained in the car with it running, and everyone else got food and brought it back for the driver. In Denver, we had planned to eat out with a friend that night and spend the night before flying out the next morning, but we couldn't with this particular car.

SO, we drove all the way out to the airport, told the story to the car rental place, and they apologized, gave a SMALL discount and said they would upgrade us with a nice car. This is not what we wanted. 

Small car, BIG discount works better, right? 

Anyway, we drove away in a LARGE SUV Denali.  It was nice, but it was awful at the same time. 
Trying to park that thing in downtown Denver was NOT fun or easy!

Needless to say, we left with some memories :)

October 30, 2020

Friday, October 1, 2021

Two Nights in Virginia

Blog About Fall 2029

Covid numbers in Texas were a little high for my sister and her family to come down and see us last August, so Keira and I flew to see her in October 2020. Unfortunately, we only had a little time in our schedule, but I'm so glad we made the trip.

We were walking around her quaint town in Virginia when she casually said, "This used to be a hotel and Lafayette apparently stayed here." 

I always forget about the history of colonial America that is at your fingertips in the northeast.


Another happy surprise was walking onto a street that was closed for fall family activities. Keira spontaneously painted a ceramic pumpkin, which the store kept and fired in a kiln. My sister picked it up, and we got it from her a year later (July 2021) when we went back.






October 24, 2020

My brother-in-law let Keira choose a creation she wanted him to make on his 3D printer. 
She chose a My Little Pony, and we also ended up taking home several other 3D printed items for Caleb that my brother-in-law just wanted to experiment with but didn't need to keep anymore.






































To bless Keira, one of my nephews wore his hair to dinner Keira-style.


















The next day, my sister drove Keira and I into Washington DC to see the Museum of the Bible and the Spy Museum. Both were SO fascinating!

We spent over 4 hours in the Museum of the Bible, and we could have stayed longer; however, we had tickets for the Spy Museum for a certain time, and we needed to get there (because of Covid restrictions).


I never would have imagined finding sarcophagi in Canaan!







































This room was really soul-moving. The museum has a Bible for each of the languages it has been translated into. 

I know the lighting is bad, but on the right, there are just empty tan-colored books. One section says "Not Yet Acquired," one says "Portions." But there was another part of the wall (not shown) that represented all of the languages that do not have a translation of the Bible. About 2,200 languages remain without a Bible. About 350 million people, mostly in India, china, sub-Saharan Africa, and Papua New Guinea. (info from 2016)





























A costumed museum worker in front of this olive tree talked about life in first century Galilee, and the video presentations were really well-done. Go see the museum, if you get a chance.







































October 25, 2020

The Spy Museum was riveting. Keira loved all of the activities, watching videos, and seeing where spy equipment could be hidden. Spy activities during the Cold War was crazy! My sister and I loved reading and learning so much! We stay for close to three hours, but we didn't get to finish the last floor.

Keira really wanted to see more of the museum, so thankfully, a year later, we went back to see my sister and planned for another day in the museum, and it was worth it the second time, too!

James Bond's car was next to the gift shop area.







































Some of our favorite stories were things we learned about Russia spying on the US and vice versa.  

Another thing I didn't know...This was Terry Nichols' hat. He was one of the men responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing. I didn't know that Nichols and McVeigh were angry about what had happened at the Davidian compound, and they planned the Oklahoma City bombing on the second anniversary of the raid.







































On our drive home, we stopped for Ethiopian food.

The first time I had Ethiopian food was near Washington DC, when my family went to visit my sister in Virginia back in the mid-90's. I learned to love it even more when we lived in Uganda. So this was a special treat, since I hadn't had it since spring 2013!


And I just have to chronicle a school cooking project from one of my other nephews. 

He had to make churros, feed them to his family, and take a picture of them enjoying them.

I'll just leave this here :)

Thank you, Benjamin. They were wonderful!

Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Traveling * Awards * Shopping * Communicating

Blog About Fall 2020

The week after the hurricane, we headed the other direction to Brownwood, Texas.
The house where we stayed had a lot of dress-up clothes for grandchildren, and Keira modeled no less than 7 outfits one night.




October 17, 2020

When we returned to College Station, we took Karis out to celebrate her becoming a member of the National Honor Society.

Since she attends an online school, there was no ceremony or acknowledgement. I thought back to my own induction, and told her to hold up a steak knife while she said the "pledge" (that we looked up online).







































I would say this generally is not what you want to see your 16-year old daughter doing.







































October 19, 2020



Two days later, my friend Shelley invited me to go antique/vintage shopping with her. I don't often get to do "girl trips," so it was so fun to spend the day with her.

One crazy thing about the day was so many reminders of Africa.

For example, this mannequin head is a similar replica of one in Kampala, Uganda, that we used to pass often and note how out-of-place it was there. I found a picture of another laughing one in Uganda that I posted way back in 2011







































Also, these wood crafts, which were shipped in from Ghana, reminded me so much of all the times we went to craft markets anywhere in East Africa.







































And this speaks for itself.  (the link is from Tanzania in 2010).

 










October 21, 2020

And this became our new normal in communicating with Kylie while she was at school.

What a blessing instant communication with video is!























October 20, 2020

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Baton Rouge

Blog Post About Fall 2020


We had plans to travel to Baton Rouge the second weekend of October 2020 to see some friends, but Hurricane Delta also had plans to visit Louisiana that weekend. We couldn't delay our trip, and since we used to live in Baton Rouge and had ridden out hurricanes in the past, we thought we would give it a try.

We arrived and immediately started visiting people; however, Keira was invited to stay at our host home instead of doing all the visiting, and she had a blast! Who doesn't love pillow fights and spy games where you crawl around the attic?

It's a good thing that she stayed behind. We didn't finish our last visit until 2am!



The day after the hurricane blew in, power was out, but that didn't keep Keira from getting in the hot tub even with all the hard gusts of wind blowing in.



On Sunday, we had to leave earlier than we had planned because highways were backing up, traffic through Lake Charles (that was hit again for the second time in a short period) was not good, and we weren't sure we could take back roads if they hadn't been cleared of debris.



 

















(These are the friends we stayed up with until 2am :)

Meanwhile, we left Karis and Caleb back in Texas where they hung out with friends.

Oct 13, 2020



October 17, 2020