Incommunicado

I will be away from my blog for at least the next two weeks, due to my mission trip to Ukraine for which I depart tomorrow morning!! Please pray for the hearts of the seven American team members that are going, that we would be Christ-centered and servant-hearted, and for the hearts of the Belarusians/Ukrainians we will be ministering to, that God would open their hearts to understand the things He wants to teach them.

And Soli Deo Gloria!!

Last Days With Georgie

It's so strange to think that this will be my last post with Georgie pictures for a LONG time. Wow, I miss her. I've been home now for a little less than a week, but because there's so much else going on I haven't really had time to realize that I miss her. I left her right as she was just starting to try to find her thumb to suck on. I spent a whole morning coaching her through the process, showing her how to purposefully bring her wrist to her mouth, unfold her fingers to release her own thumb from her grip and place her extended thumb in that sweet spot at the roof of her mouth. I would praise her when she found her thumb and giggle when she wept out of the frustration of the thumb slipping from her lips (of course I would cradle her as I giggled...and she'll never remember the giggling anyway...). Those were such sweet moments on my last morning with her. I love remembering the way her eyebrows would raise up and her head would wiggle back and forth when she felt her wrist near her mouth and therefore searched for her thumb. Sweet little thing.

Ok, disregarding the fact that I have the appearance of a hobo, this photo documents one of the sillinesses of Georgie!! Almost every time I held her on my shoulder, she would wriggle and thrust her way into this silly position. Seriously, the full weight of her head was hanging in the air, it was quite an arm workout to keep her steady and sleeping!!

I just loved walking into her nursery or her parents' bedroom - wherever her side-sleeper was during her nap - to this site. Besides the fact that she looked precious, she always reminded me of a lazy teenager sleeping in on a Saturday morning.

'dorable 'dorableness! What else can I say? Could you ever have imagined such a tiny little thing?

For Hunter

Just a collection of photos and some stories that I know would be enjoyed by Hunter.

This was how Smithka spent her 4th of July. She sacked in practically the whole day. She was really taking a well-deserved lazy day, relaxing from her duty of being the neighborhood sneak peak.


These are genuine reindeer. Christmas flooded over your senses the minute you turned the zoo's corner and saw Santa's most faithful helpers nibbling in Washington's early July heat. The original Christmas legendeers really knew what they were up to when they decided that REINDEER would be the animal that comes to mind when the word "Christmas" is uttered.

I wish I could have gotten a completely front-on shot of this silly owl's face. He made me giggle. His ginormous, invading eyes give the impression that he thinks he's much more intimidating and wise than he really is. He looked around and at people like, "Duh, you're taking pictures of me. I'm the most interesting and intriguing piece of creation here."

I just thought Smithers looked beautiful on this windowsill behind these curtains. I love the way her eyes match the linen. And her use of the perch technique here is exquisite. If I've ever seen an attempt at the Double Paw Curl that deserved a 10.0, this is it.


Smithers continued to impress me with the way she has perfected the art of cat comfort. Notice the well-placed tail.

After cautiously climbing onto the air mattress and snooping out the underneath side of my pillow, Smithers decided that the pillow would make an adequate kitty-cave, if only she could get underneath it. Well, no task seems to large for a determined Smithers so sure enough, in a matter of minutes she was cuddled completely under the pillow. She stayed there for a good twenty minutes.

I just thought these were awesome flowers at the zoo, reflecting a little of our Awesome God. They're such cool flowers, aren't they? This shot is from directly below the flowers, so they're pretty design faces the floor. Interesting, huh?

God's Perfect Timing

I'm sure most of you who read this blog have already seen Heather's post about her back pain and the ER ordeal. Poor girl! She hasn't felt "normal" or well for ten months now, and even before she was pregnant her migraines and headaches were an almost constant struggle. She puts on such a cheerful face and maintains such a sweet disposition, though. She's really strong. That's why it was such a shock to see her writhing on the ground last night with tears streaming down her face...I knew that she was feeling a level of pain that I have never come close to experiencing. For Heather, managing a busy, social events-filled life with a constant headache (many times migraine) while maintaining a sweet smile and a fun, encouraging personality is LIFE. Making sure people don't feel uncomfortable around her because of her pain has always, in her mind, been a loving MUST. And she does a stupendous job at it.

But enough about Heather. :)

Our God is so awesome!!!! In a gazillion more ways than one, too, but here's one of them:

He demonstrated His providential planning and timing yet again. Hear this: My original itinerary had me leaving Washington TODAY, the day after the all-nighter in the ER. Thankfully (providentially), at the beginning of my month here it was looking like Matt was going to have to be out of town this entire week, so Heather asked me to extend my stay here by at least a few days. I readily agreed to move my flight to the weekend. But think about it, can you imagine us trying to get me to the airport today in the state we were in after having not slept the night before? I'm so thankful that I get to stay a few extra days and help get things back in order and help Heather rest like she should. And I'm so thankful that her in-laws are here also...they've been such help! And they've got quite a knack for cooking. So that's where Matt gets it.

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!"

An Event Worthy of Fireworks

A proposal was made on the 4th of July! (Said proposal was eagerly accepted on the same day.) Congratulations, you two!

Fiamially (fee-am-yu-lly)

The title comes from the way I used to pronounce the word "family" when I was a small girl. Haha, over the years my family has pretty much developed its own vocabulary as we picked up and held on to funny ways of saying things or little kids' mistaken pronunciations...anyways, my whole family plus Harrison's girlfriend were here in Washington this past weekend! It was a great time of passing Georgie around, laughing, fellowship and a little sight-seeing.

The first time all of us were together was on Saturday morning when we gathered for a kind of smorgasbord (Matt had to help me spell that one...though he claims I still didn't type a real word because I left out the two little dots over the second "o") breakfast. We laughed a ton as Harrison and Vichka presented their gifts to Georgie: 1) a coffee machine, because, of course, babies are always falling asleep all the time, so Georgie just needs a good strong cup of coffee and 2) a monsterish puppet. I think Heather has a pic of the monstrosity on her blog.

We eventually mosied over to the Steilacoom Deli & Pub for lunch. Yummy just like the first time.

On our way home we stopped at the lake for a walk. Here are some pics:

Couldn't resist the shot of the butts as they all bent over to look at something in the water:
Since when did trees become food?
When we got home from our outing, we all decided that our skin temperature relative to the temperature of the pool water made ideal conditions for a dip, and Harrison became a hippie on our walk to the pool:
Georgie had her first dip in a swimming pool, poor girl hated it even more than she hates baths. But doesn't she look cute?

After having to say good-bye to my mom and Hunter, the rest of us went to church the next morning! Georgie got dressed up for her first occasion of hearing Jesus talked about in big words, as Matt said.
After church we went to lunch at a really cool restaurant ("we" here means the church group minus my dad, we had to say good-bye to him mid-morning :( ). It was a pizza place, called The Rock, and the theme was rock-n-roll. Guys, I love restaurants like this, that pay as much attention to atmosphere as they do to food. It totally reminded me of Hard Rock Cafe, except maybe a little more Disneyland-ish (i.e., EVERYTHING was part of the decorations, even the drink station where the waitresses prepared our drinks looked like dumpsters, and the outside of the menus were famous rock-n-roll records). I think I was the only one who appreciated the atmosphere so enthusiastically, but I think we all agreed on the caliber of the food. Oh, so tasty.

Pics:

This one was meant to be a picture of the two girls' scrunchy hair (thanks to my mom who labored to braid our hair the night before!!), but Harrison couldn't pass up the opportunity to take another picture with his beautiful girlfriend:
Part of the decoration in the restaurant, a guitar chandelier:
I was WAY impressed with the bathrooms. The minute you walked in you felt like a rock queen. The stalls were jet black with hot pink flames, the toilets were black, the walls were a juicy red, man, I could totally be a rocker. (Ok, probably not.)
After lunch we spent the afternoon at Dashpoint State Park. This was the first time that I got to wade in Pugent Sound! The water was very warm, and strewn all over the sand and in the water were beautiful sand dollars, some of them still alive! I started getting all excited and shaking them next to my ear as I marveled aloud at the little shell angels that we would find inside a sand dollar if we broke one of them open. Finally several of us gathered in a little huddle as Matt held a sand dollar in the middle of us and broke it open with his hand. Nope, no angels, but Matt did succeed in splattering my arm and face with mudd. The rest of the group had never heard of angels being inside sand dollars, so they proceeded to laugh at my belief and attributed it to one of my crazy dreams. I then became slightly frantic because of how CLEAR the REALITY of angels in sand dollars had been in my mind, so I crawled all over the sand, shaking many sand dollars to find the sound of loose shell and becoming increasingly uncomfortable with my world as I shook and shook but heard nothing. At that moment the reality of angels in sand dollars seemed to be the crux of everything I believed, I had to find them!!!!! Oh, those minutes were painful as I slowly began to believe that I had, in fact, dreamt up the notion of shell-angels residing in sand dollars.

This is me with the mud, also looking slightly perplexed because of my angel dilemma:
I managed to still have fun and shoot a few pictures:
The moment of truth!!!! I finally examined a previously broken sand dollar, one that looked as if it had been carelessy stepped on, and I found what I had so long and frantically been searching for!!!! Sand dollar angels! (Or, some people like to think they are doves...doesn't matter, it was what I was looking for!)
Georgie just looked so cute with her dad:


Do you see the jellyfish?
I want to frame this:
As our group was walking along the shore, Harrison wondered out loud what it would be like to climb this hill and find a tiger at the top:
The purpose of our walk on the shore was to reach those houses in the background, which from far away looked just like miniature playhouses:


Mr. Crab (um, Mr. Dead Crab, that is):
Perhaps the coolest jellyfish I've ever seen:
Have you ever felt the top of a jellyfish? All I can say is, whoever named them jellyfishes has obviously felt the top of a jellyfish. So fun to feel! Just steer clear of the tenticles!