Uncle and Nephew

There is just something profound and moving about seeing a man holding the next generation in his arms.

Happy Birthday Lucas

Today's birthday boy works as a chef at the downtown DoubleTree hotel. We visited him for breakfast on our last trip to Omaha (for Gpa's birthday Feb.1.) Shawn and Sasha joined us for the great buffet they have.
Here is Luke in his uniform looking all official. At present, there is no hair under that hat. Quite the handsome chef!
We are very happy for you Lucas. You seem happy in your job. We are proud of you for persuing(sp) your dream.
Hope the day is fulfilling, relaxed and happy!
Love you.

Happy Birthday Lucas!

Happiest Birthday to you brother! I hope that you are going to do soemthing special for yourself today. I remember growing up really liking this time of the year because Valentine's Day had just passed (which mant a bag full of candy) and then we had the two birthdays back to back. Lots of dessert and good will. Yummy fun!

This means that you have one final year of your 20's left. How do you feel about that?

What is your fondest birthday memory? What do you think is the perfect birthday dessert? You can include the recipe if you want - hint - hint. :-) I love you bro'!

Angie

Thank you for all the birthday wishes! I had a great one! Brunch in the morning, a long afternoon nap, and TGIFridays for dinner. A bunch of good food mixed in with some sleep and boggle makes for a awesome day. As for some of your questions Angie, I don't remember most of birthday gifts even though I had some great ones (and I am reminded in photographs sometimes). This year Mom made me a couple large tumblers that I will use for paint brushes and the like. They are woodfired and look really cool. The folks are also helping me get new glasses for my eyes and I got the traditional $20 for grandma. I think birthdays get sweeter as you get older, at least for me. My favorite part is spending time with people I love and just being together, and don't forget about the food. Yum, yum. Also Ang, I didn't eat a piece of cake for you but the piece I had was big enough for two (I had to have all the frosting flowers).

more of Em's birthday

Em's Birthday pics!

Emily and her 3 desserts! We had dinner at TGIFridays.

PLEASE NOTIFY ME OF CORRECTIONS

Please note that there are two new lists on the blog. Please leave me a comment on this post so that I can make the corrections.

Also if you have any suggestions for the family blog, just let me know.

Peace,
Angie

Happy Birthday Emily!

If memory serves me correctly (which isn't always the case as we all well know) today is the birthday of Emily! You were born in 1980 - right? So that means that you are 27 years old. Wow!

I am sure that I speak for everyone when I say I hope for the best and brightest year ever ahead of you.

What fun stuff did you do to celebrate? What is your fondest birthday memory? What has been your favorite birthday present over the years?

Eat an extra piece of cake on my behalf!

Love,
Angie

Great idea

Well it has been around three months since we moved into our new apartment on top of our ministry and we are starting to enjoy it. Just so you can understand our context a little better here are the 10 reasons that we like living in our new apartment:

10) It take exactly a minute and a half to get to church (church is a stones throw away)
9) We just got a new refrigerator (now we can fit our milk and meat in the fridge at the same time).
8) The kids have their own park to play in (the church has a park).
7) high speed Internet in the house(Now Angie's hobby is spending time staring at the computer screen).
6) No phone in the house just cell phones(praise God). The end of 3:00 in the morning wrong numbers phone calls.
5) We are two minutes from the market, supermarket,etc.
4) We can look out the window and see how our children are acting in children's church (we can see the children church class from our kitchen window).
3) Hard wood floors. Tyler has been rolling around the house in his walker.
2) A bath tub!!! Now we do not have to wait until we go to a hotel to take a bath (yes before that we took showers).
1) They finally fixed our hot water!!! (Try taking a shower in a lake of ice or better yet with a bucket of hot water.)

As you can see we are happy with our new house.

(This post was written by DaRonn)

My busiest week this year.

This week is really stressing me out as to all I have to do that I actually started scribbling out entire days in my calender after they were over so I didn't have to look at all the "to do" items on them. Well, it's coming to an end and getting better because of hard work earlier in the week. So I think I'll summarize my week here with highlights.

It started last weekend when I "did the women's fair." What does that mean? Well, a few jewelers from my "upline" rented a booth at Wichita's women's fair so that we could come and show our product and get bookings for jewelry parties. I spent a few hours there and got 4 bookings!! And a one-on-one (a lady who wants to hear more about doing the business herself, who I would sponsor and receive commissions from). One of the parties will be in Marion KS about an hour from here and she wants to have two hours of open house style which she will put in the paper and then have a mother-daugher party. I think this is great since I have to drive an hour, the more opportunities for people to come the better it is for my profits.

This week I am also getting ready for Portfolio Scholarship Review. In the past I have received the highest amount of $900/yr. This time they are giving 6 $4500 scholarships and 24 $1800 ones. But they are making us jump through more hoops. We just became aware of our February 23rd deadline for applications two weeks ago along with regulations as to how to hang our work which they changed three times since. Now it stands that we have to paint the wall space Monday and hang our work Tuesday. I won't get into all the problems I see with students painting the walls, but I don't like it. I am excited though and hope for some good money.

Also, I am leading a new committee for Shift Space. What's that? A downtown gallery for WSU arts students, ran by WSU art students. Previously the city was letting us use vacant buildings (Wichita has a lot of them). Now we are going to rent one space and renovate it ourselves and there will be a new class offered on how to run a gallery held there too. I am in charge of the committee to get funds from SGA and Student Fees. We have a couple deadlines approaching and our committee had our first meeting last night, ran by yours truly and it went smooth and quick :) However, I felt like the underdog being that I was delagating to Grad students and Seniors. But they all had specific things to offer and took on tasks they were qualified for and enjoyed. I am excited to be involved and I can put it on my resume.

Between all that and friends visiting Monday afternoon, a Premier Designs training meeting Monday evening, two tests to prepare for by Tuesday, taking Kent to workout at YMCA, calling all my new jewelry party hostesses, preparing artwork for review (Thanks for your help Dad), and regular school and home responsibilities I am happy that through it all we got a warm up in weather (70º today).

I know this is longer than needed probably, but it summarizes a lot of my life that extends beyond just this week, maybe serve as a basis for future blogs. Also, I hope everyone gets on this bandwagon because the site looks great and Ang and I both were hoping for something to know what's going on in the fam's life on the day-to-day so that when we do get to see eachother we can start where the blog left off, comment on things we read about, and not miss out on special details that we might forget in the moment. I would also like to eventually have an extended family one or each aunt/uncle clan have one to check in on. Maybe it will be catching... at least we're ahead of the curve :) unless they have one they're keeping secret ;)

I love you all and miss you all. I feel bad when I get so busy and realize later that I haven't called/talked to/e-mailed/blogged/whatever to you guys and hope you always know I love you. And I ask you as Ang did: BLOG, please. It's not that hard.

Love,

Emily

Oh, I better include some pics. So hear is Ali as she hides and I seek. She cheats now too. She peeks or tells me where to hide or tells me where she is going to hide next time (usually where I was just hiding because it was such a good spot).

Hello Family!

This is a post to give you an example of what to write.

It is so funny to me to watch how the big kids interact with the baby. Timothy was pushing Tyler around in his new walker and singing to him (as the top of his lungs of course) "On Top of Spaghetti". Tyler was having a grand ol' time laughing. Earlier Tyler had a blow out and Gabrielle offered to change his pants for me. Tempted, I declined the offer. I can just imagine what that would have been like! Raimy is of course the ever protective "mommy". Her new mission is to be sure that he doesn't stick his fingers in the plugs, now that he is rolling all over the place. We are really having a fun time with our baby boy.

Love,

Angie