Mom and Dad came through with a great shot of the boat in all its glory




Did I mention that the horn was a complete chord? Oh yeah....

THANKS M & D!

Hey all you MySpacers -

The Resolved Conference now has a MySpace! Add it to your friends list.

http://www.myspace.com/resolvedconference

Back in the beginning of July, I posted a link to one of the blogs I frequent, Pyromaniacs. This blog is always a great read, but on that particular day I was super encouraged by Phil Johnson's post called the Drying Brook. Since then Phil has continued posting on the lessons we learn from Elijah's experience. Go read and be encouraged...

Part 2
The Security of God's Will

Part 3
The Sufficiency of God's Grace

Part 4
Why Did God Let that Brook go Dry?

Also, check out Dan Philip's post yesterday.

In fact, just bookmark the page and check it every day! : )

Our 2nd anniversary was filled with the most ridiculousness yet. John had been working 5 part time jobs and my job didn't pay that well so money was super tight. It was that awkward week toward the end of the month where every penny had to stretch to make it to the next paycheck. We had resigned that we wouldn't be able to get away and would just try to go out for a nice dinner. Then SURPRISE I got a nice bonus from my employer and we decided to head to San Diego for the weekend at the last minute. I ran home and found a great little hotel on one of those cheap hotel sites with a description that said it was "European Style" city accommodations which I knew would mean small in size and amenities, but the pictures looked great and it was only a few blocks from the water. So I booked a room and we packed up our things to head down.

When we arrived on West St and began watching the numbers. 494, 496, 498, 500. As we drove alongside the hotel we saw banners hanging that listed its different features. "Cafe" "Pool" "Hotel" "YMCA" YMCA?? That's weird. There must be a YMCA in the same building. Odd, but oh well. The lobby was nice enough and the workers were helpful so we checked in and rode up to our floor in the 2nd scariest elevator I've ever been in (1st scariest was in Russia). We stepped out onto our floor, thankful to have made it and noticed that the hall looked oddly like a dorm. We passed a few doors that had signs for toilets and showers and finally found our room and opened the door. Do you know that scene in Christmas Vacation where the family is hiking through the snowy forest to find the perfect Christmas tree? You know how when they finally find it a light shone forth from on high while a choir sang to herald the find? It was nothing like that. It was more like when Eeyore is sitting on a cliff, having discovered one more reason to feel sorry for himself and a dark gray storm cloud appears overhead, pouring rain on him. The room was smaller than a dorm room. It had a tiny twin bed, a table with a tiny tv and a tiny wardrobe. Notice I did not say anything about a tiny bathroom? The bathrooms were in the hall and we would be sharing them with the backpackers and students who had to take bathroom breaks between writing poems and playing guitar. Our quaint European style hotel was actually a YMCA youth hostel. Oh and did I mention that the carpet was soggy? John, immediately seeing the humor, began chuckling and enjoying the irony of the moment. While I stood, shocked and bugged. We wanted to move to a different hotel, but there was cancellation policy and we would have had to pay for the room anyway.

Deciding to make the best of it, we headed out to enjoy the town. After a lovely walk on the water front we made our way over to a great restaurant right on the water and sat down for what we had heard would be a great dinner. The food was amazing. The service was terrible. Our waitress did not wait on us at all. She introduced herself and then didn't come to our table again until she brought the check. Someone else took our drink order, our food order, brought our food and desserts. Since tips stands for To Insure Proper Service and our service was anything but proper, we marked a big fat $0.00 on the tip line. The next stop was a handsome cab ride and on the way John just happened to call up the bank and discover that the waitress had given herself a $20 tip!! Unbelievable! I'm sure she assumed we wouldn't notice. We called up the restaurant manager and explained that the "waitress" had not served us at all and we were pretty disappointed with the experience and then that there was and extra $20 charge on our card. She tried to tell us that sometimes banks charge extra money to make sure the money is there. Uh. I don't think so. Eventually she agreed to refund the $20 and send us a gift certificate by email. Thanks, lady.

After a very uncomfortable night's sleep on the tiny bed we spent a redeeming day at Sea World which is one of my favorite places (I love manatees), and were very thankful to get back home.

For those of you who have been following my blog (all 2 of you, including my Mom) You'll remember that I wrote a bunch of posts about my camping memories in anticipation of the first JLM camping trip this summer. This last weekend was that first camping trip. You see, our good friends Ryan Foglesong and David Zimmer are up at Hume Lake Christian Camps leading the music for the Jr High camps this summer. They're part of a great band called Chasing Cadence with 2 other guys from TMC and are doing a fantastic job! We wanted to surprise visit them and we wanted to camp. So we packed up all our gear including our brand new 2 mantle propane lantern (I love the sound of propane lanterns), threw Fritz in the car and headed up the 4 hour drive to the sequoias. Since we were going to be sitting in on indoor camp sessions we knew we couldn't take Fritz with us, so we dropped him off at doggie heaven in Reedley. Seriously, this place is operated by a retired couple and their daughter on their gorgeous property surrounded by peach, nectarine and plum orchards. They had great kennels and an agility course. After we drove off, we were a little worried that Fritz would refuse to come back home with us.

General Grant Tree in Kings Canyon


I was expecting that there would be alot of funny stories to tell of the ridiculous things that happened, but nothing really ridiculous happened, probably because we didn't bring Fritz. It was a very smooth and easy trip. So I guess instead, I'll just give you the highlights of the trip.

After we set up the site, we walked over to the Christian Camp and sneaked in the back of the big rock concert for the Jr Highers. Those kids were so great. They drank that concert like it was mountain dew and had the energy to match. They screamed and jumped and sang along. Then afterward, they swarmed the guys bringing anything they could find to get an autograph including hats and shirts and posters. We decided it would be fun to act like a couple jr highers wanting autographs and stood with our poster in each line. When it was our turn we screamed (though not as high or loud as those jr highers could) and they both just about fell over. The concert totally rocked and was so tight. We were extremely proud of them. We got to hang out with the band and Ryan's girlfriend in the coffee shop for a while debriefing about the concert. Then after the guys finished serving fries at the roller rink, we all got back together and listened to their album. A MUST BUY!


Our site, Friday morning. We got up at 5:30 to go watch the sunrise over the lake. UH-MAZING. In the early morning fog rises up over the water almost like steam. It's so beautiful. This was one of the things that really impressed John when he came up to Hume as a kid. We forgot to bring the camera though. Doh.


Breakfast Friday morning. Scrambled eggs, bacon and english muffins with percolator coffee (bad percolator coffee) and OJ. Mmmmm.


A new camping tradition: Roasted marshmallows IN hot chocolate. I have no idea why I never put these two things together before. Apparently, it was only new to me.




Canoes on the Lake with Ryan and Rachel. Not long after this picture we paddled to shore and as John got out of the canoe it tipped, filling up with water and soaking us up to our waists! Of course, Rachel and Ryan came prepared with swim shorts on and they didn't get one drop on them. John and I came in normal shorts and got soaked!


Rachel, Ryan, John, Me & David. SO FUN!!


Fritz, post-doggie heaven.

Global Warming Strikes Again. This weeks victim? Grammar.


pet-bottle-yarn.jpg

WARNING - The operators of Engrish.com decided to do an "adult english" week. Now is not a good time to poke around the site. I did appreciate that the home page gave fair warning so I didn't have to see anything.

Oddly enough, some ridiculous thing has occurred on every anniversary that we have celebrated since our wedding day. It all began 3 years ago on our 1st anniversary. We were looking forward to a lovely weekend away…

We had checked into our hotel and were all dressed up for a nice dinner out. The dinner was amazing. It was our fist time to eat at Ruth's Chris Steak House and it was an extraordinary culinary experience. It also happened to be where I had my first official celebrity sighting.  After an amazing dinner we headed to the next event on our agenda: Opening night at The Hollywood Bowl. We thought we had left enough time to drive the 6.5 miles from Beverly Hills to Hollywood. Little did we know! Read More...

When your source of air conditioning is a window unit and some fans and it's 103 degrees at 5 pm you gotta do something. So we did. We had been eyeing those inflatable pools online and had decided after the next payday we'd go for it. But then we just happened to be in Walmart and found a great pool that is bigger and less expensive than what we had been looking at. The Fourth of July being upon us, we sprung for it. And OH MAN! I'm so glad we did! RE-freshing!

FYI - I added a LINKS page to the right column where I have a list of the blogs I like to visit.

I'm a blerd. I admit it. I have indeed become a blog nerd. Probably because I have the type of job where I have to keep myself busy while sitting at my desk answering phone calls and I can only check for new items at Pottery Barn so many times a day. Of course, I love to check out friend's blogs and blogs from people I haven't seen in a while, but there are also a few discussion blogs that have made it to my bookmarks page. This week, I was super encouraged by Phil Johnson's post on Pyromaniacs called the Drying Brook. Since I cannot possibly improve on this post, I'll let you read it for yourself HERE.

Today was my 2nd celebrity sighting. When you move to LA you might think you'll be seeing celebrities around every corner. Or at least the ones in Beverly Hills and Bel Aire. When I first arrived I'd casually glance toward every limo and chauffeured car just in case a star was comfortably seated behind the elusive tinted window. Read More...

.....I don't have a lot of memories of my clam diggin' days at family camp since I was still pretty young when we switched to chili cook-offs. Why did we switch to chili cook-offs you ask? Much to our parents' chagrin, the razor clams of Washington were becoming endangered and the state no longer allowed clamming on Camano Island. Anyway, for many years family camp was around the first week in July, which just happened to be the peak of clam season on the Washington shores. I remember getting up at an ungodly hour to catch low tide at the beach on Friday morning. I’d watch our group walk around like hunchbacks, peering into the sand and under rocks just waiting for that tell-tale sign of clam life - streams of clam spit. Read More...