Jan 2019 - End of Week 1

Can I make a suggestion?
Don't bother with 23 and Me. Unless you really don't know anything about your ancestry... then it might be fascinating. But if you have a pretty good idea of who your relatives are? It won't tell you anything new or interesting. For instance? I know I am Dutch/German and my dad/all grandparents lived in the Ukraine/Russia.

So this was not a surprise:

The "French" part of the French and German intrigued me. But upon a closer look:

Haha, there was no French.
And the British/Irish bit? Just a 'possible match'... so probably not.

And the Russia/Ukraine results were not a surprise either.

I am who I think I am.

Not sure that was worth $100.

How about you? Have you done something like this? What did you discover or have confirmed?


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Three things I'm thankful for:

1. We celebrated my mom's birthday on Jan 2. Ahhh Keg dinners. SO goood. I hope I look as young as she does when I turn 79.

2. My truck was broken into this week. It was parked on the driveway, right up against the house, as per always. They took my loose change and emergency $20. Plus our mail box keys, AND MY BRIGHT ORANGE HOODIE that is about 100 years old but it's 1. My only hoodie and 2. My favorite hoodie. Arrrrgggghhh. I am thankful that they didn't break into the house or steal my truck and light it on fire. (It's happened before.) So all things considered, I came outa that robbery, just mostly inconvenienced. 

3. I am thankful that my kids are back from Sunpeaks, with no 5 car pile-ups on the Coquihalla with written off vehicles and multiple injuries. (It's happened before.) 

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Remember in my last post there were all those categories at the bottom (best this, favorite that, etc)? It's really hard at the end of the year to remember anything that happened in the first 9 months. So, I thought I'd make notes. Weekly. And then, in December, I can decide which ones were really the best. 

Of course, I may get bored with this idea and not ever do it again. But just in case I actually follow through with this, here is the template that I'm gonna add to some/most/a few of my blog posts this year:

• Proudest moment this week: I was in a meeting at work with representatives from other departments talking about different aspects of our organization. Many positive things were mentioned about the Creative Dept, and I am just darn proud to be a part of that team. 
• Most embarrassing moment of the week: I can't imagine EVER sharing something embarrassing on here. 
• Funniest moment of the week: This category will likely remain empty as well. "Funny" is rarely something I experience. 
• Biggest achievement of the week: I made it to the gym 4 times this week. And I threw 5 curve balls in a row on Pokemon. 
• Best moment of the week: Last Sunday when I walked the Vedder Trail and saw random trees decorated with baubles, which made me smile, (obvs placed by short children as they're all clustered together on the lower left side of the tree) then looked up and saw the mountains, which caused me to 'awwwwh". 

• Best holiday memory of the week: (Holiday: New Year's) Hmmm. I was by myself at the lake. Best memory? When the furnace was fixed at 4:30 pm on New Year's Eve. Twas very cold here before then. 
• Best advice I heard this week: SO much advice this week... From cleaning advice "You need to buy a roomba and a Dison." To wardrobe advice, "You need to buy a Costco bathing suit today", to Pokemon advice, "you need to spend your coins on more bag storage" to exercise suggestions "Aldergrove Community Centre has a walking track..." to life advice, "Figure it out yourself." Coincidentally, I'm reading a Proverbs chapter each day this month. (31 days, 31 chapters) And the BEST advice I heard came from Proverbs 4: Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.
• Most grateful for this week: So very grateful for Clint and Max helping out with couches and TV's... my mom and I are are missing the muscles and brainpower for electrical/technical things, so we were heavily dependent on them. Grateful for their help and love. 
• Favorite family memory of the week: Dinner with Daryl, Julie and my mom. (Also the only family memory this week.)
• Best thing I learned this week: 
• Biggest change I made this week: 
• Best Only gift I received this week: I received this book from Maureen on Friday night:

• New friend this week:
• Most inspiring thing this week: This:

• Word to describe this week: Routine 
• Unexpected obstacles I faced this week: 
• Unexpected surprise this week:
• Best place I visited this week: 
• New skill I learned this week: How to repost on Instagram
• Biggest regret of this week: Being needy, asking for help.
• Biggest obsession this week:
• Best food I ate this week: So many good meals/good company/great conversation this week. But I guess the baked garlic shrimp and teryacki steak were my favorites.
• Best TV show I watched this week: Didn't watch TV this week. 
• Best viral video I watched this week:
• Best meme I saw this week:
• Best movie I watched this week: 
• Best song heard this week:
• New skill I want to learn NEXT YEAR:
• Something to try NEXT YEAR:
• Place I want to visit NEXT YEAR:
• Most excited about this for NEXT YEAR: 
• One thing to work harder on NEXT YEAR:

HaPpY HaPpY NeW nEw ...

Time for a list (or two):

First.
Looking back:

Top Ten Things From 2018 That I'm Thankful For:

1. Answered prayer. In late January I prayed a very specific prayer. And ten minutes later my phone rang. Haha. I got my very specific answer. I am living at my mom's house by God's design, for His purpose. There is a goodly amount of peace knowing that I'm where I'm supposed to be. So. I'm thankful for: He who makes things clear. This house that I share with my mom and Max. Memories of my dad, who built this house and would be so very happy to see it filled with people he loved.

2. The house at the lake. Also built by my dad. I'm here now, writing this from there. The furnace packed it in on Saturday, so it's been getting progressively colder as the year drew to a close. I don't mind the cold. I can always add layers. (For that matter, I don't mind excessive heat, either. I can remove layers.) (I'm adaptable that way.) I am grateful for the time I get to spend here, either by myself, or with my kids, or with my friends. SO many memories. This is home. (Even if it is about 10 degrees in here.)

3. My first two items were about buildings. Houses. Places to live. I am SO very thankful that this need (for housing) is a praise item, not an urgent request. So many women around the world do not have this luxury of having a roof, walls, clean water. I know I'm one of the lucky ones. I am forever grateful that I was born in Canada.

4. My kids. God knew exactly what type of children I'd need in order to be stretched and challenged and pushed to try harder. One of them recently asked, "What are you doing, mom, to continue to grow and learn? Are you being intentional about new experiences?" Oy. I'm thankful for all of them. They are my heart.

5. This was The Year of Funerals. Eight of them. Each one was a unique, as it should be. I learned something about the people who've passed, but also about the ones they loved. We are who we are because of the lives our parents lived. Their choices, their passions, their quirks, their stories, their heritage, their way of doing family ... all of these things are make 'us'. We either embrace it all. Or we reject it all, but either way - their lives were important and had meaning. We are living proof.

6. Sunny days. I get 25 days off per year. My gift to myself in 2018 was to spend those days sleeping in then soaking up the sun. One day at a time. I'd take random days off ("it's gonna be 25 degrees on Tuesday, July 14... think I'll go to Kit's beach..." etc) as well as two impromptu long weekends in Palm Dessert with Julie. SO thankful for sunshine and blue skies and warm air and oceans and lakes and rivers and pools and folding chairs and good books and the peace that happens in my soul when my skin turns brown.

7. Teeeeth. I sacrificed travel adventures for three front teeth in 2018. It was a long, painful, arduous project. But after months of temporary caps and repeated appointments (yes, a person can use of most of her accumulated sick hours on dentist appointments), they finally were cemented in place just in time for this summer's wedding season. I am thankful for a dentist who just didn't quit until he was happy with The Smile.

8. Evening walks. I am so thankful for the 3 - 5 nights a week I walk with my camera and a friend. I am rich. So very rich with experiences and with relationships. I live in the most beautiful corner of the world and I have the very best friends. My instagram account has ended up being my online Walking Journal of sorts. Memories of conversations made during colourful sunsets beside some body of water ... These are my top nine insta-posts in 2018:

9. Books/writers, movies/actors, music/musicians, photographs/photographers, art/artists, the entertainment industry ... All of these things/people make me think, smile, cry, wonder, wish, dream ... I am grateful for their talent, their skill, their contributions to my life.

10. I am thankful for this life. Thank you, God.




Top Ten Things on my To Do List for 2019:

1. Use the elevator 50% less often this year.
2. Blog once a week.
3. Send birthday and sympathy and Christmas cards within a month of actual event.
4. Get two more teeth done.
5. Read a book a week.
6. Sign up for the Thinking? class at Northview in January.
7. Join/buy/get Spotify. Have more music moments. Make a few playlists.
8. Say thank you more often. To real people. And to people who write the books I read, make the music I listen to, work on the shows I watch, preach the sermons I am impacted by, to the people I work with, live with, walk with, late-night-chat with ...
9. Be brave about the court case in January.
10. Keep track of these things, so that on Dec 31, 2019, I can comment on which were my favorite/the best/the most...

Happy New Year, friends.
Blessings and love, xo

Young Women

Friday after work I stopped at the Carvolth Bus Loop to pick up the first one, then over to a Walnut Grove basement suite to pick up the other.

Three of us were heading up to the lake for a quick get-away. They're both young women from Nice, France. 

I'm old me, from 'round here. 

As per usual when I show up with friends on Friday night, we throw whatever we're contributing to supper on the table:

Hahaha. I contributed the grapes and the pitcher of water. Alex baked gluten-free, sugar-free, diary-free muffins and Anne brought a crust-less quiche (roasted vegies in egg). We sat and ate and talked for hours. They're French and this is how they do dinner. Twas all kinds of awesome. 

What do young women talk about these days?

Purpose. 

Calling. 

Value of friendships. 

Importance of family. 

Faith. Community. 

Such rich conversation; so good for the soul.

And then we watched a movie. 

Anne had never seen Julie and Julia, nor did she have any idea who Julia Childs was, and because we'd talked about blogging (I'm encouraging both of them to start), and because Amy (one of our work-mates) started a Julie/Julia type blog by baking and blogging her way through the Great British Bake Off book and we've been enjoying her efforts, AND BECAUSE THIS MOVIE IS SET IN FRANCE AND THEY ARE BOTH FROM FRANCE - it was the perfect movie choice. 

Don't you love it when movies are inspiring? 

This one was. 

For all of us. 

Mostly about blogging, but also about goals. 

By 12:30 they were off to bed and I stayed up to putter and think. 

As per usual on these weekends when I go away with friends, I come downstairs late in the morning (some might call it noon). 

The girls were out walking, so I took a pic of the table where one of them had been sitting earlier. 

Scenes like this challenge me to up my Bible-reading game. 

Oy. 

Nothing so pretty as a marked-up, colourful, underlined Bible. 

When they came back, we all found a spot to be alone. Together. 

Ahh. We be introverts. And we introvert very well together. 

Because there was a splotch of sunshine on the deck, I sat here:

Not realizing that my companion, less than a foot away, baking in the sun, 

was a dead bird. 

Ah. The circle of life. 

I had been awakened just hours before by a wood-pecker pecking at the metal flashing around my window (sounds like machine gun fire in case you're wondering) and I wished him dead. I'm pretty sure this wasn't the guilty 'pecker - but maybe one of his friends? 

Anyway, after lunch, we packed up to head home, stopping first at the other end of the lake for a look-see, then a lengthier stop at Vedder Trail for a walk in the sunshine. 

Weekends should be longer. 

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Inspiring lives of young women who are brave and adventurous and willing to continue their stories in new countries far from home. 

2. Weekends with sunshine and stillness and sweet company.

3. Sermons with a surprise ending. Haha. A new twist at the end of the Abraham/Isaaac story that I'd never pondered before. LOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS. Listen to Northview's latest sermon series called 'Abe', here. 

Spring officially starts this week!

YAY xo

Women.

I come from a line of strong, loyal, hardworking, Godly women.
My Omi's husband was forcibly removed from their home in the middle of the night and executed, leaving her with two-year-old twins and a 9 year old son. She was on her own in a hostile land, so she and her sisters, took their children, while World War 2 in all it's gore and ugliness exploded around them, and started walking to Canada.

It took about 10 years.
She arrived in Manitoba with a teen son, a pair of almost-teen twins, no ability to speak English, during the worst winter on record when most farming families were struggling financially due to harvest hardships.  Her marketable skill? She knew how to work hard.  So she did. When she arrived in Vancouver, 5 years later, she started cleaning the big houses on the West Side. And once she retired? She volunteered every single day, until she was no longer able, sewing blankets in the back room at her local MCC Thrift Store.

She was committed to her church, to prayer and to serving her family. I remember as a young girl, staying with her for an overnighter and watching her kneel by the side of her bed, in her billowy white cotton nightgown, and her thin, grey, waist-length hair loose from it's usual braided bun, praying desperately, in German (the Holy language) to the God she trusted her life with. I also remember her babysitting us on Friday nights when we were little, and when we were older, she'd come to the house, park herself at the ironing board then iron, mend, and tend to our clothes. When we went on holidays, she'd stay at the farm, feed the cows, look after yard and deep clean the house.

She was tiny (5 feet tall? Maybe 90 pounds?) but fierce. When she poked me with her finger to make a point about something - her point was felt. She was passionate about ensuring that her grandchildren would know and worship the God who protected, delivered and loved her. And once she had great-grandchildren, that was her prayer for them as well.

Omi and Max

Omi, dad and Drew

Because of her sacrifices and because of the risks she took, her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have lived blessed lives in Canada/England/America/Germany.

This tiny woman.
This tiny, determined, strong, trusting, hope-filled, woman of faith, made her way half-way around the world in order to offer her young children a better life.

Because of that, I am here.

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Today was International Woman's Day.
I come from a long line of hardworking, loyal, family-loving, church-going, God-fearing women who believed they were worthy and valuable because the God of the Universe created them uniquely for a divine purpose.

That's something, I guess.



Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Legacy of faith from all my ancestors, on both sides of the family.
2. The strong, kind, smart, brave, confident young women that my boys have fallen in love with.
3. This life.

xo

3

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. There's a long weekend coming up, and I'm gonna make mine EXTRA long. SO much happy in that sentence.

2. Tulips in the winter. So much hope and cheer in those flowers.

3. Exercise bikes and elliptical machines.

Shalom,
xo

Another Goodbye

Today was Alex's last day at work.

During our all-office morning gathering, I gave her a gift on behalf of the organization, then said a few words and cried.

The creative team had a good bye lunch for our girl - a Gluten Free French Picnic Lunch. (Because Alex is from France. And she's got food allergies.)

Finishing up her last day.

After work, my previous design team met for dinner to say their goodbyes to Alex


...

We reminisced, caught up, asked questions, listened for answers, shared some dreams, ate and played Pass-The-Baby:

I drove Inca home to Surrey, then Alex home to Vancouver and on my drive back to Surrey, on a wet, dark, stinkin' rainy night, I realized how very lucky I am.

It is an honour and a joy to work with such great people. So much talent. So much integrity. So very gifted and gracious. So kind to the old lady of the group.


Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Conversations that I am privileged to be a part of. I love a good talk.
2. Toasted Shrimp Sandwiches. I love sourdough bread.
3. Babies. Especially ones with cheeeeeeks.

Shalom,
xo

Longest January EVER

No, really, I do.

Haha. I have runners. And boots. And those ridiculous heels I bought knowing I'd only wear them once.

I'm open to suggestions re: winter footwear.


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Three things I'm thankful for:

1. The gym is mostly empty at 9 pm. Perfect for introverts.

2. Fresh air. (It stopped raining for about ten minutes this evening. So I used those minutes to empty all the crap from the back of my truck. I saw the moon. The stars. And the air was Just So Fresh.)

3. The internet. It really is wonderful. Tonight I watched my grandfurbaby snuggle with Dani. I chatted with friends in 4 different cities (this works best if everyone has nimble fingers and can express themselves well via written words. But even if they don't, it's better than nothing...) I listened to music. And I shared photos.

Erhm. This of course means, I am totally lost when the connection cuts out. FOR 24 hours. As per last weekend at the lake. Oy.

Hoping all is well in your world,

Shalom,
xo

It's just around the corner...

Three things I'm thankful for:

1. Furnaces and thermostats that work. Sometimes I take these things for granted. 

2. Baby kittens. (Toto joined the family today.)

3. CS Lewis. Kindle app. Amazon sales.  If you're wanting an encouraging 'daily reading' that makes you think, reminds you of the important things and is a great conversation starter, do this:

a. Download the FREE Kindle app to your smart phone. 

b. Then purchase the "Year with CS Lewis" on Amazon.ca (link is here) Kindle version - FOR ONLY $2.99 and 

c. have them send it to your kindle. (Which will send it to your phone app.) 

BAM - just that easy. 

Have a great week,

Shalom, xo