Folks from Brazil

Last evening we had the pleasure of sharing a meal and The Pit with Ken and Lori Stucky and two of their three daughters. We met them when our son, Ryan, was 16. He spent two months with them in Mossoró, Brazil where they helped plant a church, and have also built a private Christian school where children can achieve a good education . Having traversed the USA for the last few months now on furlough, they are heading back home soon. They are good people :-) Ken and Lori
Alisha and Anabelle

Potato Salad

At the last BBQ we had in The Pit just a few days ago, our son Ryan informed us that although he was hesitant to bring it to our attention, we had not yet made any potato salad yet this summer. A perfect solution to this was, of course, another BBQ to provide us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Since Ryan was going on a short backpacking trip this weekend with some buddies, Darrell quickly suggested that he would crank out a BBQ for them all today after they returned from the lake they hiked to. The hungry hikers were expected sometime after 4 PM, which gave Darrell plenty of time to fulfill his responsibilities to take his shift parking cars at the fair until 1 PM, then come home to start the cooking. Nice plan, hon. However, due to more lovely rain, the hikers returned this morning instead, and hoped to eat earlier. I was just starting to make pies when the call came at 9 AM, that they wanted to come at 10 AM. Holy Guacamole! Though I don't usually manage to whip out multiple dishes in short time periods, I surprised myself and put the blueberry-nectarine pies together, made the baked beans, the potato salad, a fruit salad and got the ribs in homemade sauce and precooked them for the BBQ. All by 11 AM! Darrell has no problems performing such feats. But he wasn't here. Turned out okay if I say so myself :-)

I ended my meal with the perfect golden brown roasted marshmallow! Nice end to a nice time with our kids and some of their friends..............

I suddenly got a craving for roasted marshmallows... It must be summer!

Sunday BBQ

This afternoon we hosted a BBQ and had a few missionaries set up displays and share their missions and passions with those who came. We ate, perused the displays, chatted, played volleyball and sat around the fire after the sun went down and it cooled off! It was an interesting and informative day. Enjoyable!



Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
~ Izaak Walton

Summer Sunday evenings................

Sunday evening brought another fine BBQ at The Pit. Our new house guests, Andrew, Amberlynne and baby Chase arrived yesterday. They will be with us for several months while they are working and raising monies to head out with New Tribes Missions to Indonesia in 2009. Some of their family that are visiting in the area and a few of my kids came to greet them.
It was good to catch up on the lives of old friends and neighbors :-)

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer

Long Lost Cousins and Patrick McManus!

What a pleasant surprise to have my cousin Marshall drop into our home and lives once again! Taking a motorcycle camping trip from his base home in Arizona, Marshall is on his way up to Alaska, visiting friends and family along the way! His daughter Breon and her husband Michael live in the Northwest also, and took the long drive out to our house yesterday with Marshall. The last time I saw Breon and Micheal was at their wedding in the mid 1990's, and I can't remember if Marshall and his wife, Deanne (who passed away last fall) were here visiting before that, or shortly afterwards. Either way, it has been far too long! Marshall is the oldest child of my mother's only sibling, Uncle Harmon, and I am the youngest child of my family, and there were 6 kids and 13 years between the two of us. I didn't know him as a child.........what teenage guy wants anything to do with little girl cousins?!?! As a elementary age youth, I was scared of him and his brother Danny. They were old and kept themselves apart from the rest of us cousins............ and is it OK to say they seemed a bit on the wild side to little innocent me? ;-) I have only visited with either of them a handful of times in our entire lives. Marshall brought with him a small flash drive that carries on it hundreds of family photos.........clear from back in the early 1900's! He painstakingly took digital pictures of all these old family photos so that we can now have them on our computers to use and share! This is a big deal to someone such as I, who for the last 3 years have been attempting to create a family history album/book, yet was missing so much information from this strand of our family! Thank you ever so much, Marshall!Since we are at the opposite time ends of the family history while growing up, he knew relatives that were dead and gone (or close to it) when I was born, and perhaps I can fill in some blanks for him at the other end of the spectrum. Marshall on his bike, ready to take off from our house this morning........... pretty nice, eh?
Michael, Breon and Marshall
Michael and Breon are new-found treasures to us! They are both artsy and Michael is very theatrically oriented and a hoot! I hope they come over again and again so we can get to know them! We were treated to some oral readings (around the fire pit) from Patrick McManus books. I don't know if you are familiar with this author or his many books. If not, treat yourself to one of his collections of hilarious stories and get ready for an afternoon of belly laughing! You won't need any of those anti-depressant pills after this, so throw them out and get those endorphins flowing naturally! Michael read with a straight face, without missing a beat! He was awesome!
I had such a good time with these folks..........can't wait for more!

Father's Day

Happy Fathers Day to two important fathers in my life. First to my own father, without whom of course, my existence would be impossible. This is a picture from his younger years. I see my son, Scott, in him.......tall, lanky and self assured.............
He fought in WWII in the U.S. Army in South Pacific. He was a radar operator, searching for incoming enemy planes.

My fondest memories that my father help create for his family were our summer vacation camping trips. Here we are next to our 'trusty' blue Ford station wagon. It sure took us plenty of cool places, but we spent hours on the side of the road going over mountain passes because of broken fan belts. Bonding times, I believe they are called ;-)
And here are the three of us kids floating on our air mattresses at Blue Lake, I believe. We took 3 week long vacations every summer all over the Western U.S. and Canada. They were wonderful times. Thanks, Dad!

The second important father in my life is my hubby, the father of my children. We celebrated the day with a BBQ in the new BBQ pit the 'kids' made for us. We had dry, mostly sunny days this weekend (finally), and truly enjoyed our BBQ and fire with smores and dough-gobs following a delicious dinner of raspberry chicken, minted rice, vegetable skewers and fresh fruit salad. Most of it was made by the father himself. We are ALL so glad that he likes to cook and does a swell job with it :-) Though our own daughter, Bethany Jean, was not present (remember she and her friend Anja came over earlier this week while they had time off from work), we were so fortunate to have daughters of three other fathers from the Moses Lake area with us........ our lovely daughter-in-law, Bethany Lynn, and two of her wonderful friends, Krystle and Amy. Thanks, Dads, for letting us enjoy them for you. I know it is a sacrifice for you!

BBQ Pit

I have the best 'kids'.......yeah, i know they are all adults now, but they will always be my kids regardless of how they tell me they are no longer 'kids'. Look what they built and surprised my husband and I with while we were in Hawaii! The river rock has yet to be placed for the floor, but they are waiting for the rain to stop, or at least SLOW DOWN!!! Isn't it beautiful? Now we can BBQ right next to the fire pit, have s'mores with a place to set the goodies and wash up afterwards, put chips and dips out while we jaw around our summer fires, perk lattes and cocoa, or just sit and admire this lovely BBQ area :-) (It has both electricity and water to it). From pictures they took while constructing it, I can spy Krystle and Emily lending helping hands, too. And of course I count Bethany Lynn as one of my own 'kids' now..........hope that is okay with you, Diane! Thank you to all of you who worked out in the rain and cold weather to give this gift to us! We love you all :-)