Practicing What I Learned

I don't know if you know Joyce Meyer but she is very direct and is a "tells it like it is" kind of person. I believe that her style is a part of her charm because in this day and age, being told something that makes sense is very important to us. One of the points she made was one in taking time for yourself. Dave and I are doing that tomorrow. We will be attending church with family, picking up our new chair, and staying in at home. We have a graduation next week. Hope you have a great Sunday! I will be back on Monday!

Boundaries

Boundaries

Last night (I am writing this at 7 am on Friday morning) Susie and I were at the Tacoma Dome until almost 10 pm. The convention has many parts to it. We arrived a little after 5 pm and there were already many people there and sitting in the prime seating. They sit there because they can possibly catch a tee shirt with a gift certificate for her products, or tickets to meet the Hillsong band and Darlene Zschech, etc. They show video spots of what is happening in the ministry. There is worship, the message, and an alter call (over 200 people came forward last night).

The focus this weekend is on "Boundaries". How we set them, why God gives us boundaries in the bible, and what changes we need to make to have a balanced life so we can enjoy our life. She says that we are are going to "talk" about all subject that may need balancing in our lives; relationships, conflict, work, taking care of ourselves, studying the Bible, finances, sex etc (a big area being taking care of ourselves... which I know all of us talk about a lot in our posts). Our homework is to pray and self examine what areas we need to work on and organize. I decided just to look at possibilities in just my morning routine to start with. I am already up to 10 things on my list. Time Management is one of them. I do pretty well... in fact, I am one of the best in planning and time management. But I know I have too much I am managing. Some days it all comes down on my head. We all have faced how to fit blogging in our lives. We need the friendships and the fellowship yet we have a hard time managing it sometimes. I spend about 15 minutes writing... sometimes my words or unclear and grammar isn't the best because I limit my time. I don't always get to everyone but I start at the top of the list and go down the list though a couple of days on my blackberry when I have a moment between things which is called "Living within the Margins". We live a lot within the margins of our lives and that is when good things can happen.

I plan to be at the Tacoma Dome for the last session at 10 am today after going to two sessions yesterday on Friday. Hope if you are reading this you are having a great weekend. Some are taking weekends off from blogging over the summer (which is a boundary they had adopted and I salute them for doing). I am using the timer on Blogger... setting up a post and having it post at midnight. Take care HUGS

Gone to the Tacoma Dome

This is the Tacoma Dome. It is right off the I-5 freeway in Tacoma. Kari graduated in it in 1999. The high schools have to find a large place to hold graduations. A football field isn't the greatest in the rain. And yes, it still rains in the month of June here. It really doesn't completely stop for the summer until after the 4th of July.

Susie and I went to Joyce Meyer speak here tonight. You can read about that HERE. Before then I had a few errands to run and went to see Kari at work for lunch. I was going to stop into Dave's new workplace that is right down the hill but he was out and about.

So this post is short. I will tell you more about the JM conference later. Have a good weekend! Summer has begun... go have some fun!

Presentation - Dinner - A Loveseat - Aaron

I will work backwards:

Aaron - He hurt his back when he was at work tonight. He can go back to work on the 30th according to the doctor. Dave is giving him the pain pills that has been prescribed to him. He is more comfortable on the old sofa.

A Loveseat - We bought one of the loveseats which we looked at last weekend on the way home tonight. The loveseat is pictured above in the photo. As I explained before, we have rather a small area in the living room and both the sofa and the loveseat would be too much. Dave wanted a sofa with wooden arms but he has now changed his mind. We also looked at leather sofas but decided that microfiber would be better for our needs. We have to wait about 2 weeks for it to get here from California (wouldn't you know... all good things come from California :-). So it will not be here in time for the BBQ but at least it is on it's way. I am so excited!

Dinner - Dave and I went to his mom's for dinner in Burien which was only a few miles from where I gave my presentation this afternoon at the New Start Alternative HS. Instead of going out, she made dinner for us. We are all getting into doing things that will save money or save gas. We are at about $3.90 per gallon here for gasoline. It is over $4 in other parts of the state. This gasoline crisis is changing how we do things. I received an email today suggesting to not buy gasoline from Mobile or Exxon because they are the biggest oil companies and to send the email to 10 other people. They are to send it to 10 other people each... and so on and so on. I would have to investigate all the companies Mobile and/or Exxon owns. For all I know they own ARCO too. The idea is to drive their price down by not buying it... therefore it will drive the other oil prices down because they are the ones that drive the prices. It seems that boycotting was what we did in the 70's. It worked then and so I am for it. I am now being more strategic about my trips and doing errands. I try to get more than one thing done in a trip. I have only been going to work on most days and combining errands on some of the days. These are things that we learned back when... now we will teach it to our kids. I also heard that the car manufacturers are coming up with new cars not dependant on gasoline. That seems about right... we get out our American ingenuity when we have a need. Autos, electricity, planes, computers... someone will come up with something to end foreign dictatorship with oil. I also heard we have our own reserves in Colorado not only Alaska. I know we have oil off the coast of California and in the Gulf Coast.

Anyway, my presentation to the students wasn't among students like I had in California. Those kids would have laughed at me thinking I thought they might be gangsters just because of living near White Center. It is very diverse there but I have always loved being around a diverse class of students. They have so many things to share and talk about. It was also fun to have Srey with me to add to the presentation his point of view. So it was a very good visit.

It is time to turn in. On Thursday evening (tonight) I will see Joyce Meyer at the Tacoma Dome at 7 pm. Hopefully I will be able to post tomorrow night since I will not be going to work on Friday morning. I will be up going to see her again on Friday at 10 am and again at 7 pm at night. Have a great day!!!

Just Like A Monday, But...

Today felt just like a Monday but it isn't a Monday, tomorrow is Wednesday. My week is already half over since I will be off on Thursday and Friday. I went out to Enumclaw HS for a lunch visit. I also went to drop off materials to some community partners there. So I was out of the office for over half the day too. I will be out of the office for half the day again tomorrow too. Srey and I will be going to White Center tomorrow... an area that has gangs. I worked with kids that were in gangs in California. I haven't had to do that for a very long time however those days are changing. There is evidence of gang activity more and more such as tagging, certain clothes worn etc. I am not concerned but I am trying to find out what I will be able to do to catch their attention. One thing is I don't wear normal "teaching" clothes. I wear a black polo and black pants with the college logo on the shirt. I am not sure if the school has a PowerPoint but I will try to bring something that will be interesting. Prizes are always good.

I was asked a lot about Renee and the baby today. The word is getting out. I haven't heard from her and not even sure they are home due to the holiday. They may have gone over the mountains to her mother's home for a few days if Renee's mom hasn't been here. I left a message to Renee on their phone today asking her to call me as soon as she heard the message and I haven't heard from her yet.

Kari and the boys went to the Defiance Zoo in Tacoma today. She came home to go to class later on in the day and the boys stayed with her dad and his wife. She says the boys were tired. Do you want to hear something funny? They will bring up the fact that they live near Disneyland to impress Riley. Kari didn't want to tell her dad that I had gone to CA and took them to Disneyland without their knowledge. I would have told him but she is concerned that they will want the same privileges I have with Riley. She would not want him taking Riley to CA without her. So she is not admitting and trying to down play Riley's enthusiasm for Disneyland. I don't know how she will do it but so far she has. I guess Deb (his wife) said "Mickey says "Hello"" and Riley broke into "And he kissed me on my head too!" OK, so Riley sounds a little nuts when he is actually telling the truth. I won't see them so I have no problems. Kari's stories are really funny though. Good luck to her. They don't know about my blog so it's OK. They will not find out from me.

I am going to finish this to post tonight at midnight and then go out to the garden or patio to do a little more. I have some library books that I have to take back later too. So, I better get to it. Talk to you tomorrow...

Furniture Shopping

Mission Style Sofa

We have decided that we would like to update our living room furniture. When I moved in the house almost 3 years ago, I left my old sofa for Kari. Dave had a sofa set but it is 30 years old, so we were going to update it when we found the time. Meanwhile, three years later, we just now have started to think about it because of the fact that the government is sending us money to "stimulate" the economy. How have you used your check if you got one or is getting one? This is not an easy decision.

First, Dave wanted only a sofa with "wooden arms". I knew that there aren't many sofas with "wooden arms" out there. I do like Mission Style which do have wooden arms. But I decided that we needed to visit a few furniture stores in the area. So the first stop was at IKEA... there weren't anything that we thought we would like there. Next we went to MOR for Less. That is one big store! It gave us some options and Dave started to see that wooden arms weren't popular. We went on to another furniture store and there we found some other sofas that we like too with recliners in them. We decided to let our heads clear and went shopping for summer clothes for Aaron and the boys.

When we got home, I went online to see if there were any Mission Style sofas in the area to go look at in person. The one place that was near was Target. Actually we have some small end tables that are that style that we got from there and we have liked them so we thought we at least go to Target and look at what they had there. The sofa that they offered comes in only "rust" (whatever that means but it is above in the picture) and it isn't available because they are out of stock. Who knows when it will be available again. I am not sure if I want to be "stuck" with that color.

Target only had a chair so we bought it thinking that we could at least start there and see how it fit on our small living room. It goes well with our end tables but it isn't exactly what we thought we would want and we were wishing for the sofa that we saw in the third place we had visited. But Dave liked the leather version and I liked the microfiber version. I thought the leather would be too much in a small area and it would be overbearing. We agreed that we should just get a loveseat with recliners in it and maybe a recliner chair too. The microfiber loveseat is a bright cafe brown. At least I could bring color into the room with colored pillows or a throw. We moved things around the room trying our best to visualize it all. We have decided to work on it again tomorrow.

I also was able to go to Lowes and buy some flowers for the front patio. The bill came to exactly $50 and the man in front of me didn't want his receipt. On it was a coupon for $10 off if you bought $50 of product. So, I got $10 off because the cashier gave he his coupon. I had a $10 off coupon too on my receipt so I "pass it on" to a guy that was buying some blocks for his yard. Saturday I bought some string lights for the back patio. I cleaned up the front patio and pulled weeds on Sunday. My reward was to start putting in the flowers. I have window boxes on a fense that goes around the little patio. I filled up the planters again with new potting soil and added some flowers there too. I will start to grow some flowers and vegetables from seeds now that the fear of frost and snow has passed. We can't really do anything until Mother's Day arrives and that was two weeks ago. So I am trying my best to catch up.

This week I only go to work for two and a half days. It will be a very short week but a full one. On Thursday, Susie and I will be going to the Tacoma Dome to see Joyce Meyer. She comes about every three years here and I have watched her on TV, read her books, and listen to her CDs for years. I am very excite that she will be back in town this week. You can read about here HERE Julie will be interested to know that I will see Hillsong's Darlene Zschech also. She will be leading the worship. It will probably be Susie's and my last venture together before she moves back to North Carolina... unless the Lord has an other idea. She has given her notice at her work and is probably packing as I type these words. I guess going back to North Carolina to visit Susie and Virginia (where my other friend lives) is in my near future. I would love to see the American historical places back there.

Well, I better go for now. All the furniture, flowers, and clothes shopping has made me tired. We never made it to the cemetry to see all those flags etc for Memorial Day. I did fly the colors today and watched a few Memorial Day programs on TV that caused me to reflect on it's meaning. One was about our service people returning home and surprising their kids at school after many months away. The kids would go right into tears of joy or from the release of fear. I was tearing up too.

This will post at midnight for Tuesday while I sleep. I really like that new feature with Blogger. It helps be able to manage daily posts better than before.

Oh... Kari and the boys are enjoying their visit with her father. They are now over at Fox Island. They were able to go down to the beach and look at craps etc today. I do miss them... I am trying to keep very busy while they are busy visiting him.

Have a fantastic day!

Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and I am off from work. Dave and I are doing projects and taking a drive. We like to go to the Veteran's cemetery near Enumclaw. I will try to take a good picture of it if we are able to go by there. It is quite amazing. We came across it a couple of years ago when we were out on a drive on Memorial Day and it made a big impression. The boys and Kari are visiting her father and step mom who has come up from California for a week visit. When they come, I suppose get a week off but I miss them terrible. On Saturday I took them to Target and got them both Speed Racer tennis shoes that light up. Keeping them in shoes is very hard to do. They stop with their toes on the pavement on the tricycles. Since this a holiday and I know there will not be too much surfing on the blogs by friends, I will keep this short. But if you have found your way here today, there are posts from the past few days below. I am do a little blogging on the weekends. As you can see from the posts below, I have been on the Internet planning and surfing etc. Have a great Monday and to some, a fun day off.

Aaron's Graduation Plans

On Sunday, June 8th, Aaron graduates from Seattle Christian School. This is a big transition for not only Aaron but for Dave. His only son is graduating. It is a mile stone for both of them. So, I took to planning for the event. On June 6th, we are heading out of town to Lynden, WA. We will stay in a cabin and in the morning we will meet up with our Canadian friends, Deb and Rick, from Vancouver, BC. They will meet us there. They have been going for years and years to the Farmers Parade in Lynden, WA with their family. They also use to shop when the dollar was less than their currency. They could get deals. I am not so sure that is the same now. But the tradition is still there. We joined them last year for this event and Riley loved it. This time we will take both boys and hopefully the weather will be as great as it was last year. You can see the website to the parade HERE for giggles. This is again is a town that has Dutch influence since those from Holland came here in the early 1900's and settled in Lynden. It is one of the cleanest towns I have ever seen to their credit.

After the parade, which will be around noon, we will all head back down to our house. At 6 pm, the family along with Deb and Rick are invited over to our house for a BBQ in honor of Father's Day and for Aaron's Graduation. We are planning to have a "youthful" BBQ... with hamburgers, chips, salad, watermelon etc for the menu. I am getting the deck ready for company. Yesterday we put up three strings of lights. Right now it isn't getting dark until after 9:30 pm but they are still nice in the twilight. Deb and Rick will stay here until Sunday. In the afternoon, the graduation takes place. I think I will have to take KleanX for Dave. I remember how it was when Kari graduated. Of course, I was one of her high school staff sitting with the graduates (she graduated from the high school that I worked at that time). It was tough not just letting the tears flow. And yet, there were the moments that a parent of a teenager is grateful that those years are over. Such bittersweet moments.

That evening after the graduation, his whole class is going to have a class party. SCS style, of course (no alchohol etc). I can't help but remember the day that I graduated from high school and from CSUSB. How excited I was for both and how I felt so accomplished reaching a goal. I think that we should celebrate accomplishing goals... so I do whenever I get the chance. Mine or anyone else's goals, birthdays, anniversarys etc. I will show you pictures of those events coming up and all of us that are involved. So stay tuned. I hope you are having a relaxing Sunday and Memorial Day Weekend.