Christmas Eve at our house

We've been having a lot of fun with relatives and friends the past few days. Lots of delicious food, lots of laughter, and the warmth of people we love. Ben has such a wonderful family and I feel so lucky to be a part of that circle. We've also been blessed with a lovely and caring community of friends, many of whom came home to Newton this past week.
However, these are some pictures I took when I was having fun with our camera on our quiet, yet special Christmas Eve at our house.

Spiders & Sweet Girls

Above: Camera stealers! I found this picture on my camera after a week of VBS. Erin and Joanna were in my drama team and did a great job! They were also fun to be with.

I really don't mind spiders that much, but I just don't like the poisonous kind. In my bathroom.

(and yeah, apparently, I have a bunch of spider webs to clean up on the bathroom ceiling, too.)

Rain Barrels and More Music

I've finally finished some rain barrels that I've been half-heartedly working on for several years. At the beginning of the summer, I'll get fired up to work on them for a couple of hours. But then something goes wrong and I lose all motivation and abandon them for another year. This year I just bit the bullet and finished them. I think I may have set the world record for longest time taken to build rain barrels.

With a little more than an inch of rain, we can collect 300 gallons of water that we can easily use to water our garden using a normal hose. And I built them in such a way that if I want to add more barrels later it can be easily done.

They're not pretty, but they get the job done. I have them tied together at the bottom with hoses so that only one needs to be under the downspout but it will fill all three equally because of the water pressure.

Exciting times.

I finished another song for the poetry CD. This one is for a poem written about the Sago mine disaster. I tried to take a different tack and not just write another "sad" song, but instead focus in on the hardness of the mine, the rocks and the miners. It's called "Coal and Granite"

Here it is:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

And here's a teaser! The Book of Jebb CD is one step closer to being released! It will probably still be several months, but it's coming along. This is one of the songs I wrote for the group:

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Garden: May 31, 2010

Blue Chairs. Check out purple Clematis growing for the first time.

We added sulfur and manure compost to our garden this year and it's taking off! Tomatoes are way taller than usual. Beans and peppers are all growing very nicely.

Notice the snap pea make-shift trellis? (below)

Graduation Party

So Andrea has graduated with her Master's Degree after two years of hard work and summers spent at North Dakota University. She managed to find time to do all her coursework and work 80% and still had time to host sushi nights and play volleyball and volunteer way too many places and just generally be everybody's favorite person.

Our friend Marathana just graduated as well, so we decided to have a joint Graduation party in Marathana and Brett's backyard.

This is Brett. And me. And 9 gallons of sweet, sweet lemonade.
This is Marathana.

The party was a success. The cool people showed up, there were burgers and tons of other food, including three different cakes, there was a fire and a jam session, and our good friends Ruth and Foort came down from Winnipeg and hung out with us (and stayed with us for a few days afterwards, also. We had all manner of fun).

Andrea asked me to take some pictures to document the party. I'm not much of a photographer, but I did my best to capture the important parts.

Lazy Saturday

In the craze of May, Ben and I enjoyed a surprisingly relaxing Saturday at home. Here are some home developments...
I painted the livingroom again. I painted it Ansonia Peach and the woodwork white. I really like it. It's bright and fresh.


Today we deep cleaned the sun room. One of the things we had to move out of the sun room that had not been touched in a long time (in over 4 years) was Ben's dulcimer... We were taking a break from moving furniture, when I heard a sudden burst of long-forgotten melody coming from the living room. I'm not sure it's a full revival, but it was cool to see him play after so long. (He gave me permission to post this.)




And here are some pictures of Newman and me having a love-fest. Newman just got groomed so he's extra cuddly these days.

Garden/House Pictures (mostly for mom)- Easter 2010

Above: Rose bush (not yet blooming)
Below: Hyacinth

Above: Pansy
Below: Quinz bush blooming

Above: Front East garden bed (pansies)
Below: Red Door (house is not crooked---it's the camera....and the birdhouse)

Above: Blossoming branches
Below: Easter tree

Happy Easter (almost!) Christ has almost risen! Risen tomorrow!

A Little Folding

Here's the next song from the poetry CD project. This one was inspired by a poem called "Beginnings" that Cheryl wrote about the beginning of her relationship with her husband.

Everything else in life is great, too.

Newman (and a song)

So, we've got this dog now. We've actually had him for a while, but we were still deciding if we were going to keep him or not. We've decided to keep him now, so here he is. Some of you may have already seen him on facebook. He is a four year old Shih Tzu from the Humane Society.



So far, things have been going well. He doesn't bark, he doesn't jump on people, he doesn't demand attention all of the time (these were the three main character traits I was hoping for in a dog), and though we were told that he was not housebroken, he caught on in about three days, so we think he has probably had some training at some point.



He has no idea what a leash is supposed to be, but he's learning. I don't think he had ever seen stairs before coming to our house and they freak him out.



The first few days we left him in his kennel while we were at work, but we started feeling guilty so we decided to try leaving him out. We expected the worst, but so far he hasn't destroyed anything or soiled anything. I'm having a hard time hating him.



Here's the latest song I've finished for that poetry CD project. It's called "Go the Way Of All Earth". Basically it's just a short chord progresssion that repeats and repeats and I improvised other parts over it. So it might sound repetitive, but on the CD it will either be a short clip, or else it will be in the background behind someone reading a poem.

I didn't make a video because there were too many parts and it would have taken too long.

There are mistakes...

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

Home for the Holidays

Ben and I went to Winnipeg for two weeks and had just a wonderful time.

We got to spend lots of time with our nephews.

It also happened to be my Opa's 80th birthday on December 19th. So besides our regular Christmas family gathering, we also spent one evening at a Country Club for an exquisite dinner, and we surprised Opa with 2 days of skiing with (almost) the whole family!

We played lots of ping pong.

And Sonja and I played a mean game of Connect Four.
Apparently Ben had a really great time playing krokeno/knipsebratt.

And spent some good quality time with Jake and Christy.

Asessippi, Manitoba. Skiing paradise! Me and my dad, taking a break in the lodge. I actually didn't take any pictures on the slopes.

These are poutine fries. Fries with gravy and melted cheese. Believe it or not.

Happy New Year!