We've Moved.

Here.

Life

Did you see the lunar eclipse? There was a lunar eclipse the night before we were engaged in '03. We watched it this time from our guest bedroom out the window.

For all concerned about my husband's health: as you can see here, he is strong and doing well...and this is without Prednisone.

Joel's sister Summer is here now from Korea. She finished her master's degree and is renewing her visa before she heads back there for a great job at a University teaching teachers English. She has been here for a couple weeks and hopes to leave next week...if all the shuffling of papers works out at the Embassy. She was with us when we had the kittens and got to see my parents too. It will be sad when has to leave again for more than a year...and so far! But we are glad for this sweet time together.

Joel's best friend has chosen us to watch his 6 mo. old son full time. We are happy for Annie to have a 'little brother' to play with. He is a sweet and content baby. He makes Annie laugh a lot and vice versa. His mom is a guidance counselor and his dad works construction.


Here we are at our friend's tea party. Annie and her friend Andrew (6) had their own table. Another little boy there wanted to take the tablecloth.


To continue the 'how Annie has grown': another size comparison:

Grandma, Grandpa and Kittens

My mom and dad came from NY to visit us. It was wonderful to see them since the last time we gathered together was at Thanksgiving. Every time I would tell Annie they were coming, she'd say, "Grandpa's funny!"

On the way to work a week or so ago, Joel found one little kitten (Mittens) above, under a bush by his car, sopping wet in the rain. He put it in the shed, where Annie and I found it mewing loudly when we took out the trash. His eyes were sealed shut with that cat-eye sickness and so we washed him and put medicine on his eyes.

A day later we found another black one. Mom bathed the tiny thing and put antibiotics on his eyes. It is our suspicion that someone dropped them off, seeing as we live on a farm.



Mom and Dad had to leave early. Our visit was cut short. But we hope to see them at Dad's graduation from seminary in April.

Just before they left, I put up a sign for free kittens at the local supermarket and got a call for both of them. When the young woman came to pick them up, Annie almost cried when she took them into the box to her car. I had been telling her again and again that we couldn't keep them and we had to say goodbye, but I don't think it hit until she watched them being carried away by some stranger. It almost made me want to cry, seeing Annie like that. But I cheered her up instead, saying that there was another kitten hiding. Turns out the other kitten that our landlady had told us about was a bigger stray, and not friendly. But the next day it seems the kittens are a more distant memory for Annie.

Rainy Day (The first of four new posts)

What could be more enjoyable for a two-year-old than an umbrella and boots for a rainy day?

How Our Little One Has Grown

And for the "take-after" contest... who do you think she takes after more?
(Personally, I think she has my chubby cheeks, but the sparkle in her Papa's eye.)

Auntie Brina Comes to Visit

My sister Sabrina has finally moved away from us...to cold and snowy New Hampshire! (She's enjoying that weather.)

So now all of my sisters live in other states, with only my brother and I left in Harrisonburg. But we are happy for Sabrina, as she is greatly enjoying living at a birth center to finish her practicum and her midwifery graduate degree.

This past week she had to be back in Winchester for some classes at her University and we were very happy to pick her up for the weekend! (Even though to her disappointment, she was met with green grass and seventy-degree weather in February!)

Nana's Birthday

This actually happened in January, just before Oma left us. We had a nice time celebrating Joel's mother's birthday with a coconut lemon cake. (Which actually tasted like cake unlike the door-stop "cake" I made her last year. And, you would be proud Baba--the kitchen didn't look like WWIII)

Oma

Our beloved grandmother on Joel's side (his mother's mother) passed away a week ago this day. The funeral was this past Saturday. She was Joel's last remaining grandparent.

She was a dedicated wife to her military husband. She took her three children to Japan and Germany and missed deaths of relatives in America because she was abroad. My mother in law says of her, "She was a good mother, but before she was a mother, she was a wife."

Personally, I had come to know her more from our visits with Annie. "Oma" is the Japanese word for grandmother, and she would tell me a bit about what it was like to live abroad. She loved seeing Annie and when placing Annie in her lap, she would heave and say, "Whew, you're full of rocks, aren'tcha?" We visited on the back porch eating chili or sharing cookies that I had brought while Aunt Nancy took care of Oma's needs during her last days.

We will keep good memories of her smiling face in our minds even though our hearts are weighed down with grief.