25th anniversary celebration week

We had a wonderful time last week when we went to Joplin, MO to see our kids for our 25th anniversary. On Thursday morning, we were given this Pontiac Solstice to drive until Saturday morning! Our kids were all in the green van in the picture and we followed them, "not knowing whithersoever we were going."

Here we are in traffic. I was reading our love letters aloud to Rowen full-time! We still haven't finished them. We had a long distance relationship before we were married and had spent a lot of time writing those letters and getting acquainted through them.

Around lunchtime, we arrived in Springfield, MO at the Lambert's Cafe: The Only Home of Throwed Rolls. We got plenty to eat there and enjoyed ourselves. One of the waitresses took this picture of our family.

We continued down the road and ended up in Branson. After driving 'round and 'round Branson, we ate some yogurt ice cream at TCBY.

Randy, Joy, and Quil

We ended up at Sights and Sounds Theater, a new and wonderful attraction in Branson.

Everybody was taking pictures by this lion and lamb, so we did also. The sun glare was fierce! I am glad for my dark glasses, so you can't tell my eyes are shut! A passerby offered to take this picture. It was funny, as he was getting ready to take the picture, another passerby offered to take the picture so the photographer could get in the picture with us!!

Here we are inside the theater. We saw the "Noah: the Musical." It was amazing and fantastic!
There was a powerful gospel message at the end.

After the musical, our kids presented us with a gift, as if they hadn't done enough already!

In the box was the paperwork for a cabin we were to stay in Thursday night through Saturday morning! It was a wonderful cabin with everything we needed. (Beth had packed everything personal we needed and brought it along in the van without our knowing.) We enjoyed our stay there so much!

It had a fully equipped kitchen.

Here I am standing on the porch before taking off on our fun Friday Branson adventure. We listened to a sales pitch in the morning in order to get free tickets to go up Inspiration Tower at Shepherd of the Hills and to see "The Promise" at the Mansion, a musical about the life of Christ. It was very well done. We also roamed a mall, saw lots of quilts, and some other things.

Meanwhile, our wonderful children and daughters-in-law were slaving away making food for the Saturday party. Tim loved using the Pampered Chef Crinkle Cutter on the ham!

Randy grilled some chicken and seasoned it in a very yummy way.

Jeffrey cooked up a lot of hamburger meat for taco salad.

Quil enjoyed the well-toy-stocked nursery at my sister, Sherry's church. Emily played with him and kept him safe.

I guess someone was wandering around terrorizing people with the camera.

This is the chef salad bar on Saturday. It had about everything you could want on a chef salad, except for peas, which Tim said would have ruined everything! :)

My sister, Marlene is helping in the background.

The next few pictures are of the decorations on Saturday. This is our unity candle saved from our wedding. There are two original napkins from our wedding, also.

The bulletin board was decorated with ribbons left over from our wedding and pictures of our family through the years. Beautifully done by Brenda, our daughter-in-law.

This picture shows the unity candle table and the bulletin board. My bridal bouquet, our wedding book and albums were also displayed on this table.

This quilt was an anniversary gift from my sister, Marlene. She used the leftover bridesmaid and mothers' dresses fabric for the hearts. It is a beautiful quilt. Also there is a modified bridesmaid dress on the table. I wore it early on in our marriage, and Beth wore it on our anniversary the last 2 years, but she outgrew it this year.

This is the wedding dress I wore 25 years ago. I had borrowed it from my sister-in-law, Sharen Scoles, and she graciously allowed Marlene to bring it to our party! I was surprised and blessed to see it again, and amazed at the thought I used to fit in a dress that small!! It was really special to me to have it there for the party. Thanks, Sharen and Marlene!

After a wonderful meal of taco salad and/or chef salad, the guests and our family went to the sanctuary for a vow renewal ceremony. My dad, Rex Scoles, officiated for us, as he did with Rev. Omar Lee so many years ago. We had all of our children stand up with us.

After our vows, Rowen and I sang "Each for the Other and Both for the Lord" with revised words to reflect the years that we have been married.

After the ceremony the children all said nice things about us and thanked the Lord publicly for our marriage. Here Rowen is thanking them for all they did for us and thanking the friends and family who came to share the day with us.

My niece, Leah Owens, made the beautiful cake for the occasion.

The heart on the wall, the cake topper, and the goblets were from our wedding.
My "going away" corsage and Rowen's boutonniere were also from our wedding.

Cutting the cake.

We've gotten wiser in our aging and used forks to feed each other!

Here is our family picture made after nearly everybody had gone, except for some of the hard working cleanup crew - my dear sisters and their husbands.

We were truly blessed by the Lord and our children, family, and friends to celebrate our 25th anniversary together. God has been so good to us!

Thanks for persevering to the end of this long blog post!

Sunday afternoon fall walk

We took a walk in Pioneer Ridge subdivision today where Jeff and Jason have spent so many hours mowing and trimming this summer. The trees and bushes there have a lot of brilliant colors that I enjoy. I am from Missouri, where yellow is NOT the main fall color, as it traditionally is in Colorado! So I like to celebrate the reds we can find. Here are a few pictures from our beautiful day. The sun was bright, almost unbearable to look toward, so don't mind if you find our eyes squinted or even closed in some pictures!

Here is the link for the Johnstown Quilt Show pictures

I have tried repeatedly today to upload some pictures from the Johnstown Quilt Show to our blog. Finally it has let me upload this one. This is the quilt Beth and I recently made which was in the quilt show. Click here for the link to the rest of the pictures of some of the quilts at the show.

Just an update

The lengthening afternoon shadows, the falling leaves, and the cold mornings remind us that snow will be flying soon! Emily loves to rake the leaves...

As most of you know, life is so daily sometimes! (quote from Joni Erikson Tada, years ago). This is how our lives are during this time of year, but it is not a bad thing! Some might think that our family's lives are boring, but as long as we are each striving to obey God, and to grow in our walk with Him each day, then we can be thankful for the steady, quiet, studious time in life.

We have been studying the book of James in our evening family devotions, and each of us has again seen ways that the Word is a mirror to help us see ourselves. We thank the Lord for opportunities with open, honest discussions about how the Bible speaks to our hearts. How can you call that boring?

Beth has been challenged to have a couple of jobs lately that were "out of her comfort zone". It is exciting to see her grow from these opportunities...maybe she'll blog about it all.

Tomorrow night we get to help set up the local Quilt Show, which we all enjoy helping with. Here are pictures from last year.

We're anxious to see our Missouri family soon, and celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary! More later...

Last Sunday we had the opportunity to see many friends from former days, when we went to a Homecoming Concert at our former church in Loveland, CO. Many people were there we hadn't seen for many years, and others we don't see very often. Some middle-aged guys that had been in various quartets at Kansas City College and Bible School many years ago, joined Steve Desmond to put on a concert that sounded a lot like Southern Gospel - and they weren't too bad! We enjoyed being there.

Janet continues to enjoy being quite active on facebook.com...look her up if you aren't already her friend. Rowen is on there too, but he is not nearly as active or friendly.

Janet and Jeffrey have been in classes this week, to be election judges. Janet is the local vote center supervisor, so she has to have three classes to learn it all, and Jeff will be a voting-machine judge. They encourage highschool juniors and seniors to be election judges. I'll try to get Jeff to do a blog post about his experiences after the election. You do think that there will be life after the election, don't you? Do you think we'll still have electricity and the internet? Maybe at least for a while.... ;-\ }}

Our friends Wanda and Debbie came to visit

On Tuesday this week, Debbie Gardner and her precious children, Madison and Chase, came for a little visit.  They live in Idaho so it was very special to get to see them for a little while.

Debbie's mother, Wanda Skeen, our former 'pastress' (pastor's wife) also came to see us.  It had been a couple of years since we had seen her, so we were blessed.  Wanda was visiting Colorado from Kansas City, MO.  Wanda and Debbie have been very special to us for 25 years.

Jeffrey and Jason's Quilt is all Done!

Those of our faithful readers will remember the posts on this blog in August, 2008 about a quilt that Beth and Janet pieced for Jeffrey and Jason's bed. Now, in the middle of October, Janet is hand finishing the binding around the edge after it was quited in Missouri. It is beautiful, and looks like it will be warm and snuggly!






As you probably guessed, Janet, Beth, and Emily have already started a new quilt for Emily. They are using their discretionary time cutting, sewing, and ironing as they create the quilt top. Do you think that they should have had a blog just for their quilts? Watch for updates in the coming weeks!

Life Chain 2008

Our family was able to participate in the Life Chain event along south 23rd Ave in Greeley, CO on Sunday, October 5th, 2008. We were so grateful for the Lord's provision of perfect weather (68'F, full sun) when the forecast the day before was for temperatures in the low 50's with rain.

Janet, Emily, Jason, Beth, and Jeffrey (Rowen took the picture)


Rowen's sister Esther, with her daughters Kwani, Hadassah, and Sarah stood with us.

The local newpaper photographer took many pictures of these precious girls, but they were not published in the printed paper.