December happenings, so far

Kara's mother gave me an Amish friendship bread starter and Kara happened to be here the day I made it all into bread. She likes to help by pouring things in.

Another day, Kara, her sister, Alia, and some other friends, Sam and Lily, were here being babysat. Beth was reading a Woof book to Kara, Sam, and Alia.

On December 6, Emily and I babysat our neighbor's granddaughters, Reece and Riley. We took them with us to the Johnstown museum, The Parish House, for cookies and tea at the Christmas Open House. Here they are swinging on the porch swing with Emily.

Reece is trying to decide which cookie she wants! It was a hard decision!

Linda Young is serving the tea and cider.

Here are some of the miniature Christmas trees that were decorating the Parish House and were being raffled off that day. Many people had decorated them for the occasion. The ornaments on the 3rd tree from the right were all made out of paper and it was called The Recession Tree. It got the most votes.

Here are some of the trees in the living room. People put their names in the bags beside the ones they liked the best. Then if their name was drawn out, they got that tree. We didn't buy any chances, but we enjoyed looking at the trees.


This past Saturday, we went to Parker, CO to Alan and Betty Durkee's house for their Annual Christmas Party. The following are pictures from that.

In the foreground is Michael Durkee and Emily. In the back is Alan and Betty Durkee and me, having a yummy snack!

Almost everywhere we saw was decorated for Christmas. It was beautiful.

This is Beth feeding Kirk Barnett his bottle.

I was trying to get another burp out of Kirk! He is a sweetie!

This is Kirk's mother, Cara, daddy, Ben, and brother, Luke Barnett. I don't know if it was Luke's first time for candy canes, but he sure loved them!

Betty Durkee, laughing, during the Bible Outburst Game we were playing. She, Teresa Jeffries, Beth, Rowen, and I were the winning team.


This is part of the opposing team. Cleta Jeffries was keeping score. Ben Barnett, his brother-in-law, Doug Jeffries, and Michael, along with Jeffrey and Jason, who are not pictured, tried their best, but lost by a few points. Lorin Jeffries was watching and lending support to the guys' team.

Rowen having a cup of coffee. The tapestry above him was part of Betty's Christmas this year. It is a Thomas Kincade piece which lights up with tiny pinpricks of light. Beautiful!

Some of those Albertson kids snacking! The cookies, covered pretzels, and fudge was on that counter! Michael tried to keep an eye on them, but they still ate too much! :)

We had a great time and enjoyed the fellowship!

Working at Operation Christmas Child Processing Center

Last year I wrote a post about Operation Christmas Child (click here to see it). We (Daddy, Mother, Jeff, Jason, and I) just went to the Processing Center in Denver on Thursday (Dec. 4, 2008) and worked for four hours. This year we took a camera with us (Jason's new one). So here are some pictures.
-Beth

This is the break area, where workers can rest/eat/drink during their work time.

O.C.C. has two gifts for its workers: a new t-shirt every year, and an ornament with the logo and year on it. Here are Mother and I displaying the backs of our shirts, prior to our training and working.

Mother working (I think she was an inspector right then).

Jeffrey was putting shoes boxes into the shipping containers.

The lady in the green shirt was our 2nd Supervisor (Line Leader).

Me (Beth), searching each box for money.

Jason taking out money at a different line. At the bottom-left of this picture you can see a hole in the table for the contributions to be dropped into, after we removed them from each shoebox. The money ($7/shoebox) pays the shipping costs for the gifts.

Daddy inspecting the boxes across from Jason.

Jeff, Mother, Daddy, me, and Jason after working for four hours.

A map, with us working in each position. Other people were working right around us, whom we did not capture in these photos. One of the fun things of doing this is the fellowship with complete strangers from all over the country, young and old (mostly retired folks, when we've been there). Click on this picture to make it larger.

The Tan squares on the ends of each side are the beginning of this process. They are full of un-sorted shoeboxes, just as they came from the various regions all over the country. The ones that we worked on were from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Colorado. When we started they had already processed over 218,ooo shoes boxes, and will do >600,000 at this processing center before Christmas.

M: Money seacher / remover

I: Inspector, who must remove banned items, which cannot be shipped, so are saved for local ministries.

T: Taper, who tapes each inspected shoebox tightly shut with Samaritan's Purse tape.

The Tan squares in the center are where the shipping containers are filled with at least 14 shoeboxes. They are sorted here to go into shipping cases for Boys or Girls, and for different age groupings.

The Colored squares represent bins that had candy and replacement toys in them. If we had to take out a banned item, we would replace it with a donated toy. Every box was supposed to have candy in it, so we added candy if there wasn't any in each box.

Thanksgiving with our children and grandson

This week we were privileged to have all of our children home for Thanksgiving. Randy, Joy, Quil, Tim, and Brenda arrived on Monday morning after driving all night from Missouri. We enjoyed having the whole week together. We read lots of books to Quil. Here is Grandpa Rowen reading a book to him.

We loved having time to get better acquainted with Quil. In the background of this picture, you can see the new doily that my mother made for me for Christmas.

Lincoln was here being babysat Monday and Tuesday afternoons and Lincoln and Quil got to play together. Lincoln is almost 4 months older than Quil. We were hoping Lincoln would teach Quil how to talk, but it didn't happen.

Brenda and I were making cider to drink while we played games.

The guys played Anti-Monopoly for parts of two days. The girls played faster-paced and shorter-lived games, but the guys did not take pictures of us.

This picture was taken on Thanksgiving day at the noon meal. This is the north end of the table.

Here are the folks on the south end of the table.

Every lunch time meal, Quil got really sleepy before we were through eating! I suppose it was because of the time zone change; it was really his nap time!

Jason and Quil playing in the basement

We took several walks to try to combat all the food we ate this week! We no longer have a baby stroller, so we took turns walking with Quil, or holding him as we walked.

He likes being on someone's shoulders. In this case, it was his daddy, Randy's shoulders.

We are quite a group! We were thankful for several beautiful days. This happened to be a gorgeous warm day.


This was a colder day when Grandpa was off work and got to go on the daily walk.

This was breakfast on Thanksgiving. Quil was having some Grandma "lap time."

Quil likes to wear overalls because they have pockets.

We opened Christmas presents while we had everybody here. Tim is displaying a wall hanging I made for him, my first attempt at calligraphy!

Beth made Randy a wall hanging cross stitching "A Careful Man I Want to Be, A Little Fellow Follows Me." I made one for Rowen when Randy was a little boy and it seemed only appropriate to make one for Randy and his little boy! Beth did a beautiful job and Rowen helped with framing.

Brenda made Emily a new robe for Christmas!

Our Missourian relatives left on Friday evening at 7:50 pm and were home safely 12 hours later this morning! We thank the Lord for the good times we had together and for the safe travel He gave them through slick roads and snow going home. We have many more pictures, but maybe these are enough.

Revival at Wesleyan Bible Church in Lakewood

Hi, Beth here!
We really enjoyed attending three services of the Wesleyan Bible Church in Lakewood, CO this past weekend. We went Friday night, and of course the dear people of the church wanted us to come back for Sunday.. so we did.. and we're glad we did. After the morning service we participated in a potluck at the Esparzas' home with the Esparzas, the Battons, the Kearneys, and Knox Bullock, who was the evangelist. The food was good, the fellowship was good, and we appreciate the Esparzas opening their home for that meal.

Pictures at the Esparzas:

Rev. Knox Bullock, Beth and Rev. Dan Batton (Beth is Knox's sister)


Cindy and Steve Kearney and Daddy and Mother


Jeff, Jason, and Emily


The Esparza family L-R: Alex, Heather, Jerry, and Jenae
(their older son Brandon is at college)


The Batton family L-R: Dan, Jill, and Beth


The Kearneys invited us to come to their house and stay for the afternoon so that we could be in the evening service. Everyone but Mother (she didn't have on her walking shoes) went on a ~2 mile walk with the Kearneys. It was a beautiful day for a walk. Then we visited for the rest of the afternoon and went to service that evening. It was truly a delightful day.

November non newsy news

This is the brand new fishing dock at the west end of Johnstown Reservoir. There is a walking path all around the lake where we often walk. This picture was taken on our Sunday afternoon, pre-nap walk, November 2.

On Election Day, Jeffrey and Janet were election judges at the Johnstown Vote Center. In our county, you can vote at any one of 34 vote centers. So we had voters from around the county, not just Johnstonians in our vote center. At our vote center, McCain/Palin won, and all the Republicans also won. Also, now the statistics have been published for our town's votes, and the Republicans won every race quite handily. Sorry it didn't carry over to the rest of our county, state, etc.

In our vote center, we had 1053 voters use the electronic voting machines, and 75 used paper ballots voting provisionally. We also had lots of other people come in, who we directed to go to Larimer County to vote (as that was where they were registered to vote), or to go to one of two places where they could emergency register (change their registration from another county from which they had moved) and vote.

When we opened the polls at 7 am, we had a long line waiting. It was 11:30 am before the line was no longer stretching outside the building. In the afternoon, we kept steadily busy but only for a short time did we have another long line. In Weld County, 70% of voters had either voted mail-in or early voting, so it made Election Day much for bearable for all the vote centers.

We had no problems throughout the day with voting machines or computers or people! Thank the Lord!

Other than the election, and school, school, school, we haven't been having too much excitement. We did have Mike Durkee visiting last weekend, but we didn't "shoot" him. We were thankful we kept him late enough playing "The Ungame" Sunday evening, that he missed the multi car accident on I-25 on his way home.

We got a dusting of snow this morning: our first for the season! This is our deck on the south of the house. It always gets more snow than the front yard.

We are doing various projects getting ready for Randy, Joy, Quil, Tim, and Brenda coming for Thanksgiving week. We are trying to get all the presents ready so we can celebrate Christmas with them at the same time.

Tim is 21 now!

Yesterday, our second born son, Tim, got to be a real adult! He is now 21. He is married and lives in Joplin, MO with his wonderful wife, Brenda. He and his big brother, Randy, work together every day as they did for years when they were still home, only now they paint houses for a living, rather than mow lawns.

Tim is a blessing to all of us. He is fun to be with and is so smart about thinking things through and problem solving. He is serious about his relationship with the Lord and being a godly leader for his wife.

I remember when he was born. He aspirated some fluid into his lungs during the birth and within a half hour or so was taken from us by a concerned nurse who tried to keep us from knowing her concern. When I was taken up to my room a little later, a portable x-ray machine was being rushed down the hall to the nursery. I said to Rowen, "Some little baby is sick and having to have an x-ray." We found out later it was our baby.

He was on oxygen and we were not allowed to hold him or hardly be with him for about 24 hours. During that time, we gave him completely to the Lord, knowing He knew what was best. I remember the peace that came from surrender to God and I sang in the hospital room shower, 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus'.

God helped "Timmy" to get well very soon and we were home in a couple of days. We have always been thankful for the gift he has been to our family.

Even today to think of that song or to sing it brings back the gift of peace and love that God gave me that day. It was such a blessing that at Tim's high school graduation, 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus' was the congregational song at the start of the service. How appropriate it was, though the ones who planned the service did not know the significance to our family!

We miss having Tim in our home, but we are happy he is following God's will for his life. We raised him to send him out to serve the Lord and have his own family. We are so happy that he is diligent in his work, and his efforts for God's kingdom in children's ministry.