Day 89: Golden Birthday Girl

It was Sarah's golden birthday yesterday (same age- 29), so she's wearing gold here. I guess there was supposed to be a prize or something for whomever wore the most gold. I missed that memo, and I wore gray and green. Sarah's an amazing woman, a friend from Cassie's dorm long ago that I don't see very often. It was fun to hang out with Sarah and her gang of friends, many of whom work with youth or missions. I also happened to find Jhonessa at the party, whom I haven't seen in about 2 years, and then it was a random meeting at a library. She was an old Bethel friend of mine, so it was fun to catch up with her and find out she's going to seminary these days. She's the one in this photo with the pink pants. I was actually attempting to get Sarah's feet in this shot and do one of those funny perspective photos, but after several tries I gave up.

Day 88: Rental car and cherry pie

I did a little editing on this one so there wouldn't be any phone numbers, but this was my rental car yesterday and today. It took a little extra time for them to finish the maintenance stuff on our Hyundai. We're almost at the 60k mile mark, which is when our warranty expires, so we thought it best to get that ol' timing belt and accessory belt replaced. When Jamin and I moved out to Oregon, it was the timing belt that broke on both of our cars on our way out there, so I hope to never have that happen again.

Below is the cherry pie I made to bring to small group. It turned out really well for my first try. Of course, I used canned filling and refrigerated crust, but it still looked really pretty. I heard it's supposed to snow a lot this weekend, so I decided to have fun with the snowflake cookie cutter.

Day 87: Sunlight on mobile

I love that they have fun artwork at the local libraries. While I was there I picked up some photography books to see if I find any fun ideas.

Day 86: Coats are in play

As you can see, we have a mass of pink coats that have invaded our downstairs coat closet. Thankfully, we also have a gold coat that is the major winter weather coat for Zaria, and it happens to be a very similar coat to mine, though mine is less shiny. So it's kind of fun to go around in our matching winter wear. Thanks go out to Mom for picking out Zaria's coat and my stepmom, Dawn for picking out my coat as a Christmas present last year.

Day 85: More Taiko, more happy

I put Zaria at the Taiko Drum Master game to see if she might get some of the hits *accidentally* but my scientific methods weren't very great because I helped her a bit. I'm sure at least 2/29 correct hits must have been from her! Anyways, it was a great exercise to help wake her up from her afternoon nap. In case you're wondering, she does wake up very happy most of the time. Unless she gets too little sleep because we have to go somewhere. It might be hard to see, but she is showing her two little bottom teeth in this smile. I keep thinking she'll bust out with more, and even dreamed that she woke up with a full set of teeth (which was a nightmare!), but so far only two with a whole lot of drooling and chewing.

Day 84: Jamin plays his horn again

Jamin played his french horn at church today, the first time he's performed for some years. I didn't catch him during the performance because I was up working the soundboard today. I found out that's a terrible place to take pictures from for lighting, and Zaria didn't help much by trying to grab the camera from me. I'm lucky I got this shot while they were practicing for the Christmas show.

Day 83: Moon rising

We took a little walk just as the moon was rising, which is insanely early these days. It was a beautiful big moon, but it looks so small when you actually take a picture of it. Jamin got more of the sky's color in his shot of me.