January comes to an End

"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?" -- David Livingstone

I thank God for David Livingstone. How many of us think this way? How many of us look at life and our commission(s) as Joy? But they are. Seriously. We talk waaaay too much about sacrifice and service to God. As if we bring Him something that makes Him more valuable. As if He is needy. As if it would be drudgery to walk in his ways. As if it brings more value to what we do if it is something we don't want to do.
In his picture Bible we have been reading with Abraham about Joseph. Yes he suffered wickedly, and caught the brunt of much sin. Yet God blessed Him abundantly in returning his family to him, and in position and possession, not to mention his eternal rewards. And Abraham. He was called to go. He didn't know where. The promise was not fulfilled for years and years, yet he believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. He was blessed in innumerable ways.
God promises to care for us, and bless us for believing/trusting him. And there is joy in that. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. So let us make ourselves happy, content, satisfied in God. He is the Good News. He is the reward.

More historical significance to be thankful for

84. Hope for today, hope for tomorrow

85. For five years in this house as of today.

86. This week marking the 3rd anniversary of "Foundational Theology & Strategic Planning for Quiescent Joint Ventures in the Unfolding of the Knowledge of the Glory of God in Frontier Localities

87. Friends who are blunt

88. A church that holds adult Bible School

89. Cold that makes your skin tingle



90. Sabbath rest


91. That God loved us so much he chose us and elected us as His own, not because of who we are, but rather in spite of who we are because of who He is.

92. A wife who longs for young women to know Jesus and to live holy lives unto the Lord

93. Frozen Banana Smoothies

94. good health

95. a successful herd preg check

96. That the Lord provides, in all ways

97. Clear winter night skies

98. Orion marching out of the East

99. Brothers dwelling together in unity

100. Faith, though I often chose sight.
(I would really encourage you to read this post)

101. Hard choices that make us pray continually

The W Clan

We had a sweet weekend catching up with Blake and Melody in Illinois. Our gracious hosts, the Bloemkers, gave us a beautiful place to relax! Getting to meet sweet Ira and Jamin for the first time was quite surreal. The last time we saw their family Melody wasn't even showing:)...and now there are 4! Abraham enjoyed Catherine's big slide, hugging the babies, and watching Catherine twirl on the swing.

Sweet Fellowship

A little backblogging here...
We had awesome fellowship the weekend of Blake's wedding. Here are a few of the people we got to hang out! We were bummed to not get pictures of everyone:(



Michael, Leslie and Cecily - We really enjoyed talking parenting and cattle:) with these guys!


Dave and Laura Gutierrez - a joy to meet little Natalie and see Elijah again!


Dan Lannin, Holly and Matt Z., Cherish & Tim Fedders, Crystal Lannin (clockwise from Jonathan)


Crystal and Ham Love:)


Heather Walburg - She and Sander (Blake's brother) graciously opened their home to us for the weekend. Abraham loved Heather - she figured out his "language" really well:).


Eric, Nikki, Eli and Jonathan C. - it was a special treat to hang out with these guys Sunday afternoon and have "the boys" meet each other for the first time!

Holiday 3

So basically I should have posted this about a month ago. Sorry for all of you whom are waiting oh so patiently.
As we were hiking along we found Bic's dream car. Then if I brought THE PRINCE back from the dead we could cruise with our ladies. However, I think Bic has some work to do before his dream car is going anywhere.



So eventually we got to our camp the last night after a pretty sweet hike. The trail went in and out along the shoreline and was pretty much sweet!!! Yeh pretty much. So we got to camp and the ladies got to work doing what ladies do. First they started getting stuff ready. Well then some other guys came and started looking for a place to camp so they (Being Proverbs 31 providers:)) scampered over to the next campsite and swiped a boatload of logs for us to burn!!

After a bit, Angela could be seen standing in all of her pregnant glory on top of the sand dune longingly gazing at the Great Freshwater Superior Sea. So we went and cleaned up our nasty sweaty stinky selves in the lake. It wasn't too bad. Had to be at least a good 50 degrees:).


Sorry no pics. This is a children's show:).

While down by the beach Bic and Melody got all cutsie and starting making help signals for airplanes flying over or something...
Maybe then were just trying to help people flying over to know where they were and when. I couldn't figure it out. So I just started grabbing stones and throwing them.

Well some how this turned into a massive competition to see who could bury the largest stone in the sand just by throwing it.

I think the evidence was inconclusive as to who one the contest. Yeh pretty sure about that:)...

So after a rather entertaining night of complete Scandinavian Nonsense, and a morning of near death due to out of control estrogen we had another great morning of hiking.
Here we are filling water bottles.



It was a great time!! Thanks for coming you two sick wackos!!!

Holiday 2

Ok, Ok, Ok, I will continue on with the Backpacking holiday:). Sorry for the slight delay but we took off on another bit of a holiday this past weekend. A 1st cousin in Pennsylvania got married. Then last night I was distracted:).

Anyway......
So the next morning we woke up on a quiet little lake.

We had some lovely blueberry pancakes for breakfast from blueberries fresh off the bush. mmmmmmm blueberries.....

So we got a bright and early start (about 11:00) after we got all packed up and hit the trail.

Now if you look closely you will see that Blake has a wacko look on his face. Most of you, upon seeing this will think nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. However, you will have been gravely mistaken. You see, the first night we hiked in, I, thinking it was a relaxing stroll of only 3.5 miles didn't bother to unload any of the food that we brought. Well, after about dying by the time we hit camp (sometime long after dark) the night before, Blake, conscience stricken declared "SHARE THE LOOOOOAAAAADDDD..." to which I gladfully dumped at least half the food into his pack. We also at this time tried to "SHARE THE LOOOOOAAAAAAD" for the pregnant backpacker. So I say all of this to let you know that the look on Bic's face is more the look of desperation than constipation, or mental stagnation:).


Here you will note that Melody (better known as Reeferson) took the lead and started doing some massive trail breaking. We tried to explain that there was no need to go through the fallen trees but she would have no part in our woosification.



So finally after an hour or 2 the troops rebelled and shouted "WE AIN'T GOIN NO FURTHER TILL WE'VE HAD A BREATHER! ... WE AIN'T HAD NOTHIN BUT MAGGOTY BREAD FOR THREE STINKING DAYS!! YEH! WE WANTS SOME MEATS!!! WHAT ABOUT THEM? THEY'RE FREEESSSH!" To which she (as caught on film) replied with "THESE ARE NOT FOR EATING!!" And then pretty much threatened us with her fist in our face.



And here is a Sweed and a Norwegian pretending that they like each other. Or something like that:). Maybe it was after the famous Oslo peace accord. Yeh, pretty sure about that, yeh, yeh pretty sure....

HOLIDAY day 1

So pretty much we had a supersweet holiday last week!!!! We drove north to da land were de say Yah to da U.P. eh!


We went backpacking for 1 day plus a half a day plus a half a day. Then we took a couple of days to get back home. It was incredibly relaxing in spite of hiking 5 miles the first evening as opposed to the planned 3.5 (a slight navigational miscalculation! We won't mention whose fault that was). We got into camp the first night at night and set up in the dark. But we sure enjoyed our campfire!! I went and played beaver and knocked down half the forest while Bic and his girlfriend Melody were kindling some flames.:)

You can see, there is Angela and I off to the left and Bic and Melody in the middle of it all:) hehe

In case you can't make us out in this picture here is some help:


Dis here is Bic Vanwhelenburgenhoffen. Basically dis here is a Sveed and you can call him Olie (just make sure you call him loud he lost his hearin workin wit Jay Larson up at da lumberyard or is he da guy on tv?)


Dis here Melody Reeferson. She da craziest smokin Norvegian I efer seen. Leave it to da Norvegians to carry not just two but tree logs at once to da fire. And ta be da first one to da finish line even dough her good friend Jack Wolfskin started gifen out.


Den der is da selfproclaimed Caboose who was brave to hike wit a bunch of scandinavians when she is as pregnant as a moose (27 weeks). She held her own when stealing lumber from da neighbors too. Must be the Anglo Saxon blood from her ancient viking ancestors! Or maybe just case she's a little loopy.



Oh yeh, and don't forget about Johann Yerface. He just about died crossing a log bridge. Which would haf made da rest real happy so dey didn't have to hear anymore about his nephew Jimmy who wrote that one song about an ocean liner going down in da great sea of the Hootchie Mama when dat big typhon caused a tidal wave, or whatever de call it and by da way, did you know that his realated to dat one guy on tv, what's his name..... oh yeh I tink it is that David Letterfield guy.......

Chimney Sweeps

When last we saw Bic I had the privilege of working with him, his dad, and his brother Sando (One of the Jedi council). Beings we were in a strange planet named Wisconsin we thought it advisable to wear these HIGHLY effective gas masks!





This is me ready to fly my X-Wing to fight off the Evil Empire of Wisconsin!!!



While we were there we went incognito as chimney demolishers. We destroyed a chimney that was 3 stories high and had to carry it all out of the house after the top story. The bottom story was in the basement.




This is what we looked like after cleaning up. Blake looked like a jaundiced Badger fan even after cleaning up!! The last 8ft of the chimney was full of soot. We couldn't figure out how their furnace still worked!!! Must be some sort of Jedi mind trick.

Adventures in winter with Blake

During Blake's visit we had excellent fresh snow for winter fun.


A pic of the creek west of our house a half mile or so that we crossed. It also runs through our property, but not quite so elegantly. Jonathan calls it a ditch, but humors me and allows me to call it a creek:).


What great guys...I can't remember what I was asking them to do for the picture, but they attempted it! Any guesses?


Cabin enjoyed the little adventure, and he didn't even have skis or snowshoes!

Chores

Blake kindly volunteered to help feed "The Ladies" while he visited us last week.
At first they didn't know what to think...

Ma and Pa Shupe are locals around here...

But where'd Ma go, and who is this new guy that's picking up our poo?

They relaxed a bit after Blake put on his charm...


He even made a new friend, Donkey!

Disco Danc'in in Soultown

A pic of me and Bic Disco dancing our lives away in Soultown at the Soultown Records Party Pub! What a riot:) (our house) ;)













The results of a weekend slam full of the summit on "Foundational Theology and Strategic Planning for Quiescent Joint Ventures in the Unfolding of the Knowledge of the Glory of God in Frontier Localities", Parties at the Soultown Records Party Pub, and too many late night Star Wars stints. All culminating in 3:30am leave time for the airport on Tuesday Morning. What a weekend!!!

The snow plunge

Fun in the snow with Jonathan and Blake...

Shupes, Blake and Pit

A round of Pit turned into trouble for Paul on Sunday. Poor Paul:)...