David and Jennilyn

For Christmas, Jennilyn got us a special gift to see Rebecca St. James live in concert. She remembered that I told her that I’ve never been to a live concert before and picked up two tickets to one of our favorite artists. It was a wonderful time of worship and listening to several artists’ stories on how God speaks into and through their lives.

In addition to seeing Rebecca, we got to listen to Jayden and the Barlow Girls. They were all very talented. The light show provided a fun opportunity to take some pictures and the music played loud. Thought-my-phone-was-vibrating loud.

One thing that tickled our funny bones was when the Barlow Girls asked everyone to take out their cellphones and make them glow. They called it modern-day fire-safe lighters.

See all the pictures from the evening.

Jenni and I received a card recently from a lady in Seattle. She also enclosed twenty dollars for us to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It was such as kind gesture, and we really appreciated the encouragement to continue dating during our marriage. Our benefactor is very generous and nice. A wonderful blessing.

A mystery too. She has always been extremely kind with me, even though I barely know her. She welcomes me warmly everytime I see her at dance conventions. She gave me a nice dance shirt one year I went to Easter Swing. Why the kindness? I wonder if it was because I overheard someone speak kindly of her and I asked her to dance at some point. If so, it amazes me what a little kindness can do.

We’re fortunate enough to be friends with Clark Wachsmuth whose family owns a cottage in Oysterville. Oysterville is a small town about twenty minutes north of Long Beach Washington. We try to visit Oysterville with Clark at least once a year. It a nice cozy place to tuck away from the world and enjoy the simple pleasures of card games, hiking, movies, beaches, and potato guns.

I stumbled upon a web site today that has a very amusing demo. It will take an uploaded photo of a person’s face and show what famous celebrities the face matches best. I’m sure you can already think of the funny mismatches that can happen since it’s done by artificial intelligence. I think it matches

• For me, my best matches (or at least my favorite matches) have been Alec Guiness, John Travolta, Kate Winslet, and Kevin Bacon.
• Jennilyn has a face with similarities with Britney Spears, Jennifer Aniston, and Shania Twain.
• Mary matched Sarah Michelle Gellar, Renee Zellweger, and Elisha Cuthbert.
• Clark’s face related to Hugh Grant, Russel Crowe, and Kiefer Sutherland.
• Jack magically got Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame.
• Tracy matched Katherine Hepburn, Sophie Marceau, and Lindsay Lohan.

Try it on your face. Then laugh for the next half an hour loading up faces of your friends and family.

Jennilyn’s family celebrates Christmas all-out. They have a real Christmas tree decked out and glowing, wrapped presents to be opened on Christmas day, stockings full of treats, lots of sweets, and so on. My family? Well, we started out decorating with some Christmas lights around the living room haphazardly, and for many years, a plastic Christmas tree that was on its last limb. Literally. It was basically a holey wooden stick with spray-painted metal wires with fake pine branches attached to it. We got good use of it over the years before we finally got rid if it (at least I think we got rid of it). In recent years, my dad has used a tripod for a Christmas tree. Laugh all you want, but I give my dad props for effort—in an engineer sort of way. Gotta hand it to the man though, he’s resourceful for what he’s got.

David and Christine Vernier open up their vacation condo in Sunriver, Oregon for all the employees at Vernier. I hadn’t taken the opportunity the first year I worked at Vernier, but after hearing over and over again how wonderful it is, I signed up. All the employees get one opportunity per year, so I didn’t want to miss out my second year in a row.