The company I work for celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. As part of that celebration, the whole company was invited to Sunriver, Oregon for a weekend of relaxing and socializing, all paid for by the company. Jenni and I received a luxurious second floor room at the Sunriver Resort with a vaulted ceiling, a cozy king-sized bed, and a porch with two rocking chairs. We didn’t stay in the room much since we looked forward to playing in the pools and hot tubs.
Jenni and I were heading home from the Asian food store, Uwajimaya, and as we got off highway 217, we stopped behind a vehicle with a license plate “DRGNS.”
“Dragons,” I stated.
“Or Dr. Guns,” Jennilyn added. We turned and smiled at each other.
I pointed to myself, “Geek,” and to her, “Country girl.”
We laughed and she pointed out that the vehicle was a truck. I crinkled my nose at her and made our turn home.
Jenni, Jack, and I visited Los Angeles this last weekend for my cousin’s wedding. Kevin, Jack, and I spent a good portion growing up learning multiplication from our grandpa, talking about who’s getting which Transformer robot, and blowing crap up with firecrackers that we got from our dentist. He moved away from Oregon before I started middle school, but our mischievous adventures of many years will always be a part of me. It was a huge blessing to be a part of a major milestone in his life.
We visited Cannon Beach to watch the annual sand castle contest. There were many very amusing creations, and a few that were fantastic. Of the twenty constructed, only a few were actual sand castles. Here are few that left us in awe or tickled our funny bone.
Before we got married, we both read “The Five Love Languages,” where it describes each person having specific ways they give and receive love. We both were strong in “Words of Affirmation” and “Quality Time.” But though the book primarily talks about each of us having a primariy and secondary language, I believe that speaking in all the love languages fills the “love tank” much more successfullly.
“I hate spiders.”
“I’m deathly afraid of spiders.”
I’m amazed at how many times I’ve chuckled as people confessed their fear and sometimes hatred of spiders. I’m not so much amused at their fear, but that spiders in general are small creatures with an enormous capacity to scare and terrorize. Even myself.
It’s been a fabulous weekend celebrating with Clark and Mary as their wedding is coming up fast! First up was Clark’s bachelor party on Saturday evening that was a laid-back time with dinner, the driving range, then pool and darts. Sunday, we celebrated with Clark and Mary at their shower.
The past few days, the sun has seeped through our vertical blinds, so I’m glad Jenni worked on putting up some curtains to keep our bedroom dark while we sleep. I’m pretty happy with the setup, the curtains are a nice deep red that blocks most of the sunlight on its own, and with our vertical blinds pulled over, our bedroom gets pretty dark.
This week I finished up two big projects. I had been working on a fairly complex web project at work that I launched as phase one. I’m quite proud of it as it has gone through several revisions based on feedback and requirements changing. It’s an online purchasing guide for Vernier Software & Technology. By far, it’s the most complex web app I’ve built for them.
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.