Pi Kappa Phi FOUR! (why do people say that?)

My view while waiting for them to finish. Trilogy was a beautiful golfing community, I wish my parents (who golf multiple times a week) could retire there...

Go, babe, go. It was fun to watch him figure out how to golf. We're committed to learning, so we can join my parents some day. I don't want to be "a golfer," but it would be fun to do occasionally.

Past and present fraternity brothers, some more sober than others... I heard that someone "cart-surfed" (on TOP of the cart) that morning. NOT what you want to be doing at a nice place like this...

Life-long friends. (Carl is wearing a UW santa hat that he won in a raffle- I tried convincing him to give it to me, to no avail).

More Saturday Pics

Impromptu daffodil field. I actually hate the color yellow, but all the tulip fields with colors I like were crowded...

So I tried to take a 'from the car' photo. Didn't work out so hot.

In line at Snow Goose (yes, this is a 50+ person line for ice cream). I'm telling you, people, it's as exciting as Disneyworld.

Almost to the front. Carl's practicing his golf swing for Sunday's tournament.

Ah, bliss...

Happy group of friends.

Chef Casey

is proud to report that my culinary artistry is continuing to grow. In the past week I've made a:

Spicy Turkey-Cabbage soup
Cornbread Muffins with jalapeno jelly inside them
Swiss Spinach Quiche
Curry Chicken Salad
Vinaigrette Broccoli
Raspberry-Angel Food Cake Trifle

This is a record-setting month. Epic.

Kubb

Saturday, 7 of us played in our back yard, with two 'courts' set up, music, a bbq, plus Carl's homemade beers to accompany the group. It is such a fun game and I'm glad Bryan and Steph introduced us to it. Justin and Carl dominated people, Carl learned the game in Sweden from it's originators. Adam and Los had never played before, so there was a wide range of 'talent.' Let's just say I'm on the lesser side of the range.

A weekend of firsts: cycling, kubbing and golfing, oh my!

We had such a fabulous weekend with friends, and will post lots of pics to show some of our time. I love when random things work out and fire on all cylinders; we were mixing Navy, college and California friends, and the chemistry was great. Friday night we had three friends over for a meal and Settlers. At 5:45 am Saturday, Justin came over to pick up Los and Carl. The 3 of them cycled the beautiful Chuckanut Ridge Loop by our house, something like 36 miles, Los' first time ever riding that far. He wants to do a Half-Ironman this summer (swim:1.2 miles, bike:56 miles, run: 13.1 miles) and the running/swimming are a piece of cake to him. Cycling is the hardest part for him, but Carl (who has cycled across the country) was merciful and he and Justin would slow down and wait for Los periodically.

Saturday afternoon we played Kubb and then went to see the tulip and daffodil fields en route to the best Farmer's Market ever, Snow Goose Produce, where the world's best ice cream is served. Sunday Los and I woke up early and drove to Redmond where he played in the annual Pi Kappa Phi golf tournament, his first time ever shooting 18 holes. Luckily Bish knew what he was doing, and carried their team of 4. The low score was 11 under par and 120 people came out for the tourney. Burly and I walked on the equestrian trails around the golf course, and saw them a few times throughout the day. The miles of trails are beautiful and we saw ten horses/riders during our hour+ walk. We all collapsed from exhaustion Sunday afternoon, but had such a good time this weekend.

Mariners game: Say, "I'm drunk!"

Last week, we went with a bunch of friends to the Mariners-Orioles game. I used to be a big M's fan, not to mention baseball fan in general... I was in line in the rain on the day tickets for the season went on sale... but because they've sucked so much and because my bro used to be in the Orioles organization, I have changed my mind. However, the stadium and skyline are gorgeous, and we had a lot of fun, here are some pics from that night:



A lot of the guys had come down in an RV, so they were already pretty intoxicated by the time we met up with them. The lady that took this group shot said, "Say, 'I'm drunk!'" Everyone gleefully obliged.


Alcohol+making decisions= bad idea. Here Adam and Tony argue over buying tix from scalpers or the stadium

The only Pac-10 fans in the group

I love the sunsets and water view from the stadium

And the view of downtown

Los and our friend Justin

Long, slow, painful death...

I never thought this day would come. I am now realizing that I have to say goodbye to my beloved iBook. This weekend, our friend Carl said, "umm, something is wrong with your computer." The following was a blur, as I was in denial (say is ain't so!), but I'm think he said something like it is the slowest machine he has seen. Ever. And he's a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science. I trust him. And as the Mac Genius told me last weekend, "well, ma'am (read: IDIOT), mechanical failures are normal, these machines weren't built to last forever." WHAT?! WHY NOT?! I love my iBook. SO WHAT if it's 7 years old?! (which is like, a 100 years old, in technology-speed)

It matters more to me than any other possession I have. We have been through so much together. I've had it since b.c. (before Carlos). We've struggled through 5 YEARS of graduate school together. It has kept me connected to the larger world when my introverted self naturally stays at home hibernating. It, along with my trusty cell phone, has kept me to connected to Carlos when, for half our marriage, he has been overseas. And since we've never had a tv, or stereo, it is my sole source of music and dvd watching. How could it leave me at a time like this?

At many people's prompting, we finally sucked it up and got an external hard drive. I'm in the process of trying to pull everything valuable from my iBook, so when that final fated day comes, I will have made my peace and be prepared to say goodbye. Sigh.

Tulip Festival

Come one, come all, to the Tulip Festival in our beautiful neighborhood!

Young Life: part two- bragging

Permit me to brag a little bit about our great friends Nick and Lindsay, the local Young Life area director and his wife- two of the most awesome people in western Washington and the western world, who do live this way.

Background context: When I was ending college, I considered doing a two-year Young Life internship. As I talked with various area directors about it, I remember a gal encouraging me, “if you stay in Young Life, you’ll marry a Young Life guy.” I love YL, but among other (more important ‘call’-related) reasons, this was a contributing factor to me not doing a YL internship. Stereotypical Young Life guys (goofy extraverts or the more business-model type with the goatee and PDA) are great guys I want to be friends with, but not who I would have wanted to marry.

Fast-forward to 4 years later when we moved back to WA. Los and I went to a high school football game at the local school by our house. After having been so invested in teens’ lives in FL, we wanted to know what was happening in Burlington, so we looked up YL on the internet and found a phone number for Nick Wood, our area director. We invited him and Lindsay over to dinner, to get to know them, and to see what was going on in our county. What could have been an awkward shared meal turned into the beginning of a joyous friendship.

Nick is like the antitype of the typical leaders I knew in college. I have seen a lot of people with lots of good programs. I have seen a lot of people with lots of money. Nick and our area have neither of those and need help in those two areas, yet more teens flock to him and Lindsay in droves than almost anyone I’ve ever watched. Most of the kids in our area have known him since elementary school, and he’s volunteered and substituted in many schools and coached soccer, while being the YL leader. And Lindsay teaches in a super cute local middle school.

The amount of teens and families they have impacted in this valley is immeasurable. I am moved on nights like Friday’s banquet, where we get to hear about specific lives they have touched through their natural gifting. Teenagers everywhere are hurting and trying to decide who they want to be as adults, they need godly mentors. I know I am who I am today because I had people like Nick and Lindsay love on me when I was young. This world would be a better place if there were more selfless, humble people like our two friends who give their lives so that young people can find hope and a healthy path for their future. I am proud of and grateful for such friends.

Young Life Banquet: part one- Nuggets

This past Friday night, we went to our local Young Life Annual Banquet. The speaker was great and told some stories that were gems. He recounted playing hide-and-seek with his grandson. The goal of the game for this little boy is not to stealthily evade his grandpa, but to be found. He will rustle around in the bedroom closet or somewhere else, excitedly anticipating the moment when he is found by the one who loves him. The speaker then transitioned into how today’s teens are just like his grandson, making noise in closets and wanting to be found.

He quoted Eugene Peterson’s version of scripture from the book of John that explains our motivation for incarnational ministry, saying God put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. He told the story of the YL leader at Columbine from the day of the tragic shooting there. Like many other days, Kevin came on to campus to meet with a student. And like many other days, the student had forgotten, and was a no-show.

So Kevin went into the dining hall and sat down with some students, getting to know them. A short while later, when someone came in announcing the gunshots elsewhere on campus, Kevin was there with and for the teens, diving under the table with them. He eventually helped lead them out to safety and hundreds of students came over to his house that week, processing with him. The speaker made the point that teens don’t need a big program, they need people who will dive under the tables in their lives with them.

Another story he told came from this past week in New Zealand. A Young Life leader there was with a group of 10 people, canyoning. They were pretty far out, when a flash flood came. The river water rose 50 feet in 30 minutes, and 7 out of the group of 10 died. Tony, the leader, was a 29 year-old guy, tall, strong and capable. He could have made it out of the river if he had only considered himself. But he had invited a student named Tommy along on the trip. Tommy had cerebral palsy and was less physically able. Tony refused to let Tommy die alone and did everything in his power to save him. When the survivors and rescuers found their lifeless bodies, Tony had Tommy on his shoulders.

The gospel isn’t incarnational unless it requires sacrifice. Hopefully not an actual physical death, but a sacrifice of comfort, a sacrifice of selfishness, and of time. It takes diving under the tables with people, it takes carrying people on your shoulders. What do you do to lift others up like this? There are as many ways to live it out as there are willing people. These stories inspired me to want to be a person like this. I don’t know what that will look like throughout life, but I want to be attentive to opportunities to make sacrifices for the benefit of others.

Atheist at Pebble Beach and Tim Keller Lecture

I didn't think about this a ton recently until I just watched this pastor from NYC Tim Keller lecture at Google about his new book. I wish I could have pointed the guy from last summer toward someone who can more eloquently pick apart "disproofs" of God.

Among my fun travels last summer, one thing I did was spend a week at Pebble Beach with my family for the 4th of July. The proximity to the links had no draw for me, since I am hardly what you would call a golfer, but I love to read, write, walk/run on 17-Mile Drive (arguably one of the best roads on earth) and hear ocean waves with the best of them, so I was in heaven. Almost.

The week was going smashingly (everyone but me golfing during the day, and then playing cards and drinking margaritas at night) until another houseguest found out that I was going to become a Christian minister. That is when the week got a little dramatic. At first he started making snide comments, but eventually he cornered me and berated me for a good hour about my beliefs. That's fine, I've met plenty of atheists before, and have had peaceable 'agree to disagree' converations. Almost always, it is a very personal thing to them and they have been wronged by believers, so the last thing on my mind is changing their opinions.

However, this guy was relentless and tactless, and the bad news for him (and for me, to an extent) was that I was not there by myself. My dad was there. And after he observed the dialogue for a short while, the father-bear-trying-to-protect-his-cub in him took over. The two men went outside, male testosterone full bore and mixed with alcohol (like I've always said, BAD combo) their voices escalating to the point of a senseless screaming match, ending with the exchange of F- YOU!'s. Super. Awesome vacation. Our families parted ways like the Red Sea.

My step-mom and I went off trying to find my dad, who was down by the water, steam blowing out his ears like in the old cartoons. I understood why he felt the need to be protective and angry at his supposed "friend." Yes, I agree, I think it is a good policy in general to have friends who will not attack your children.

HOWEVER, I felt tremendous compassion toward this man, which my dad was not aiding by saying, "I never want to speak to him again." I tried explaining that Jesus was persecuted all the time, and he still a) KNEW who he was and never lost sight of his identity and b) MET others where they were and c)LOVED people. This is my call as a Christian, and should hopefully be my dad's call too. We will hopefully always meet people who are different than us and learn from one another. Mutual respect is always better than categorically denying someone else's beliefs or discarding relationships with people who believe differently than you.

Calling

"Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism and direction lived out as a response to God's summons and service."
-Os Guinness


"Vocation comes from the Latin vocare "to call" and means the work a person is called to by God. There are different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say or the superego, or self-interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work a) that you need to do and b) that the world needs to have done... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness/joy and the world's deepest hunger meet."
-Frederick Buechner

GRADUATION

For those who've been asking for info, here's a little of what I found for the CA graduation:

Commencement will be held Saturday, June 14, at 10:00 a.m. at Lake Avenue Church, 393 North Lake Avenue, in Pasadena. The service itself will last a little more than two hours. The auditorium will be open for admission beginning at 8:30 a.m. In order to ensure adequate preferred seating for the families of all graduates, admission will require a Family Early Admission Pass until 9:30 a.m., at which time admission will be open to all. All graduates will receive an application for Family Early Admission Passes. There will be no fixed number of passes allocated per graduate. However, in order to ensure adequate and appropriate seating for the families of graduates, these passes will normally be available for family members only.

I have no idea how many people are graduating, doctoral candidates and master's-level students are all together. This place is massive, and will hopefully accomodate everyone with ease if you get there early enough. For our family, and my high school and college friends, we'll have some kind of get together that day as well, yet to be planned. We're staying (with JJ and Lisa Kissinger too) at the Embassy Suites in Arcadia, which KC told me is maybe 10 minutes away.

This is less than two months away! I can't wait! I will have announcements to distribute soon-ish.

I'll keep you posted on the small WA graduation, which is the previous Saturday. After 5 long years, what great celebrations those will be! Los and I want to have a WA party as well, some time this summer; but likely after our celebration trip to England, Greece and Turkey.

“I Want the Red Ones.”

Humor from the grocery store…

The girl in front of the line looks about 15, puts her 2 items down and says to the cashier, “Oh, and I want a pack of cigarettes.”

“Which kind?”

“Umm, I forget which ones I like, I think it’s the red ones; yeah, gimme a pack of the red ones.”

“The red ones?” the cashier asks quizzically and raises an eyebrow. (who says that?!)

(peering at the name) “Marlboro. They’re, like, not too strong, right?”

“Strong? I don’t understand what you mean…”

“Never mind, I just want one pack.”

“Okay, well I’ll have to see your ID”(Girl hands her her debit card)

“I still need your ID.”

“What? My picture’s on there.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t show your age.”

“Don’t you only have to be 18 to buy these? Come on… fine, I’ll get it. (She rummages through purse, sure enough, no ID) Oh, um, I must have left it in the car.”

“Then you can’t buy these, would you still like your other items?”

(Flustered and red, the girl scurries away, mumbling) “no, it’s okay.”

She leaves behind a box of tampons and a toothbrush.

Good times.

10 on 10

So some of my fun friends are doing the 10 on 10: posting 10 photos from 10 different hours of the day on the 10th of the month. I love the idea, but am a little slow in catching up to speed with them. I did take photos on the 10th (Thurs) but not all 10. Here is what I have for this month:

After a mellow day (not worth photojournalism) we had a reunion of my college Bible study. That was so fun as I love these girls more than life itself. Shannon now has two boys, Kirsty's preggo with their first, Jennie and I are just enjoying married life, and Erika and Jodi are pursuing their passions as singles. Being with these gals is always a highlight of my life.

Then we went to meet Monica and Erik's new baby, a girl born at noon, Audrey. Big brother Jackson is so excited about her, even if he tried to trade his grubby blue blanket for her clean soft, new pink one:)

Best friends and a sweet city skyline

The four ladies (and one boy in the oven)

The dad-to-be, the dad of two, and the wanna-be dad:)