People

Susan and Joel

We celebrated a birthday with some new friends today. This is Susan, whose birthday it was, and Joel (sorry, I don’t know when his birthday is), and Ralda is photobombing on the left. It’s been great to get to know these folks and we look forward to getting to know everyone better going forward. Susan said she doesn’t like pictures of herself, but I hope she won’t mind this one. I think it turned out rather well.

What a beautiful afternoon it was. Windy and cool but nice and warm in the sun.

Tomi, Valerie, and Mary

We have some friends who work with international students at a medical school in Romania. We were fortunate enough to have Erin as Dorothy’s first grade teacher. For about seven years now, she and her husband, David, have lived and worked in Romania and their four children have lived more of their lives there than here. We got to visit with them briefly this evening at an open house and this is one of the photos I took. Two of these young women were students at the med school and are now living in this area. I don’t actually know them, except as friends of Dave and Erin, but I do like the picture, don’t you?

Bob at the Grand Canyon, 1974

Dad would have been 88 today. This isn’t a photo taken today, obviously, and I do have a photo taken today to post a little later. This was taken by my mom in the summer of 1974, when we all hiked down the Grand Canyon. That was a pretty nice trip. In addition to the Grand Canyon, we did some hiking at Devil’s Postpile National Monument in northern California and spent some time on Spruce Mountain in northeastern Nevada.

I think about dad quite a bit but especially on dates like his birthday. Mom sent this photo around along with a few others from that trip. This year, I got an extra dose of thinking about dad because I got a text this morning from a good friend saying that his wife’s father had passed away this morning. This is not a club I look forward to welcoming anyone into, but it’s a place where we all get, eventually.

Dad, here’s to you.

Sokho, Nick, Jeffrey, Anna, Katie, Lucia, and Timmy

As mentioned in the previous photo, the youth retreat was this weekend and I came up today, joining the group already there. It was a smallish group this time, due to various conflicts that others had. We missed those who could not be there but had a great time with those who came. It was fairly chilly so we all sat pretty close to the fire Friday evening, roasting marshmallows and talking and basically having a good time. It had rained early in the day and was cloudy most of the day but it cleared up about the time this was taken. I even got a pretty decent photo of the Big Dipper a little later.

Cathy

A bit of a milestone was reached today. I’ve had my current camera, a Canon EOS 60D, since Christmas, 2010. Then, a week later I started my Project 365 and have taken at least one photograph every day since then. In the 1,552 days I’ve had this camera, I’ve taken photographs all but two of them (December 26 and 27, 2010). Today, I took the 100,000th photograph with this camera (although the image number is 100,010 because the camera resets to image number 1 instead of to 0 (zero) after 9,999). In case anyone cares, that’s an average of 64.4 images per day. My previous camera, a Canon 10D, was at 87,376 images when I got this new camera. I had owned that one for 2,823 days, averaging only 31 images per day (and not taking any on a lot of those days).

Cathy and Dorothy have, not surprisingly, been common subjects for my photography and Cathy let me take a few of her this evening to reach the 100,000 point.

Hannah, Susie, Lynn, Dorothy, Ginny, Cassandra, Kaitlyn, and Katy in front.

I’m behind in posting this but on Sunday we went to pick up Dorothy at Dulles Airport on her return from Asia. They were a while getting through customs and all but finally they walked out into the airport lobby. She (and I presume the entire team) had a great time and we were happy to get a chance to hear her stories and visit with her for a little more than a day before she had to return to Richmond. They were all pretty tired and glad to be back on the ground again. In the photo, we have (from left to right) Hannah, Susie, Lynn, Dorothy, Ginny, Cassandra, Kaitlyn, and Katy in front.

Erin and David

This morning we had a wonderful, if altogether too short visit from our dear friends, Erin and David, along with their beautiful children. They wanted some family photos and came over for a short photo shoot. We started with some family shots, with all of them on the sofa, then a few of Erin and Dave (this is one of those, in case you’re having trouble figuring it out). We also took individual portraits of each of the family members and I’m happy to say that there is at least one pretty good picture of each of them. Thanks for coming, guys, and we hope to see you again, soon.

Dorothy and Her Driver’s License

As mentioned in the previous post, also for March 3, Dorothy and I drove up to Frederick today. The purpose of the trip was for Dorothy to take her driving test for her license. We went early so that she could practice backing into a parking space for a bit. Also, we borrowed her Uncle Albert’s car, which is smaller than ours and made things much easier for her. She wanted time getting use to that car, as well, of course.

We still had time after she got to the point she was pretty confident, so we went into town, went into an antique shop and had time for a nice lunch at Cafe Nola. While walking in the downtown are it was sleeting but at the time she had her actual road test, it had stopped so she didn’t have that to contend with, anyway. Also, we saw a bald eagle a little earlier, and we took that to be a good omen.

I’m happy to say that she passed, and is now a legal driver. Congratulations, Dorothy

Bob Prentiss with Family and Friends

For many years Bob Prentiss said that he’d get baptized when hell freezes over. How prophetic. Today, at the 4:30 Saturday afternoon service at Mosaic (a.k.a. “a church for people who don’t go to church”), with between six and eight inches of snow on the ground and with roads poorly cleared at best, Bob was baptized.

There were people who could not get there because of the snow—we left home a little before noon and it was slow going—but it was going to take more than a bit of snow to keep us away. This picture is from after the service. From left to right: Cathy, Dorothy, Kadie, Stephen, Maureen, Bob, Julia, Heart, Heather (holding Heart’s baby daughter, Emma), and Carl (the pastor at Mosaic).

Katy, Dorothy, and Cathy

Dorothy and one of her new friends from Richmond came up for the weekend. It was a pretty hectic time but we really enjoyed having them here. We saw David and Darius again this evening but Darius was not feeling well so I didn’t take any pictures of them.

After they left I took a few pictures of Dorothy and Katy. Cathy asked if she could get in the picture and this is the result.