People

Carol and Andy

Today was the big end-of-year award ceremony at school. While there are awards for the entire middle and upper school, there is a significant focus on the seniors. with honor awards of various kinds. The senior with the top thesis presentation gave a slightly shortened version of that (and Dorothy was thankful that wasn’t her “honor”). There were also departmental awards. Although they could go to anyone, the senior class tended to predominate. I won’t embarrass Dorothy by telling you how she did, except to say that she was embarrassed enough on the day.

I took pictures throughout the ceremony, as well as a few short videos (and one almost 10 minutes long). Most of the pictures are nice in terms of memories for us, but not particularly great photographs otherwise. A person walking onto the stage and receiving a piece of paper. Someone standing at the podium. That sort of thing.

After the award ceremony was over, I took a few more, but not a lot. Cathy took some of me with my mom, which was nice, but of course, my aim here is to post a picture that I took, not just something taken with my camera. The final picture I took is this one of Carol and Andy, grandparents of Dorothy very dear friend, Hannah. I hesitated to post this one, because the lighting is so harsh, but it’s a cute picture of a cute couple. So, here you are.

Cathy

It’s been a little while since I posted a picture of Cathy, so, here you go. Usually when I post another picture of Cathy or Dorothy, I wonder “aloud” if I’m being too repetitive. This time, I won’t even mention that (oops!). Instead, I’ll say that I’m fortunate, indeed, to be married to such a woman as this.

We’re coming up on 30 years of marriage and in fact, have past 30 years since I asked her (and she agreed) to marry me. That’s a pretty good while, but we aren’t done yet. Of course, no one knows how long he has before he shuffles off this mortal coil (as Hamlet might say). While we need to look to the future, we also need to think back on the past, both with thankfulness and with humility. Thankfulness for all that we’ve been given. Humility in light of our misdeeds, sins both of commission and of omission. Nevertheless, we live in an amazing time, a time like no other in the brief history of mankind. And while there has been and continues to be war and strife throughout the world, we have been blessed with relative peace and prosperity the likes of which has never been seen. I could go on about the abundance we share, but today, I’m thankful for this one person, Cathy, who has been kind enough to live with me. And for as many more years as we are given. Thank you.

“Winter” Retreat (Spring Edition)

As I was making plans early this year for things to do with the youth group at church, I decided that in addition to our summer trip, it would be nice to have a winter retreat, something close to six months opposite, in late January or early February. Unfortunately, because I was making this decision in late January and early February, it was a bit late. I decided that I didn’t want to wait 11 months for our first winter retreat and I also wanted to include this year’s seniors. So, we had our first “Winter” Retreat on May 9 through 11 (thus the “Spring Edition” part of the name). This picture is of some of our youth, sprawled around the meeting room Friday evening, at Covenant Village in Pennsylvania. If you’re looking for a place for a retreat or camp, you should give Covenant Village a look. We found it perfect for our needs and I’m pretty sure most had a great time.

Katie, Jessie, and Dorothy

I took a bunch of pictures at church this evening and as usual, I had a hard time deciding which one to post. Some of them were not very flattering, so were easy to eliminate. I don’t mind having unflattering pictures of people. They come in handy once in a while, and they are good for a laugh years later. But for posting here, I would rather pick flattering pictures, or at least not-unflattering pictures. This one is pretty nice. It is Dorothy with two of her friends, Katie on the left and Jessie in the middle.

Brittany and Nicole

Cathy and I took a relaxing little drive up interstate 95 this morning. Actually, except for about four miles approaching the Harbor Tunnel Thruway south of Baltimore, we didn’t have any trouble. Traffic was heavy but moving quite nicely. We were visiting the folks that I’ll be working with one week this summer. Back in July of 2011 we had a similar trip with CSM Toronto which I was (sort of) tricked into leading. This year I volunteered. Actually, I’m looking forward to it. It was good to meet Brittany and Nicole, who run the office in Philadelphia. In addition to seeing where we’ll be staying and a few of our work sites, we had a nice lunch with them along with another team leader and his wife.

Maureen, Jessie, Dorothy, Gretchen, Anna, Ellen, and Mary

I drove a few students from the youth group out to the University of Maryland this evening for a Cru event. After it was done, we went to Cold Stone Creamery, nearby and managed to get there just before they closed.

Here’s the group (from left to right): Maureen, Jessie, Dorothy, Gretchen, Anna, Ellen, and Mary. Safiya got to Stone Cold just after the picture was taken, unfortunately.

Cathy

You can never have too many pictures of your friends and family. The longer I live and the more pictures I take, the more I believe this to be true.

For yesterday I posted a picture of Lucia that I took at church. Today, a picture of my ever young bride, Cathy. This got me thinking about having pictures of people and the realization that you can’t have too many of them.

Have you ever gone back and looked at pictures from 5, 10, or 15 years ago (or longer)? Isn’t it wonderfully fun? The one problem I sometimes face is looking at a picture of someone I know I knew well and not remembering their name. It isn’t likely to happen with pictures of Cathy, of course, but of those not related to me, it’s all too possible. So, label your pictures as you take them. It makes looking at them all the more enjoyable. But whatever you do, take lots of pictures.

Lucia

I only took a handful of photographs on this date (Wednesday, March 26), all of them at our church youth group meeting this evening. I’m posting this on Sunday the 30th. Last night I promised to post one of the portraits that I took. Dorothy and I agree that this is the best of them.

I do not believe that Lucia has graced this blog before today, so let me introduce her to you all. Lucia moved here in the last year so has had the difficulty of making a completely new set of friends. We were fortunate to have her and her parents find us at church.

One thing I enjoy is learning the various expressions of my friends. Some find it easy to smile and laugh. Others are more reluctant (particularly when a camera is aimed at them). Lucia is one of those fortunate people to whom a smile comes very easily. It certainly adds to her face value, don’t you think?

Cathy

One thing I worry about (although I can’t say it actually keeps me up at night) is that I am repeating myself on this here blog thing. Are my pictures too repetitive? Am I not creative enough? What can I do to get something different. The problem is that even if I do something different one day, that’s just one day. then I’m back to looking for something to photograph the next. But that’s life for you. Life is repetitive. We see the same people and travel the same roads most days and that’s not always bad. If every day were completely different to the day before our lives would be pretty tiring. That’s something about travel that I love but also don’t like. The sheer differentness of each day gets tiring after a while. And even then, there are many things that are the same. I mostly don’t mind the sameness to my days. It means, among other things, that life is pretty stable for me. Anyway, I get to come home to this lovely lady every day, and that really is good.

Elizabeth

There are always people that you wish you’d run into more often and this little girl and her family are in that category. I’ve been taking pictures of her and her brothers since they were tiny but the chances I get are way too far apart for my taste. We always say we should get together more often and we really mean it, but it doesn’t work out, somehow. I’m convinced life gets squeezed out by all the stuff we fill our life with and here I use the word “stuff” where a stronger word my do better.

Anyway, Elizabeth is about 14 months older than the last time I took her picture, I think. As you can see, she’s missing a few teeth but her smile is just as genuine as ever. Her brothers were around, as well, and I tried a few times to get pictures of her younger brother but he wasn’t having any of it.

Fiona

She appeared here on October 3, 2013 at about age four weeks. She’s really grown a lot and happened to come to work today with her mom. I heard a knock on my door and was happy to have this face waiting for me (and Kasia’s, of course) when I opened my door. The picture from October doesn’t really have a good smile but now she’s getting the hang of it.

Calvin

I was over at Henry and Calvin’s house this evening. I suppose it’s really Greta and Andy’s house, but when you have kids as cute as these two, you are going to have to learn that it’s their house that people come to. Actually, I wasn’t there to be with the kids. That was a wonderful bonus and of course I took the time to take pictures of both of them.

Calvin, being still fairly young, isn’t as adept as his big brother in making facial expressions on command but he did smile a few times for me and I think this picture captures it pretty well. He’s getting over a cold and I think his head was stuffed up, which didn’t help him much, but he’s basically a happy boy.

Henry

It’s been a while since I’ve seen them and I was quite impressed with how much talking Henry is doing and how understandable he is. Once or twice during the evening he’d say something and we’d all look at each other as if to say, “do you have any idea what he just said?” Mostly, though, he’s quite understandable and starting to communicate clearly. He still has his wonderful smile and is getting better at smiling when asked.

Great kids, good food, healthy discussion. All the makings of an enjoyable evening.

James, Jonny, and Dorothy

We were down in Richmond for the long weekend, arriving at about 3:45 this afternoon. When we got there, we were warmly greeted by James and Jonny, who are interns at Hillside Missions. They showed us around the building, including their apartment and shared the loaf of bread they had just made. Shortly after this, we left Dorothy with James, Jonny, Becca, and Katy and headed off to our hotel.