Ryan's Poem

Ryan and I have been talking about how we want Christ to really be the focus during Christmas, as there is so much to try and distract us. We have been thinking of ways for us to celebrate as a married couple and also with future children, that will glorify Jesus during this time and not Santa Clause (who we are not planning to teach our children to believe in). We have some ideas for us within our home, but we were looking for ways to do this when visiting with our families. We thought about maybe a story or poem, but we didn't find anything that seemed to be what we were looking for. Ryan decided to write a poem to read to my family on Christmas after dinner. I think that he did a great job and I wanted to share it here.

Through stormy night on cold, damp hay,
The head of Jesus softly lay.
This stall for oxen barely meet,
Chose God for him his first night’s sleep.

Outside the wind and thunder cracks,
As if all of hell at once attacks.
A place no human could find rest,
A storm the hearts of kings would test.

While wind and rain and thunder chill,
Christ continues sleeping still.
For right above, in dark night sky,
He sees his Father’s angels fly.

This was the first, but not the last,
Of trials our faithful Savior passed.
For soon he’d hang upon the cross,
Where all his good appeared his loss.

But through his death upon that tree,
He gave true life to you and me.
And now in Glory Jesus stands,
With open heart and outstretched hands.

And one day soon life’s storm will break,
And Jesus hands you’ll reach and take.
To where He is, you He will bring,
To live forever with your King.

Belated Christmas Greetings!

Merry Christmas! I'm a little behind in posting! Or actually, I'm just celebrating the whole advent season so I'm right on time! We're in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas leading up to the celebration of Epiphany (when the wise men traditionally show up to see baby Jesus).

On Dec.15th, we went to the Nutcracker ballet with our moms after eating out at a great Thai restaurant.


Christmas Eve was spent with Ryan's extended family (34 people) near Seattle. On Christmas morning we went to my mom's for our traditional sausage casserole and cheese grits breakfast.


Afterwards we opened presents, and in the evening we had dinner and celebrated my grandmother's 86th birthday, which is on Christmas.

San Juan Island

Ryan and I had a four-day getaway to San Juan island for a break from work and school. We had a great time and saw so many animals including a fox, chickens, ducks, deer, alpacas, pigs, horses, porpoises, bald eagles, and an animal that we surely didn't expect to see in Washington. Click on the clip below to find out which animal.

We stayed at a beautiful log cabin resort surrounded by 3 lakes and 82 acres. It usually is a pretty pricey place, but they were having a special during Nov. & Dec. if you stayed during the weekdays. A nice breakfast was included in the price. We stayed for 3 nights. For the first two nights, we were the only ones staying there. At 5 pm the staff left and it was like having a huge log cabin all to ourselves. At night, we came downstairs to read books by the fireplace and play chess. In our room, we had a fireplace (something we don't have at home but wish that we did) and a large jetted tub. The room looked out over the lake. The video below shows some of our trip.

Baker River Trail

We are both done with school for about a month. I won't have to be back to work until Jan. 7th. Ryan has some work to do, but for the most part, we are able to get out and enjoy some things that we've been wanting to but have had to either work or do homework.

A few days ago we went on a hike on the Baker River trail. I forgot about adding it to the blog until I was just looking back through some of our recent pictures.

Leavenworth

Ryan and I invited some international students to go to Leavenworth with us for their Christmas tree lighting festival. They had not seen snow, so we wanted to take them to see it. For those from out of state, Leavenworth is a little town east of the mountains in WA that is designed to look like a village of Bavaria, Germany.

From L to R we have: Kola & Jeremy (from Hong Kong), Ryan, Elizabeth, and Kanita (from Thailand). We enjoy making friends from other countries and learning about them and their countries, while at the same time introducing them to America and our culture(s).

They enjoyed the drive through the mountains saying it was like something from a movie.

Lots of sledders.

Main Street shopping

We had roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. We found out that they are also popular in H.K. and Thailand.

We borrowed our 8 year old friend's sled--thanks Cordell! Everyone got to try sledding. Kanita is behind me, though you can't see her face.

Afterwards we had a German dinner together. It was greasy and not so good. :P Jeremy asked Ryan and I about our beliefs and if we believed in Mary. We weren't completely sure what he meant, but we explained that we believe that Mary was a human like us, who gave birth to Jesus. We told him that that is what who are celebrating at Christmas--Jesus.

We asked if he'd heard about Jesus dying for our sins. He had. (If he hadn't...we probably would not have explained too much at that point.....you've got to give bite sized pieces of information that may be completely new). We said that we believed that Mary was real, but that she is not (or not nearly) equal with God and that we do not pray to her. He said that he believed like we did and wanted to go to a church like we do. We said that he was welcome to come with us anytime.

His mother is buddhist and his father is atheist. I'm not sure where his Christian interest started. He said that he wanted a bible to practice English. I think that he'll be getting a bilingual English/Cantonese one sometime soon! :) I've given out a few bilingual bibles in the past to others. I think it's very important to read the bible in your first/heart language as it's difficult enough like that.

Class Party

Tuesday night was our end of the quarter party with my night class. Ryan came and we had a lot of fun. We did a white elephant gift exchange which was quite entertaining because there were many great gifts that kept getting stolen back and forth. I put a limit that a gift could not be stolen more than twice. Some students brought family, as you can see. The kids are not my students. : ) Students in my evening class are from Peru, Ukraine, Belarus, Mexico, Thailand, China, and South Korea.

These are some shots of opening gifts during the game.

Tis the Season!

It's the busy Christmas season. Yesterday (Monday) was our end of the quarter party with my day class. We had food like mole, shrimp yakisoba, spring rolls, fish tacos (that's what I brought), and flan. It was great! We also had a white elephant gift exchange. In the back row, far right, is another teacher. My day class is small. The night class is bigger and our party is tonight. I plan to put up some pictures of that later on.

Countries represented are: U.S. (that'd be the teachers), Mexico, Japan, Bolivia, and China. There is a Ukrainian student also (not pictured). It's fun to have a class of all women and to learn about each other's countries. Notice that I (at 5'2") am slouching so as not to look too tall!! That never happens for me. I was wearing about 2" heeled boots, but so were others. It's nice having students from "shorter stature" countries so I don't always feel like a dwarf in a group!

From Saturday until Tuesday I have/had four different parties. On Saturday night, we went to the house of the couple that's leading the marriage Sunday School that we attend. We brought along the two guys from Hong Kong that Ryan is conversation partners with. They really enjoyed it, and so did we.

On Sunday was the Ladies Christmas party at our church. My mom came and also two of my students. Here is a picture of my mom and me. Some of the pictures didn't come out well. The flash made the background too dark, but it also wasn't very good without it. : /

These are two of my students. One if from Mexico and the other is from Thailand. I don't think I need to identify which one is which. : ) We made snowman ornaments.

To save on the cost of tickets, ladies volunteered to decorate tables. Here is mine. They had told me that all cups, plates, and plastic ware would be provided, so that's why you don't see that. It's nothing fancy, but at least I got to use the chargers that we got for a wedding present!

I took shots of some of the more beautifully decorated tables.

This is the huge table of desserts that we had. I was thankful for the person who missed the "bring a dessert" note and brought two huge veggie trays!! ; )