Sat. 10-19-16 The Wedding

The Wedding!

I had a wonderful time on my visit to Oregon. All the relatives are great! Harriet's older brother Jim and younger brother John both live in Halsey Oregon. Their children and grandchildren live relatively close by and came in for the wedding. It was John's son Caleb that was getting married to Ashley.

The wedding took place out-of-doors, near the town of Sweet Home, OR.

The reception took place in the barn type structure that was built specifically for this purpose and would hold at about 250 people.

You can see they are cooking food in the above picture. John and Diane's daughter, Jenelle and her husband John raised the hog that was butchered for the reception. And they cooked it and made pulled pork. Really great family.

I'm getting ahead of myself in the order of events but this is a picture inside the barn for the reception. Left to right, me, Harriet's sister LeeAnn, LeeAnn's husband Spence and Harriet's older brother Jim.

 The picture below: Harriet's brother John, praying for his son Caleb and new daughter-in-law Ashley.

At the reception we had 2 jars one with Caleb's name on it and one with Ashley's name. You put money into the jar that you want that person to get cake in their face. Of course Caleb got more money so his wife got to smire his face with cake. I was just thinking, Harriet and I did not do that.

The groom dancing with his mother, Diane.

I'm going to add some more pictures just to show you how beautiful it was.

 Of course my favorite picture, a nice fixer-upper. Early 1950s Chevy, it just needs a little work.

Well, that gives you an idea of how the wedding went. It's really beautiful country in Oregon and it would be a great place to live if it didn't get so cold.

Maranatha,
Frank

10-20-16 Thursday

I am writing the blog early this week because I leave on Friday morning at zero dark thirty to go to the airport. Plane leaves at 6:30AM flying to Portland, OR.  John, Harriet's younger  brother's son, Caleb is getting married on Saturday. Something that both Harriet and I talked about last couple years that when Caleb gets married we're going to fly up there and attend the wedding. Hopefully I'll have some pictures for the blog next week.

In San Diego we're having a "Mild Santa Anna condition". I checked the weather report and it's raining and the highs will be 60° where I'm going too.

I went over to Tanner's and Breanna Verhoeks home yesterday evening. Tanner's mother Janie was there and we had a really nice time of fellowship. I'm attaching a picture of little Lincoln. He is one year old and he's so cute. As Janie pointed out that when I 1st went over there to see them and this was about 6 months ago, Lincoln was very concerned about me and would cry when I tried to make friends with him. Gradually we have become friends. Yesterday I picked him up and did the tango with him. (Disclaimer: no I really don't dance. Only with babies.)You know the part when people were dancing the tango, they put their hands together and stretch out their arm and go in that direction and then be swivel around and come back. Like this picture below.

 I was doing that with Lincoln and he loved it. When we put him down he would reach his arms up and he wants to go again. I got my exercise last night.  Janie took this picture. Next time I will ask Janie to take a picture of Lincoln and me doing the tango bit.

 

 That's about all the excitement this past week. Pastor Mike Spees will be preaching this Sunday at Maranatha Bible Church, I know it will be great!

Maranatha,
Frank

 2007 Dukes in Hawaii

10-15-16 Sat.

Can we talk? Do you remember my Oriental barber? That was a couple of blogs back. Well he finally finished remodeling and repairing his barbershop. I went in and you probably can guess he's raised its prices. I should of took a picture of him when I was there is he's really a nice guy. Can't understand the things he says, but still a nice guy.

We had Family Night at church last night. Sometimes when there's a really good movie out we play it and we showed the movie it's called The War Room. I will tell you it's one of the best movies I've seen for a long time. I highly encourage you to get a copy and watch it.



Last week I put a picture in of Harriet and I in Hawaii in 2001. Today I have a picture that was taken in 2003 which I've not put on this blog.

 This picture was taken in the Family Room at Sonrise Community Church. 2003, That was the year that I hurt my back so bad that I was in a wheelchair and did not know if I was going to be able to walk again. It was New Year's Day weekend when I hurt my back, lifting a large television set and throwing it into a dumpster. I decided to sell our home in Del Mar and we moved to Santee. I remember that I was in a wheelchair when we came and we where looking at mobile homes. When we found the one that we are currently living in, the previous owners had died and they were very old. They probably had not done anything for 15 years. I remember. Harriet couldn't believe I was moving her into The Dump. That's actually what I called it and I made a video of what this place look like before we upgraded everything. I told Harriet that I would spend whatever amount of money it would take to make it nice. We stripped it down to the bare walls and rebuilt the entire thing. I remember years later Harriet Saying that this is the nicest place we've ever lived and I agree.

November 2003, the big fire! It burned all the way from Julian to Tierasanta. I remember that when we came out of our mobile home there was fire all the way around the perimeter of Santee. We lost electrical power and I decided to pack the essentials into our van and we drove over to our church.

Here are a few pictures as a reminder.


 
Those were some tough days. If I remember correctly over 1500 houses burned and that's just in the San Diego area. As you can see there were fires burning north of us also.




The message I will be preaching tomorrow is taken from the Book of Revelation chapter 2. It is the letter specifically written to the church at Ephesus, but we can learn from their mistakes. They had lost their First love. I hope you will make the right choice and be in the house of the Lord tomorrow. All choices have good or bad consequences. It's time to start making good choices.

Maranatha,
Frank

Sat. 10-8-16, 9/11 2001

I wanted to give you a little background on our 1st trip to Hawaii in 2001. We're supposed to fly to Hawaii on September 21, 2001. Of course, you all know what happened on 9/11. The terrorists attacked and brought down the twin towers in New York.

This was our 1st trip to Hawaii and I was going through a travel agent. What's a travel agent? Are there any travel agents around anymore? If there are, there can't be that many. Pretty much they are gone the way of the dinosaur. Our travel agent had scheduled us to fly from San Diego to San Francisco and then to Hawaii. I had contacted her and asked her why we don't just take a direct flight? Of course, there are the standard answers, which really were unacceptable. I canceled the flight that she had scheduled and rescheduled taking Hawaiian Airlines directly from San Diego to Honolulu. It cut off at least 3 hours from the flying time.

When we got to Hawaii it was deserted. Not really, it's just that a whole lot of people had canceled their vacations because of 9/11. I probably didn't mention it, but we were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary which would've been on September 4, 2001. I made hotel reservations at the Outrigger Hotel which is part of the Ohana chain of hotels. It's right on the beach in Waikiki and Duke's restaurant is on the ground floor of the hotel.

So when you look at this picture you will know that it was our 1st time and the picture is taken at Duke's restaurant. This is always been one of our favorites. It has the proverbial million-dollar view. You can see Diamondhead in the background.

Now I want to tell you about my shirt. We bought it at one of the 76 ABC stores in Honolulu. There seems to be an ABC store almost on any block and sometimes two on one block in Waikiki. This was not a terribly expensive shirt, but the reason I'm bringing this up is because I still have this shirt and will wear it today to Bible classes. What is amazing about it, it has retained its beautiful colors. That's what I find amazing!
We had a really nice time and we were able to go back to Hawaii many times.

I hope you have a wonderful day!
Maranatha,
Frank

Sat. 10-1-16

Can we talk?  I have some good news and some bad news. I am going to rant about haircuts. By now you have seen that I am follically challenged. But, Harriet used to convince me that I need to get a haircut once a month, so at least things are trimmed up nicely.

So after Harriet died I thought I could stretch it out and get a haircut once every two months. Here is where the problem starts. I have a Vietnamese barber that has his barbershop approximately 1 mile from my house. I've been going to for many years and all of you know both men and women, that when you finally get your hairdresser trained to do your hair the way you wanted to, not too short, not too long, you hate to switch.

So, earlier in September, I stopped off at the barber shop, to get a haircut and there was a sign in the window that says that he will be closed until September 16 because of a water line break. Then I come back on the 17th and the sign has been changed to 26 September. Yes, you guessed it, I come back on the 27th and he's in his shop working doing a complete renovation. He  said it will be a few more weeks before he has completed his project. So that's why I look like the shaggy dog.

Now the good news. I want to thank everybody for your suggestions concerning baked potatoes. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read last week's blog. I appreciate all the help. It seems that there is a number of ways to cook a baked potato. If you recall last week I said I'd look up to find out if there's a special machine for baking potatoes and guess what? Yes, there is. The one I was looking at gives you the ability to cook 80 potatoes at one time and you can keep 40 more potatoes in a warmer. No price was given, but I think that was way more than what I needed.

I received an email from my friend Victoria who I've known for about 30 years. She said that she cooks her baked potatoes and yes she likes the skin crispy like I do, for an hour and 15 minutes at 425°. You know how it is, it's one of those things you get the email of the exact time you're thinking about preparing for dinner. So I followed her directions.

I've documented my potato cooking. The 1st picture you can see that it's a small to medium size potato. Scrubbed clean.

I turned the potato every 20 minutes and yes I use a timer. When I took the potato out and plunged a fork into it, it went in really easy so I knew the potato was cooked.

  It turned out great, thank you everybody, for all your assistance.

This will be kind of a long blog post because I have so much new information. If you recall a few months ago I said that a couple of the little plants of Harriet's are dying. I kept forgetting to water them and we had some hot weather. So I decided to water every day and it seems that there's little green leaves starting to show up. But, we'll see in a few weeks if he gets even greener.

I was watching Blue Bloods, which is a TV program about a family of policemen in New York City. One of the main characters is Tom Selleck, who plays the police commissioner. In the program, I was watching, he is a widower. He was married for 40 years and the program episode takes place on Valentine's Day. He was commenting that he found a box that had all the old Valentine's Day cards that his wife was saving. I stopped the recording and I figured that Harriet would do the same thing. I went to her nightstand and in the bottom area, there was a shoebox. It had a lot of different cards in it, pictures and letters that were very important to her. I took some of the pictures out and scanned them so I will have some new pictures for this blog.

The 1st picture is of Harriet and our son Joseph taken on October 31, 2004. I'm sure glad that she wrote the dates on the back of the pictures. She always liked to have hardcopies that she could hold in her hand as opposed to viewing on the computer screen.

Today is Harriet's birthday.

 This next picture was taken in 2008. Our friend Pastor Mike Spees, came over to Hawaii while we were there. So he and I went on an Outrigger canoe ride. It's the best attraction in Hawaii. For about $10 a person, you get in the canoe and paddle out and catch a total of 3 waves and then come back in. Yes, and they do work you like a rented mule. You have to paddle hard to catch the waves. If I can remember I will try and include a link next week to an adventure that Pastor Mike and I had in Hawaii. The waves were so big on the South Shore that none of the canoes were going out. I finally talked to one of the captains into taking us out and he charged us $50 a person. No, Harriet did not go out. I will tell you more about it next week and I have a slide show and it will  show you the size of the waves. They were Bombora! By the way, I'm in the number 1 position in the front of the boat and pastor Mike is seated right behind me. I sent him a copy of this picture this week.

 I think that would be it for now. I hope that you all have a great weekend. The message I'm preaching on this Sunday morning is, "Jacob Wrestles with God". I hope that you'll be able to make it or you'll be in the house of the Lord that you regularly attend.

Maranatha,
Frank