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Bet you wonder where I've been...all two of you who read this. Most recently camping. Hard to believe it has been over a week ago since we went!!!

Psycho Dog went along this time, and amazingly did not suffer a complete and utter mental collapse, though we were all worried on the way there, as he was in his kennel under a flapping tarp barking his brains out for a good portion of the trip. He has an obsession with tennis balls that is over the top. He will bark at the kids in the back yard the whole time they are out there if they don't throw a ball for him every 15 seconds.

He will chase one for hours and can pretty much outlast any human who will attempt to wear him down. He ran and ran and barked and shook his stinky, wet, sandy self all over Geoff's students every time he got in/out of the water the whole day while we were down at the lake. He wouldn't even stop for a drink.

Little L going for a ride in the boat.Daddy the human life raft.One of the students coming within reach of whiplash, and loving every minute of it.

Lady L with a lizard.
For the meeting times, the topic was how various people worship God with bits from the Sacred Pathways book by Gary Thomas. Little G wanted to be in the middle of everything and it was kind of that he actually picked up on some of what was taught/discussed and wanted to take the test that evaluates one's preferred ways of worshipping God himself!

Home group work day

A couple of home groups from our church joined forces on Saturday and did some work at IBC. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of everyone who participated, and many of the pictures didn't turn out well, but here are a few of the better ones:

There was a lot of cleaning...

The "cloudiness" of this photo is actually dust...These two were having a fun time trying to rake together:Even the kids worked!

And played a little, too.Lots of painting...Pizza for lunch! Before and after shots would have been nice, too, but there were none of those either!

Procrastination Wednesday and much more

It seems like some organizational, get-your-life-in-order website I used to subscribe to had "anti-procrastination Wednesday" where you were supposed to tackle things you had been putting off or something like that on that day.

It's 10:52am and not one speck of school has been accomplished yet. Two young people who should be finishing up school and violin practice have mysteriously disappeared, and since they are being very quiet, I have not set out to find them and jump into my daily role of "teacher." Partly because I know the response is going to be especially unpleasant, due to them being up 2 hours past their bedtime last night. And partly due to me being up too late for the past 2 nights and several nights the week prior to that. Ambition is ebbing under the circumstances...

The reason for it being a late one last night, was the Indian Bible College's 50th anniversary alumni potluck (also including all current students and staff). Though it was really a struggle for me to be social last night (due to being out so late the night before among other things), I was blessed/inspired/encouraged by the turn out, the testimonies, the worship, and hearing a bit more of the history of IBC.

This family was sharing how God has held them together and how they came to be at IBC this fall:

A couple of past and present students led a great time of singing:

We had our first snow Sunday night and woke up to this:

Somehow the kids managed to scrape a couple of hours worth of fun out of 1/2-1 inch of snow.

I thought it was a perfect opportunity to try out this recipe for Maple Hot Chocolate, which was sooooo good...

We had Shakshuka (an Israeli egg dish) for breakfast:One of the things I've been doing while procrastinating, is checking out some photos taken by Wendy, which are just amazing. If I ever had a ton of spare time (and $$$), I would love to improve my photography skills.

Everyone is coming out of the woodwork now. It's lunchtime. We don't procrastinate about food around here...

New find!!!

Tonight while searching for info about my grandfather on Google, I happened upon Google Book Search. Am I the last to discover this or is it something new? I don't know, but it searches the content of books for things (like my grandfather's name) and pulls them up in text. This is a tool I can envision using in the future (though nothing can replace REAL books).

Along this line, a site that has been around for a while that is great for reading books online is Bartleby. It is a treasure source for a variety of things, such as classic fairy tales (i.e. the original version - not Disney's), classic literature, etc.

Also, there are some evacuations from the village of one of Geoff's students that I mentioned a while back. You can read the news article about it here. Here's one picture taken there when he and little G went there just before Christmas. Have to post some more later.

Another garage sale, tortoise, and violin

Today we loaded up everything from our previous garage sale and hauled it all in to Geoff's work, set it up again, and gave it another try. It went a little better this time, but there was still tons left over. We gave much of it to his coworkers' and students' families. Here the kids are playing with some of the children of one of Geoff's students at the Indian Bible College. They have a fascinating heritage - they are from Supai, which is in the bottom of part of the Grand Canyon. You can read about it in this very interesting book (which I checked out at the library): Here we are picking up and checking out a tortoise. Interesting pet!Last night the kids had a little, informal, outdoor, group, violin recital.

frequently frybread

Frybread is a factor in any gathering and most money-raising events for Geoff's work. Thought I would share about it. From what I have read and understood to date, the Native Americans did not have wheat flour prior to the white man's arrival. It seems that it really became a part of their diet after they were forced onto the reservations and could no longer feed themselves from the land in the manner they were accustomed to. And so the US government gave them flour. (As their way of life changed and their diet, they developed new health problems. They have a high rate of diabetes, etc. But this is a tangent and it has been a while since I read all this so my memory of how it all went may be inaccurate.) Anyway, somehow frybread became a staple food of most tribes across the nation.

The woman who's hand you see with the dough, has been making frybread since she was a child. (Forgot to mention, she estimated she has made millions of pieces of frybread. This night alone she made 60.) She throws it back and forth between her hands while rotating the dough - like you might see in a hand-tossed pizza parlor - till it is just right - perfectly round, then drops it in a pan of hot oil. It is eaten with most meals and frequently sold as Indian tacos. Made like tacos but with frybread instead of tortillas.