beautiful winter wedding

Mr. and Mrs. Ty Rallens

Ty and Jenny, thank you for letting us be a part of your wedding. It was a joy and an honor. We wish you a wonderful Christmas in Hawaii! :) We love you.

idaho again

as joe is finishing up his tasks at work, his crew asks him:
"so where are you going?"
he replies, "idaho."
"again? you always go to idaho."

yah, it's getting kind of embarassing. i bet we look so unimaginative. we get a "vacation" and all we come up with is idaho.

ah, but we have a good reason this time: they made us. joe was best man in a wedding, in idaho. so off we flew. thank you, beth and jacob, for such a wonderful, soul-connecting, rejuvinating visit with you. we love you. here are some pics of your goofy kids. we love them too. also below are some pics from Ty and Jenny's rehearsal dinner, and of Emily and Aaron who are getting married in two weeks!!

goofyness and the Trinity

i've been thinking a bit about silliness, trying to dig some into why we enjoy being goofy from time to time. let me just say first that it's a good thing Christ knows the human flesh. He knows the feeling of laughter, and i've got to say even the gut-wrenching kind, because God was the one who invented it in the first place. and whether or not Jesus entertained the goofiness of children or clicked his heels in a jig or two, we don't know. but i do know this: we have joy because of the loving and playful union of the Trinity, the birth of our perfect Lamb, the resurrection to life and power of our Lord Jesus Christ. and we have the freedom to live in this joy, our consciences unburdened by the guilt of sin. thus we live, free to glorify our Creator even in great laughter and occassional moments of silliness. this is unique to our God.

our advent calendar told us to take goofy pictures. and so we did.

couch tour

we went downtown Walnut Creek for our annual festive dinner at Lark Creek and did a bit of shopping on the side. my parents put us to shame though; they scurried around like elves while we had to retreat to the couches at every store for being all tuckered out. thank goodness for pottery barn and crate and barrel. we would have never been able to read all those coffee table books. :)

cookie exchange

i think everyone's going to a cookie exchange this year!! i had never been to one. but once i was invited, i was hearing everyone talk about how they were making some dozen cookies for an exchange. even our post office lady Debbie was having one, right here in the post office! it's like when you hear a word for the first time that you've never known the meaning of (but you should have) and then all of a sudden you hear it everywhere. i think it's God's fun way of aiding one's memory...and also making one feel a fool for not knowing what punctiliar meant, or how versus was spelled. yah. ahem. anyhoo...

mom and i made Spritz and Persimmon cookies, which, i found out, were quite the unique additions to the church cookie exchange. there was plenty of chocolate/mint combinations, and plenty of sugar cookies, but ours were the stellar representations of their kind. my mom-in-law brought Rosettes, which are even more unique among the cookie species and they went fast. but out of all the cookies, my favorite (the least Christmasy and the kind most found in my take-home box) were the peanut butter cookies with the reeses peanut butter cup pressed into the middle. ah, how can you go wrong there!? but for our family, Spritz and Persimmon are Christmas traditions. they just have to be made. amen and amen.