Bountiful harvest

Hand-picked fresh from our garden: Asian pears (two varieties), Fuji apples, carrots, cucumbers and rhubarb. That's what I call organic. All picked in less than an hour.

Video - A Thousand Questions

This is quite possibly one of the most impactful short videos I have ever seen. We watched it during our church service this morning. The 1o-minute video-story, A Thousand Questions, is told from the viewpoint of a woman who feels the hurt and pain of this world. It starts with the creation of the world, the fall of mankind, the brokenness of the world and concludes with hope. It's incredibly inspiring. I hope you can find time to watch it.

The title of the sermon series we're going through right now is called "Outside the Box." It's about how God's people, a.k.a. the church, are putting themselves in a box. The box is the church. If we don't get outside the "box" and become the "church" God created us to be, and help others (e.g., the sick, hurting, homeless and lost), then we'll die. It was a very impactful sermon, I thought.

And to drive the point home about getting outside the box, our pastor had a guy named Yogi Daniel perform a stunt for us. There was a clear box on stage that was probably barely bigger than 2x2x2 feet. The box had a classic church steeple perched on top. Yogi miraculously squeezed himself into the box from the front. I've never seen anything like it. He was a perfect little box. He then climbed out. Afterwards our pastor asked him how long he might be able to stay inside the "church." He said, "five, maybe 10 minutes." And then he was asked what would happen if he stayed longer. He said, "I'd probably go to heaven."

John 17:18 - As you sent me (Jesus) into the world, I have sent them (church) into the world.

Getting corny

80 ears of corn later... We're almost ready for winter. The pears and apples are just about ripe on our trees. We'll harvest those in the coming weeks and make our necessary sauces. Then I think we'll be done.

New faucet?

It's still the leisurely Saturday morning that Dustin just wrote about and he has already been busy around the house. For the past several months the kitchen faucet has had issues with the water pressure and it takes us forever to fill containers up to water the plants, etc. While this doesn't really bother me that much, for some reason every day it just grates on Dustin and I'm not sure there has been a day that has gone by when he didn't make a comment about how much he despised that faucet. He actually reverted to using the bathroom faucet because of the pressure that it had. We have even gone to the store to see about buying a new one. And while I was not a big fan of that option, I was willing to spend the money just to make my husband a happier man. Well, this morning he was feeling ambitious and took apart our faucet and cleaned it out. He took apart the pipes, removed the residue, blew out all of the gunk that had gotten built up in it and worked his handyman magic. He put it back together and viola we have a practically new faucet that has so much force it gets water on our counter top when we turn it on. And it was free! I love how handy Dustin is around the house and how willing he is to take on new projects and learn about things. He's saved us a ton of money and I'm so thankful that he's my husband! He does a great job of taking care of the house (and me too)!

Leisurely Saturday morning

It's Saturday, it's lightly raining outside and I have no plans to leave the house. Ah, the joy of not having to go anywhere today. That feels so refreshing.

I'm definitely going to catch a few football games on the tube. This is ideal football-watching weather.

I just brewed some hot water and made a cup of green tea. Abby is making fresh scones as I write this. Can life get much better than this? I think I'm going to enjoy this day.

I hope you're blessed with an awesome Saturday too.

Nine months later... fixed it (it was a lugnut)

I can't believe it took me nine months to fix it. Talk about lazy. Sure, sure, you're wondering what I'm talking about. Before I give you the answer so quickly, I have to tell the whole story. That requires me to start at the beginning.

It all started in December, 2007 (nine, almost 10 months ago)... You know what is in December, right? Christmas, of course. And since Abby and I have very tall ceilings, 20-plus feet tall, we can't let all that height go to waste. For the last three years we've searched out the tallest (and cheapest) Christmas Tree money can buy. This year was no exception. We hunted and searched through the mountains and snow for the perfect Terpeing-wald family Christmas Tree.



When we saw it, we knew right away that this was the one. It lit up like stage lights were shining on it. I'm pretty sure I heard a choir of angels singing in the background.

I guess our eyes got the better of us this year. After we cut it down, we realized that it was SEVERAL feet larger than our permit allowed. I quickly chopped it down to size. Not only that, but the two of us couldn't lift it high enough to reach the top of the jeep. It was too heavy. After struggling with what to do with it for 30 minutes, Abby lobbyed to chop down a new, smaller, lighter tree. But, as you can see by the picture, we were able to get it on top of the jeep. We owe the park rangers a big thank you. Two of them happened to drive up at the last minute and helped us lift it onto the jeep. Lucky for us in many regards...



We got the tree in the house and unraveled. The best way to transport a 23-foot tree with a zillion branches is to wrap it with a rope from the bottom up, turning it into a candy cane of sorts. Then it fits into the house nicely and stands up relatively easily. This year I had to stand on the top of our tallest ladder and lift the tree up with a rope. It was too tall and heavy to push up from the floor.

Here is the final product in all it's glory. I wrote a mini news story, attached this picture, and sent it to the media. The local tv stations played the picture and story. We were famous, for about 30 seconds. Go Terpening-wald family Christmas tree!

Here's where we get the wind for the sails of my story. Before we got the tree tied to the wall (for safety), lighted and decorated, I was lowering the really tall ladder (not seen in the pictures) and accidentally snagged it on the rope holding the tree in place. The tree started to fall... timeout. Abby was resting on the couch from the uber-long day we had. I'm thinking, "yes, I'm almost done." Un-timeout. The tree starts to fall; I look at the tree; I let go of the ladder that is still 16 feet in the air; I jump into the tree to catch and prevent it from falling; the ladder slams into the wall and eventually the ground. Needless to say, this all caught Abby by surprise. Lucky for me I caught the tree. Unlucky for me, the ladder left a hole and several dents in the wall.

The hole and dents were in the wall for most of 2008. Well, I'm glad to say, they're no longer there.

Here's the tree after I limbed it. This is the best way to take down a monster tree.

You can kind of see the hole in the wall to the left of the Christmas lights. Don't mistake the alarm sensor for the hole.

Do you see that? Right. The hole is no longer there. I patched it... nine months later.

There's star power in this picture

I don't know about you, but I think this picture is hilarious. The schwing man (Tim Reeves) in the upper right corner of the picture is the one who created it. I wanted to share it with ya'll. These are all the guys I lived with in college. We referred to ourselves as 601 (six-o-one). No, not because we thought we were a boy band. It was because our house address was 601 N. Garden Street. Try as we might to come up with a name for our house, the best thing we found was 601.

Here's a fact that you'll never need to know, but is fun to hear. In two weeks it will be nine years since we all met at college as freshman. There is one caveot; we didn't meet James until we were juniors. He's two years behind us. Regardless, I can't believe we've been best friends for nearly ten years.

You're all thinking it, so I might as well say it, "Yes, it took us a long time to fit into those jeans. They didn't come off very easy either. "

Left to right, top to bottom: Matt Metsker, Taylor Swedberg, Tim Reeves, Peter Plantenberg, me, Matt Kellen and James Aires.