A relaxing week...

Well, last week was wonderful. I had the week off as the English Language Institute was in between sessions, and I just had a really laid back week. At the same time, I was amazed how much not working increased my people contact! I mean I guess not technically because I see so many students every day, but in one week I:

* Ate dinner with our new friends Ann and Ben. They have the CUTEST brick bungalow house across the park from us and we had such a great time with them.She made a gourmet meal that was deliciouso and we had great conversation.
* Had my friend Eliza and her mom drop by one morning as they were on a walk, which was so much fun because she had not been to our house yet.
* Went to visit an older lady named Miriam with three of my students, which was a precious time.
* Went and had coffee with my friend Sarah and her cutie patootie baby girl Stella
* Last but not least, we went to a baptism celebration for Eliza's daughter Oakley!

I realize that some people work full time jobs and do things such as these every week, but I just don't have that kind of energy!! So it was a real treat for me. I also did things like wander through natural food stores and look at all of the healthy yumminess, and then left and went directly to Taco Bell (oh my).

So, sorry for the lack of updates. We are now back to regular scheduled programming:) Hope you all are well, Jen

There's snow on the mountains tonight!

I can't believe it....suddenly it's cold in Utah! I knew it was coming, but those sweaty days of no AC in the classrooms at school just last week made it impossible to imagine. Today as we walked to the grocery store the temp was about 52 and then joel took a drive in the mountains and the car said it was 32! Right now I'm sitting in bed grading essays and I have the space heater rolled up next to the bed and turned on full blast and I'm still chilly! Now, I'm sure I will be really tired of cold weather by the end of winter--but there is such excitement in these first few days. We stayed in bed late as we couldn't bear to get out from underneath the warm covers, drank hot chocolate, watched a movie, wore layers to go to the grocery store.....I love it.


So, last night I completely forgot to take pictures of our time with Tom and Cristy. They were in SLC for a conference and so they got to come by for a visit. I did remember to take a picture of the food before they arrived...chicken spaghetti,yum,yum. You'll just have to imagine the rest of our visit. The four of us eating in the kitchen and then the girls sitting in the living room sharing a blanket and our souls with each other while the guys are downstairs looking up the White House on Google World:) A great time was had by all.

Guess that's it for now. Joelie is at a friend's house studying so Willow and I are holding down the fort:) Hope you all are well, Jen

Sometimes we make dinner....

....mostly when our friends come over. Tonight we were all three starving and so the food tasted extra good.Truly, it was pretty funny how much we were relishing every bite. Well, I guess you can see that on Joelie's face:)I love sitting around the table eating and talking and eating some more and talking some more. That was tonight followed by more talking outside where it is starting to feel and look like Fall...love it. Now the guys are off to study and I'm gonna watch a movie--hurray for my weekends starting on Thursday! Hope you all are well, Jen

The rest of the story...

So after leaving our beloved Missoula, we wound our way up to Kalispell. The drive was so gorgeous with views like this abounding...

Of course, arriving in Kalispell we had an even better view waiting for us...

Our friends Tom and Cristy(hi guys!) graciously welcomed us and provided us with great conversation, wonderful entertainment from their boys,yummy burgers for dinner and a hearty breakfast in the morning, and even sent us off with a bag of their fabulous homemade soap--thanks again guys for such a wonderful time! We are so impressed with Tom and Cristy making their dream of living in Montana a reality and it was so fun to experience it in person.

We then drove about an hour to Glacier National Park. WOW!! We really just did a drive through this time...but we must go back to explore and hike in that most beautiful place!!





From Glacier we headed to...





We drove away with a glimpse of the Grand Tetons before sunset and then worked our way back to SLC. What an amazing, creative God we have! Now I must go and study a not so creative Teachers Manual titled, "Focus on Grammar: An integrated skills approach". Does that sound fun or what?!? I think Modals are on the menu for tonight:) Jen

A friend is...

" A friend is a bay where you can anchor your boat in bad weather."

Another great metaphor and beautiful picture from one of my students. Speaking of friendship...

We had a friend of Joel's from school over tonight for dinner.
I love watching him with his friends. He is always so interested, so full of great questions and appreciation for what their heart speaks. He finds true joy in people, in stories, in shared experiences. How blessed I feel to be the one closest to his heart. I am often caught off guard by his interest in my thoughts. I start to say something, thinking that only I would find this interesting and that maybe I should just cut the story short. Then I look up and see those big, brown eyes waiting and smiling at my words. My heart wells up with thankfulness to know that he is indeed my friend. He is truly a bay where I can anchor my boat in bad weather and in calm seas as well.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of Joelie, listening to our friend Matt...

So lovely is he.

If I ever get on a communal living kick again...

You are all free to remind me of the following things:

1.The Washer and Dryer: We share them with one family and one single girl that live in the duplex in front of us.Besides the fact that they are in a pretty scary basement beneath the duplex that I refuse to go in at night, they are really gross and dirty. Yuck. Before I finally wiped them down, they both had so much gunk (I don't even know where it comes from) that I felt like our clothes were cleaner before they went in!! Also, they leave their clothes in for hours and hours and our clothes have to wait in line.

2. The trash cans and recycle bin: We take them out and bring them in almost every week--even though we are all supposed to share the responsibility.

3. Our sprinkler: apparently we share that with our neighbor too because it always ends up in her yard and we have to retrieve it if we want to use it in our lawn!

So, I am rethinking the whole "oh, communal living would be soo great and save so many resources and create community and on and on...". I mean, I haven't totally given up on the idea but so far I am being pretty wimpy with these few shared resources! Ideally we would actually know our communal living neighbors and have a common goal for the living arrangement and so we could have some practical "how are we going to share" discussions, but still. Americans are so individualistic and its hard to change that in my own attitude. This little talk has made me want to try harder though. For goodness sakes, we are only sharing three things!! I'll let you know how it goes.

Well, not too much going on. Just getting ready for mom and dad to get here on Saturday--yippie!! We did go to a pro-soccer game on Sat. night--that was fun. Here is a picture of Joelie with two buddies from school taken after the game:

Benjamin on the left and Sully on the right.Both are great, interesting, yogaing, skiing, earthy type guys. Of course, the guy in the middle is pretty great too:)Guess that's all for now. Hope you all are doing well, Jen

Curious Joel Goes to PA School !!

Fueling up for his big day...


Drinking his morning brew of soy milk/chai tea...


So long life of leisure!


Over the hill to follow his dream, his mission, his passion…..it’s with a proud heart that I watch him go.


Well, we had such a great time last night with Erik. He took us to a place called One World Café. Basically, it’s a café that serves organic, healthy food buffet style served by interesting looking folks. You choose your portion size and what foods you want and then pay what you think is a fair price (8-12 dollars for a full meal is suggested). Its such an interesting concept and you can read more about it at this link http://www.utahcityguide.com/reviews/oneworld.asp .... I had a tofu-meatball soup, Quinoa, quiche, black bean coconut rice, and greens. It was delightful and eaten in a back room that felt like a living room chatting away with joelie and erik. Good times—wish you all could have been there with us-- especially John Mike and Tara—you guys just belong in places like that. Missing everyone more than usual today with Joel gone—hope you’re doing well and enjoying life each day.Much love, Jen

"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom."

For our precious mommas for which no words can express our love and gratitude:

From my mom's heart I have learned of grace, forgiveness, unconditional love, creativity, child-like faith,eternal hope, endurance.... Thank you mom for being such an example of God's love to your kids and to your husband.

From mom Shari I have learned the art of hospitality, to see the best in everyone, the joy of genuine faith, the goodness of order, and in this moment I am learning from her the joy found in obedience as she has followed her husband to the far off land of the Ukraine!

Thanks to the Lord for these amazing women and for creating the role of "mother"-- I know of know greater love other than His than that of a mother for her child.


In other news: Joelie starts school tomorrow! We are excited, sad, thankful, emotional...well, I'm emotional. Joel says I've been more emotional about him starting school than when he went to Colombia and was in real danger of death! I must admit that he may be right. I think it's because he and I have gotten to spend soooo much time together this past year and four months since he got out of the military and I'm just really going to miss it. My love language is time and so this has been heavenly for me to have him to myself so often. We've been dreaming of this day for so long though, and I really am thrilled that it's actually happening.

Nothing too exciting happened this week after the road trip. Just working on the house, working on my data entry....We did have our friend Tonga over twice.He is this huuuuuge guy, from Tonga (his really name is Uaisele), that Joel'll be in school with and we had him over the last two nights for dinner and to play cards. He's great and reminds me of a Tongan David Zapp(hi Dave and Becca if you're reading this!!)Tonight we're having dinner with Erick, who is in the class ahead of Joel. He's an interesting guy and fun conversationalist, so we're looking forward to that.

Oh, I've been meaning to tell you that Joel has a blog documenting his journey to, and now through, PA school. It's appropriately titled www.joelsjourney.blogspot.com , so check it out if you have time. I'm hoping one day he'll get it published into a book for people interested in the PA profession. He has worked on it diligently and think it'll be a great venting place for him during these next 27 months. Gotta run, coffee shop closing. Jen

Places that surround us...

When the weather's bad or he just needs a break from the bike, Joel will ride the TRAX to school. This is where he'll wait.


We feel especially urban when we ride the TRAX:)



We seem to find a way to visit Smith's every day! This picture is of "The big Smiths" that has a top floor with house and lawn stuff, clothes, etc.


This is how we get the goodies home from the store.


The entrance to Liberty park where we jog, go to events like Earth Day 2006, and take walks.It's a great place to be.


Our mailbox is another great place to be, especially when it's full of mail from family and friends (ahem). Ours is the big one on top, so don't ever be afraid that it will be too full.

Guess thats all the pictures for now. We had a good day today. We went to a place called "The Original Pancake House" for brunch and Joel was thrilled to discover it is the same Original Pancake house that is in Hawaii, where his beloved 49ers reside. They are these enourmously round, but very thin pancakes and he loooooves them. Then we went to a coffee shop where I worked for a bit doing some data entry. He then rode on to REI and I came back home to walk to Old Navy.

The reason for the Old Navy trip was to buy some baby girl clothes for newly born Megan Riley Howard. Now, we thought Megan was going to be a boy. The doctor even said it was going to be a boy after the ultrasound. Thus, a baby shower with a boy theme was given--by me-- all the while Megan's mom Holly was trying to tell us that she really thought it was going to be a girl!So imagine the surprise, to everyone but Holly, when 10lb Megan burst into the world:) So an immediate trip to Old Navy was in order, and cute girlie things were purchased to be sent ASAP. Next time a friend tells me to go nuetral on a shower theme, I promise I'll listen!

Hope all is well with you folks, Jenny

A Sad Goodbye

Pray before you teach.
Teach with your love
and love those you teach.

This is a quote one of my students gave to me and I love and believe in it with all my heart. Teaching these students is one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done in my life--and I got to do it twice every week for a whole year! I will miss our conversations, I'll miss hearing Blanca's heels "click clacking" down the wood floor hallway and into the classroom and her elegant way of saying "Good evening" with a calm wave of her hand before sitting down. I'll even miss Emmanuel coming in late, always with a funny comment or a crazy shirt (can you find him in the picture?:) , making us smile and roll our eyes. Such individuals, and so precious to me each one. My heart was full after each time we met and no class will ever replace this most precious group of people who I was privleged to have call me "Teacher".