It's Lovely! I'll Take It!

Oh my, I've discovered this hilarious blog called LovelyListing. It features "a collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings." They are all from actual listings, links provided, where if you are so inclined, you can view additional poorly chosen photos of the same property.

I don't know exactly why, but this site has had me laughing so hard. The blogger (Sara) provides witty titles and comments for each photo. I certainly feel a little better about my own home now.

Yearbook Your Husband

Here is a photo from Yearbook Yourself of Lance (using a current photo of him) as he would have looked had he graduated in 1988 (with my class). I love this one, because he looks so much like the guys I remember from my high school class.

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Here is his actual senior picture, taken in 1979, for his 1980 graduating class. (Now you see where Connor & Noelle get their blonde hair!)

Yearbook Yourself

What fun! I highly recommend you hop on over to Yearbook Yourself and see how you would look had you graduated in different years. Above, you see their version of me (my face is from a recent picture) in the classes of 1960, 1966, 1972 and 1984. Thank you Keri for the link.

Just for the fun of it, here's my real high school graduation picture (class of 1988):

Tanya's Visit

We had a great month with Tanya. We were very blessed to host a mature, well-mannered, very intelligent, happy girl who spoke quite a bit of English! I feel like it might not be fair for me to so heartily recommend this program, because I know our experience was exceptionally good. But, it's a great way to be a missionary while staying at home. Chattanooga has a great Chernobyl Children's Program and being a part of it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Here are some photos to help describe some of our adventures with Tanya. There were so many; I'll have to break it up in several posts.

Here we are swimming at my mom's house on the 4th of July. Notice how Tanya is using a floatation device, as she does not yet know how to swim. By the end of the month, not only did she no longer need any floatation device, but she was jumping off the diving board and swimming to the ladder! We swam at least 3 times per week, so she got a lot of practice!

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The group went to the Chattanooga Railroad Museum and the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Tanya really enjoyed the train rides and museums. It was soooo hot that day. I tried to get a picture of Tanya and my kids together by one of the trains, but this was the best I could do.

Tanya is standing with the couple who lives across the street from us. They are super nice folks, and were very interested in Belarus and the Chernobyl Children's Program. They donated many items for Tanya's family, and gave her a gift card to Target so she could get some school supplies and other things for herself. That was a fun shopping trip, because she had never been to a store like Target before. She loved it!

Welcome Tanya

We are having a great time with our Belarus daughter-for-a-month, Tanya. Connor absolutely adores her and wants to play with her every waking moment. She has had some English classes, so we can communicate better than I expected, although there are many times she wants to tell me something and cannot find the words.

We looked up how much her call to Belarus was the first night and discovered, causing our mouths to fall open, that it was over $5 per minute. So, after a recommendation from a neighbor and some online research, we downloaded Skype for free and now she can talk to her parents for around 22 cents per minute (a little better, don't you think?). If her parents had a computer, internet, and downloaded Skype, they could talk for free, with video & sound!!! What a cool age we live in. But, her parents do not have a computer or access to one. So, we just use our computer to call her parents' home phone.

Here are some photos of her over the last day and a half:

Wednesday in Skagway

Wednesday we spent in Skagway, riding the White Pass train and dredging for gold!

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White Pass Railway

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Noelle on the train

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Lance's mom taking a little nap

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Shallow river

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Looking back at our train crossing a bridge - best shot of the day

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Getting the mountain in the shot

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The valley

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A waterfall we rode by

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I wish Noelle had slept a little longer

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Gold dredging machine

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Panning for gold demonstration

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Back to the ship

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Goodbye Skagway

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Tuesday in Juneau

On Tuesday of our cruise, we docked in Juneau. Our excursion was whale watching, and we did see some humpback whales. We even saw one breach, or jump all the way out of the water! The guide said that is very rare in Alaskan waters; it usually only happens in warmer waters when the whales are mating (the breaching is showing off for a potential mate). They come to the cold Alaskan waters to eat. I kind of think the whale just enjoyed breaching, and maybe was showing off for our boat. We saw a couple of whales together, and the guide said that was rare, too, but these whales are together every season. We also saw many bald eagles and a big group of sea lions. Our tour boat served complimentary hot chocolate and we each got one cracker with smoked salmon on it - very tasty. We loved our tour guide - he was a 24-year-old Alaskan native with enormous knowledge of wildlife and some great stories.

We woke Tuesday morning up to see this beautiful view of Juneau out our balcony window:

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It was a busy port with a few other large cruise ships arriving the same morning. This first photo was taken from our balcony as we were pulling into the port.

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This picture was taken a few minutes later, also from our balcony, but the view is from whence we came - isn't it beautiful.

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Here's a picture of the rare pair of humpback whales I mentioned earlier.

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Here's the sea lion colony - they were noisy. the guide told us how they like to be trouble-makers, like knocking over kayakers for no reason. He also told us that sea lions have hips, while seals do not.

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Here's Noelle & I braving the rain up on the outer deck, hoping to get a good look at some whales. I'm glad we went up there, because it allowed us to see the whale breaching. We couldn't stay out there very long, though, because it was so cold!

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We thought this ship looked pretty against the sunset as we were leaving Juneau.
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"Goodbye Juneau," we call as we sail away.
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Fabulous sunset sailing away from Juneau. As you can imagine, it was even better in person.
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