Michael's Visit

          My cousin Michael made a stop in San Francisco this week. He's an admissions counselor for Bethel and was swinging through the West Coast, stopping in Fresno for the Bethel Banquet, and then up to SF to try and convert the kids in the church. So that meant that he was in my neck of the woods for a few days! On Monday he had to go to Sacramento to meet a recruit or something, but then he was back on Tuesday. So I went across the Bay to see him. Except that I took my bike, thinking it would be faster. Well, it was. Until I got to the BART station and realized that the “no bikes during commute hours” was in effect. So I had to go downstairs, lock up my bike, and pray that I would see it again. Bike theft is a big thing, and I live in Fruitvale, so I was pretty sure that I would come back to a seatless bike or a bike with bullet holes in it or both.

         We started the day off right with Dynamo Donuts. I hopped off BART and tried calling him and Alyssa to see where they were, but they didn't answer. So I was walking and texting at the same time (bad idea, always) and all of a sudden heard a “HEY YOU!” from across the street, and there they were, exactly in step with me! We walked the rest of the way to Dynamo together. Michael has super long legs and doesn't seem to realize how fast he walks, so I was chugging along as fast as my short little legs could go! So I had worked up a pretty good appetite by the time we got there. We decided to each pick three donuts and then swap them around so we could try most of the ones on the menu. Afterwards, Alyssa had to go to a meeting, so Michael and I took the BART across the Bay and walked back to the house. My bike was still completely intact, btw.   

l-r maple bacon, vanilla bean, passionfruit chocolate

Sharing is caring!

           We swiped the van and took it to Lake Merritt, the largest inland saltwater lake in the country. We took a walk around part of the perimeter, Michael identified all the birds, except for this one that we knew we'd seen before, but couldn't place.   

Mom.  WHAT IS THIS BIRD?!

          Then we went to the Lake Merritt park, where we stopped to watch some guys play bocce ball, a game that we had always heard about, but had never seen played on an actual field before. As we were watching, a guy came up to us and asked in broken English if we played. We said no, but he told us that we should come play. When he figured out I spoke Spanish, he switched over to that. Then he asked if we were dating. I said “No, we're cousins.” But then he asked again, like “Well why aren't you dating?” Because we're cousins? Then he turned to Michael and was like “Well you two should date, look how pretty she is!” I was having a real hard time keeping it together. Maribel said that it's a pretty common thing to do in El Salvador, dating your cousin. Helps keep the money in the family, I guess. Given our already-convoluted family tree (and my boyfriend), I think it would be wise of us not to attempt it.

          After that, we headed over to the Oakland Cathedral, where a priest asked us if we were dating.  

Oakland Cathedral

I also performed the WORST parallel parking job to date. We tried to park on a side street so we wouldn't have to pay a meter. I ended up see-sawing back and forth for probably like 10 minutes while Michael stuck his head out the door and told me which way to go. It's embarrassing to have an audience to parallel park, but it's even worse when the audience is in the van with you. He said it happened to him sometimes too, but only when he is with Grandpa Unruh!

        Later, we went back to the Catholic Worker, threw down some leftover spaghetti, and went to the Alameda beach. There were a bunch of little water birds there all skittering around. They were adorable, and did EVERYTHING as a unit. 

       The last thing we did was head up into the hills for a panoramic view of the city from Merritt College, and then he had to go meet a kid to talk about Bethel. So it was really good to have him around, even though I just saw him like a month ago when I was home for Christmas. And now that I've given my first official tour of Oakland, all of you other people can come see me, and I'll have the BEST TOUR EVER lined up for you!

Snogging with the sound like a drain being unclogged

          The VS house had a get-together at their house on Friday. I decided that BARTing to Ben's house, then BARTing with him to the VS house would be sort of stupid (not to mention expensive), so I met him there. As I was riding down the sidewalk on my bike, I tried to pass a guy. Unfortunately, my tire slipped off the edge of the sidewalk and into a crack. When I tried to get back out, the wheel caught and dumped me onto the sidewalk, where I executed a nimble ninja-roll, jumped to my feet and continued on my way. Yeah, I wish. It was more like “??!?!?!? AAAAAACCCKKKK @#$%@#!!!!!!!!!” Not quite as graceful. And as I went down, I hit the guy I was trying to pass. Whoops. And my chain came off, so I had to get all down and greasy to fix it. Stupid bike chain. The rest of the trip continued without incident.   

       I was the first one to show up at the house (Yeah, I'm THAT person...), so I just hung out and watched Chelsea make pizza and talked to Alyssa about my cousin Michael's upcoming visit. Then other people finally showed up, including a Berkeley girl who had been an associate VSer in Kansas City with Sierra Pryce (yay quasi-Bethel connection!) We played Catchphrase and some other games, had peanut butter cookies and Jell-o, and met some new people (hooray for a potentially-expanded friend circle!)

       On Sunday, Ben and I just hung around and did boring, productive things. At 230, we went to Cheeseboard Pizza, this super well-known pizza place that's just a couple blocks from his house. There's always a big line outside, but we thought that if we went at a weird, non-meal time, we wouldn't have to wait in line. Yeah, that wasn't the case. Luckily, we were in line right in front of a loud-talking recently-begun-dating couple, and their conversation was much more interesting that any small talk that we would have been making. So we eavesdropped. All of a sudden, the talking stopped and this loud sucking/squelching sound began. I was like “what in the name of everything IS that?” and I turned around and they were hardcore making out. In one of the HP books, Ron and Lavender are described as “snogging” with “a sound like a drain being unclogged.” It was like that. Thankfully, we were able to sit right next to them and eat our pizza, so we were blessed with even more of their insightful conversation. The pizza was good. We sat on the grassy median on Shattuck, leaning against the sign that said “Please don't sit on the median.” Other people were there too, so it's ok, right? Then we got some gelato, which was delicious.   

The male from the violently-snogging couple can be seen behind Ben's shoulder

        I had to be backup support for a fundraising presentation at a church in Walnut Creek, so Ben took some time and drove me up there and back again. During the mass they sang a song to the tune of “Come Thou Font,” and I was like “I CAN SING THIS!!!!!” So I belted it, sort of. Unfortunately, since they're Catholic and can't sing four-part/at all, I had to sing the soprano part, since I can't remember enough of the alto to harmonize.  One of the speakers used the term "prostate" instead of "prostrate," which caused me to snicker a little bit louder than was appropriate.  THERE IS A DIFFERENCE, PEOPLE!!!!  

        Sunday was spent waking up stupidly early so we could get to church on time. Once we got to the church, we met Michael, who is doing a Bethel admissions tour of the West Coast. Evidently he had to get up earlier than us to drive here from Fresno. So we did the whole church-service thing and then hung out later, waiting to ambush potential Bethel students and determining if he was related to any of the FMCSF church members. He'll be around for the next couple of days, so we're planning some stuff to do on Tuesday.   

No sense of place

        One of the weirdest things about graduating from college and moving across the country is the absolute social disorientation. It's SO WEIRD. I mean, who sits in their room and says “Hey, I think Imma just leave all the people that I know and go to a place where I don't know anyone at all except for one person that I'm dating, but whom I've barely seen in a year”? Well, as someone who does that, let me tell you, it really effs up your sense of having a place to belong. I definitely don't belong back at Bethel anymore since I graduated (also I don't want to be “that person,” and all you people know exactly who I mean), I haven't belonged in Clay Center since about a year after I left, and I don't quite feel like I belong here, either. It's like being stuck in limbo, and it's just SO WEIRD.

        I mean, it certainly hasn't been a bad thing to move out here, it's just something that's super far outside of my realm of experience. The last time I left everyone that I knew and went someplace new was when I moved to college, and even then, I already knew Brian, Jackie, Alan, Dan, Ben, and Matt. And I was only 2 hours from home. And also everyone on my hall was in the exact same situation. And I'm realizing that I'll never have another experience again where I am literally surrounded on all sides by people that I could hang out with and be friends with. At Bethel, all I had to do was walk upstairs or even just yell across the mod, and someone would show up to talk to me. At Bethel, I was super extroverted (or at least, more extroverted than I'd ever been in my life) because it was so EASY to make friends and maintain friendships with people, because I saw them literally EVERY DAY, sometimes for hours every day. But now, I'm trying to make friends with people that I only see once a week at church, and it's really hard to build a relationship inside of one hour-long encounter per week. Now, I have to actually exert actual EFFORT to spend time with people. But the thing is, having to exert so much effort (money and time to BART across the Bay, walk for an hour, repeat) to spend time with people that I barely know is just such a skewed cost:benefit analysis. I mean, it's pretty fun and stuff, but it's just so much easier to be introverted again and just not go out. Which, obviously, makes my feeling of “oh poor me, I don't have any friends” just that much worse.

        So right now, after having gone back to Bethel and seeing that life goes on without me (of course it does, good grief, even I'M not THAT conceited!), and then coming back to San Francisco, where my friend circle is in its infancy, I'm just experiencing the loss of a sense of belonging that necessarily accompanies new surroundings. And you know, in a year, I'm sure I'll look back and be like “haha, what a silly person I was, everything turned out just fine!”, but right now I'm kind of like “OMG I WILL NEVER EVER HAVE GOOD FRIENDS EVER AGAIN!!!!”

Obnoxious Abundance of Nature

          Now that Ben has a car (Yayyy!!! mobility!) we can travel a little further outside of the Bay. This weekend, we went to Muir Woods, a place that I'd heard a lot about and had wanted to visit for a long time. It was on my Bay-Area Bucket List. It's in Marin County, so north of the Bay by 10 or 15 miles. It's also on Hwy 1, the most scenic highway in the country. It's also the wiggliest, with the most hairpin turns.   

The Festiva has arrived in Berkeley!

View of downtown Oakland and Bay Bridge from Marin County

We Kansans aren't used to this sort of thing. 

           It was a good thing we arrived early, because the parking lots were already full and people were parking on the side of the road - we ended up walking about half a mile to get to the main entrance. Inside the park, under the trees, it was kind of chilly – I was glad that I had my two jackets and gloves. It was also spectacular. The trees were so tall and so old – hundreds of years old. I felt bad for Ben because I had to keep stopping to take pictures! We also did a lot of ambling, which he is NOT a fan of.

Baby redwood!

This is a dogtooth violet.  I read "My Side of the Mountain" in 5th grade
and they referenced it, and somehow I retained that knowledge for 11 years
so that I could regurgitate it on demand.  You're welcome.

 

           We decided to take a trail that had the term “ocean view” in it, which I was excited by. It was pretty steep, and I realized just how out-of-shape I am when I had to stop and rest after an embarrassingly low number of steps. But once we hit the top, it was a pretty great view. We could see over the tops of the trees all the way to the ocean! It was also really warm at the top, and not just because I was sweating like a really sweaty person. It was sunny and 65-70 degrees, a rare warm day in the area.

Yuck.  Sweaty.  

         The hike was supposed to lead us back around into the woods. Unfortunately, something happened and we ended up taking a long hike around some sunny, grassy hills overlooking the Muir Woods canyon. I guess there are worse things in life.

         We had seen some signs for Stinson Beach on the way in, and while I've never heard of Stinson Beach, I do love me some beaches. So I convinced Ben to take another wiggly-squiggly drive up the coast so that we could go to the beach! It was pretty cool – a lot less windy than Ocean View, but a lot more people. Probably because it was so nice out. I scampered around in the waves a bit, but they were SUPER cold, so I had to hop around on one leg until it went numb, then switch to the other. Probably looked pretty silly.

View from the coastal highway.  Gorgeous.

So c-c-c-old!!!!

       Sunday was spent traveling to church. The Richmond-Fremont line was delayed, so we had to spend way too long sitting in a BART station. Because we were late to church, we missed “Come Thou Font,” which was SO SAD, because no one can sing that hymn like a Mennonite congregation can. Afterwards, I went to the park with Hannah, Alyssa, Jonathan, Emma, and Greta and enjoyed the continued nice weather. There was also a 49ers game. Conversation with Alyssa regarding said game:

       Alyssa - “The 49ers are playing today!”

       Me - “OMG I KNOW!!!”

       Alyssa - “Are you going to watch?”

       Me - “No”

       Alyssa - “But you were so excited that they were playing...?”

       Me - “No, I was excited because I knew that they were playing, not because they were actually playing!”

Oh, and the 49ers won, which is cool because it means that they get to play in the Super Bowl!  I might actually watch it for reasons other than the commercials... And if they win, SF can lay claim to TWO nationwide championship title-things, because the Giants won the World Series a couple months back.  Nifty.  Look at me, all up-to-date on my sports knowledge!  

         Today was pretty laid-back. I switched my clinic hours to Thursdays, so now Mondays are wide open. The only noteworthy thing that happened (other than trying and sort-of succeeding at fixing my bike brakes) was skyping with my friend Zach, who is in Austria right now, just chillin' out and enjoying the life of a German-speaker in Tirol. It was really good to catch up with him. I actually had very little idea of what he was doing, because Facebook is dumb and doesn't show me stuff from people I don't click on, and since he took a leave of absence from Facebook, he was automatically shuttled to the bottom of my list, right under a group of Bethel football players from 2009. But now, thanks to his blog, and our 2-hour conversation, I am 100% up to speed! 

Maxi skirt

          Yesterday was my day off, so I decided to do some work on my new pile of fabric. This is what I came up with:

It didn't take too long, actually. The hardest part was sewing with knits for the first time. Well, that and the fact that my sewing machine hadn't been adjusted yet, so I spent a lot of the first hour getting the bobbin tension to match the needle tension. Turns out that's pretty hard to do, especially when you don't have a mini screwdriver for the bobbin tension and have to use your seam ripper. Hunched over a small sewing machine stabbing at a tiny tiny screw with a very sharp object is not ideal, but it got the job done.

          The waistband is a solid chunk of black 2” wide elastic, and when I sewed it on to the skirt, I forgot to stretch it as I sewed. So then I tried to put it on and it didn't stretch and I couldn't get it past my knees. So I had to rip it out and do it again. And I also only had one functional bobbin (the other two were not the right kind), and I had to use both black and white thread. Obviously that's not going to work. So I guess the next time I go to the fabric store I'll have to pick up a bobbin or two.

         I was going to take a picture last night, but it was dark and my room has terrible lighting. Plus, I couldn't have taken it with the owl from the garden. He's supposed to be scaring all of the mice out of the garden, which he does with gusto. Unfortunately, they run into our house and have a party. We've caught ten in the last week.   

Taking a bike on BART during Berkeley rush hour is a bad idea

          Gosh you guys, I'm sorry, I haven't posted in like a week! My bad. In my defense, it's not like anything super exciting actually happened, so you didn't miss anything.

          I made it back to Oakland on Monday. Ben picked me up from the BART station and since I hadn't really eaten anything of substance all day, we went out to this pizza place in Berkeley and had THE BEST DAMN SLICE OF PIZZA EVER. It had cilantro on it and it burned the roof of my mouth because I was so hungry that I tried to eat it as soon as it came to the table. And just a little update, Ben moved into a new house in Berkeley. Here's a picture.

Ok, so he doesn't actually have the run of the whole place.  Just a room and a shared kitchen.

           I spent Tuesday doing laundry and putting my room in order and catching up on stuff. Turned out no major disasters occurred while I was away. Not that I was worried. My coworkers are pretty good at averting crises. So now my room is further livened up by the addition of a four seasons painting, a rainy day painting, and MY NEW SEWING MACHINE. Haven't actually sewed anything yet, but more on that in a bit.

         Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were spent working my butt off, as usual. Thursday was a crepe party at Hannah/Emma/Rosanna's house (hereafter referred to as H.E.R. House). That was a really fun experience. 

Mushroom-spinach crepe filling

          On Friday, I attempted to get to Ben's by BART. With my bike. During rush hour. When he lived in the City, it wasn't a problem, because no one is heading from Oakland into the city on a Friday evening, so there was always plenty of room. But now that he lives in Berkeley, everyone who works in downtown Oakland hops on the BART and goes to their little bungalows in Berkeley. Meaning that the train is jam-packed with LITERALLY EVERY PERSON IN THE EAST BAY. And their bikes, because all the people in the East Bay are hippies that ride bikes everywhere. So there I was, packed onto the BART with everyone and their bikes. I was leaning against the wheelchair-only spot because it was available (because it's supposed to be available for wheelchairs, but no one is ever in that spot). Then suddenly, this guy in a wheelchair gets on and is like “HEY GIRL YOU'RE IN MY SPOT.” And so I had to shamefacedly maneuver my bike out of the wheelchair spot while completely surrounded by lots of people and their bikes. It was very embarrassing, and there wasn't a lot of room. And then I couldn't hang on to anything because I'm too short to reach the overhead grab bars and I wasn't within reach of anything else except the disabled man's wheelchair and I felt like that would be in poor taste.

         Ben and I had been planning to head into the city for a friend's birthday party, but once I made it to the house and we actually sat down and thought “Hey, we'd have to walk half an hour to the BART station, ride the train for half an hour, and then walk for an hour to get to her house... and then do that a couple hours later, when it's incredibly dark out...” the whole idea just sounded less appealing. So we decided to go to Target to buy an air mattress, because Ben's room only has a tiny single bed. When we aired it up, it pretty much filled the rest of the room.

          On Saturday, Ben skyped with Gary and Carla while I took a walk down Shattuck, the street that Ben lives on. It's pretty cool, quite a few interesting stores and very expensive gourmet restaurants. I was looking for a fabric store that Carla had spotted. Ben claimed it was within a few blocks of the house, but it totally wasn't.  But when I did find it, MY HEAD EXPLODED IT WAS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER THERE WAS FABRIC EVERYWHERE AND IT WAS ALL TOTALLY GORGEOUS SILKS AND SATINS AND VELVETS AND LINENS AND WOOLS AND EVERY KIND OF FABRIC IN THE WHOLE WORLD. 

BEST THING IN MY LIFE.

I could spend a lot of time there, just imagining things that I could do with all of the different fabrics if I had the time and money to do something with all of them. Skirts. Lots of skirts. That's what I would do. I restrained myself, and only bought a couple pieces of striped fabric for a pleated skirt and a knit skirt (I'm not sure if my small frame and giant ass can pull off a maxi skirt, but if I can't, I'll still have a giant chunk of uninterrupted yardage to fiddle around with, so win-win either way). Then we had a late dinner at an Indian buffet place that was pretty cool. Afterwards, we took a walk up into the hills and watched the sunset and it was pretty magical.

          We had to get up super early on Sunday (ok like 730) to get to church on time. Turns out it takes an hour and a half to get to church, what with the walk-BART-walk combo. And that was even when we actually caught the train and didn't have to wait 20 minutes! So it could almost take two hours! That's some serious dedication to Christian education right there. Afterwards, we headed back to the house and spent an unnecessarily long time looking up how to get to Grizzly Peak, which is this mountain thing behind the house. It had GREAT views of the whole Bay. Seriously, we could see clear up north and most of the way south. And it was completely clear out, so we had at least 10-mile visibility. It was a spectacular view. We watched the sunset there, too, and I took way too many pictures.

       Today was full of the Street Level Clinic. Literally everyone had cold and flu symptoms, so it's a good thing I got my flu shot, I guess. I am currently laboring under the delusion that if I'm exposed multiple times in small doses, then my body has enough time to set up immune defenses. I'm not sure if that's true or not (pretty sure not), but hopefully through sheer force of will I can avoid deathly illness. Later in the evening, I went to East Bay Supper Club and hung out with some cool East Bayers from the church while all of their children screamed like little maniacs in the background. They are very adorable children though, so it was mostly ok.   

Five Days with Friends

        Well, I'm headed home after spending five days in Newton. It was a SUPER great trip – it was wonderful to see all my friends and professors again (four months apart is a LONG time), and to hang around Newton and Kansas for awhile longer.

        On Wednesday afternoon, Natalie and I drove back to Newton and I spent the afternoon and evening at Bethel, “speed-dating” all of my friends who were leaving for Interterm. I just walked around the mods and talked to people as I met them. I pretty much asked and answered the same questions for each person (“how was last semester/your time in Oakland so far?” “Where are you going for Interterm?” “What are your plans for the future?”) but the plus side of that is that I'm now really good at concisely explaining my volunteer position! So it was really good to see everyone again. I stayed the night in Jenae's room in 9C, so that I could get up the next day and do the same thing with all my professors and faculty friends!

            I went around to see all of my adult friends (Megan/Toby Tyner, Christine, Paul, Francisca) during the day on Thursday. Our conversations were a lot longer, and I still pretty much said the same thing five or six times in one day, but that's all right – they all had different things to say in regards to what I was doing, and it was nice to hear some adult feedback. That evening, I went to Brian's and Nate's house to spend the night. Eric stopped by after work in Wichita, and it was so good to see him again, not only because he's a wonderful person and a very good friend, but also because I seriously needed some computer help. So we spent an hour or so troubleshooting my external hard drive and attempting to copy photos to his computer. It took forever, over a full day, to copy 30GB of photos, which is not how it's supposed to be. Stupid hard drive.   

       Eric and I went on a Druber's run before he had to go back to Wichita, but afterward, I kind of just bummed around the house on Friday.  

SO HAPPY

I had some things that I'd planned to do, but it just didn't happen, but that was ok, because I was super tired from spending time with friends and not sleeping. 

Brian made me quesadillas!

 I went to see my chemistry professor so that he could explain some nuances of organic chemistry to me (it was sort of embarrassing to admit that I didn't understand it, because it was kind of a basic concept, and I just faked my way through class without actually knowing how it worked). But now I think I get it. That evening, Brian and Nate and I headed to Bethel and hung out in the mods, catching up with people and doing typical Bethel Friday night things. That was also really fun.

 Around 130, Evan and the three of us went to Newell's for cheese fries, which are DELICIOUS, but hell on the digestive system.

  

So much regret the next day...

       Saturday was spent getting a haircut from Allison (she is the BEST, and everyone should get haircuts from her, because she is so good. And she's the only one who knows how to work with my masses of cowlicks), and with girls from the mod. I taught Jackie how to make zwiebach and she had an excellent time learning how to pinch off the zwiebach.

We took them to a mod Christmas party at Kylie's house (she has the NICEST house). We all brought food and had a gift exchange. It was really good to see the girls again and to catch up on what everyone's up to and what everyone's plans are. Camille bought me an AWFUL Jesus-head snowglobe, which since it had more than 3oz of water, I couldn't take on the plane with me! So sad. I could have had a lot of fun photoshoots with that thing.    

 

Watching Ellen read "50 Shades of Grey" on YouTube

6B reunited again!

Jesus head snowglobe!

        On Sunday, I went to Tabor and said “hi” to Helen Schmidt (my adorable old-lady friend who writes me letters all the time) and my extended family and cousins, as well as a lot of people who just came up to me and said “hi, how are you?” and I had to pretend like I remembered who they were (or that I even knew in the first place). There was also a potluck, which is a thing that Tabor does VERY well. Afterwards, I headed to my grandparent's house to see them. They haven't been feeling very well for the last week or so, and weren't in church, so I wanted to make sure that I saw them before I left. At 5, Brian and Nate and I went to the Newton theater to see “Les Miserables”, which I have heard rave reviews about. I haven't seen the play or read the book, so I really didn't know what to expect. It was good, and the music was great. The girl who played Eponine was my favorite – she KILLED it. Then we met Jackie and Ben for drinks and half-price apps at Applebees. We annoyed everyone in the restaurant by taking lots of flash photos, which I felt bad about, but only for a bit – it was my last night in Kansas, after all!

8 years of friendship.  One of the good things that came out of Clay Center.

I took all of these pictures.  Next time you're at the 'bee, check out their back wall!

All in all, it was a GREAT trip, and it reminded me how much I love Kansas and everyone that is still in Kansas. It makes it pretty hard to go back to the Bay Area.   

Christmas at Home

      Well, I've spent the last several days in my hometown.  My flight from SFO to ICT was relatively uneventful. From SFO to DEN, I was supposed to have a window seat, but some lady took it, and then she FEEL ASLEEP! The nerve. There was all sorts of fog and whatnot over the Bay Area and I really wanted to take pictures of it, but I thought leaning over the lady and snapping my camera would be a bit of an invasion. The flight from DEN to ICT was also about an hour late because of all the storms out East. But I made it to Wichita, Ben picked me up, and we headed to Clay Center.
       The next day, Saturday, was our family Christmas. I received a cool “rainy day” painting from Grace, a pencil drawing from Natalie, some new grey Toms, and some other stuff from my parents. Ben got a box of Fruity Pebbles, because I told him that if he didn't give me any Christmas ideas for him, I'd get him a box of Fruity Pebbles. He also got some other stuff, but for awhile we tried to trick him. I'm sure he didn't fall for it.  Ben and I then took a walk outside, had a snowball fight, took some pictures.

Whoo, Christmas tree!

I made a raccoon scarf for Natalie!

      Dad also fixed up an old Singer 99 ¾ size sewing machine for me, showed me how to thread it up, and figured out how the buttonhole attachment worked. I planned to have Ben take it back to California when he drove out the next day. It'll be nice to have a sewing machine close at hand again – hand sewing takes a little longer than I'd prefer, and plus I've got a quilt top to piece!   

      Ben headed out the next day at 6am. He planned to drive to Berkeley over the next two days with his little Festiva, and he ended up making it in the next day at 10pm or so. The family headed to church, then afterwards, we went to the ice skating rink in Manhattan, since all the ponds around here were empty. The rink was super full of a bunch of little kids who didn't know how to skate. It was also really small. For someone who grew up skating on farm ponds, it wasn't as enjoyable as it could've been, but better than nothing. 

        After that, we went to see “The Hobbit,” which was just as good the second time around. Except for the part where I was so tired that I snoozed through the first 30 minutes, but I came 'round around the time they all reached Rivendell, so it was all right.  

        It snowed most of the day on Monday, which was all right with me. I'd been missing the snow and the cold (strangely enough), so I was really happy to see all the snow. Four inches worth! It was gorgeous. I walked around in it, took some pictures, and spent time with our dopey ugly/cute dog.  

The view from our front porch.

The most common view of our dog.  He likes to jump.

        Today, we took advantage of all that snow. We went sledding, tried to go cross-country skiing, and wandered around in the deep drifts up by the windbreak.

This did not end well.

When we came back, Dad and Grace made New Year's cookies while Mom made Dutch Letters, both of which are the most delicious things ever.  

        We had to take down our Christmas ornaments, since Dad's still on his crutches and Mom didn't want to have to do it herself. So then there was the usual “oh, how do we fit all these ornaments into these three boxes,” “what did we do with the ornament hooks again?” “hey, you forgot these decorations in the kitchen!” But now it's all done, and we're all hunkered down watching a movie before all of us girls head out tomorrow afternoon.

       So that means that I'll be in Newton tomorrow afternoon, arriving around four or so. So all you kids that are leaving for Interterm, look me up, ok?!