The Right Fit!

So some of you know we've been waiting many months to buy a car - specifically, a yellow 2015 Honda Fit. We've been working with an auto-buying service called Autoland, through our credit union, and the yellow Fits have been trickling into the US very slowly... but last week, a yellow Fit showed up in southern CA, and Aaron snagged it for us. It arrived yesterday at Derek's office!

Derek and I with THE FIT!


Here we are with Aaron, the Autoland consultant/car finding guru!


...and with Saul, our loan officer!! Such a nice guy, he makes you want to go get a loan, for anything.


Of course, we couldn't celebrate the new car without acknowledging the faithful, reliable service of the car it's replacing, the 1998 Honda Accord, previously owned by Derek's parents.


Kids in the Accord, 2008.


We sold the Accord at CarMax, where it got HIT IN ITS PARKING SPACE right after they did the appraisal. Fortunately, the nice people at CarMax honored their appraisal despite the damage. Crazy!!

We're thankful for our newest Honda, and are looking forward to putting tons of miles on it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDPA!!

Orville Vanderlip is 105 years young today!



We couldn't find a "Happy 105th Birthday" card, so we sent him cards in denominations; Happy 60th, Happy 21st, Happy 16th, and Happy 8th.

Those add up to 105. Hope you have a great day, Grandpa! We love you!!

RIP Moonlight

Our last and beloved fishy, Moonlight, passed away last night.

200? - 2014

He was a social fish who had a long life. We will miss him!

Happy 50th Anniversary Bonnie & Darryl!!

Sorry to be so late with this, but we wish Bonnie and Darryl, AKA Grammie and Gramps, a VERY happy 50th wedding anniversary on September 5th!

We were fortunate to go up to spend the day with them on Friday and Saturday, the 5th and 6th of September.

We also called in Molly, currently going to college not too far away, to take some backyard pics! More will be coming, but here's a preview of the photo shoot!


It was a GREAT, great day. Here's a bad cell phone pic of us at dinner (Cattlemens):


...and a slightly better cell pic of the happy couple enjoying their gift from Cattlemens for 50 years of marriage: special hats and a hot fudge sundae!


Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad. We love you very much.

20 Years ago Today

We got married!



It was a day of tonal extremes: from gorgeous choral music with my cousin Shelly's God-given soprano voice soaring above, to unadulterated geekery in the use of the "Throne Room Processional" (from Star Wars, though by design, nobody really knew that) on organ for my entrance, and reception decor featuring film reels and cardboard standees of Star Wars characters, it was a day that celebrated God's perfect and wacky union of Derek and me. All our love to everyone who helped make it so special, and so much fun.

A 7-minute low-res video:

Glassybaby Interview with Trina!

My dear, incredibly charitable friend Trina was recently interviewed by the Glassybaby company for their new "Glassroots Story Page" - in fact, she is their first subject!

Their cover page introducing Trina can be found here: Glassroots Tour Page


Here's Trina's interview.

And here's a link to Trina's blog post, which documents the "making of" the interview!

Thanks for all you do, Trina!