A Charmed Life

A charmed life. A full life. A life that does not provide very much time for blogging…

This is my family. This picture was taken in Riverfront Park in Spokane in October 2007.

Keith is 46 years old. In fact, he just celebrated his birthday on November 30th. Happy Birthday, Sweety! He and I have been married for 12 years. We celebrated our 12th anniversary on August 29th. When we met, he had two beautiful daughters, Lisa (25) and Kristina (21), and I had a daughter, Linnea (13). Then, together, we had Megan (11), Stephen (6), Rebecca (3) and Michael (2).

Here are some recent pictures of them. Some of these pictures are from this Thanksgiving.

Lisa and Kristina enjoying some sister time in the kitchen
Linnea the bookworm, reading Frank Peretti book, “The Oath”

and here’s Linnea goofing off with Michael

Megan likes to spend time with Michael, too. Here they are together

Michael has this new thing right now. He’s become quite fond of the camera, and whenever he sees it, he runs up to me and says, “Smile, please, Mom?” He doesn’t pronounce his words quite correctly yet, so the phrase comes out sounding like “My-o peas Mom.” It’s pretty darn cute.

Rebecca (the blond) with our granddaughter Alexis (the redhead, 4 years old)

Rebecca playing dress-up in a Dora dress
Here’s Stephen proudly displaying one of his more recent Tinker Toy inventions

When we met, Keith lived in this house:
He had lived there for 8 years, and we continued to live there for another 10 years after that. It was rather small for such a large family. It had 5 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, but two of the bedrooms were in the basement and had non-egress windows, and one of them was dedicated solely to storage. The house was roughly 1800 square feet.

In April of 2006, we moved to this 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 3,400 sq ft house about ½ mile away from the old one…

It’s wonderful because it’s on a cul-de-sac, so there’s no traffic to worry about, and the kids can play outside with relative freedom. But the back yard has a gate that opens up right across the street from three schools--an elementary school, a junior high school, and a high school. And it’s really nice not to have to stand in line for the bathroom. It is, however, a lot of work to take care of. It’s all good. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But all play and no work is far worse… It makes Jack and Jill spoiled rotten ungrateful brats. It’s been a fun and exciting challenge trying to find ways for everyone to work together to get everything done to take care of what God has trusted us with.

On top of having a big family and big home with a big yard in a nice neighborhood filled with big beautiful homes (whose owners of course expect a certain level of upkeep from their neighbors), I joyfully spend a lot of time at our church, New Hope Christian Center. We’ve been attending this church since 1996, just a couple weeks after we got married. Pastor Eric’s father-in-law, Leroy Hunt, is our pastor.

I am blessed and privileged to be a member of the worship team right now, which means being at church at 8:15 or 8:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings and at worship practice on the first and third Thursdays of most months. Plus, Keith and I attend the Celebrate Recovery class every Tuesday night and teach Awana every Wednesday night. We love our church so much. She will be our church home for as long as her doors are open, which I pray will be for the rest of our lives.

On top of all of that, I work full time for the City of Spokane in this beautiful historical building across the street from Riverfront Park and River Park Square (a beautiful shopping mall). This building used to be a Montgomery Wards store.

This is my messy desk in the office I work in, the Clerk’s Office. I truly love my job, and I’m incredibly grateful for it, but there’s so much to do, that even though the four of us are working as fast and as hard as we can, we’re hardly keeping our heads above water. The full days pass by in such a blur, it sometimes actually leaves me feeling breathless.

My mom moved in with us at the end of November. It’s been awesome having her here. She and Megan, especially, have been spending a lot of time together, which has filled deep needs in both of their hearts. She is in the only bedroom in the house that has two windows in it, because she loves plants and light and beautiful things. Here she is proudly displaying some of the necklaces she’s made recently, as well as a couple of pictures of her beautiful flowers and the plants in her room.


God's richest blessings to everyone reading this, and a big thank you to my family for letting me be away from them for a few hours while I put this post together.