Some Random Nikon F4 Shots from Throughout the Holidays

Here's Suz puttin' some change in the meter so we can head over to the bookstore to return some used textbooks for cash money.

Suz is dreaming here about what she is going to do with all that cash!

Mom's Department 56 village carollers sing their hearts out silently.

Sam, here with a goofy half grin, is looking more like a boy than a toddler every day.

Gordon and Al scope out the action above.

Gordon, closer than you ever really want to be to him.

Al, ditto.

Thursday and Friday December 21 and 22

John and Dan play games on Thursday night.

Sarah and Mark at Lindsay and Shawn Vietch's wedding.

The Murphster sucks down a pop at Qdoba.

Magoo gets her knots.

Wednesday December 20 - Shopping and the Deleeuws

Suz and I did some Christmas shopping together, which was fun, except for this part:

Here's the lovely sister herself picking out some fancy pants paper for one of her fancy pants friends.

Casey has long been laboring at this goatee.

Here Nick, the proud uncle, holds Casey's daughter Evelyn.

Tuesday December 19 - Dinner with Grandpa and Grandma

Tuesday afternoon I ate lunch with Al and Gordon at Red Robin, and then we did some shopping at the mall. I got a new Bible with a sweet Celtic cross on the cover, English Standard Version (a word by word translation based on the RSV). On Tuesday evening Grandpa and Grandma Spangenberg came over for dinner.

Here's Liz enjoying an after dinner period of relaxation with the family.

Mom, doing, I suspect, the same thing.

Al, with toothpick.

Bryan James Gordon himself.

Grandpa Spangenberg occupying a chair.

Tuesday December 19 - The Coopers and Donuts with Al

On Monday morning we settled into the Dan Cooper household, where we spent the rest of the week.

On Tuesday Sarah and I went out to brunch with Alec Glass at Krispy Kremes. So good.

Sunday December 17 - Christmas with the Sagendorfs

After we flew from DC to Detroit to Grand Rapids we were whicked off to Forest Hills Bible Chapel with Mom and Dad Johnston to say some quick hellos before we sped up to Edmore for the Sagendorf Christmas celebration.

The Sagendorf's play a mean gift exchange. It was good times - I ended up with a nice flourescent Craftsman work lamp. Sarah's cousin stole the gift Sarah and I brought from Grandma, which was looked on with much disapproval by most of the clan.



There were other people there besides the Johnstons, but I guess I didn't really take many pictures of them. Oops!

Home Again

Well just to let you know, we arrived home yesterday in one piece! We started the trip out behind schedule in GR and then were delayed again in Texas, but we made it to our flight from LA to Sydney fine. Brian had an exit row seat from Texas to LA, which he lost because of me - sorry Brian! - because some girl was sick behind me. Her boyfriend had asked the guy next to her if he would switch (giving him the exit row seat) but the guy refused. So I asked Brian if he would switch with her, squishing him back in a normal window seat space. I should have thought about it and offered my seat to the guy so Brian and I could sit together in the exit row, but obviously I wasn't smart enough for that.
It obviously was very hectic for the boarding crew in LA because they were lots of people in line and they pretty much dismissed my need to be seated on an aisle seat. The lady at the end of our row tried to sleep the whole time, so I was a little annoyed because that meant we had to limit the number of times we could get up and use the bathroom - not cool when you're pregnant!! I always feel bad for Brian because he doesn't have any leg room and his neck always gets really tight giving him a headache; so it had to be way worse for him. :( We did jump over her a couple of times to get out but getting back into the seat was the hard part. Anyway, Qantas's (our airline) staff is always really nice and they kept me fed, even at 1am in the morning when I was feeling sick. It is true that once you fly first/business class it is hard to go back to coach.

Since we were stuck in our seats for 14hrs (I did get up a few times) my feet were so swollen when we arrived in Sydney I could barely tie my shoelaces. Brian was struggling with his congestion and major headache. Then we headed to the first immigration checkpoint which was ridiculous because there were about 300 of us in line all merging into one line. Well praise God it only took us 10 min to get our luggage and get through the luggage screening! I fished out some painkiller from our bags for Brian and we headed off to our domestic flight.

Once our bags were checked we washed our faces and changed our clothes before boarding our last flight to Adelaide. We had a nice chatty Queenslander cabby take us home. It was hot - 36 degrees and the house was warm from being shut up for 2 wks. We showered, ate, turned on the air in our bedroom and laid down for a nap. I woke up at 5:45pm and realized the power was off!! We knew it had been off for at least 2hrs because we set our alarm for 3pm and it never went off. I checked the electric box and then woke up Brian to decide what to do. At this point I'm a little overwhelmed and feeling sick from flying and the heat. So we hop in the car to go for a ride and get food.
Luckily our wonderful friends Annie and Nandor were home and they let us come hang our in their air-conditioned house and eat pizza until we headed home for bed!! It was so wonderful and relaxing and probably helped stay awake a lot better than we could have done ourselves. Well we got home and the power was back on :)!!

Brian got up at 6pm to go to work and he said that he felt ok. We slept through the night pretty well, even with the 4hr nap in the afternoon. Well it's supposed to be 40 degrees today... I better get ready with a cool shower and begin some unpacking and laundry. Sorry for the lengthy report. We had a wonderful time at home and were very sad to leave you all.

Northern Virginia

Our friends, vita familiae, picked us up at the airport and brought us back to their home. Since it was about 10:30 pm when we got there we went straight to bed. Thankfully we were able to sleep for about 9 hours.

We spent the morning hanging out with our hosts and their three delightful children. They took us to a tremendously large and fabulous thrift store called Unique, where I was finally able to find a pair of overalls that fit me. We then went to Five Guys for burgers and fries. The burgers there are a wonder to consume. After some more hanging out and a delicious pasta dinner we went to a surprise birthday party for our friend Mike, where we were able to see him and a whole bunch of other friends from the area. It was very nice.

That night we only slept about three hours before flying out for Grand Rapids at 6:30 am. We went to bed at 11 pm but our bodies woke up some time after 2 am and would not go back to sleep.

The flight to Grand Rapids was fairly uneventful, but involved a long layover in Detroit Metro airport.

This is our friends' youngest:

Dad and the twins:

Sarah and Jatana:

The Flight Back to the U S of A

The flight was LONG. Not any longer than before, but it was LONG before, too. We left Adelaide at about 7 am on Friday morning and got to Washington, DC at about 10 pm. With the 15.5 hour time difference that's 30.5 hours of travelling. I think we each got less than three hours of sleep. Some of the flights were delayed but thanks to a long layover in just the right spot we made it into Reagan National only about an hour later than scheduled.

Here is the sunrise somewhere over the Pacific:

The wing and engines of the Qantas Boeing 747 somehwere over the Pacific:

Sunrise over the California coast as we approached the motherland:

Ontario, California, where we landed to get some fuel and wait for the fog to clear over Los Angeles.

Sunday Was Much Cooler

I hung out with Tim and Nandor on Sunday morning while Sarah was laboring away at rehearsal for the carols service. We rode our bikes from Tim's house over to the beach at Glenelg, ate at a cafe and then threw the frisbee around on the beach and in the ocean for a while. I found out this morning that a large shark was spotted in the water at the same beach later that day.


Carols was great. Sarah played beautifully! All her hard practice and worrying about reeds paid off in the end. They'll have a DVD of the service ready sometime in June. We'll get one so you can all watch Sarah do her thang. Here's some pictures of me with the stars of the concert. Sorry, I got a little celebrity happy.

The Hottest Day of My Life

Friday was the first hottest day of my life. And then came Saturday: 109 degrees Fahrenheit. So hot. However, humidity was about 6%, so I've probably endured worse in humid Michigan even though the temperature was only 90 degrees or so. Sarah and I spent some time in the new pool, which you can see here reflected on the side of our Weber kettle.

The lovely lady herself, loungin oppulently in the luxury of our inflatable pool.

If we look a little strange here, it's because we're so hot, and there was a bee bothering us.


P.S. (posted by Sarah) The water coming out of the cold water facet was so hot at first you could burn your hand!

Pink and Pregnant

The tummy continues to grow.

And Sarah continues to dislike pictures being taken of her at inopportune times. As would anyone.

Gingerbread House Extravaganza!!!

Last Thursday Sarah and I took part in a Gingerbread House event at church. We had asked beforehand and were told that it was not women only. When everyone had taken their seat I was one of two men there. I was in the midst of over 200 gingerbread house constructing lolly eating women. It was pretty dang frightening at first, but once I realized how much better I was at making gingerbread houses than most of them I did all right. Sarah's house was real sweet - she loaded it up with a lot of good things to eat.

The raw construction materials.

Sarah carefully putting the roof on her house.

My nearly completed masterpiece.

Again, from the back.

Sarah's work of pure inspired genius.

The lovely lady thinking about what will happen to the house later.