We thought our Michigan friends would enjoy seeing the front page of the Seattle Times. It's pretty dramatic considering there was only 1-2 inches of accumulation! This is our first snow that "stuck" since we moved to Seattle.
The other exciting story happened a few weeks ago. I dropped Kayle off at work around 10am and proceeded toward my school. A few blocks away, the light at the intersection just never changed from red. As I sat about 3 cars back, two police cars went speeding by with lights flashing and sirens blaring, but, still, our light didn't change. Next, another police car pulled up from the other direction and did an abrupt slide to a stop, parking lengthwise to block the road to my right. I thought, "wow, that was dramatic for someone coming to direct traffic for a broken stoplight." Sure enough, the officer jumped out of his vehicle and waved the traffic through the intersection in the direction he just came from. After the cars crossed, he went around the back of his car and pulled out a huge black assault rifle and started crouching down. This was the first time I got a little worried and thought perhaps I should be ducking or something. I glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed police cars were blocking the road behind me. I was stuck inside a police barricade! Soon after, two more police cars drove up and parked in the intersection. Their occupants jumped out, guns drawn, and moved down the sidewalk to the left. Meanwhile, I called Kayle to tell him what was going on. His advice was to stay in the car. Finally, my crouching cop ran back out into the intersection and directed our lane to turn right and get out of there. Phew! I was glad to get away from danger, even though the whole ordeal lasted only about 5-10 minutes. Still, even after checking online and searching the newspaper, I can't figure out what exactly was going on that day. It did make for an adrenaline-filled commute!
Most of the month was not nearly as exciting or perilous. At the beginning of the month (11/4), the ladies of our CG had a girl's night out at a fancy wine bar and restaurant in Bellevue. The menu features dozens of cheeses, the tiniest desserts you've ever seen, and hundreds of wines (among its other full-sized meals). I had an amazing salad with sugared pecans and some fancy, bitter cheese (not one I'd ever heard of before). Almost everyone was able to attend, so I enjoyed chatting with the 10-12 women and catching up with those who have been absent from CG for a while with their newborns.
On Saturday (11/6), I took one of my Eastside Academy students to the Seattle Harvest event with Greg Laurie. The event featured several live Christian bands including Kutlass, Revive, and Jeremy Camp. There was also some comedy and an explanation of the gospel. Kayle and I watched the live broadcast online on Sunday as well. The Key Arena (basketball) was packed with about 10,000 people, and my student and I enjoyed the evening. The broadcast from Sunday night is in the archives online. I think it was even better than Saturday. There was a touching interview with an Australian man who was born with no arms or legs and also some music from Jars of Clay and MercyMe. You can watch it here: http://seattle.harvest.org
The following week featured a day off from school for Veteran's day and the birthdays of my two siblings, Dani and Aaron. Happy 23rd and 18th birthday! On Friday, Kayle and I babysat for the McClellands and, as usual, enjoyed a dinner date after work before monitoring the sleeping baby (Tommy). The next day, we stopped by a fondue open house party at the Burns house, an annual event to visit with friends and enjoy chocolate and cheese fondue. Unfortunately, around that time, I also fell ill with a bad sore throat and headache. I was sick for most of the weekend and still tired and recovering the following week. I stayed home from work on Tuesday and missed church and CG.
By Wednesday, I felt better (enough) and went to youth group. We are still studying Joshua and have two weeks left before diverting to some special Christmas festivities together. Right now, the plan is to make a massive gingerbread mansion one night and exchange and deliver Christmas cookies to my neighbors the following week.
Last Friday kicked off a busy weekend as we went to the 7:30pm showing of the new Harry Potter movie with our friends from our old CG, Gary and Sarah Burns (same couple who hosted the fondue party). I found the movie to be excellent: suspenseful with enough comic relief to break up the general hopelessness of the mission at hand. Of course, I also am a professing "Potterhead" although the matter of Harry Potter's virtue/vice is still up for discussion in our house.
Last Saturday, I invited my youth group girls over for breakfast and our monthly leaders meeting. We made (and ate) cinnamon french toast, eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Meanwhile, Kayle went to his weekly men's accountability group. (I love that group, because the men talk about how they can better serve, love, and pursue their wives.) After, we went to Bolder's one year birthday party. They had the cutest cupcakes of lions and lambs, with designs made of frosting, mini chocolate chips and marshmellows. Bolder is Marilee and Thadd's baby, born just one short year ago and soon after we started in our current CG.
On Sunday, Kayle had to fill in for someone in the booth at church. I opted to stay home this week to rest up and get some cooking/cleaning done (only get 3 weeks off from teaching Sunday school before another 3 weeks on). Kayle was gone from 7:30am to 2pm, which is typical when we volunteer at one service and attend the next. I had lunch ready right as he came home. That afternoon, we went to our second one-year-old birthday party, this time for Tommy. We went early to pick up some balloons and help decorate. The party itself was at Gymboree, a toddler's paradise of mats, slides, tunnels, parachutes, and bubbles. Tommy also had the largest shaped-like-a-drum cake we've ever seen; Kayle joked that he half-expected the birthday boy to jump out of it.
Since the weekend, my anticipated busy-ness gave way to snow days. Yesterday (Tuesday), our mutual snow day was not good for our budget. Kayle has been wanting a new Windows 7 phone to test his apps and play with. Microsoft will reimburse for the phone itself, but we had to sign up for a new cellphone plan with unlimited data (internet) for 2 years. We took a nice, romantic walk down the snowy sidewalk, all bundled up, to Redmond Town Center. We ate lunch together at Claim Jumper and went to the AT&T store and Half Price Books. Kayle is excited to show you our new technology upgrade, since the phone we had before was almost 7 years old. Before we could only make calls and send text messages with great effort. Now we have a cool touch screen, can surf the net, watch videos, and check our e-mail. Do we need all that? Probably not, but it's hard not to get caught up in the excitement of new gadgets. And EVERYONE ELSE at Microsoft has one! And don't worry: our awesome phone number hasn't changed...
Last night, Kayle worked with Joe Filcik (from the Dutch House) on their bookshelf phone app. I worked on the blog and was distracted when Henry came home and watched "House" and "Lie to Me" on TV. Joe also showed us the new Kinect video game system. It uses cameras and sensors to let you play games without any controller. Kinect also takes pictures of you while playing so you can laugh at how silly everyone looks flailing around. Very fun!
Our Thanksgiving plans are not finalized yet, but it sounds like we'll be spending dinner with some friends from CG and possibly visiting Leavenworth (the Bavarian town here, like Frankenmuth). Call us on the weekend, since we'll have more minutes then to be able to talk! Love you!
Angie and Kayle
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