Jeannine, Jerry's Deli & David Hasselhoff

My friend Jeannine came to CA with her mom because Jeannine was receiving an alumni recognition award from California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.  It was so good to see her as it had been awhile and my girls were in love with her by the time she left!  (Alyssa confessed to Jeannine that she wasn't too sure about her when she first met, but it didn't last long!)   We were able to see Jeannine at the start and end of her trip.  The latter was at Jerry's Deli in Encino.  And it's at Jerry's Deli that we spotted David Hasselhoff sitting at a booth near the entryway.  While we didn't snap a photo of David, here's Jeannine with my girls...

Hannah joins the Circus!

Hannah checked out the Beginner Family Circus class today at the XTC gym in Eagle Rock... she'd going back again next week.

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10 on 10... My first posting!

1. Reading from our daily morning devotions book, "God and Me."

2. Hannah has new reading glasses!
3. Yesterday was bubble gum day, today is eat all you can candy day.
4. Garage door painting.
5. Hannah surveying the sights.
6. I love the fragrant orange blossoms.
7. Hannah helped make a dinner to deliver to a new mom for AHG service hours.
8. Hannah holding baby Sonia.
9. Alyssa holding baby Sonia.
10. Hannah at gymnastics.

Easter with the Family

We got up early to have breakfast at church at 8:30 (and too early for the grown ups thanks to the clock with the mind of it's own, changing to daylight savings... again!) After breakfast there was a kids egg hunt, then church where the choir from the Mandarin Baptist church who shares our facility came to sing (so lively) and our very own brass band played.

Following church we headed up the the "Hillcrest Estate" (with a newly redone kitchen) for dinner, egg hunt and birthday celebration for Naomi, Brett and Ryan. Miss Britt's sister and kids joined us, so we had a full blown kids table!

Miles scored big time during the egg hunt... the girls all carefully obeyed the 8 egg each rule... and Miles, well, I guess he was too busy finding eggs to bother counting them! Two year old Cruz scored with the biggest orange egg you ever did see... straight for the orange tree! The kids all had a blast together.

If you click on the link to see the rest of the pictures, one snap shot needs a bit of an explanation... there is a picture of a picture of a group of kids with a bunny cake. That's Ryan at his first birthday, the cake was made by did dad... that was forty years ago...

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Morning Mystery, by Nikki Grimes

Dawn alone stood witness
when the weighty stone
was heaved aside.
Then came May Magdalene--
crept in,
stumbled out again,
her stare vacant
as the grave,
her loved one missing.
No wonder tears flooded
the banks of her eyes.
"Why do you weep, child?"
a stranger whispered--
the gardener, she thought.
She struggles for air,
wove her worry
into words,
"Sir, tell me
if you know where
they have laid him."
He wrinkled his
thorn pierced brow
and sighed,
"Dearest Mary."
She knew that voice,
those eyes.
"Master?"
Is it you?"

The Cross of Easter

Many Questions, by Nikki Grimes

What about that tree--
the one that would be
sawn asunder,
its limbs
lashed to a T
to brace his
bruised body?
Did he plant it?
Give it water?
Did he bless
or curse it
like the fig?
As a sapling
did it forsee
a day when nails
would join
its marrow,
its meat,
to the hand
and feet
of the Lord?

One Answer, by Nikki Grimes

They made my sturdy limbs
a party to their mutiny.
Forgive Man, Lord,
and me.

Reading these poems reminded me of the Bebo Norman song, "The Hammer Holds" that comes from the perspective of the nails...

Since it is Holy Week...

I found a book by Nikki Grimes at our local library called At Jerusalem's Gate, Poems of Easter. It is a collection of poems from the perspective of various people who were witnesses to that first holy week.

At Jerusalem's Gate, by Nikki Grimes

It's Him! shout bands
of rich and poor
who block my view.
I angle for
a glimpse of him
whose touch unlocks
a blind man's sight,
a deaf man's hearing.
There he is! There!
But what is this?
No light shoots from
his fingertips.
His voice calls down
no fire.
And yet, they say
a fig tree withered at his word.
That he shattered
death's door
not once, but thrice,
calling someone's
loved ones
back to life.
That he speaks
and demons cower.
Perhaps he hides this
power.
He is, by all accounts,
extraordinary, yet
I find him quite ordinary.
Until he turns
and drinks me in.
I gasp, a-tremble,
grasp a palm frond
and wave in a frenzy
of praise and adoration,
singing Hosanna!
Hosanna! Hosanna!
as if my very life
depends upon it.

Alyssa is an Angel...

Today was the Easter Chapel at Alyssa's preschool. She played an angel in the Easter story with her friend, Mihret.

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