Flying

Jon and I got to spend Thanksgiving in Ohio this year. It had been since Christmas that I got to spend any time there, so I was super excited. I couldn't sleep for days leading up to our trip - and if you know me, you know I can't stay awake for much past 9:00 p.m. One of the most notable experiences over those few days was having my dad fly me over our home, looking at the roads I had just run on earlier that morning, trying to find my uncle outside his home chopping wood. My dad logged a few hours of flight training many years ago (I imagine around the time he graduated from college, although I could be wrong about that.) In the past couple years, he bought a Cessna 140 and finished his training to become a pilot. I admit that I am a bit of a scaredy-cat, and did not anticipate ever going for a ride. Friday turned out to be an unusually nice autumn day, and I couldn't resist. My dad did not disappoint - it was a beautiful trip. He is very careful and, of course, very good and what he does. Besides my normal irrational fear of vehicles whether on the road or in the air, I felt very safe.

SOLD! (-ish)

This past weekend, we signed a contract on our old house. The family will rent it until they are able to get a mortgage. Because of past issues, it may be 18 months, but we are happy to let them pay our mortgage for us until that time. If all goes according to plan, this is perfect in that we get to make some more money. I'm so excited to a little bit of extra money come in rather than just watch it disappear like we have for the last few months.

LOVE THEM!

Look! Look at what my local Price Chopper now carries! This is my favorite treat from my Corrymeela days. Before, I could only buy them at World Market or the Brit store in Lawrence. Now they are at my finger tips. Not that I will buy them actually - they cost $5.15 for 8.8 oz, but it is so comforting to know they are there. A little friend on the bottom shelf of the cookie aisle.

Almost There

It's been a very busy start to the school year but things are still coming along with the house. Thank you to all those who have been here and done so much. Without Chris and his entourage of tools, we would be nowhere with the house. My parents were here 2 weeks ago and Emily's parents are here now. It is great to have this feel like home and to be connect more closely to church and the community here.

Here is the progression of the bathroom that is almost finished. Only 2 drawers to build, 2 doors to paint\put on and crown molding to put up.

May

July

Early August

Today

First Days of School

I've been a high school teacher for a little over two weeks now. There are many, many things I miss about my job in Ottawa (like having my own room, having oodles of pens and clips and various office supplies, sharing the same 100ish students with the 3 teachers right next to me, knowing all the teachers in the building, having administrators that I could find. . .) but I am liking this okay so far. I think most of my apprehension is just dealing with change - to be doing my old job would be sooooo much easier because I know what to do. I have two teachers that are very helpful with each of my two preps; I don't have a lot of planning to do, so that is huge. Organizing is very difficult at the moment because I travel between three different rooms and have no two classes in the same room. I am really enjoying the math; Geometry is my favorite branch, so I am thrilled. The maturity of the students is a nice change, they get my sense of humor a bit better than the 7th graders. I'm working out the kinks, but I think this could be a job that I really love. Too early to tell (because I am overwhelmed with all the details). Ask me in couple months (or maybe next year.)

The high point of the day: during last block, a student brought a football to class (most of them carry everything with them all day), and I took it to lock up in the closet during class. When I gave it back to him after class, he asked me to throw it, and I said (obviously), "you can't throw a ball in the classroom! But. . . I can throw a football." He didn't believe me, so I said I'd show him outside after school. So, he and four other students came out to watch me. It is funny how being a girl simply makes this noteworthy. They were so impressed.

Emily

Little Buggers

What a great crop we have had here in Prairie Village! First the cherry's, then apples and peaches and now with cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers. Things do know how to grow. However, we have lots of critters. When we went to Colorado, the cherry tree was bursting with fruit. Not one was there when we got back. Then we went to Newton and the apples all disappeared. Even all the ones on the ground. Not a trace left! Now we took a few days to hang out with Kari and Jimmy and all (even the green ones) the tomatoes disappeared. We have seen rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks. If anyone has a suggestion on how to keep them out, let us know. We were not too happy to see the tomatoes go.

Reunion

Neufelds and Wiebe's galore! We had a great time at Morning Star Ranch with my mom's side of the family. Although it rained a whole lot, we had took advantage of all we could. I am reminded every time that we get together what a great family we have. Thank you all who were there and shared your weekend with Emily and I. It was a great time to get re-acquainted and worship together. It was also Alvin and Ruth's 63rd wedding anniversary (my grandparents). Congratulations!

Grandma and Grandpa sharing.


Me with my favorite little man.


Uncle Phil came in from North Carolina. It was great to see him again.


Aunt Becky. We had lots of amazing food and shared many of our pictures and stories over the weekend.


On Sunday morning we shared a worship time together on a bluff above the ranch.

Colorado

Last weekend we had the privilege of visiting Jen and Dave in Denver. We had great food and an even better time. We did try and go camping and hiking. It was so beautiful. Here is a picture near grizzly reservoir were we camped.



Here is Jen at our campsite.


This is the tailhead to our hike the next day. Once again, we should think more carefully as to what these names would imply.


This is a picture along the hike. Just around this corner we heard a loud growl and had a bit of a startle. It might have been more of a bellowing. Either way, we turned around and decided not to find out if there are only black bears in Colorado or if there are any grizzlys.


Here is Dave eating a PB Cup Smore. This is at the campsite we moved to to run away from the bears. It was located near mosquito view overlook. Once again we should have headed the signs and not tried to stay here. We ended up heading home before nightfall.

However, Colorado was great.

Pie

One of the nice things about this last week was the discovery that our tree in front of our house is a cherry tree. The cherries are a bit too tart for me (Emily) to enjoy. But, it is abosolutely beautiful and it makes oh-so-good pie. The cherry tree is only one of many fruit trees we have on our small property. We also have a peach tree, 2 apple trees, and a grape vine (although we got rid of most of the vine because it was pulling the gutters off the house . . . and we knocked down most of what was holding it up.) Come to our house and we will make you a pie. (And by "we" I mean Jon. I'll tell him later.)

More work...

Here is the back of the house after we took everything off. Bill fixed all the gutters and the ladies took care of the inside, including all of the wall paper. Everyone was great.














Here is a picture of roses in the back yard. Both Harold and Bill help clean out the yard by weeding and cutting out bushes.














This picture was taken a week later when we painted one of the rooms.














Just this past week we had a new tank-less water heater put in. It is a little bigger than we had hoped but a lot smaller than what we had and in a better place.



















This is the main bathroom. It had a lot of mold and needed to be repaired. We went to town and here is the state it is currently in. Soon there might be Sheetrock, backerboard tile and maybe a toilet.



















The tub works and we plan on keeping it. The rest of the plumbing needed to go though and we hope to have working hot and cold water (running through safe pipes that are up to code). We've spent a lot of time working on demolition and rewiring circuits in the house. Emily is a patient person when I have to rewire a circuit 3 times and I get very frustrated. She has been a busy bee and such a hard worker.

More work.

A video of how the back came off...let's just say that this was a process and the old nails were a bit stubborn.

Wiebe's, Suter's and Benner's

What a great family we have! Over Memorial Day Weekend my parents, Jen and Dave and Emily's parents came to Prairie Village and helped us get things going with the house. They were extremly motivated and we accomplished a ton. Thank you so much!

Slim pickim's with the pictures from that weekend. We were just too busy working.

Here is mom helping get the new appliances goin.














Jen cleaning away the layers. There were (are) many.














Dad at work with supper.














The is the back side of the house before we worked on it.














Dave, hard at work on the back side of the house. Good thing you can carry 8 chairs at once!














More to come.

Not All Work

Although there has been a ton of work done on weekends, evenings and - now that summer is here - weekdays, I have had moments of wonderful relaxation at Ugly House. Thank you Jon for the lovely hammock.

Finished

After many, many hours of hard work, here is the one picture I have of the stained and finished floors. (I don't think this picture quite does it justice.) Jon pretended to compromise on the floor color - he wanted dark, I wanted not so dark. We chose something in the middle (which I think is what he actually wanted). I was sold right away on the color once we did the first closet. I really like it.

Unfinished

Here you can see what the floors looked like under the carpet.

This is the same room from a different angle, many dusty hours later.




Who is this loon? Goggles rock! And check out that awesome wallpaper (it's coming down this weekend . . .I hope.)

Not the Average Day

A couple days ago I borrowed a VCR from a coworker and today I went to return it. She was out of her room and her lights were off. I reached in to turn on the light, VCR in hand, and there, two feet away, was a snake. A snake just hanging out on the floor. I just about jumped out of my pants. At school, you learn to deal with unexpected circumstances, but this is completely startling. As though the situation was not funny enough, as I leaped out of the room screaming/laughing/hyperventilating, one of the 8th grade science teachers was walking his class passed the room. They just looked at me like I was crazy. I'm not sure if I got the word "snake" out. The teacher then proceeded to tell me a joke about a captain of a ship asking for a red shirt when he went into battle against 2 other ships so the crew wouldn't see if he had been shot. And then when he saw he was up against 25 other ships, he asked for his brown pants. The moral, apparently, was that I needed brown pants. Very comforting. I'm just glad someone was around to enjoy the show. It would have been wasted hilarity for me to experience that alone.

-Emily

Ode to Hiram (a little late)

On my drive home from work today, I was thinking of some things I had intended to post about our trip to China that I never did. So, here it is.


While we were at the Forbidden City our tour guide, Hiram, was trying to explain what the huge bowl-like stone structures were for. (You can see one on the ground level near the bottom of the steps. I was only slightly taller than them. They were big.) We helped him come up with the word "vat" and then just played completely dumb. He couldn't stop laughing enough to actually tell us what they were for. We said something like, "They ate soup out of that?. . . No? Oh. . .They took baths in there?. . ." Finally he said it was for putting out fires, and I commented on how hard it would be to carry that up the stairs. (Apparently, they used buckets to carry the water that was stored in the vats.) We had fun trying to make Hiram laugh. To be honest, I was rather amused too.

After we were up the to the Great Wall and back, we had a meal at a local restaurant. They were not used to foreigners - we caught the cooks watching us eat. This was the first meal we had with Hiram. The meal was "Hot Pot" - Hiram's favorite. This is like a soup that the whole table shares. They boil a fish (head and all) in spices and then bring raw beef, cabbage, noodles. . . for you to dump in as you see fit. The table has a hole in the middle of it and a burner underneath, so it cooks while at your table. Now, I must admit there are certain foods that I ate while carefully inspecting - hopefully somwhat inconspicuously (such as the fish, because there were bones it) Other foods were "safe" because I could eat them without really paying attention to them. Vegetables, rice, noodles. . .fell into this category. (Does being a math person have anything to do with my desire to sort things into categories?) That is, until the tomato noodle entered my world. This noodle is made of tomato flour. It is white and rouhgly half an inch think, an inch wide and 2 feet long. I took one of the noodles out of the pot, thankful that I had something of good volume to eat. I don't know what I expected, but this was shocking to me. It was chewy, sort of like a gummy bear. It didn't taste bad; it didn't taste like much at all. But it was so chewy. This was our first meal with Hiram and our driver. I wanted to be polite. I wanted to bite part of it off, but it was too chewy to bite through, so I just kept pulling it into my mouth. It was so much chewy stuff in my mouth at once. I think I chewed for the next 5 minutes. Although not a terribly exotic food, it was the most notable thing that I ate while in China. (As a side note, later in our trip we were talking with Hiram, and I commented on how it was so exhausting to eat because I had to chew so much, especially those crazy tomato noodles. He started laughing, and then admitted that he only chews those about 3 times and then pretty much swallows them whole. We all had good laugh at that. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who finds those somewhat difficult to eat. )

I consider getting to know Hiram one of the best things about our trip to Beijing. He was about our age and was fun to talk to not as a tour guide, but as a person who grew up in another culture. We all three shared stories and asked questions. It has been my experience that humor can have difficulty translating in different languages and cultures, but I was surpised by how our senses of humor meshed so well. It was a joy watching him laugh at Jon doing crazy things and at our dumb jokes. Three cheers for Hiram!

Last Concert

Today was my last concert at IWMS this year. I still have an elementary tour this year and a talent show on the last day, but tonight was my last night concert. I am very excited.

New Home

We are officially the owners of a new-old home in Prairie Village, KS! Very scary (as you will see) but very exciting. We waited an extra day to sign papers as the renters occupying the house had not cleared out. After running around yesterday and getting this moving along a little quicker, we went ahead and signed on the house. When we went over today, they were still moving and there is a mountain 5 feet tall of trash in the front yard. We are praying this will take care of itself without more involvement on our part. We tore out the carpet and pads and found relatively nice hardwood floors underneath. Very exciting. The weekend will bring a lot of work, but hopefully things can get turned around in the house and we can make it the Wiebe home we've been dreaming of.

Emily in the living room. Look at those floors!














Hard at work.














Nice big windows.














The kitchen.














We left out most of the scary stuff. That will come later...

Mrs. Wiebe is Moving Up

. . .to the high school level that is. Much to my chagrin, I was informed that next year I will be teaching Geometry and Algebra 1B at SM West. (1B is the like the 2nd semester of Algebra 1, but stretched into a full year. Not a motivated crowd, I'm guessing.) The thought is growing on me although it would be a much easier transition to do middle school again. Part of me is getting excited about trying something I might eventually love. The other part of me is worried I will be eaten alive.

Easter and the Great Wall

This year Jon and I spent part of Easter on the Great Wall. The whole setting was just beautiful, the mountains, the first signs of spring - it was actually warm and sunny. It was a wonderful place to be. To get to the wall, you can either take a gondola to the top of the ridge or you can climb the 1,000+ steps. (At least I think I heard it was more that 1,000 steps - I suppose I might be imagining that. Nevertheless, it was quite a climb.) No question about what these Wiebe's did. As soon as we got to the top of the wall we did what everyone else does and got out our camera. Unfortunately, our batteries died somewhere on the trip up - too many pictures of me looking tired and out of breath, I guess.

Jon decided he would go back down the mountain, get the spare batteries and come back up - because you don't go to the Great Wall not take pictures! I decided I would stay and enjoy the view. Our poor tour guide, Hiram, decided he would have to go too, so he could explain to the man taking tickets that he would need to get back in, etc. I was a little worried, he would refuse to be our guide the next day. Hiram was a good sport though - I think he thought Jon was really funny (and slightly crazy). Anyway, Jon had the joy of climbing the mountain twice - once, he got to run. I think that is a good day in his book.

Wheeeee!

I love this picture. -Emily