To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of people;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;


To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived

This is to have succeeded.

-Bessie Stanley & Ralph Waldo Emerson


Sunday, November 29, 2009

rolling up our sleeves for Christmas...

With Thanksgiving under our belts, we welcome the Advent season into our home. I especially love this time of year because Target puts out all their really cool merchandise-wait no! I TRULY love Advent because we get to celebrate Jesus' birth and realize what it means to be in relationship with the Living God all year long. Oh, what peace I have from Him!

Joe and I are discovering what the holidays mean for our little family of two. We have Joe's family in Fargo, ND, and Minnesota, and my family in the Northwest, California, Florida, and Minnesota. So, needless to say, sometimes the holidays are a bittersweet time of loving the ones we're with if we can't be with the ones we love. We have been fortunate to fly out from Seattle to the Upper Midwest for the past 4 Christmases plus spend some time with my parents in Oregon; this year will mark number 5. We savor these blessings.

Although we are seasoned (haha get it?) holiday travelers, we do not have a track record of decorating in our own home because we were gone so much of the time during the season and we simply didn't have the money! This year marks the first year that we actually have a real Christmas tree!! My parents brought an extra tree they had in storage up for us and they helped us decorate it. My sister Chelsea and brother in law Rob came down from Renton and we all watched Uncle Buck while we decorated. I think my red, gold, and silver theme came together quite cohesively.





Friday, November 6, 2009

for starters...


Hi. We are Joe and Katy Lindquist, although the writer of this post (Katy) is most likely to be the primary blogger. We live in University Place, WA, a suburb of Tacoma. When Joe is not jogging, balancing our checkbook on Quicken, or helping with the dinner dishes, he tends to spend most of his time at Steilacoom High School, where he teaches choir and French. If he had it his way, he would sing for The Concordia Choir full time under the direction of Dr. Rene Clausen. Katy, while toiling away at her current job as a Nursing Assistant at a nursing home in Gig Harbor, dreams of attending nursing school someday...after she completes her prereqs 1 quarter at a time at Tacoma Community College. She loves to paint portraits in watercolor and hones her cooking/baking skills on her guinea pig of a husband, who fortunately has a hollow leg and will eat anything except maraschino cherries and grapefruit.