Merry Christmas!

I'm a bit behind on updating the blog, but wanted to post a short 'merry Christmas' message. Hope everyone has had a great day with friends and family.

Here are a few posts that have been percolating in my mind and I will hopefully have the opportunity to finish before too long.

- hunting for our Christmas tree
- our Totally Tubular 80's party celebrating our 30th birthday
- Drew and his love of airsoft
- Christmas!

A Breakfast Fave in the Wilson House

One of our favorite weekend breakfasts is Baked Oatmeal, or "brown oatmeal" as Sam likes to call it. As with many of our favorite things, we learned about this from the Zimels, and we still refer to the recipe card that A-R wrote out for us several years ago now. So you can also enjoy this awesome breakfast food, here is the recipe and a few pictures from this morning.

Baked Oatmeal
Preheat oven to 350

3/4 cup oil
3 eggs
1-1/2 cup milk
4-1/2 cup oatmeal
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp salt

Stir wet ingredients together; add dry ingredients. Add nuts or berries as desired (and we always add them). Pour into greased glass baking dish and bake for 30 minutes and enjoy!

Here are a few photos from this morning's batch:


Mixing the wet and dry ingredients together.


Layering the bottom of the dish with walnuts and frozen blueberries.


Mixing the oatmeal with the nuts and berries before popping it into the oven.


Mmmmmm....


P.S. apologies for a few out-of-focus photos. These were all taken with my iPhone.

Welcome Isaiah Gordon!

It was an absolute joy to meet the youngest member of our extended family, Mr. Isaiah Gordon Salwasser, this past weekend. The little man was born about two months ago to my sister Julie and her husband Brian. He is absolutely adorable and we are so happy for the Salwassers!

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Let me preface this blog post by saying that we have an incredible group of friends up here in Seattle. We have been amazingly blessed with great friends since moving here two years ago. But this morning as I was laying in bed solving the world's problems (as I often do on Saturday mornings), I was struck with the thought about how many great friends we have had that are now scattered throughout the country. This has been due to either them moving away from us, or us moving away from them. We are able to stay connected through sporadic visits (we are coming to the 'burg soon Newtons - promise!) or technology like Skype, but it's just not the same as being able to share a meal or watch a football game with these great friends. So, with absolutely no slight to the friends we have here in Seattle, here are some (but not all) of the really great friends we miss a lot!










And don't forget the one and only Jack.

Another Public Misspelling

Regular readers of this blog, which, I know, hasn't been updated very frequently lately, will understand that I have "a thing" for publicly misspelled words. These can appear in the newspaper, on advertisements, signs, etc...My reaction to these misspelled words runs the gamut from frustration (as in when a newspaper or print publication misses a very obvious error) to the bemused (as in this picture). In the advertisement below, I just chuckled when I saw the incredibly unique treatment the author had given to the words. I saw this when Missi and I went to lunch the other day at this restaurant. In his defense, it was very safe to assume that the person who wrote this was not a native English speaker.

Beauty

I love fall. I mean, I. Love. Fall. As a Northwesterner my entire life, I actually get excited for the signs that autumn is here: Rain. Sweaters. Fires. Boots. Hot coffee. College football. And ohhh, those leaves. I get jazzed just to drive around and attempt to count all the different colors I see as the trees start changing...and dieing.

Last year, the Lord used my love for fall as a way to show me my love for the alluring beauty of my sin. It was breaking experience in my heart as He revealed how much sin dressed up in the appearance of "beauty" still appealed to me. He taught me that it's just a moment of pleasure, but in the end, it quickly leads to death. It was a humbling lesson, but it kind of wrecked my feeling for my favorite season.

This fall though, in God's goodness and kindness, He has redeemed this time of year for me. Allow me to explain...

You see, since moving to Seattle, we have been blessed with an amazing community around us. People with the desire to move towards the Lord and seek Him. People that serve well, love well, support well, and enjoy life well. I've also seen them suffer well as God has allowed me to witness the beauty of earthly death with them.
It's been painful to watch them on this path. To see moms and dads miscarry yet another child. To watch two dear couples say goodbye to parents that went Home after battling brain tumors. And now, walking with our close friends and neighbors as all medical odds are against their little boy surviving this pregnancy, which would be the second miscarriage this year. And yet, as crazy as this sounds, it's been so beautiful! Or more accurately, beautifully challenging. I have witnessed our community visit with a meal, wake up in the middle of the night to be in prayer, babysit on a moment's notice, or just sit and cry and pray and cry some more. I have seen faith being birthed and trust being put in the Father for the first time. And faith grow stronger as the situation has gone from green to yellow to orange to red...to fallen. It's been tough chapter to say the least. But it's also been so full of gorgeous colors of joy, peace, hope, and reasons to rejoice, just like these breathtaking autumn days.
To God's Glory, He has giving me this beautiful fall here in the Northwest as a gift to stand in awe of our Creator. Of His detailed and wonderful design in all things. Psalm 24:1-2 says, "The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters." As I watch how truly fragile life here is, I am seeing Him as Creator and Protector in new ways.

And am so dang excited to get Home to see and meet the saints that have gone before me!

Meet Abraham

I've probably written this somewhere on the blog previously, but Adam Zimel is about the closest thing I have to a brother. We've been friends now for close to 10 years, and it is always a highlight of my day/week/month/year whenever we talk or get to hang out (much less frequently than I would like since the Zimels now live in Austin and we live in Seattle). Even better, our families mesh almost seamlessly. I say "almost" because one difference between our families is that the Zimels now have 5 kids while we enjoy just Drew and Samantha. Missi and I consider ourselves to be an "aunt" and "uncle" to the Zimel kids and love them like our own - and I know the feeling is mutual as both Adam and Amber-Rose love Drew and Sam.

So it was with complete joy that we got to meet the newest member of the Zimel family, Abraham, when he and Amber-Rose came to Seattle to meet up with their adoption group. Abraham was adopted from Ethiopia and is about 8 months old. He is absolutely beautiful and we were so grateful for the opportunity to meet him.

A few recent pics

Been quite awhile since I've blogged - been super busy with work and life in general. Here is a big 'ol batch of pics to update what we've been up to the past few months:


My little lady is growing up. As she often reminds us, she goes to "full day school" now.


Drew is 100% all boy. Fishing, exploring, shooting BB guns, anything related to the military, sports, forts, and sneak attacks. The boy loves them all.


But Sam isn't too grown up to stop putting on performances for us. Definitely a favorite past-time of mine.


It was great to see my niece and nephews this summer. Here is "the little sweetie" as she is known by my sister.


And here is "the little sweetie's" older brother - "Mr. T"


Unfortunately it's pretty rare when my sisters and I are ever in the same place at once, so it was fun this summer to spend a few days together. Here is Missi and my two sisters at Silver Lake in Washington.


The "siblings photo" on our camping trip this summer.


Missi and I had our first on-water SeaFair experience this summer. We were with some awesome people but the weather wasn't great!


Getting ready to head into the forest to have an airsoft war!


Missi with two of her great friends, Nina and Monica.


Missi and the kids took a trip to Bend this summer with our friends John and Kiki. Unfortunately I had to stay in Seattle to work. It was a great trip with sunshine, pool time, floating the river, and other adventures.

First day of first grade!


First day of fifth grade!


Date night. Heading to Staple & Fancy.


Sam and one of her best friends Kylie.


At a friend's wedding this summer.


With my two pretty ladies.

An awesome guy's weekend in the Olympic Mountains

As I've blogged about in the past, each year I try to organize a "guy's weekend" (sometimes also known as "dude's weekend" or "bro-fest" or "guy-a-palooza") where a group of my closest friends all meet up for a long weekend to hang out. This was much easier to accomplish when we all lived in the general Portland vicinity and were younger (i.e., not as many family and work obligations). Now we are spread out over a much broader geographic area and we have more wives, kids, and demanding jobs among us. So, it takes a lot more effort to find a weekend that actually works for everyone. But, all of recognize how important it is to connect at least once a year, so we try to do whatever we can to make it. Among other things, in the past this "guy's weekend" has included a climb of Mt. Adams and a weekend at the Oregon Coast playing poker, fishing, and racing down sand dunes. Without even the slightest hint of exaggeration, the "guy's weekend" is always one of the highlights of my year.

This year we decided to try to go backpacking in Olympic National Park. I had heard so many good things about this area, and I looked out at the Olympics from my office window every day, so I knew I needed to get over there sooner rather than later. We were fortunate that we were able to find a weekend that worked for everyone, and we lucked out with some great weather. We ended up hiking the High Divide Loop, which wound up being about 23 miles of hiking over about 3 days. If I provided a day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of everything that we experienced, it would probably run about 5,000 words and would take me the next several hours to type up. Suffice it to say that it was an amazing weekend of beautiful scenery (including several bear sightings), lots of laughter, and great conversations to catch up with each other. Here are some photos from the weekend:






















This last photo was taken at about 10:30PM so the flash was blinding everyone. It was our last group shot together as Adam and I had to wake up at 1:30AM and start hiking out to make it to Sea-Tac airport by 10:00AM. That's a crazy story for another time.