March Birthdays

Four Norwoods have birthdays in March.

So when possible, we have a dinner to celebrate them

all at once.

Since it was such a beautiful day, we decided to have

our first cook-out of the season on our deck.

Elliott is excited to finally be in two digits!

(See his new ipod)

We send our greetings to Johnathan, somewhere in India!

It was a really wonderful day.

PUZZLES

Something most of our family likes to do is

jigsaw puzzles.

We've found many good ones at the garage sales we frequent.

Normally, there is a puzzle in progress on the

game table in our game room at all times.

Whoever can and will spends a few (or alot of) minutes

working to put the current puzzle together.
Sometimes a puzzle remains in-progress for several months! 

The resulting pictures were so pretty we hated to tear up the puzzles

after all the hours spent on them together.

But of course,

since the puzzles are from garage sales sometimes there are

pieces missing! But we still used them.

Now

how do you hang a jigsaw puzzle?

                                   First of all, paint Mod Podge on the front

and back of the puzzle. This holds it all together.

  Then put Mod Podge on your mounting board.

Then....

Make sure each corner is exactly in place and

carefully lay the puzzle on the mounting board.

Now we have new artwork in our game room that also

holds memories of family working together

and having fun doing these jigsaw puzzles.

And there's plenty of room for adding more puzzle pictures

as we complete them.



OLD FRIENDS

Johnny and I have different opinions of what

"old" friends means.

To him, his first thought is uncomplementary.

But for me, it brings up comfortable, nostalgic and warm thoughts.

"Old" friends are those you have a history with.

"Old" friends have walked with you through hard times and

rejoiced with you in your happy times.

This week we enjoyed some days with good old friends!

Von and Marge Worten were our nearest English speaking neighbors in Indonesia.

They lived 1 1/2 hours away. They were there to help us find a house

and settle into our home of 16 years in Central Java.

We raised our kids together.

Their youngest and our youngest are now serving as missionaries in Indonesia.

Noel, Molly and Elliott were able to join us for part of the eveing,

to reminisce with Aunt Marge and Uncle Von.

Even Cookie (in the chair) had company: Daisy.

And all the men (3 generations) enjoyed playing pool.

I hope whoever is reading this has "old" friends to remember with,

 to relax with, and

to grow old-er with!