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!

New Pantry

While our house has a good pantry, it is deep and dark and hard
to reach things that are way in the back.
So Johnny set to work to improve this situation.

                                           Cookie observes and consults.

Now we have nice pull-out shelves in our pantry.

Then Johnny built an area for me to slide our trays and cookie sheets into.

Very neat and easy now.

 

 

And then Johnny installed one more cabinet for extra pantry space in the game room.

                All done! We are well prepared now, to store whatever we need!

Great job, Johnny.





Tai Chi

While living in Asia, I observed many older people (and some young ones, too)

gathering and doing an interesting series of exercises.

At the park near our home in Chaing Mai, Thailand, a group gathered in the late

afternoons. But they all seemed to already know the moves and I felt I couldn't join them until I knew what I was doing.

And then our gym here in Longview began offering Beginner Tai Chi.

Just what I was looking for.

I go once a week. I'm just learning. But already I'm getting the hang of it.

I've learned it is a discipline of control, posture, breathing.

It works in a different way on my body than the Silver Sneakers cardio class

I attend. In fact, my new Tai Chi teacher is in my cardio class.

If you'd like to read up on it, you might be interested in looking at

this website:  http://www.everyday-taichi.com/ 

ESL

Tuesday nights finds us at Primera Iglesia, teaching

ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE.

We have 3 active classes on various levels.

I get to teach this class.

While we have ESL classes, there is tutoring for children who have trouble doing all their homework in English, as well as childcare for the little ones.

This is our 3rd and best year so far. 

Reminders

We are pet lovers who love the Lord even more!

So it follows (at least in our minds) that things around us will sometimes remind

 us of scripture or spiritual truths. Often our dog, Cookie, and our cat, Sugar,

 will do something that strikes a familiar chord within us.

For instance:

"So, what'll we do today?"

Seeing Cookie just waiting for Sugar to move reminds us that we are to just

Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Ps. 27:14.