My family has a thing for big dogs. And, funny enough, this crew is actually smaller than some previous members of the West clan!

Meet Bandit:

Holly:

And Jessie:

Such as: I have a niece!

Meet Madelyn Clair Miller, my sister Tracy’s firstborn! She was born on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 to Tracy and her husband Johnny. She was (I don’t know how many) ounces and (I don’t know how many) inches long (either). Hey, at least I know that I’m supposed to know these things!

Pretty cool….here is a photo of four generations:

That’s (l-r) Tracy Miller (my sister), Madelyn, Betty Danielson (my grandmother) and Kris West (my mother).

More holiday pics to come, but for now I have to get back to my whirlwind life.

Squirrel!

This one is dark, but look carefully, I think you’ll find it interesting…both theatres in view at Liberty and State, and a Stop sign too. Such a deal.

It’s been a weird day. My grandma West (that’s my stepdad’s mom) passed away yesterday morning. It was a long, slow, unpleasant way to die, I’m sad to report. The only comfort I feel I can take in it is that the doctors were able to keep her comfortable for the three weeks (three weeks!!) that she was without food and water at the very end. I’m glad she’s finally free of the tough times that were her last couple years of life – she did nothing to deserve the troubles she suffered through.

Strange, it seems that it doesn’t really matter how long you know it’s coming…doesn’t seem to change the way it feels when it finally arrives. I’m kinda in a fog…which I hope to come out of sooner rather than later, but I know better than to put a timer on these things.

Her name was Grace. She was a good and kind grandmother to me. If you have a moment to spend, send some thoughts & prayers out to our family.

Thanks for listening.

Here’s a view of the lake from the back of the main building. Check it out:

My friend Donnell had invited us to do the “video recap” for the Cloud Nine retreat. Cloud Nine is an annual retreat that has served Vineyard’s youth groups of the Great Lakes region for the past nine years. The video recap is something that the leaders used to stay up all night on the second night of the retreat piecing together…and then present it in finished form on Sunday morning to 500 highly sugared, caffeinated and sleep deprived teens. Yikes.

Needless to say, the leaders “aren’t getting any younger”, so they needed an alternative to staying up all night. This is where we came in. And, the reason for the title of the post: Cloud Nine 2005 RECOVERY. We needed it. Recovery, that is. Ten total hours of sleep over 48 hours…but the great news is, we delivered a top notch professional result that was well received. Whew!

Here is Donnell speaking to the youth leaders on the first day of the three day retreat:

The retreat uses the following ingredients:
Stir
500 teenagers with
50 youth leaders
lots of loud music
some *slightly* too deep for the room teaching
and a dash of humor

Bake for 48 hours.

The result should be 500 edified teens, hopefully no pregnancies, not too much vandalism, and 50 seriously frazzled adults.

Crowd shot:

Here’s a cool collage I put together – on the first night, there was a girl dancing off to one side of the stage:

Remember, click the smaller picture for a larger version. More to come!

I swear I am not making this up.

Honestly now, what are we coming to?