14!

That's how many pounds I've lost so far.

Why it's good to be healthy

Because when you've started eating salads with every lunch and dinner and you have run out of lettuce and need to run into the grocery store to buy some lettuce, you might find out you're the instant winner of a 2nd generation iPod shuffle. (See how small it is!)

A sunny April day...

try, try again

Well, I haven't been able to post anything since that one cry of "I'm in!" We are fine. Our Easter was enjoyable. We hosted the "Sunrise" service. There were over 50 people, mostly from the Harrises' church. The choir from their church sang and the men from our church (Dad, Sam, Omar, Pablo, Nito and Luis Riquelmes) sang. Dad preached a good sermon. Liliana and I cleaned the church on Saturday and prepared the breakfast. Carolina went to B.A. with Tobias to visit her grandmother. Alicia and Jorge came. They are on vacation in Brazil this week. Antolin Velasquez has been having nightmares again and sleeps late in the morning. In the evening we had a movie on the resurrection based on a novel by John MacArthur. There were 8 of us. Juan Efren Vera came in the morning and evening. It has been a long time since he last visited.

Sam takes his ACT this Saturday morning. Dad called Jose Nuñez to ask if Sam could stay there overnight Friday. Please pray for him.

Am I alone?

Hope everyone else is alive out there.

We had an interesting Easter. We had a brunch at church in the morning, to which I took my very slavic looking Easter eggs. :) I was quite proud of them.
I picked up these plastic sleeves for eggs at a Russian store we were at. And once the eggs are cooked you just slip them on and dip them back in hot water.

Matt came over for lunch which consisted of borscht and Matt's world-renown chicken. It was quite good!

Our church didn't have an evening service, so we went with Jody, Pearl and Matt to another church that was having a play/cantata thing. It was quite interesting, and moving (it's hard not to be moved when you get to see someone being "crucified"...yes, with cross and loin cloth and all. I bet no one else saw that Sunday! :D)

We then ate dinner at Jody and Pearl's house.

Well, after my first week of Weight Watchers, I've lost 4.4 pounds. :) It is my first week, so I'm not expecting to lose that much every week. I do feel better about how I'm eating, though. And I've yet to start exercising! Hopefully, I'll have enough energy this week to do some walking.

Hello

Just saying hi.
I shipped my stupid heart monitor back yesterday!!! Despite it being Monday, it was a pretty good day. :) Although I still have red marks where the electrode pads used to be. : b
My department started a two-month contest yesterday to see who can lose the most weight (figured on percentage lost). Donna wanted to go to Weight Watchers, but since she didn't want to go alone, she offered to pay my membership if I would go with her. So last night was our first meeting, and we went for a walk before-hand. We'll go walking every day after work, too.
Let me know if you'd like me to share any tips from the book I got. It's actually pretty helpful. There's a plan called the Core Plan where you can eat all you want from a certain list of healthy foods. The other is the plan where you add points of what you eat. I don't think that'll work for me.
We saw "Meet the Robinsons" in 3D on Saturday. I love 3D movies--they're too cool! Of course, all the other adults in the theatre had kids with them. Matt, Chris and I didn't, but we're used to that by now.
Ok, I'll go back to work now. Chau!

Picture session for church

Yesterday I took pictures of church people for our church tract. Since it was going to be outside, I bought a diffuser and a reflector on Saturday. I'm so glad I did!

Here's an example of what using a reflector does. (Ignore the fact that it's slightly out of focus.) :)




This was the result of many attempts by others trying to take our picture. I've always thought that my camera was easy to use, but it took three different people trying to get this. :)

Thankful for cable

I'm not usually glad we have cable, but this show makes me glad we have it. It's been amazing!

Chris's Birthday

We went to a Russian restaurant for lunch today. Chris enjoyed his borscht.

Matt was there, too.

Chris and I had lamb chops. (No, I'm not trying a new comb-over hairdo. It was a weird hair day today.)


The teens surprised Chris with pizza during youth group tonight and gave him a card with a gift certificate to a restaurant! I thought that was sweet...until they covered us in silly string, that is! Chris is planning his come back! : )

I took a cake to Sunday School (there's usually coffee and some kind of snack), and I put candles on it and we sang "Happy Birthday" to Chris. I don't have a picture of that because when I pulled out my camera it didn't have a memory card and I couldn't find one in my bag. Later I realized I was looking in the wrong pocket! (I felt very "blonde".) Anyway, since I wanted to take pictures at the restaurant, we stopped in at a Circuit City (which I found because I took a wrong turn.) To make a long story short, I was able to buy two 1G memory cards for my camera at a pretty good price. God allowed me to not find my memory cards so that I could get some better ones. : )

Anyway, we've had a good weekend. Chris got to talk in Russian some and buy some of his cherry juice.

Crazy weather...

Three days ago it was 70 degrees outside...today we're supposed to get an inch of ICE. Not snow, mind you, but ice. And, since I stayed home, I can see that that's truly what we're getting. It's sleeting little round icey thingies.
It should be fun driving in this later since I'm going to Pottstown to pick up Andrew.

Update: Our evening with Matt and Andrew is cancelled. The ice and snow are supposed to keep coming all evening long. So, instead of Hibachi tonight, it'll be a casero stir-fry. : )

Argentina in the news...

on a more happy note!

I´m in

I´m in, I'm in, I'm in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow. I´m a member again of the Eckman Family. Whee-hee!

Installation Service

The other three couples are ones who helped to fill the pulpit while the church was without a pastor. On the left is Pastor Glatz, who specifically helped the church line up candidates--namely, Jason!

The trustee, Ed Dietrich, sharing a testimony about the church's perspective on the pastoral search. Another member, Sherry Carter, also shared a testimony. Cass Sisto played an offertory.

Pastor Glatz asked Jason a series of questions/vows regarding his desire to serve the Lord as pastor of this church.

He then asked the members to stand and asked them to commit themselves to some vows. (Jason had found and prepared the vows.)

These are Kristi Colas' parents (Liz's friend).

Sherry Carter was excited about the cake. :-) We still have lots left! Come see us, and we'll be happy to give you a piece.

Fun times...almost

That's Elianna way up at the top of the "Bunny Hill," riding down between Nadine's knees. We were glad the pros were there to help us!

Micah's riding up the lift.

The "Magic Carpet"

Jason enjoyed himself.

Elianna was, as always, a daredevil.

We went skiing today--hope fulfilled for the kids! :) The pictures tell the story, all except the part where Jared wiped out and cut a gash in the back of his head with a ski. He ended up with 4 staples after a trip to the ER.

With us are T.J. & Nadine Sisto and their boys. T.J. is the head deacon at church. The "Magic Carpet" that you see in one of the pictures is basically a conveyor belt that the younger children could ride up and then practice coming down a slight incline on their skiis. Great idea!

Out and about

I'm at Dave Gouge's today. The weather is nice here in Virginia, I'm thinking of moving :). I got here last night and we're taking it easy. I got up and did a little homework, then we hung around, went to a park, went to see a house they're looking at, and then I took a nap. Now we're going to have supper. Life is rough.
Wed and Thu I was in Penn State with Andrew. That was fun. We also took it easy (he had class), and then we drove back together and I dropped him off at his grandma's house.
Not much else. Back to work and school on Monday.

A lunchtime "hello"

Just thought I'd drop a note in here. Life is pretty routine-like these days. Chris goes to class on Mondays and deals with his job the rest of the week. He then proceeds to do homework at night and over the weekend. He's recently started to teach himself German. I talked to someone at work that could probably help him out a little. We have plenty of Germans where I work. : )
I have been fighting some sort of virus this whole week. I haven't been so sick that I had to stay home, although I did sleep in two different days this week and went in late to work. There's been a nasty stomach virus going around, and I think I got some form of that. Although, I haven't actually been "sick", I've just felt "blah" and tired.
On to happier things, a co-worker told me of an Argentine restaurant yesterday. It's about an hour away from us, but it's worth the hike. It's called Café con Leche. If I feel up to it, we might try to get there this weekend.
We had some snow two nights ago, but I didn't get a chance to take pictures. We're supposed to get rain and 50 degree weather this weekend. Doubt we'll see too much snow the rest of the winter (all two weeks of it.) : )
Matt's out in State College. I guess he went out to spend a couple days with Andrew, and then he's bringing Andrew back here to his grandmother's for his spring break. So, that probably means we'll see him again in the next week or so.
Another fun thing: I just had a co-worker tell me that she recommended me as a wedding photographer to someone else who works here! Not sure if I would take it, although I would have to start somewhere. I'm scared of doing someone's wedding right now because I know how important it is. I guess I could buy some lighting equipment and learn how to use it. Not sure when this wedding would be, but I don't think it's soon.
Well, I think that's all for my lunchtime musings.
Love you.

Finally!

I've been trying to make a post, but I haven't been able to sign on. Google owns Blogger now, and they were in the process of switching it to use Google accounts. But today I was able to sign on. Booyah!

Well, life is coming along. Last week I had to deal with way too much math for my Modeling & Forecasting class. The prof gave us the option of redoing our old assignments to gain some points, so I did three assignments from scratch. Then we had an in-class assignment (test) on Thursday. It was painful. But it's done, and I don't have an assignment this week! And in 2 more weeks the class will be done!

Other then that not much is going on. I'm doing another job for EDU, and I'm hoping to get some independent work analyzing websites. Still hanging out at bookstores whenever I have a little downtime.

Translation???

Here's what happens when you translate English into Chinese, and then translate the Chinese back into English.

P.S. I do apologize. All the screen shots hadn't loaded when I put the link on the blog. After I went back to the other window, I noticed that a few of the screen shots had swear words. Just read a fwe of the first ones; they're not bad. But if you keep reading through the whole list, be advised that a few of them (maybe 3 or 4) have swear words.

Word of the Day

At breakfast, Micah said, "The word of the day is 'scrumptious.' This doughnut is 'scrumptious.'"

He was the only one sitting at the table, so that wasn't prompted by his siblings.

:)

Hi