Nice hike

Monday was the first full day off we've had since our long holiday break and we heading to Washington Park with Mat and Leah to hike. Washington Park, which includes Japanese gardens and the rose garden, is connected to Forest Park, which, with its 40 miles of hiking trails, is the largest city park in the US! The place is only half an hour away from our house--we definitely need to go more often!

It was beautiful out and warm in the sun, but much of the ground was frozen (along with my toes) and it could be very chilly in the shadows!

We had a gorgeous view of Mt St. Helens from a few spots.


Mat found this pole early on and used it as a walking stick.


Happy hikers.


I love that we live in a place where winter hiking is a reasonable option for a half-day outing.

We warmed up afterward at a great place that Justin Horn (a college friend of Eric's) introduced us to: the Goose Hollow Inn. Hot coffee and delicious, melty sandwiches. Mmmm...

Cleaning out the closet

Community Table, Cornelius UMC's new food ministry, is on track to open at the end of February. In addition to offering food to those who need it, we are also creating a comfy, hospitable space where people can rest and "convivir." In Spanish, that word is used like "fellowship," but literally means "to live together" or "to exist side by side." I like it better than fellowship.

This past week, some folks from Sherwood UMC who are helping us get started came by with tons of food!



We've chosen to use a space behind that sanctuary (called the Mooberry Room) that has a small kitchen and closet attached and used to be the coffee hour space. Most recently, it has been the designated spot for Ad Board meetings and for dumping junk with no other place to call home. As we began planning the new set-up, we all agreed that the first step was cleaning out the closet!

Here are Aileen, Eric and Melanie in the little kitchen:


Look at all this stuff that was pulled out of that kitchen, bathroom and closet!


Among the items that emerged: a bag of barbie dolls, a fake fireplace, a bazillion candles, some old-fashioned light fixtures, a bag of newspaper clippings from 1998, a couple of sheaves of wheat, some patriotic fake-flower center-pieces, a set of neon green curtains, and a two-keyboard stand.

It's so great to have a good reason to clear out all this stuff! Not only can we get rid of the stuff we don't use, but now we now what we do have--and can get it organized and use it!

We've still got a lot of work ahead of us, but it feels good to be making space for new people. Now if we could only say the same for the parsonage guest room...

Back in the swing of things

Life has gone from 0 to 60 in just a few days. After three weeks of doing next to nothing, we are jumping back into everything at once!

Eric spent some time early this week at beautiful Alton L. Collins with the Conference Camp and Retreat Ministries Board to do some planning, reporting and reflecting. Oh, and eating ridiculously delicious food. He always comes back from those meetings inspired and challenged by the organization and effectiveness of the camp board and by the good people on it. They get things done and they do it well.

The Goose has also been playing music with church folks in our living room, visiting people and planning for his first funeral (this Saturday in Yamhill), in addition to preparing for Sunday worship.

We've both been meeting with folks and planning for Cornelius UMC's new food ministry, Community Table, that will (hopefully!) be launched in February. The awesome organizers of Sherwood UMC's food pantry have been helping us and will come next week with shelving and food to get us going--and some of Cornelius's members will take a field trip to the Oregon Food Bank soon after to learn how it all works. The plan for Community Table is to do more than simply hand out food--we hope it will be a place to gather, practice language skills, share gifts and build community. One meeting today really got me excited: Matilde, who lives near the church and teaches courses in nutrition and health food prep in Spanish, wants to do cooking demonstrations and hand out samples and recipes on the days Community Table is open. How great is that?

Some of the other things I do are organized around a school schedule, so all those are starting up again: volunteering at Cornelius Elementary (in my friend, Leah's 2nd grade Spanish literacy class) and at Adelante Chicas and teaching ESL with the PODER program. I've also recently taken on a third position (the 2nd is with PODER) with PLAN Loving Adoptions as a bilingual birthparent counselor. So far, I have focused on outreach and am learning heaps about the adoption process. So interesting!

So many exciting things happening! Our new year has been full and hopeful so far...

Better World Shopper

For Christmas, Mike gave Eric a book that has been hard for us to put down: The Better World Shopping Guide #2. In his introduction, author Ellis Jones says, "As consumers, we vote every single day with the purest form of power...money. The average American family spends $18,000 every year on goods and services. Think of it as casting 18,000 votes every year for the kind of world you want to live in." For some time, we have believed that conscious shopping is incredibly important, but have been frustrated about the lack of good information about which companies are doing good things for our world and its people and which are not--especially for the companies that are not the best or the worst, but are somewhere in the middle.

Ellis has examined over 1000 companies and has given them each a grade according to how they score in five areas:

Human Rights
The Environment
Animal Protection
Community Involvement
Social Justice

In his pocket guide, companies (and their most common brands) are divided into categories of products and ranked according to grade. "Corporate Heroes" and "Corporate Villains" are listed for each category and what they do that is so good or bad. We highly recommend this book to those who want to live out their values with their pocketbook and become more conscious shoppers.

The website betterworldshopper.com provides more detailed information about each company's rating and includes updates as practices change.

To get you thinking, here is the book's list of 10 best and worst companies:

10 Best
1. Seventh Generation
2. Working Assets
3. Eden Foods
4. Clif Bar
6. Honest Tea
7. Patagonia
8. Tom's of Maine
9. Ben & Jerry's
10. Aveda

10 Worst
1. Exxon-Mobil
2. Kraft
3. Wal-Mart
4. Chevron-Texaco
5. Pfizer
6. Nestle
7. General Electric
8. Archer Daniels Midland
9. General Motors
10. Tyson Foods

We have already found some practices we need to (and plan to) change and look forward to carrying this guide with us as we shop!

Conklin B & B

We had a great visit with Eric's parents and with Mike, Tanya and Emerson up in Spokane and Chewelah! Here we are after the Gonzaga vs. Tennessee women's basketball game--too bad Gonzaga couldn't pull off the upset!


Ann and Brody's friend's two granddaughters play for Tennessee and Gonzaga and were planning to guard each other that night, but one of the sisters injured herself not too long ago and is out for a while. It was fun to see old Conklin neighbors, the Blums, and meet their kids and grandkids!

Unfortunately, Grandma Conklin was pretty sick this past week, so, instead of having lunch with her at the Waterford, we spent time with her at the hospital. We were so happy to see how much better she was the second day we visited.

We played lots of board games during the week. One of our favorites, Wise and Otherwise, is like Balderdash, but with old adages and strange sayings. We highly recommend it!

Another game we tried on New Year's Eve, called B.S....not so exciting:


And the clock strikes twelve:



We also did lots of eating and sleeping and watching of games on TV--the usual.


Of course, everyone loved hanging out with Emerson.




We had a wonderful time but are also happy to be back at home, in our own beds, enjoying the snowless ground and clear roads! I'm excited to have this day free and plan to head into Portland this afternoon to see Sarah, who is up visiting from San Francisco. Yay! Then, it will be back to work. After the crazy weather and nice break, I am really ready--excited actually--to get back to work!

Happy New Year!

Favorite Emmy pictures

Niece Emerson turned one in November and is cuter than ever! She has learned and grown so much since we saw her just a few months ago and we had so much fun playing and cuddling. We think she had fun with Unkage and Tia Mira, too!

Spokandyland

The trip was a little hairy at times, but we made it to Chewelah last Sunday without incident. We thought we'd stay overnight at Mike and Tanya's (in Spokane), but they suggested that we continue up that night to Chewelah (another hour 15 min.) because snow and freezing rain were expected early in the morning. We are so glad we did! It started snowing early Monday and hardly stopped for four days! It made it a bit of a challenge to get down to Spokane to see Grandma Conklin, but we made it. And we weren't too sad to be snowed in by the fire the rest of the time.

A few more snowy pics:



Part of the roof of this grocery store caved in because of all the snow: