Easter at the Stouts

Pictures are in from our Easter this year. Lots of friends from Keyport, and a few others including Kevin's parents Connie and Rory, gathered at the Stouts' home for feasting and a great egg hunt for the kids. Iris and Ariana played hard with Rachel and some big kids outside, while ladies passed around Nathan and chatted in the relaxed dining room area. Meanwhile, since we had so many guitar players and other instrumentalists, a band was formed around a coffee table, playing some hymns and worship music.

This collage was another experiment on Picasa- it likes to post directly to a blog, so I hope you enjoy collages! I'm a little addicted to the color dropper for the back ground.

In Memory of our Seattle Apartment

In the process of learning a few techniques on my computer, I ended up making this collage from photos I took shortly before we packed everything up to head over to Bremerton. It's sort of sentimental to me, and as I review the pictures and just the way the light seemed to hit our life, I realize what a blessing it was to spend the first year of our marriage in that place. It also makes me a little forward nostalgic... looking ahead to the time when we are able to set up another life in another place. It will be funny to get all those old things out of the storage unit and produce a brand new home from them.

180*

Since our last post, we've had a lot of changes. Probably the most impactful was our decision to forego Japan, as the day drew closer to make a final commitment. People have been kind of confused about how it happened, but it went quite smoothly between us, actually. For a long time it had just been an assumed agenda item for me, but we decided to seriously look at where we were and how we were going forward. Once we put the trip in light of our long term goals, as they have distilled in the last few years, it seemed like a kind of peculiar detour in some ways. After praying over it for several weeks we agreed that, though God would have blessed either route, we felt that what we have been learning about eachother and about life was pushing us a new direction from where we had been when we started the application process. It was a much more direct route to plan on staying in the states, and though we missed some opportunities I really looked forward to, we both have a lot of peace about the decision.

Straightening our road by eliminating the Pacific however did not exactly equal short! Since our lease came up when we were planning to leave to Japan anyway, we agreed to move back to Bremerton to set up house near my family. With my family, actually, for the time being. Statistically, the multi-generational household is really in right now, and for us it means a little extra stability to be saving while Kevin looks for work. While we look forward to house shopping and starting a family, it's been a huge blessing to have the old Nipsic house open to us. It's been surprisingly nice to gain a little domestic expertise from my mom (which I necessarily rejected as a highschooler). Of course it's great to just all be together and reconnecting.

In the process of moving, we got sad news that my great grandmother in Luisiana had passed away. In spite of the loss, we were happy to travel with so much of my family to join Nana in Ruston, where we were able to help with the funeral and spend some time with my great aunt, and also my great uncle whom I had never met before. We refreshed our sign language to communicate and enjoyed a Mardi Gras trip to Natchitoches (say Nack-a-dish), the oldest town in the Luisiana Purchase.

While Kevin keeps up the job search, I've been helping my dad with a number of tasks relating to Springtides Corporation, especially his upcoming publishing project. He launched his book, Your Ultimate Sales Force, late last year with a gala event, and now we're working on another project relating to the BizBuilders network. As usual, I really enjoy working with him and getting to spend a little extra time with my busy daddy.

So, Bremerton! We're looking forward to putting down roots and all that means, although it's skipping a few years ahead of where we thought we'd be. The community of Manette, where we live, is a pretty good place to keep playing with the Transition concept. We're also plugging back into Keyport where my family has gone since they moved to Kitsap County, and we're excited to see how new relationships unfold. We're also very eager to keep in touch with the close friends we left behind in Seattle, especially with the wonderful kind of visits we've had lately with Jon and Rachel (who are getting married this summer) and Elizabeth and Jason, among others.

That's a fair summary of the interlude. Keep in touch!

So, turns out every week is a little much to manage, and not that much happens to us anyway, so bi weekly it is. The last two have been pretty good, albeit frustrating because of school. Speaking of which, things are going nicely there. I got started on the centerboard for the catspaw dinghy. The case is nearly finished, and the slot in the keel is cut, so things are moving along. The quarterknees are done, and the transom is looking good. That's about it. I managed to damage the same finger three different times this week though, that was a bummer. It's mostly recovered.
Adele having a dairy allergy, she's had a hankering for pizza lately. So we went to a vegan pizza place on Tuesday. Turned out that was a mistake. For me, anyway, the fake cheese made me sick for the rest of that night. I wasn't super happy about that, as you may imagine.
Adele has her interview for Japan on Saturday. They flew the people in from Japan, and they're doing the interviews at the airport. Actually, at a hotel near the airport. So this is it, this is when we find out if we're leaving or not. I mean, a few weeks after this, but this is our last chance to make sure they know how awesome she is.
Ratty has pneumonia again. The doctor said this might happen, apparently some rats just live with pneumonia for the rest of their lives. That's no good, but you can keep it under control with antibiotics. So tonight I'm headed up to the vet to get some for her.
The last weekend we were at the Davidson's for Halloween, which was super killer, and Jon Lewis and Rachel Edwards came to see us. They got engaged on their way over. That was pretty exciting. I think that's it. Sorry if that was horribly boring, I guess you had to be there.

Currents

I'd like to apologize for the silence that's been happening in this blog, it's been a while since we've posted, and even then it was not regular. I have, however, decided that's not very kind to those we don't speak to very often, so beginning today, I'm going to be posting every Thursday, the last day of my school week. This one will be a little long to catch you all up, but they should be pretty manageable after today.
First things first: our church has recently opened up a new location in the U-district which actually meets on the campus in Kane Hall, which contains the school's largest lecture halls, currently we're in the second largest. We started up a few weeks ago, and things got off to a roaring start. Everything was very well planned out and prepared, and the new sermon series on Luke kicked off that same week, so things lined up nicely. The series on Luke has been well received, even one sermon on abortion, and Pastor Mark has a lot to say. You can listen to these sermons and others on the Mars Hill website. After the sermon, there's a Q & A time, and the UD pastor, Matt Jensen, and usually a few others field questions brought up during the sermon. It seems that the church is really reaching the school, and we're very encouraged about it. Please keep praying for our church.
Adele is no longer the lead teacher in the Butterfly room, she stepped down a few weeks ago to let the other teacher, who has been and will be there for longer take over the lead position. Her stress level has dropped appropriately, and she still gets to spend time with all of her favorite kids.
I've begun school, and I'm currently working on a lapstrake catspaw dinghy. The last plank is finally on, and for much of the rest of the quarter, I'll be making and installing the seats, trim, and mast for this boat, perhaps even sails and rigging. Also, a friend of mine, Ryan Down, skippers a wooden schooner currently docked on Lake Union. He has hired me to completely redo the galley, which me and my Dad will be designing, and may include a home-built refrigerator(!). He's paying me in trade by teaching me to sail, both on his schooner "Lavengro," and on the smaller boats at the Center for Wooden Boats.
I think that's all for us here, but we're happy and content, and more in love than ever. Please write or call, we'd love to talk to you.
-Kevin Rory Connally

Samson

A couple months ago now, Kevin asked how I'd feel if he cut off his hair; I was skeptical. For our entire marriage, and friendship too actually, his hair has been longer than mine and I had really made peace with that being the state of things. How would I recognize my husband without his mane? But that was exactly the point. Where he wanted to be a bear, Kevin felt more like a lion with the thickness that it continued to have, even at the awesome length of well over a foot. He couldn't possibly be serious. I decided that he would forget about it, and so dismissed the question forever.

But he couldn't forget. While I was in Louisiana, Kevin asked again, this time with more urgency, if it would bother me for his hair to be cut. "How much cut?" Quite a bit. I wasn't comfortable with jumping into the decision, so I suggested: "How about you get a good trim up and see if it's just the way it's hanging that's bothering you, rather than the length itself?"

Kevin agreed and we got a shape up at a local barber shop, which came out fine but didn't seem to make much of a difference. "Give it a few weeks."

It was okay. Kevin still felt that something was not right- we talked it all out and on Friday night we spontaneously agreed that a haircut could be good. I parked him in the hallway where the mess would be most manageable and set out to Totally Revision Kevin. It took over five minutes to hack through the ponytail alone, and then I shaped it up until we felt okay about it. The photo documentary below was rendered for your enjoyment.







I think we're actually going to go a little shorter because after he washed it it turned into highschool hair.
So there you have it.

More Boat Stuff, and some others.

So, more boat stuff. Me and Meg just finished the boat we started working on forever ago, which is tight, but it took us way too long. We chose to do some very intricate and foolish, although beautiful things, like the tank trim, which took forever and I don't think I'd make that decision again. But we're finally on to the varnish, which is nice. I like varnishing. So anyway, I think I mentioned earlier that I'm building an oar. If I didn't, there's a lot of back story, but suffice it to say, there's a fellow who wants to move his boat without an engine, so he needs a sculling oar. I'm building it for him. I'm almost done with it, I'll finish it this week, which is very encouraging. After that I'll be able to take it out with him and test it, trying different blade shapes and seeing which works best. So that's what's going on there. I'm excited about that. Then, also for you interested, I talked to Dave, and decided on what I want to build in the wooden shop for myself. I haven't quite talked to him about this boat, but when I spoke with him about the peapod, he was not enthusiastic, and suggested some others. The boat I chose was one of the others. So while we haven't really discussed this, I'm pretty sure he'll like it. I'm going to build a flatiron sharpie skiff. You can look up a picture of one on the google machine, they're pretty sweet. But the best part is that they're easy (ish) to build, relatively cheap, and good sailers and rowers, which is what I'm looking for. I'd like to make it 15' or so, but we'll see what really works. It may be that I need to make it shorter just so I can get it down to the water. Who knows. That's another thing, I need to figure out where to put it, and how to get it to the Sound, and a few other logistical things. But I'm working on all that. For the summer I'm still figuring out what I'm going to do, but there's a summer internship available at the Center for Wooden Boats down on Lake Union, so I'm shooting for that, and it's only open to students in my program, so the odds are good. That's really all for now, perhaps there will be more updates later. Toodles!