What happened this past month (April):
The first weekend of April Joy and Nathan had their friends Brett & Rebecca over for dinner. They told us about a game called GeoCaching, where you look online at areas and where people have hidden "caches". You can take the GPS coordinates and go looking for them. When you find them you log your visit in the log, giving the date, your name, and whether or not you took or left anything. We tried looking for 3 around here in Aliso Viejo. We only found one.
Also that weekend, on Sunday we had dinner at the Schultz' place. They had a delicious chicken enchilada dinner with veggies & fruit salad. Their little girl Sydney is so cute. We also played a game called something like paradudo (sp?) where you have 5 dice and guess whether or not people are bluffing. Dudo in Spanish meaning "I doubt it".
The following Monday we celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversay by going to The Getty Villa in Malibu. We had lunch at The Main Cafe, and took a tour. It's a very nice place, though not as big as the Getty Museum overlooking LA. That evening we went to the Readings place for the DINKs FHE. We had yummy paninis.
The second weekend on Saturday evening we tried a new restaurant called Ristortante Rumari down in Laguna Beach. It's a cute little place. On Sunday we had our friends Bill & Amber over for dinner. We had some fun conversations about reading material, our lives, etc. They know Nathan from the original Newport Beach singles branch.
The third weekend Joy went to the baptism of Max, a child of our friends Jill and Roger. After wards we went out to dinner at Tuscany Mediteranee, a cute little Italian restaurant in a business area of Irvine. I'm sure it's busy during the week because there are five tall business buildings around it. That restaurant was pretty good. They even offered a complimentary turkish tea, but we said no thanks. Afterwards we went to a fireside by one of Joy's previous religion teachers, Br. Richard Holzaphel. He gave an excellent talk about why Christ was significant and changed lives even before the empty tomb. (So many radical religous people are claiming that Christ was a normal person, not the son of God, and that the only thing that made Him change lives was the empty tomb.)
That Sunday we had the Sister Missionaries over for dinner, Sister Schafer and Sister Schmalz. They were fun to talk with, and they cleaned their plates. Later that evening we also went to visit our good friends John & Iris. It was Iris' birthday and we loved talking with them. She also gave me some succulent clippings. Now I've got a couple of jade plants, string of pearl plants, a "teddy bear" plant, and some others I haven't figured out yet. She's always so generous.
The fourth weekend we had dinner at BJs restaurant with our NDS friends, Mark & Mina, Natalie & Dmitri, and Victor & Eping. It's always good to see everyone. After dinner we went to our place to play games. We ended up playing Dread Pirate. Nathan had a keen time attacking the others. Poor Dmitri was picked on by Mark on his right, Natalie on his left, and Nathan who went around attacking everyone.
JNS Development finished our picture window around the middle of April. Then for one of the family home evenings we hung up vertical blinds. They go well with the blinds for our patio sliding door.
Joy's little garden has doubled in the number of plants, thanks in part to Iris who gave her about a dozen succulent cuttings. Also Joy got a flat of lavendar ice plants, 6 snapdragons, and some of her seeds are starting to grow. I think the growing seeds appear to be cilantro, oregano, and salpiglossis, but we'll see for sure when the plants mature.
Joy has finished reading Douglas Adam's So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. She is now reading Dorothy Sayer's Strong Poison.
Joy has been lazy about updating her database of books (see link below).
Happy Spring!
Below are pictures of our month.
