Catch up

Okay.

I haven't posted since October, that's pretty sad. I had many things to blog about and no time to blog. I have a real knack for turning my free time hobbies like drawing and photography into jobs that generate income. The result is that opportunities to make money while having fun, take priority over merely having fun. More on that later I suppose.

Christmas has come and gone. The fall has come and gone, and I don't even no where to begin.

I know, I'll start with a picture like this...



Photos like this always require some explanation. Our good friends, the Pattersons, threw an ugly sweater party this season. The idea is to wear the worst Christmas sweater you own, eat good food, and drink good drinks. Ruth and I don't even own those sweaters, we borrowed them from the Pattersons.

Funny story: I was at Value Village looking for a pair of ugly sweaters in the mens sweater section. I came across a guy about my age dresses similarly to me, flipping through sweaters in much the same manner as I. When I later ran into him in the ladies sweater department I asked if he too was going to an ugly sweater party. He was. Must be the 'in' thing this year.



In other news, Ruth's parents were by for a visit this fall. In case you don't know what it looks like when the Nelson's all congregate in one one room, I took a picture...



I'm left to watching tv, going online in the office, taking pictures, or asking one of three to shop for a laptop for me. The purpose of the visit wasn't only to ride digital waves together but also renovate the remaining part of the basement. We are the luckiest married people on the planet to have them come do that for us. I'll take more pictures as things progress, but a lot was accomplished. Follow up visit is forthcoming this month I believe.



Besides that, all I have are pictures from are trip home last week. It was a full on white Christmas. I'm not sure it stopped snowing the whole time we were home. It was crazy.



It's refreshing going home sometimes. I don't know anyone else that's get to step outside of the crazy consumerist, material driven environment that this country provides. How pleasant it is listening to CTV news, where they never bait me to watch the 11pm news by telling me that something I'm doing at this very moment could be killing me "tonight at 11 !". There's no coverage of what Britney did for Christmas or what, or how Hillary just dropped 2 points in the popularity contest we call an election.





Peaceful. That's how the Canadian news feels. I know it's so cliche it makes me sick. But that's how it is, they cover international events, they talk about the dollar, they talk about the states a bit, they spend a lot more time on the weather. And none of the anchors seemed to be getting paid by the frequency of their head-cocking, fear-mongering, eyebrow raising. I swear. Everything south of the border is fox news compared to CTV.



And why am I interspersing this rant with random photos of the snow in Salmon Arm? I have no idea. I think it calms me down a little. It really was pretty there.

Here's a few more to calm you all down. I went up to the cemetery to shoot some photos. It got pretty dark though.






Oh look, the symbol of freedom!

Alright, on to the actual day of Christmas. There was a strange abundance of scratch tickets this year. I don't know why? They even made their way into my family.





Nobody won. Well...nobody won big. And then there were the very practical gifts like scarfs and such.





Right. And headslick. Can't complain.

Much of the holidays were a blur, running back and forth between our families. But helps that they're only 2 minutes apart, and it's kinda fun sometimes. It's liking hitting multiple parties all week, and then hitting them all again for leftovers.




I was also helping undertake a project to photograph Lepp families. They were supposed to be put into a booklet for Grandpa at the home to help jog his memory.




Joanne was missing that night so I'm going to photoshop her in later. Dad already took a picture of her standing to right behind the couch. This was a nice picture of Mom and Dad.




Well, that's that I suppose. I can't blog anymore today. I got other stuff to do. This is one of the ventures I've started this month - http://www.roydenspetportraits.com/ That's pretty much what kept me from blogging this fall. This country and it's stupid news and incredible opportunities. I know, I know, Ruth and I are here for a reason.

I'm also cranking trying to get book 2 of my series wrapped up for the publisher. It's been a long year. 2 more books to go!

That's all I got for now. I'll try to update more regularly in 2008. That's my resolution. Blessings to everyone who reads this. Happy New Year!

Excuse me sir...

Um..Marc? Yes you have something on your shirt. Yes, I assumed you know I'm wondering how much it is? Fifteen bucks for that! What a deal! I'll take it!

Those and other ridiculous things could be overheard at this years Northwest Reptile and Exotics Expo. I was in my glory. Ruth is a wonderful wife for coming with me.



I'm afraid I probably fit right in with this crowd. Bald guy in a leather jacket, to whom the pet shop employees often greet with the question, "you look like a guy who needs pinky mice."

No sir, but could please point me towards your flightless fruit flys and several thousand crickets?

With price tags like this, who can afford these gorgeous animals anyways?



But then you see one of these and it's like the price doesn't matter.



Babe, can I keep it? please? I won't let it escape or bite you, I promise. I'll also try not to let it grow to it's full size of eight feet.

I've never been much of a snake enthusiast, but Ruth admitted she was praising God while looking at some of these beautiful creatures.



There were several buckets of 'beardies' (bearded lizards).



I'd like that one please. No, not that one, that one. Yeah the one with the stripes..no, no, no, the other one with the stripes.


Check this out. Just when I thought I could use the argument against Ruth that this is one of the cheaper hobbies I could get into...click on this picture...



See the price tag on the left? A thousand bucks for that hairy little, eight-legged mom spooker. Seems like for a few hundred extra you could go on vacation to the place where that spider lives and smuggle it home in a suitcase. It might be illegal but I'm just saying...

The main reason, of course, that I went to this Expo and the reptile that brought me into the hobby, the chameleons...





We went to Pams Chams booth to see the many different panther chameleons that I find so beautiful. Check out this gorgeous guy...




Both those picture are of the same animal. Notice how he "fires up" when I stick the camera in his face. What an amazing creature. Only further evidence to me that this world was designed by an engineer/artist. This couldn't have possibly been an accident.

Many thanks to my lovely wife for enduring this strange boyhood hobby, and for coming along to the Expo even though she was feeling pretty sick this weekend. And thanks to her also for sharing the house with 'Otto' and all the little "things" he likes to eat. More on that in some other blog post. ;)





See you all next year!

Getting caught up...

Sorry about the long delay between posts. I'm not sure what's been keeping me. I have a ton of photos to share, I just haven't got time to sit down and write I guess. So here's a smathering of photos from various summer activities in the last couple months.

Starting with the ferry ride to Bainbridge for coffee. My parents came for a visit a few weeks ago and we went to pegasus coffee on bainbridge island for the evening. It's a beautiful ferry ride as you watch the sunset, leaving the city, and you return to the lit up seattle skyline.







Here are some photos of Grandpa I took while we were in Salmon Arm this summer. Dad and I fed him his lunch out on the patio. It was kind of interesting to sit there and take turns spoon feeding Grandpa with my Dad. It wasn't that long ago that Dad was spoon feeding me.



And before that, Grandpa was spoon feeding Dad.



And one day I may be spoon feeding Dad. But for this particular place in the Lepp men legacy, my Dad and I sat together and took turns spoon feeding Grandpa. He was hungry.

I picked up the guitar again recently if you can't tell by the furrowed brow. Ruth decided to capture me reading chords off the laptop the other night.



Technology moves so fast.
If you would've told me 10 years ago that instead of pausing mid song to the turn the page, I'd instead be pausing to scroll down, I wouldn't have had any idea what that meant.

We also spent a bit of time up at the ranch to see Nathan and Erin this summer. That place is so relaxing. It really is the perfect place to slow down a little...



..and then speed up the shutter!



Pretty little birds. 1/4000th of a second. That's how fast the shutter has to snap to catch their wings without a blur.





Hard to believe summer's over. We skipped fall all together this year. It started raining last week and hasn't really stopped. It's cold and miserable in Seattle. It makes these pictures seem much older. Ah well. Back to work.

Home

We spent several weeks at home in August and while there I was lucky enough to hitch a ride with Royden's dad for a spectacular flight over the Arm. It was awesome and made me even more convinced that we got to grow up in paradise. Remind me...why did we ever move away?



If you look closely in the window you can see both the pilot and the copilot. Royden laughed when he noticed that I moved the camera away from my face for this pic so I could smile :)



One of our reasons for returning home was for my 10 year high school reunion. D'oh! That's our nifty high school. I think we had the coolest high school ever. It was the first school designed by a mall architect and was full of windows and light. Every classroom had a bay window that looked out into the hallway so lots of natural light could filter through...this design also made it undesirable to skip class since anyone in the halls could be seen from the classrooms. Not that that really stopped us though...



The big city. You can even see McGuire Lake with it's fountain.



Royden's dad was my pilot. I'm not sure exactly how long he's flown for but it's been over 30 years. He used to be a bush pilot in Northern Ontario. He actually survived a crash in a white out storm in the middle of nowhere about 33 years ago. His passenger was killed but dad survived for three days in 40 below weather. He was found by a Christian Native Indian who was out hunting. The man had lost the moose off of his sled and turned around to find it and thankfully found dad instead. Hallelujah! Where would I be without my Royden? -probably Salmon arm;)



The house in the center of the picture is where Royden grew up. We had lots of fun over the years hiking through the woods, snowshoeing on Christmas Eve, kayaking in Gardom Lake (seen in the background) and hosting Pepsi parties by the fire. Something I forgot to mention in Trevor's wedding blog (May) was that he once went to all of the grocery stores in town and got the store managers to donate the Pepsi for our parties. He told them that we were trying to have a non alcoholic party and wanted their support. We thought it was brilliant and hilarious since we would never have had alcohol at those parties...obviously the store managers didn't know what kind of kids they were dealing with!









This is Co-Op mill, one of the major employers in the area. Warning...this is my mountain pine beetle plug. So you all know about it already since I bemoan it every chance I get. It's depressing and is killing our forests. I worry about the beauty of the country I grew up in and the impact it will have on things like clean water and jobs. So I'm totally worried about it. I also saw a huge amount of dead birch trees-you might be able to see them if you enlarge the pics of Royden's house. So please pray that Jesus wouldn't let all the trees die and that if He does I'll somehow accept that He really does know what He's doing. I'm serious, please pray about it. I'm really bad at that faith thing.





Look there we are!





Thanks dad! I enjoyed myself immensely and marvelled at God's glorious handiwork.