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.

The Last Bride

I met Alison in Kindergarten...I think...it could have been grade one (or first grade for all of you American readers). It was a long long time ago. She lived in a big old white heritage house across the street from our school and she had a hidden cubby hole behind her dresser that I thought was cool. Her mom made the best birthday cakes in the world (they had money in them-as an adult I still think those are the best kind!). Ali was best friends with Loa, and I was best friends with Trina. We were a fabulous foursome. Over the years many hours were spent together at Ali's house playing with barbies, riding bikes, dreaming about boys and drinking too much tequila. Mexican tequlia.



Time went on, we got older. Alita and Michelle joined our little foursome...and we became six. We got along...mostly. There was a rift when we discovered Judy Blume's book 'Forever', and another when Ali and Alita discovered Thomas at about the same time. We'll just leave it at that.



So we all grew up and got married. All of us except Ali. She decided she needed to travel the world and get her master's degree. She's travelled to a dozen different countries and speaks about 6 languages. In her travels she met her Mexican match Alex, the hot older brother of her friend Alisia who was Ali's host sister on an exchange trip to Veracruz back in high school.



In our group of friends it seems you either get married before anyone's the wiser, or you string your guy along for an eternity. Ali did both. She strung poor Alex along for years in her indecisiveness, and then in an instant she eloped with him in the spring and moved to Mexico. They decided to come back to the Great White North so we could celebrate with them...and what a celebration it was!



If you know Alison, you know she's not exactly the most organized person in the world. Loa and I were curious to see how the whole event was going to unfold when the rehersal the night before took three and a half hours. Incorporating Canadian and Mexican traditions into the ceremony and then translating everything from English to Spanish took a little time to organize beforehand but worked out beautifully on the wedding day...even if the wedding did start an hour and a half late...I think we were on Latin American time.



The wedding was held at the same heritage site where Trina and Michelle had their weddings. It's a beautiful spot to wed and a fun place to take pictures.

Loa, me and Alita. No leg shots on our camera :(.



Ali and John, her dad.







This is Ali's little brother David who suddenly developed into a very handsome man in the last ten years. Was he really only two years younger than us all that time? I'm not sure if we flattered or embarrassed him with all of our comments;).



Well guys, we had a awesome time at your wedding. It was so fun to have most of us all back together again (we missed you Michelle). We wish you love and happiness in your marriage and we'll keep you in our prayers. We'll also keep you in our Mexican vacation plans! We love you!



Royden took a pretty good closing shot for our blog post but a better one would have been of the bride and groom hitch hiking in their wedding garb to their hotel after their car ran out of gas on the way there...we hope you continue to keep your same sense of humour on the rest of life's adventures!