Been a while?

I don't disagree.

It's been a long time since we've blogged. I have plenty of blame to pass around. First I'll blame blogger. Did anyone notice how that upgrade to the post editor removed the ability to drag and drop photos?

Lame.

However, they're new extra large photo format...   I dig it. Ruth and I have always intended this to be a photo blog, so anything that makes the photos more presentable is alright with me. I haven't decided what I think of the template yet. This is Minema stretch? Vote yes or no in the comments if you like the old template better. I can't decide, there's a bunch of things I'd like to fix but messing with html for me is like making a sandwhich in the dark.

I'd also like to blame facebook. Facebook really does make it easy to stay in touch with family, upload photos, chat amongst friends. I guess I wasn't even sure who still read our blog regularly. Well regardless of who reads it, these words and photos are going out into the airways anyways.

Ultimately, the blame is mine. I've been lazy and aimless this year. 2009 has not been a year I'd toast to, as it wasn't for many people. I've actually had more time to do things creative this year, and less desire to do them. Not sure how that works but it's been that way for Ruth and I both.

So I'm going to empty the archives and post a few photos that I just never got around to posting. So here's a few snapshots of the last 6 months or so.

This is another thing I blame for blogger inactivity. Home reno's...

The goal is to finish the basement so it becomes an actual usable space. It's been work but not the kind you think. I'm not doing any of it, we're contracting it out, but making decisions and hiring people is exausting. I wish I could do the work myself instead of greeting strangers at the door everyday at 8am to walk downstairs and cause chaos, walk out and charge money for it all. It's nice to be able to afford it. It's difficult to not be able to do it myself. It's just not one of my gifts.

Here's some other great photos I've been hanging onto for sometime (more then 6 months).

Becasue there are no longer employment complications...  I think it's safe for me to post these photos of me on a motion capture set  I went to, to test some equipment for a company I used to work for. The photos were taken by a co-worker for research purposes, but they were also pretty funny.

This winter we got a chance to go skiing with Ruth's dad Eric. It was his birthday present, and our treat. It was great to spend a couple days on the mountain. Beautiful weather too.

I've still been photographing God's scaley critters. This past fall, a friend of mine sent me a fertilized chameleon egg so that I could photograph a hatchling chameleon (one of my favorite things to photograph). Last month on one of my routine checks of the egg, instead of seeing a little white globe. I saw this...

Pretty cool. (To me anyway).

Let's see what else...

We had a grease fire in which God showed us how He's taking care of us despite ourselves.

Ruth made cupcakes for me on Valentines day. Yum!

I mowed the lawn in December. Mowing leaves is better then raking them. :)

Oh yeah, here's a funny one. Last year, Ruth and I posed for my friends board game called Last Night on Earth. It's a zombie game played on a board with cards and miniatures. I was asked to pose as "Victor; the escaped convict", and Ruth posed as a zombie. Some of you might remember my halloween costume from 2008, this is where it came from. This winter the game was printed and made ready for distribution, so we finally got to see some of the photos and press. There are more we will share sometime soon, but this is the pne photo I had handy. That's me in front. Ruth is the zombie over my shoulder on the right.

Well, that's all I got for now. I'll try to post more often but I can't make any promises. I've loved this blog, I really don't want to abandon it.

This last fall while I was filling the yard waste bin, I found this fascinating little blue snail. All yardwork came to an end while I shot it. Now what am I supposed to do with photos like that unless I have a blog? If I stop doing yardwork to shoot a little snail and I don't post, then it's a waste of time. It's just a photo in a file on my hard drive. Now it's in cyberspace where it should be.

Dot and Cliff

There are a few ways that I know that God loves us. One of them is that he allowed us to buy this wonderful home four years ago in this great neighborhood. But just so we did't miss the point, God gave us people like Dot and Cliff as neighbors. Dot and Cliff are about as close as we can get to replacement family here in our little town. You couldn't order better neighbors, even if you were a part of a home owners association.

Last week were honored to help Dorothy and Cliff celebrate 50 years of marriage. A milestone rarely reached, rarely celebrated, and rarely attended with smiles and laughter from the bride and groom.




Not that their whole life has been a party. Cliff and Dorothy have had their share trials. They have shared a life of special parenting, of loving and serving a son who's needs were tremendous.
Dot and Cliff have had their share of tears and trials.



We were more then happy to gather and watch them cut their cake, renew their vows, and look back on their life. Dot and Cliff bought the house to next ours when it was brand new. Our house was built a year or two before theirs, and they've watched families come and go from this street. They've got stories about who used to live where - when they moved out and who moved in. I've often called Cliff to ask him about our house's history. For anyone who owns an old home, you know how priceless it is to have that information.

I invited Cliff inside our house for something shortly after I bought it. I'll never forget Cliff standing in the kitchen and saying "it's been 40 years since I've been in this kitchen." I haven't even been alive for 40 years. It's so hard for me to grasp that thought.




Dot and Cliff call us at work when we have a package on our front door. They often take it into their house, or sign for it (whatever that package may be :)

I've borrowed Cliffs tools more then I care to admit (and have broken a few of them).

Dorothy has taken care of my pet lizard for heavens sakes! While we were in Canada, she's fed and watered my chameleon and my praying mantis! I'm not sure my wife would do that for me!




As a young couple you look forward to kids, grand kids, to connecting with other families with kids. But God had a different plan for these two. He gave them a job to do, and then he gave them the love and ability to do it.

It's been a year since Jeffery went home to be with the Lord, leaving these two parents to figure out how life works without him. We know we can't imagine how that transition has been for them. But from our point of view (across the lawn) they seem to be doing pretty good, and for that we praise the Lord for continuing to give them grace and love.

Ruth and I really want God to use us to show His love to our neighbors. But it's neighbors like Dot and Cliff who remind us of God's love for us.




Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work:
If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. - Ecclesiastes 4:9

Guten Tag!

German genes, that's what me and Royden have. Between the two of us we have a lot of them, heck we may even be distant cousins. You laugh, but when our good friend David married our cousin Kristy we found out that grandma Mary was from the same European village as David's grandfather. So...it's a small world.

Our grandparents and great grandparents had some pretty amazing stories to tell about their life experiences. Several of them endured displacement from Poland to Russia during the second World War and endured much hardship. Eventually they immigrated to Canada. Thankfully some of them wrote out their life stories, which I really need to read again.

Our German grandparents have given us a very good heritage and we have much to be thankful to them for. The greatest legacy they left was their faith in Jesus, which they passed down to us. That makes me think of Proverbs 22:6 'Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it'. We praise the Lord for the gift of our grandparents!

Our German relatives also passed down a few other things to us including: the need for clean, a tendency toward stubborness, a taste for halva and a strange love of...saurkraut. And that my friends is what inspired this post. I decided to turn our meal during community group last night into an Oktoberfest party. FYI community group is code for bible study...so if we ever invite you over for an Oktoberfest party with our community group look out for the bait a switch!



Meet Helga. Fortuntely she was only at our party in spirit. I would say our bent for beer was not something passed down with those genes...but I do recall a particular grandmother with a penchant for the dark stuff. She might not appreciate me blowing her cover but it can't be that bad if monks invented the stuff and Martin Luther let his wife run a brewery eh?

So there you have it. Of course some of our friends weren't too keen on the fermented cabbage. Good thing I didn't tell them the stories about how back in the day when Royden's family made it they would let the freshly bathed little ones jump around in the cabbage in the tub as part of the canning proccess!

Since you're supposed to listen to German music at an Oktoberfest party we subjected our friends 'Fettes Brot' the only German music I had. It's rap and we had to skip all the songs with English since it seems they only know English expletives. I can't judge them since the only German word I know is schiesser and I use it often enough that Royden regrets that he ever taught it to me. He has been known to remind me not to say it in front of his many relatives who still speak German. "You know it's still a real swear word right?". Uh huh.

I can forgive those who loathe saurkraut...since I used to be one of them. I thought I'd try to make it up to them by plying them with this:

The key ingredient in this:

I think they left happy.

Bees!

Insects. Who would have thought you'd find bug photos on the Lepp's blog.



This summer, Ruth and I went home to Salmon Arm to spend some extra days in the Okanogan sun. To my pleasant surprise, my Uncle Larry has started a honeybee farm. I've always wanted to be a bee farmer. There's something fascinating about overseeing a colony of creatures, a city of citizens all carrying out their life's purpose under your management. Fascinating!



And we got a jar of fresh honey, and it's incredibly delicious. Thank you Larry and Marlyn!




The other activity that found the attention of my lens while we were home was the Interior Provincial Fair in Armstrong.

Ruth, who likes to ride tractors...





...and me and my Dad...

...who also likes to ride tractors...

..wandered around the crazy midway of a small town fair.

We enjoyed the famous mini donuts.

We found this crazy sight...

A traveling RV, driven by a crazy old guy that turns into a mini reptile/insect museum. Ruth warned me that I would have ended up like this without her.

Likely true.

Onto my favorite part of the fair, the livestock exhibits!

I was mostly attracted to the incredibly colorful fowl barn. I aim to one day buy a couple bantam chicken eggs and keep some chickens in my backyard. Not for the eggs, but so I can keep some crazy looking chickens.

We then headed back to the midway and ate some... chicken quesadillas. :( So tasty.

Thanks for the trip to the Fair Dad!

That's all for now. Here comes fall.