I like Ike

This is a picture of Ike and me. Oh, yes Sandie is there too. Back in 1989, Heidi and I moved to Vancouver, Washington and I worked at Eisenhower Elementry School with Sandie. Sandie and her husband Ross have remained good friends over the years. This past weekend they had an open house for us so that we could visit with many of the people I worked at Eisenhower. It was a lot of fun to catch up on the news and visit the new school. The one I worked in was torn down. Really, it didn't have anything to do with me. It was old and needed to be replaced. Honest.

On Sunday, we enjoyed spending the day with our friends at Felida Baptist. It was a pleasure to be with them again.

Anna Arrives

In mid September, our niece, Anna (on the left), from Alaska stopped in to visit us for a few days. We enjoyed having her with us and taking her around to visit friends and family. Above on the left is Lucy Endicott. Lucy is a cousin on Anna's father's side. She is also a distant cousin of mine. She is my wife's sister's husband's, cousin's daughter. You can't get much closer than that.
Anna's cousins on the Loertcher side include Emily and Charles. These three are were all born the same year. Below is another "cousins" picture. The younger girls are Heidi's sister Sara's children, Lola and Lily.
Our travels with Anna took us to Emily's house in Shelton for a tea party. I, have never attended a tea party before and may never be invited to one again, but I did enjoy the company and it was a treat to see Emily and Don's children. Pictured are Anna, Lucy, Carrie, Emily, and Sheryl.

Faces that ring bells

Furlough is a great time for catching up with friends we haven't seen for a while. Sometimes a face really rings a bell, but we are not quite sure if we can come up with the right name or not. This little bell ringer is my college roommate's daughter, Emily. Last furlough she took some of her first steps at our house. Now she is a school girl.
One weekend in September we traveled to Everett to enjoy a time of fellowship with Matt and Shirley Comstock and their children. Shirley even sent an apple pie home with us. Thanks Shirley. It was superb. The Sunday following our trip to Everett, we went to church at Hood Canal Community church. My father, John Bamford, was the guest speaker. In the evening, we drove to the airport and picked up Anna; Heidi's niece from Alaska. We are looking forward to having Anna with us for a few days. Today she jumped in to fill a needed babysitting job that needed to be filled. Our neighbors have twins which we enjoy.

Going to School

Fall is already here and we are enjoying seeing the trees start to turn from green to orange and yellow. This tree is a sugar maple and is the first one to put on a show in our neighborhood. With the yellow leaves comes the big yellow school bus.

When our children were still babies, I used to tease Heidi about having to put them on the school bus and watch their tear stained faces pull away. Well, it never happened, our children did almost all of their schooling around the kitchen table. This year, things are a bit different. You can see this in the picture. To me, it looks like Heidi is pushing them onto the bus. Perhaps not, but anyway, there are no tears. James and Carrie are enjoying their classes at Black Lake High School.

Thomas has also started school. He is going to Cornerstone Christian School. In the picture, he is standing with his science teacher, Mr. Evatt. I, Jonathan, am one of his teachers. I'm teaching a missions emphasis class two days a week to 19 Jr. high students. Charles will start a few college classes next week and Heidi and I will be taking some correspondence classes as well.

Oregon Trips

We have made several trips to Oregon during the past few weeks. Last week we stopped by Oregon city to see some of our family there and were blessed to see Jenny, a "long lost" cousin from Bend, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Then it was on to Hillside, Oregon.
This church was build by my great grandfather and is full of Bamfords. We enjoyed spending time with family there. After church we went down to my Dad and Martha's place for lunch and table games.
The following weekend was a trip to Portland to see our friends, Mark and Letta. Mark and Letta served with us in the Philippines for many years and so it was a joy to get to spend a few hours with them.Mark and Letta took us to a mall for lunch. It happened that the mall had been invaded by aliens of all types. Fortunately they didn't seem to want to abduct anyone and they all spoke English. The fellow below was handing out plastic aliens. In reality the aliens were all part of a big Japanese comic book show going on in the area. I noted, that Letta does talk to strangers and I can only attribute that to prolonged exposure to downtown Portland.

A fair day in August

Going to the fair with Aunt Kay (standing behind Thomas) was a lot of fun. We are watching an event called the tractor pull. (see the picture below) This tractor pull is for children driving peddle tractors. These kids really gave it their best shot and the crowd enjoyed watching them do it.
As we wandered the Kitsap County fair grounds we saw lots of interesting displays. All the displays were organized into groups. We thought the exhibit in the picture below would be very interesting, but it turned out to be much tamer that the name suggests.
Thomas and James enjoying the Sheriff's exhibit.
Our family with Uncle Harry who was holding down the 4-H booth.

August Activities

Meet Emily and her husband Jon. Emily is Heidi's niece and we enjoyed having her and her husband Jon over for dinner last night. We are enjoying our time on home assignment. Seeing friends and family has been a real treat for us. We have also enjoyed visiting many churches. Heidi counted our speaking engagements over the last two months and found that we have had 19 speaking opportunities.