I have 8 nephews and 2 nieces among my siblings.  For the most part, we’ve never lived in the same city, so they are just these far-off adorables you get to see growing up through Christmas card photos and the every-other-year family gatherings.  They are a pretty likeable bunch!

Until March, we have never lived closer [...]

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See the trailer:  http://www.dare2share.org/gospeljourneymaui/
The stars of this film were nurtured and food-powered by Carol Ann Kelly (http://cakboliv.wordpress.com/) and me, see here.

Click here to view the rest of SNEAK PREVIEW: Dare 2 Share in Maui~Gospel Journey

I had the weirdest dream.   I was in a carnival-like crowd of gazillions of people.   We were on a city street outside what I knew to be the hotel I was staying in.   I was surrounded by high-rises and  hundreds of people, many I knew from various times and places of my [...]

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About once a year  I dream of my childhood home - at least one of them.   We moved quite a bit, so there were many “homes.”   But there is “the one.”   It is the one I lived in from the summer of 1965 through  early September  1970.   It was my parent’s [...]

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Life’s Grace Notes: Unexpected moments of perfection, the  tiniest shimmer  of  beauty  piercing your heart.   The I-was-made-for-this minute; the unscheduled, fleeting, almost-unnoticeable events that make the life you have more valuable than you can imagine or could ever have hoped or asked for.
Grace note:   Daughter, Tara, sitting in the chair in the family [...]

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When I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, hollyhocks grew like weeds in the alleys and my friends and I used toothpicks and  hollyhocks  to create dolls now and again.   One toothpick was inserted into an unblossomed bud and then connected to an upside down bloom.   The second toothpick was poked through [...]

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Dave and I met and married in North Dakota, where we both attended Bible College.   ‘81 was our summer of love.   Our first date was 5.26.81 and we married on 7.23.81.  
The summers in North Dakota are spectacular.   It is a shame you can’t bottle that.   The sun takes almost [...]

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My “home” state has had a hard summer.   Most recently it has been in a pretty severe heat wave.  
In June, though, much of Iowa was flooded and was declared to be in a state of emergency.   This photo was sent by my old junior high friend, Lorri.   It depicts a highway [...]

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I started this blog on November 29, 2006 during a dark time when I just needed to be able to talk and was hoping I could find a place to tell the truth even when it hurt me or exposed my ugly side (as if it couldn’t already be seen). I wasn’t always forthcoming, it [...]

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“If you build it, they will come,” from the movie Field of Dreams, is one of my favorite lines ever.   We worked and labored, we sweat and even cried a little, we planned and double-checked everything we could think of.   But near the day you wonder: will anyone actually come?
Heaven Fest ‘08.
The  gates [...]

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