Change Is Comin'

(Kitty) Only God knows what's going to happen for sure, but changes are coming. John has an interview with a great company in the San Francisco area next week. Kitty is about to change positions with her local RWA (Romance Writers of America) chapter, and being in San Francisco could be good for her. More than anything, though, we want God to send us wherever He wants us to go. We'll let you know what happens!

Babies!!!

(Kitty) I've been meaning to post this for a month! But it's been a busy month! :) Turns out four sets of friends have "recently" found out they are pregnant - and one already has the new baby because it's taken me forever to get this up! LOL!

Mel & Andrew and Baby Turnham

Mel & Andrew are our great friends from Sydney, and we were thrilled to hear they became pregnant recently. Baby Turnham is due in February and plans on surprising his/her parents with his/her gender. Here is a picture of what he or she looked like last month. I plan to finish crocheting Baby T's baby blanket sometime in the next year or two.

Andrea & Brady and Baby Justin Nasfell

Andrea and Brady are long-time friends in the LA area. Justin was born on August 26 (my own mother's birthday!). We saw him at church this past Sunday and wow! I forget how tiny 3-week-old babies can be! His parents look tired, but happy. His big sister Emma was all smiles. Here he is right after he was born.

Dave & Ann Marie and Baby Barndt

Few babies have so many loving prayers lifted up to our Heavenly Father before their birth as little Baby Barndt. He or she is a little fighter, tenacious and determined. He/she already has two fantastic big brothers who are helping Mom and Dad out while Mom rests. Another ten weeks or so and Baby Barndt will be big enough to be born if he/she insists on it. Please pray mother and child continue strong and healthy, and that God's unsurpassing peace enfolds the whole family while they wait.

John & Karine and Baby Woldhuis

John and Karine are also wonderful friends from our church back in Sydney. They are currently missionaries in Loja, Ecuador along with their little angel girl, Evie. Karine is just a few months pregnant and is going to have their baby in Quito, Ecuador. The pictures of the country are beautiful, but I'm sure the pictures of the new baby will be even more beautiful.

Duke

I'm sorry, but I can't resist! You all know that I go mushy in the knees quicker over puppies than babies. :) My sister Bonnie's dog, Mooch, died a few months ago after 15 years of working with Bonnie and her therapeutic riding program (using horses to give physical therapy, see http://chumtherapy.net/). On her birthday, August 27, friends gave Bonnie a new puppy named Duke - because he was born on John Wayne's birthday. He's a 3-month-old black and white border collie. Bonnie says he's quiet, smart, loving and already attached to her side. I'm sure he and all the horses and kids are going to be very good friends. Isn't he just precious?

John's Birthday Invitation!

(Kitty) Hi guys! Sorry it's been so long since we've posted. I was out of town for two weeks, then the last week has been crazy busy. But part of what's keeping us busy is planning John's 40th birthday party. Check out the invitation! (Ignore the fact that the picture color is off. It looks a lot better printed. :) )

Amazing Biking Trip!

(Kitty) On Sunday, we were so tired of life and the day had dawned so beautifully that we made an instant decision - play hookey from church and go on a bike ride!

We'd never really been south much before, so we headed that direction. Since we weren't trying to get someplace, we kept veering west whenever we could so we could stay close to the ocean. Great decision! We saw so many cute little "downtowns" in a bunch of beach towns. We recognized some of the names - Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach. But many were cute names that I've never seen on a map.

Two things stuck in our minds - one, we drove past the Trump National Golf Course and both of us were thinking, "Hey, this is the place that was on 'The Apprentice' TV show!" And the second thing was a part of the road called Portuguese Bend. It's a curvy bit of road (and there's a subdivision there with, apparently, the same name) with warning signs to drive 10-15 miles per hour because the land for the next mile is constantly moving! Isn't that wild?! Explains the new blacktop - they probably have to repave it every time the road cracks away. The shape of the road is very weird - curves around back and forth, and also has a lot of deep dips, hence the slow speed limit. It was a strange mile to ride.

The whole trip was about 75 miles and took us about 3 hours including a 20-minute break for food and gas - and to let our behinds get the feeling back! By 10am, we were back home - and it was already 82 degrees! We stayed inside for the rest of the day with the A/C on! LOL!

Now we can't wait for the next opportunity to drive some more. We're thinking maybe we'll go farther south and spend the day at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Or not. Who knows? All I know for sure is that neither of us is keen to get on the freeway yet, so we're just going to enjoy driving slow for a while longer. :)

Cute Picture of the Future

(Kitty) I finally pulled this off our camera today. Here is John with Spike, the mascot from Animation Mentor. We met Spike when we were at Siggraph two weeks ago, along with the very nice Admissions lady, Victoria. If John ends up enrolling in A.M. for the January term, you'll hear A LOT more about it, so I'll just stop typing now and leave you with the picture. I will say, they are all so nice!

Hope you're having a great day! :)

Too Hot!!!

(Kitty) That's all I've got to say. It's just too freakin' hot! In May and June, I was so blissful with the Santa Monica weather - which made me suspicious. So I went to weather.com and looked at the monthly averages. Sure enough, August and September are supposed to be the hot months here.

Today, I can definitely feel it!!! Thank God for air conditioning!

Our First Bike Night!

(Kitty) John found out that there is a "Bike Night" every Tuesday up at Universal CityWalk. It's sponsored by the Saddleback Restaurant, which ropes off a huge area in front of the restaurant for the motorcycles to park (FREE parking, I might add, which is HUGE in LA) as well as a 20% discount off food and drinks for the bike riders.

We rode up there last night to check it out. Inexplicably, the traffic was awful. Yes, that is sarcasm. But it was still a nice ride. Took us over an hour to get up there, and about 50 minutes to get home. That's because we still don't ride on the freeways. Which is fine. We took some streets we normally don't drive, saw some things we normally don't see when we're driving a car, talked at the red lights. It was fun. :)

Anyway, so we got up there and we were in the 50% of bikes that were nice but not special. Then we walked around and looked at the other bikes (like everyone else at Universal CityWalk was doing). Some had interesting colored lighting, some had amazing paint jobs, some were part of a club or whatever with the club name painted on all the bikes. One was even some kind of 3-wheeler with 2 wheels in front and 1 wheel in the center in the back, and it had two bucket seats side-by-side. Sort of reminded me of a dune buggy, but I have no idea what it was. Had a great paint job, though!

So we parked, immediately took off our riding jackets because it's August and still hot after dark, and walked around the shops. Then we meandered back to the restaurant for a surprisingly pleasant dining experience. By some fluke, we were seated in a dark corner in front of two TVs - one playing baseball highlights and one playing music videos. Between the two TVs, the kissing, the two guitarists who came by and played "Peaceful, Easy Feeling" by The Eagles for us, the great waiter named Lake, and the FABULOUS breaded mushrooms - we had a great night! I think our biggest problem at this point might be finding the will power not to go up every Tuesday night and blow our "dining out" budget! LOL!

New Plans

(Kitty) Hi everyone! If you're wondering why I'm posting all the time and not John, it's because he has to work 60 hours a week. Since he doesn't like the idea of working weekends, he tries to get all his hours in Monday through Friday. That means he's exhausted by Saturday and has no interest in typing. :)

So...here I am trying to update you. We went to Siggraph, the annual visual effects convention, on Tuesday of this week. Very cool! I've never been to it and I thought it was so interesting, especially the emerging technology! I wanted to drop everything and become a research assistant! LOL!

John talked to a lot of people and gave away more than a dozen resumes and demo reels. (We put together a very cool package to hand out.) A couple places seemed particularly interested in talking to John further, so on the way home we tried to come up with a plan. We came up with a kind of A, B or C plan.

Our apartment lease ends November 15. If we renew for another year, but John gets a job outside the area, we have to pay the balance of the lease until and unless they re-rent the unit. So we're building the plans partially around that. Plan A is - Weta calls between now and Christmas and offers John a job - we move to New Zealand. (Yea!) Plan B is - a good company in San Francisco, or perhaps one in another city, calls and offers John a job - we move to that city. (From what we can glean, there aren't many companies in our local area that are going to be doing what John does between now and the end of the year.) Plan C is - no one offers John any long-term work between now and Christmas - we move to our friend Doug's near Temecula, CA, and I get a job and John goes to animation school for 18 months.

So...one way or another, it looks like we're moving in November. We just don't know where. John is totally committed now to this school he's been researching; he met with the admissions director at Siggraph, and is ready to change from being in motion capture to being in animation itself. If he gets a good job by the end of the year, we'll just keep saving while he works that job, then he'll start school when that job ends and we won't have to borrow as much in student loans. If instead he starts school in January, he's that much closer to his dream job. Either way, it looks like a win-win situation.

Now we simply have to wait and see what happens. We'll keep you updated! God bless you!
Love, Kitty & John :)

Some Firsts

(Kitty) Couple interesting firsts lately, one for a friend of mine, one for us. :) My friend Janice just sold her first book! Hurray!! You can check it out at Capstone Fiction. Janice and I are in the same writing group, so this is very exciting for us and our friends! She used to be a police officer, and now she's a novelist - writing about a police officer and her K-9 partner. Very enjoyable book!

The other first is that John and I FINALLY got to see the Tigers play!! Hurray!! We asked a couple friends of ours, Ray and Jessica, if they wanted to go. (Our friend Doug originally told us about it because he was going to the Saturday game - to root for the Angels! Little devil! But there were no more tickets left, so we went to the Sunday game.) The good part is that we've now finally seen the Detroit Tigers in person. Yea! The bad news is that they LOST 4-14 in a nearly sold out game!! (Don't laugh, Doug, or we'll have to hurt you!) There were a lot of Tigers fans there, and we were all sorely disappointed.

So now we've seen the Tigers (baseball), the Red Wings (hockey) and the Lions (football). We just need to see the Pistons (basketball) sometime and we'll be all set! :) Below are some pictures of us with Ray and Jessica. (Ray's co-worker Kara who is also from Michigan came with us, but wasn't able to get seats with us.) John's wearing his Tigers cap that his mom mailed to Austraila last year. Enjoy!

Too Much Fun!

(Kitty) We already showed you how cool John looks on his new motorcycle. But we haven't told you what I think of the whole thing. Well, last month John decided he was comfortable enough to try having a passenger. We tooled up and down the alley the first time and I was pretty okay with it. That is, until one of our neighbors stopped to chat (motorcycle owners/lovers are very chatty with each other) and told me about the girl he'd seen the day before on the freeway. I won't go into details, but it certainly tamped down my enthusiasm for the day!

The next time we went out, we drove down residential streets for about 20-30 minutes. That was scarier, though I wasn't scared of riding - I was afraid of falling off! So we decided to buy a backrest (aka, sissy bar - but I hate that name! LOL!) for the rear seat so I could relax. (I'd been holding on so tight to John that both my legs and my arms/neck/shoulders were tense as could be!) The first time we drove with the backrest, we rode for about an hour and a half! (We saw a lot of Santa Monica that we'd never seen before, including a canal that's a nature preserve.) John kept asking me if I was okay, but I was having a great time. Later, he said he was a little worried because I no longer had a death grip on him. LOL! This past Saturday we even rode on the PCH - Pacific Coast Highway - for an hour. Riding 45-55 mph is a little scarier than the 35-45 on surface streets, but I was game for it. We finally turned around because I couldn't feel my bum anymore. LOL!

Now that we have the backrest, and I finally found some good boots that fit (Kevlar lined, can you believe it?), and yesterday I bought a great jacket that fits and looks good on me, we'll be riding a lot more. John found out about a restaurant that has "bike night" every Tuesday night - free parking for motorcycles and all you can eat ribs for $19.95. I can't wait to go! Plus, he's going to ride to church on his bike one Sunday coming up to make sure he's comfortable with the streets (we're not riding on the freeway yet), then we can ride it to church. They even have motorcycle parking there! We already ride it to the movie theatre, and for the first time, we don't have to circle for parking! It's awesome!

I'll post more pictures of me in my new jacket later, but here are some pics of us after brunch last Sunday. I was so happy, but you can't see my huge smile! It was too hot to ride in our black leather jackets, so we went home afterward. (We usually ride from 7-9am on Saturdays and Sundays.)

Wake Up! We're Back!

(Kitty) Holy cow! Until my friend Teri pointed it out, I had no idea it'd been 2 1/2 months since we last posted! Yikes! Sorry about that. All I can say is that we find life back in the States a bit more boring than in Aussie Land. :) Or at least it seems more boring to us. For the most part, we see our life as day after day of waiting, waiting, waiting. Still no "real" word about when we'll know about John's next job, but it seems as if it will be the autumn. (Meanwhile, he carries on at his current job in Santa Monica.)

Of course, once I decided I needed to think of something interesting to post here, stuff seemed to start happening! So I'll try to post once or twice a week and let you know some of the interesting stuff and show you any pictures we can take. For today, we'll share some great news about one of our dear friends!

Our friend Don Coleman graduated from Princeton Seminary and was ordained at our church, Bel Air Presbyterian, last Sunday. That was a great day! We got to see him for an hour or so, and his wife Bridgette and son Brennan we'll be able to see tomorrow for several hours. (Don had to go back to work at the church they're at now in Ohio.) We're proud and happy for Don - seems the church they're at now is full of great people - but I'm particularly happy for Bridgette because now she can be a full-time writer! Well, as much as a full-time mom can be! LOL! So I've been spending a little time every day this week thinking of things she needs to know, books she needs to read, people she needs to meet! Hopefully, I won't overwhelm her!

Below are pictures of Don's ordination. More catch-up stories coming up!

Our Trip to Arizona

Hey everyone. I wanted to post some pictures of all of our friends that we visited in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. It was WONDERFUL seeing everyone and we even enjoyed the Arizona weather a little bit too! We drove around and saw some sights and then spent hours catching up with our friends the Gregg's on Friday night. We spent all of Saturday with each of our collective friends - Kitty with her writing group Imaginary Friends (who she insists are real,) and me with a whole bunch of my gaming friends. And then went to church and spent the afternoon with the Bonnell's.

Thanks to everyone for making it a great time!


Kitty's friends Andrea and Shonna.


The Gregg Family.


More of Kitty's friends - Heather and Stephanie.


One of our Godchildren - Jessdyn.


Two handsome guys - Jessie and Me.


Kitty and Jamie.


My friends (from the left) Jason, Ivan, Jon and me.


The gang.


John and Jessie with food.


Kitty and I about to fly to AZ.


Us and the Foster's (Heather in front is our other Godchild.)


Brad and Dawn Gregg and Us.

Mountain Biking Men

Dwight has been trying to get me to ride with him for a couple of weeks. I finally had some time open and was able to go riding with him on some fire roads on a beautiful Saturday morning. Dwight found a fire road that ended at an old Cold War era radar station (a couple pictures of us are actually at the station). I'm glad the thing that some of the pictures don't show is how utterly tired and winded both of us were after the ride.

An Easter Poem

Kitty: Happy Easter, everyone! I was shopping on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica last week and, among the "usual" street people there, I saw a man with a sign that said something like, "Will read poem for $1." I walked up to him smiling and said, "That's too unusual, I have to hear your poem."

After he read it to me, the man gave me a copy. He'd made copies to give to everyone who listened. I liked it so much, I asked him if I could share it with my friends and he agreed. So here is an Easter poem written by a very nice gentleman named Royce. God bless you, Royce!

I Know What I Think

by Royce Hummer

Easter time again
The candy companies love this time of year
Spring in the air
A new beginning
Summer around the bend
Don't forget to turn your clock ahead
And oh! How could we forget
That big pink bunnie
All the above are the things most people think about this time of year
Fine and dandy
Why is it we don't wanna think about the main event
I know some don't believe
But what if the story is true
Where will you be
Can't change in mid stream
I know what I think
A man named Jesus walked on this Earth
Song of God, who's to say
Is there a God at all
I know what I think
Was he raised from death
I have no problem with that
You think we came from nowhere
It all just happened
Thinking like that is like standing on a muddy slope
So go ahead and hug your make believe rabbit
I know what I think

Happy Feet on DVD!

Kitty - Hi guys! If you have little kids, you probably already know this, but Happy Feet just came out on DVD on Tuesday. (It's on sale at a Target near you for $15.99 this week!) I don't know if John can stand the thought of seeing it again so soon, but I'm going to watch it again soon. I love that movie! I listen to the soundtrack (one of my Christmas presents) a lot, too. Great stuff.

I'm spending this week catching up on things I have been neglecting - taxes, household chores, etc. Then I'll start working on book two on Monday - probably at the beach! I have to say, I really can't complain about my life! LOL! Oh, and if you're one of the 243 people whose email is still sitting in my Inbox, or one of the dozen or more people I promised to call and chat with - please be patient and forgive me! I'm getting to it all! Honest! Just got to get those prickly taxes done first! (grin)

Hope you're all having a great day and week!
Love and Hugs!
Kitty :)

Happy Birthday Kitty

March 24 was Kitty's Birthday! (Would have gotten this up sooner, but been a little busy.)
We went to our friend Doug's house where we kicked back, relaxed, and celebrated with a BBQ Kitty's and Doug's brother, David's, birthday.
Write Kitty and ask her how old she is if you want to know (I'm to scared of retribution to put it up on the blog.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGEL!

KITTY FINISHED HER BOOK!!!

JOHN - Well, it's DONE!! Kitty finished and sent her book off to her agent Monday! She has been a little busy and hasn't had time to post, so I thought I would let everyone know! Her agent will read it in about two weeks due to all the other books that people submitted before Kitty. I asked her if she is going to take a break, and Kitty said that she would take a week or two off, but she would start outlining her second book soon.

Watch for her soon on the New York Best Sellers list!

Dirty Bomb Diaries

JOHN - Our friend Eric Tozzi is directing a real riveting web series called The Dirty Bomb Diaries! It is the story of a lone woman who is in her apartment when a dirty bomb is detonated in the same city.
He has directed other things in the past, but this one has a lot of people hooked!

Check it out at:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=dirtybombdiaries

Or the MySpace sight at: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1988348949

Cool Car

Here is another blast from the past thanks to my cousin Paul. This is of my dad and uncle (my Uncle Bob is on the left and my dad, Tom, on the right) standing in front of a 1955 or a 1956 Mercury Montclair. Not sure where the picture was taken, maybe Indiana, where they lived for a while.

The Cool Crew

I have to thank my cousin Paul for these great pictures. He has recently set to scanning in a bunch of old photos of us and our dads. This one shows Paul, David and I outside Paul's house when we were little tykes. David is on the left, Paul in the middle, I'm on the right. (When I was a kid, my mom always dressed me in green's and brown's so she could tell us apart.)

More photos will be posted later.