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Aaron’s band, “Team Redundancy Team”, played in downtown Portland at the Satyricon this week!
Band members are friends from Newberg High School.
Whoa! Loud? Yes—and some very cool original music!
Fine guitar work, Aaron.
This was actually taken before the concert. Laine, on the left is the bass player.
Tomorrow (Sunday) marks the twenty-first year that we have had our sweet Alison with us. Her arrival was a wonderful thing. I remember being in awe that we actually got to take her home! We didn’t have medical insurance in those days, but they let us take her home anyway, and we promised to pay the $50 a month they wanted. (It took a long time to pay off, since we got all ready for a C-section and all. DIdnt end up having the C-section, but that’s a longer story than I have time for now!)
I remember the pride I felt when I first strapped Alison in her car seat in back of our 1968 Datsun sedan, and took her for a drive, just the two of us. (Since I’m going back in time, there was also the night I ran out of gas in that same Datsun, with her in the back. I locked the doors and went into a house that was right there by 99W, and called my dad. Then I went running back out to make sure she was still there. Wow—fatherhood is great!
Happy Birthday, Alison! You have become such a fine young woman, and you make your mother and I very proud.
Here are a few shots of Aaron’s big night…
Mr Brand really gets into his “speech”! Chosen by the students as the faculy speaker, he was demonstrating all of the changes this particular class has had to endure. He had quite a few shirts on when he was done, and he did an excellent job!
Almost there!!
He’s got it!
With the family.
Congratulations, Aaron!
Aaron’s countdown to graduation reached zero today—and he really did graduate!
He played in the jazz band at the start while the guests streamed in, smiled a lot, and really looked like he was soaking it all in. We are really proud of him. I’ll get a couple pics posted soon of the grad in his gown on his big day…
I’m going to get rid of the “countdown” feature for a while. It was fun to watch it trickle down to this day, and also to be reminded of the last days of Deanne’s schooling, but Austin has 1095 days until his graduation ceremony—that’s a bit too long of a countdown! Alison is next. She’ll be graduating from George Fox next spring!
As part of our church’s 6-week fast, Gregg asked me to make a banner as a focal point and to help illustrate a theme. 
Found near the end of the book of Joshua (Joshua 24:14-28), the story tells about the commitment that the people made to follow God, and the marker stone Joshua placed at the base of a large oak tree, to remind the people of their commitment. We at NFC are corporately and personally renewing our commitment to follow and serve the Lord, so these are exciting times!
After thinking about this opportunity, I decided to do something unusual. Something big. (At 17.5 x 3 feet, this is the biggest banner I’ve ever made!)
It was a fun project! The best part being that I got to spend half of Saturday (including a Subway lunch) with my daughter Alison… Together we enlarged it, painted it, waited for it to dry, and hung it. I’m SO glad she helped me. Without her it would have taken twice as long! Plus she’s a great painter and good at mixing colors!
The drawing:
First, I made the simple sketch with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator at 1/12th size (1 inch = 1 foot). Then I applied a “charcoal” stroke to the lines, colored them, and filled the areas with simple colors.
Trade secret #1 (how we enlarged it):
We used the church’s projector to enlarge the file directly onto butcher paper that was taped to the wall. We traced the outlines in pencil. Then we painted in the colors, sort of like “paint by numbers” with tempera paint. So cool!
Notice the re-purposing of the projector on the left side of the next photo. We used its cooling fan for a while to help dry the paint! It was pretty slow so we eventually took it outside into the sunshine. A gust of wind overturned part of it, and it did smear in a couple of places (if you look REAL close you may see them), but thankfully no major damage was done!
I brought my Dad’s long ladder with the extended arms to get to the top of the arch, and I taped clean rags on to its arms to keep from scuffing the walls.
This domed structural feature is somewhat like an apse in cathedral architecture. Whatever it is called, there was an amazing view from up there!
Trade secret #2 (how it is held up):
Finished!
This just in…
Austin was abducted in the early morning hours on Wednesday, May 28. All I know right now is that there was a big commotion, they dressed him in some sort of green suit… and he was gone!
I hope to get ahold of some actual photos and facts soon. Stand by for more details….
6:00 News update..
I picked Austin up from school just now. He had a very unusual day dressed as… Robin Hood!
Drama people. You gotta love ‘em!
(He’s missing his cap and bow in the picture.)
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