tetens and one maschhoff

sweet maria!

at the park with Noey

Our home away from home away from home

Glen Eyrie is the home of The Navigators headquarters in Colorado Springs. It was built in the 1870s by the founder of Colorado Springs, William Jackson Palmer. He fell in love with the beauty of this particular spot along the rockies. The Navigators purchased the property where General Palmer built his home, a castle, in 1953. It is used to hold conferences, train staff and be a retreat center. This is often where we have gone for meetings and training throughout the years. It is a wonderful place to come back to!

The castle, General Palmer's house-turned-castle.
We took a drive to see the vista!
Beautiful Colorado.

The Reason for the Season

Is not John and I, this is just the order they uploaded in . . .
The reason is that my parents have been married 30 years!

And John and I came out and surprised them! My sis joined in the fun later too! We had such a good time with the fam!!! We shopped, ate at our favorites fort collins spots, took a drive up in the mountains to look at the fall colors and watched the Gators win!

Thanks Mom and Dad for being so great and for deciding to spend forever together 30 years ago!

Colorado Times

John and I have been on the road for the past couple of weeks, getting to see friends and family. It has been so wonderful. I would love to post some pics of getting to see our fam! these are just a few, more to come.

Vivs . . . Vivian is such a cutie. She is talking so much. My favorite is her animal sound for a rooster "doodle doo" And she favored the word "okay" or "otay" while we were there. Couldn't get enough of her
We got to meet our newest niece Freesia!! A cute little button that was content to let us hold her awake or not. We loved every minute of it. Way to go Jens and Kristi, we love you and your babes.
Upon just waking up in John's arms!
And you bet it snowed here. In September . . . the day before the first day of fall and it was snowing!!!! We had to catch it on film or digits.

my handyman's handywork

Well, with the inspiration of our favorite coffee house (thanks Davey), the expertise and equipment of our favorite Military Navigator (thanks Roy), many layers of paint and a few extra holes in the wall (dang it)....we have handcrafted our first Teten family heirloom. Now just pray that it won't come crashing down on our table!

I like to ride my bicycle

all in a sunday's work

well, last sunday I tackled a job I had been planning on for a while! Thanks to a simple, free pattern from burdastyle.com and a $2 set of garage sale sheets put to another use . . . I now have a cute little circle skirt!



oh the joys . . . and sometimes headaches of my sewing inklings.

interesting foods!

We ate a bunch of different kinds of foods. Some I had never had before, others I had eaten, just not that part of it! Here are a few . . .
there is much to note here. First the bird is carved out of some fruit, but that is just for beauties. The dish here is snake, chopped in bits, with the skin still attached. And the best way to eat it, apparently is with the skin. Yums.
Pigeon . . . all that remained of it anyway after we had at it. It's head is on the top left of the plate.
This was a little picnic snack provided for us. That is chicken in between crackers. Processed, tubed chicken of course.
Zong zi . . . a traditional treat to eat at Dragon Boat Festival. They are rice triangles with meat or egg or ? inside.
Left baggy: dried rose buds . . . "good for skin" right baggy: ? "bitter, good for waist"
This was more different than weird, this is John's birthday cake. Although they do not celebrate birthdays except for children, I had this cake made for John's day. It has fruit on it, typical cakes have various fruits on top!

Swine flu?

We heard before traveling that we would be stopped at our final destination and be checked for symptoms of Swine flu. So we were doing what we could as we were landing to not be caught with a sudden temperature or sickly looking appearance. And what we were told would happen did happen. A few people boarded our plane covered head to toe in hazmat suits, goggles and gloves. One of the guys had on a pair of ski goggles!

So we waited as everyone had their temperature taken by the black radar gun! Everyone was ok on our plane. If anyone was suspicious though they would have been quarantined along with three rows in front of them and three rows behind.

It reminded me of a time in elementary school when the fire department came to our school to teach us stop, drop and roll . . . They also suited up in their fireproof garb so we would know what they look like if ever caught in a fire. They asked us "Now are you going to be afraid if someone dressed like this ever comes to rescue you?" All the kids said, "NO!" But secretly I was scared of how they looked . . . all covered up, huge masks on, big boots. I was a little scared of these goggled faces too!

learning the language . . .

we spent 4 weeks beginning to learn Chinese. Our team was in class everyday with a tutor. We learned the phonetics of their alphabet and learned some basic conversational stuff. We could get by on our few phrases "hello, how are you?" "My name is ___, what is your name?" "That bag is expensive, cheaper?!" "I don't have any bread" "I like coffee" We all loved using the the Chinese word, kafei because it sounds the most like our english word coffee, and because we were all thirsting for some coffee in a land dominated by tea!

John really picked up what we learned and quickly started putting sentences together. It also might be because he looked over what we learned once every night. (He had the book we shared . . . thats what East Asia gets for putting us in separate dorms!)
Here is our beloved teacher Anna. She was very patient with us 10 Americans. We got off track only a few times with her!

these videos are very representative of our time in class. As we learned different phonetics, we would practice by repeating them three different times. They sound a little strange, and you might notice us laughing a little as we repeat. Our laoshi (teacher) would also ask us questions in chinese, we would ponder a minute wondering if we have any idea what she just asked, and then try to assemble an answer that made any sense to her! In the second video she asks if I have a younger sister. Once I actually understand what she is asking, I say "no, I don't have a sister."

We are back!

Most people know where we have been. But if you are not awares . . . we have been in the far East for 6 weeks! We went with some college students to learn some beginners Chinese and get to know the culture and some great people. I have hundreds of pics to share, and tons of stories to tell. It might be slow-going but I would like to share some of those bit by bit.

But for now know that we are home safe and sound! This pic we took while on a bike ride through a town we visited for a few days. We rented the bikes and went for it in the crazy, no-rules, anything-goes just don't-get-hit traffic of this East Asian land!

coast to coast

John and I spent four wonderful days in LA and Riverside this past weekend.  We celebrated with  John's brother Paul on his 21st birthday and experienced his life in LA.  And then we got to see Joy and Joe (John's sis and her husband) in their home in Riverside.  My little niece Noelle turned 1 recently and so we got to be there for the big celebration.  Of course our camera did not have any juice in the battery the whole time so we are pictureless except for a pic of Noelle covered in chocolate icing at her party.  But I will share some staples from our sweet Cali time, most of which involve some great food, but that is not new.

yummy brunch at Urth Cafe across from Rodeo drive in Beverly Hills while ritzy people with small dogs munched around us . . .

watching Noelle get more comfortable around us and we knew we made it when she offered her dolly for us to hug and kiss as she giggled and sang . . .

walking around the Mission in Riverside with the Maschy clan on a cool night with a tea latte in hand . . .

walking around Westwood with Paul on his birthday, eating some sushi, and trying the most delectable espresso drink with orange peel and cinnamon . . .

grabing a pinkberry frozen yogurt and perusing Santa Monica's promenade . . .

John spotted Maria Shriver in Anthropologie so I quickly grabbed a book so I could stare without being obvious, although it was obvious . . .

I was told on Santa Monica pier by a cart vendor with a british accent selling skirt wraps that "it would be ok if the skirt blew open and you showed the world your knickers, its california . . . you could walk around naked and no one would notice . . ."

back in Riverside Joy and Joe had cooked up some steaks and twice baked potatoes in celebration of Paul's day . . .

we got to watch Noey eat her first cake, (the first time she had ever tasted chocolate too) and watched as she quickly decided she liked it, mom and dad were not stopping her and everyone thought it was so funny so she kept getting fistfuls of the icing and eating some while smearing the rest all over her face and ears . . .

From the Maschies front yard we were able to make fresh grapefruit juice, lemonade and my favorite: orange juice . . .

To top it all off John and I got to spend a couple of hours enjoying LA again by ourselves.  We ate at a Egyptian Hookah Cafe . . . sipped coffee and read our bibles in between people watching (hoping that one of those peoples was famous).  Paul joined us for $1.50 cookie ice cream sandwiches at Diddy Reise and after much debate over dinner and  trip back to Santa Monica we decided to eat some In-N-Out . . .

we had such a great time!  Thanks to Paul for being the best tour guide and for turning 21 . . . thanks to Joe and Joy for hosting us and letting us watch Noey while you dated . . .  thanks Tsangs for letting us stay with you in LA and giving us some upcoming travel tips . . . and thanks to Frontier for the almost free tickets, free checked bags and free TV.  We couldn't have made it without you.