Steffi Wilson Graduates

In the last post, the SoCal family gathered to see Daniel graduate.  This time around, it's Daniel's wife Steffi who is excited to graduate.

One year after the last Wilson graduation, Steffi finished her last two classes and graduated from The Master's College with a B.S. in Computer Science.  She is excited to have more free time to do more rock climbing at a local gym, crochet, and learn more about computer programming.  She has been working full time at TMC for the last year and will continue with the same job.

Family Gathers for Daniel's Master College Commencement

On Friday, May 10, many family members, from Daniel's Peterson side, gathered for Daniel Wilson's commencement event located at the College of the Canyons stadium in Santa Clarita, CA. Daniel received a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies: Biblical Languages from the Master's College in Santa Clarita, CA.

Family present: Doris Peterson, Audrey & Garth Wilson, Cindi & Glen Peterson, Timothy Wilson, Steffi & the graduate with honors, Daniel Wilson. Photo Credit: Steffi's Dad, Steve Hydanus

Palm Sunday Octet Includes Glen Peterson

Glen sang with an octet at Whittier Area Community Church for four services Saturday night, March 23 (1 service) and Sunday morning, March 24 (3 services) for Palm Sunday. He and seven other men sang a song called He Is, accompanied by the choir and orchestra. It was great!

Cindi worked as Assistant Video Director with the Video Director and camera crew to get the right shots to communicate the action on video and the web. In this role, she talks on a headset to tell the camera guys who sings next so they can set up the shot and the video director calls on various cameras to capture the moment. The video turned out well, too.

If you'd like to watch and listen, here is the video. The song starts at approximately 44:00 minutes in. If you hover over the bottom of the video, you'll see a bar that tells how far along the video is. If you click on the bar and hold down, a little hand will appear and you can drag the hand to the right to move the video to the proper time. I hope that makes sense.

Celebrating a Life

A few members of the family left for OH yesterday for my Great-Uncle Donald Davis's memorial service which is today.

His obituary may be found here. Here is the first paragraph:

"Praise the Lord" were the last words of Donald E. Davis, age 83 of rural Wapakoneta, who went to his heavenly home 7:15 a.m., Wednesday, January 9, 2013. He was born July 6, 1929 in Lima, Ohio to the late Chester and Koneta Moyer Davis. On July 22, 1950 he married Loretta J. Kennedy, his sweetheart of over 62 years, who survives.

Space Shuttle Moves Through Town

This is a great short film of quite an endeavor to move The Endeavor to its new home at the California Science Center. What an exciting time for the city of Los Angeles. We have tickets to view the shuttle on November 4th at the science center. Can't wait!

http://framework.latimes.com/2012/10/15/time-lapse-video-space-shuttle-endeavours-trek-across-l-a/

Chance of a Lifetime for a Space Geek

On Friday, Glen and I watched the Space Shuttle Endeavor pass by on a 747 from Long Beach, CA on its way to LAX. I was thrilled and touched. It was fun to be with masses of people all excited to see this historic technology fly by. An amazing moment. An amazing scene. I had arrived about 9:45 and waited until around 12:30. This video is exactly what I saw from my vantage point outside the Queen Mary. In fact, from the ground shots included, this photographer must have been standing very close to me.

I had a great time...until I tried to leave the parking lot. People had parked in red zone, double parked, and maxxed out the lot. No one could move. Meanwhile no one closed the parking lot, so visitors to the Queen Mary continued to pour in to the parking lot after the event and add to the chaos. I pulled my car back in to the nearest spot I could find, getting out of the stopped line of cars where I'd sat with my engine off for 20-minutes.

I went into the Queen Mary for lunch and to wait. Traffic was jammed for 2-hours. I sat outside in view of the parking lot from an upper level vantage point and watched cars in every lane not moving. About 2:45, I headed to my car and got home around 4:00, exhausted and frustrated. I talked to the front desk of the Queen Mary hotel and explained I was willing to pay the $5 but unwilling to pay a higher parking fee simply because I was unable to get out of the parking lot in a timely fashion. My contact at the desk gave me a room key to get out of the parking lot for free. That was a nice gesture. No, it was not activated to unlock a room -- or I certainly would have gone in for a nap to wake up after this nightmare.



Another lady wrote this comment on Yelp. I appreciate the fact that I was not the only one wondering where the parking lot management was on Friday afternoon. From what she said, they made a killing at $15/car and I got wonderful understanding from the hotel staff by getting the room key to park for free. Here is what she wrote:

"Enjoyed watching the space shuttle about one hour later.   Time to go home.........then the nightmare begins. The parking lot was full.   I guess to be expected considering all the exhibits and the Space Shuttle.   Everyone seemed to be leaving at the same time.   Nobody thought in advance to collect the parking fee upon entering the lot.  What happened was what appeared to be thousands of people trying to leave the lot at the same time and having to pay on the way out.  This uncalled for traffic jam left all of us sitting in our cars for over one hour without moving at all.  A complete gridlock.   People were honking, yelling,  walking around just angry.   It took one hour before someone took control and had employees start directing traffic and collecting the parking fees way in advance of the gate.  I could only thank God that this were not an emergency situation.  I am also offended that after such a huge screwup on the part of parking management, they still insisted on collecting their $15.   Why didn't you just open the _ _ _ _  gates and let these people out? An extremely poor ending to a very nice day."

Scandinavian Heritage Village Visit

Gol Stave Church (Norway)

Glen & Cindi spent a week on vacation, visiting South Dakota, North Dakota, and taking Amtrak from Minot, ND to Seattle, WA. These photos are from Minot's Scandinavian Heritage Park, featuring buildings and statues and fountains that are tributes to various Scandinavian countries. It was in the 90's that day, so we rushed through in honor of the Peterson Swedish heritage, and the fact that there wasn't much else to do in Minot.

Dala Horse (Sweden)

Dala Horse (Sweden)

Hans Christian Anderson & Windmill (Norway)

http://www.scandinavianheritage.org/tour.htm

Petersons at the wedding

Uncle Brad Peters sent Steffi and me his DVDs of pictures from the wedding.  Before we get them all processed on our side of things, here's a picture of all the Petersons who were present.

Thanks for coming!
 :)

The Newlyweds

Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Wilson

Invocation

A student took this photo of me at Whittier College Commencement ceremonies where I was invited to pray the invocation including the Quaker moment of silence last week. It was a great day to see some of the students who became friends and meet their parents. President Herzberger said some very nice things about me. Cindi and I got to eat dinner at Wardman House, Whittier College President's residence the evening before.

Välkommen

Welcome to the blog, Steffi! We were getting a little bland and needed you to spice up the blog. Since you'll be changing your name, we won't need to change the title of the blog to include Hydanus (unless everyone wants to see the whole family's incorporation to the blog).

 "Välkommen" is Swedish for "welcome."

Popcorn is good for you! But we all knew that already.

Summer wedding

You are all invited to the June 23 wedding of Daniel Wilson and Stephanie Hydanus, at Foothill Bible Church in Upland, CA, 2pm sharp. But even if you don't make it for the ceremony, you might make it for the cake & punch reception afterward.

You'll probably see your invitations in your hands in the next few weeks. But you can email danielandsteffi@yahoo.com to let us know if you're coming or not. I would love to see all human members of the blog there! The church's address is 1330 W. 15th Street, Upland CA 91786.

And they lived ever increasingly like their Lord ever after.

Hey everyone. I love you all!

O.K. So my best story involves going to dinner in a restaurant that thinks that I care whether or not the napkin they provide for me coordinates with my pants/skirt (black for black or dark colors, white for light colors...the nightmare of lint...). This issue pales when confronted with the Facebook page, "You Know You Grew Up in Whittier if..." My new obsession...Henshaws, Rubis, Mrs. Butterfield at East Whittier, Beach Blvd., I can't get enough. I admit it here and right now. Do not judge me too harshly since my sister has posted on the above mentioned Facebook page, too...and she is SO much better than I will ever be.

New Weather Sticker for Cedar Grove

Rob told me that he was at Hole in the Wall at Cedar Grove, CA where highway 180 ends. So, I found a new weather Sticker from Weather Underground for that geography. It took a bit to make it work as they do not have our old format for stickers any more.

Let me know if you want any other weather updates here.


View Larger Map

Rob's Front Porch

Here is a photo of one of the places Rob camped this summer while working in King's Canyon National Park. I think it is near Rae Lakes? Anyway, the the blog post of May 15, 2011, there are photos of near this same area. So here is an actual shot from "Rob's room."

Summer Peach Cake Adventure

My friend told me this week that the peaches are in at our local Farmer's Market. So, Friday, she and I paid a visit to our favorite peach farmer. I got enough peaches to try this recipe, Summer Peach Cake. Steps include roasting the peach slices and peach chunks to carmelize them. Another step includes tossing the chunks (that sounds bad, doesn't it?) in crushed Panko bread crumbs.

This afternoon, I'll attempt to make the Summer Peach Cake, using the recipe found in Cook's Illustrated magazine.

The Gurgling Cod...More Information

After treating many family members to a cool glass of water from our very own Gurgling Cod and Gluggle Jug collection, I came across this video that filled in even more details on this mysterious, whimsical, table top item. Perhaps you'll find this informative, too.



http://bcove.me/86bodym5