Kim

Here is a page dedicated to my wife, my best friend, Kim.
UPDATE: Kim just got a myspace page! I’m so proud of her, she did such a fantastic job, pictures and all. Please check it out if you’re interested: Kim’s myspace page
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This was taken soon after I married her. It’s one of my favorites, even if a bit dated.

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Soon to head off to the mission field, we agreed not to blow a bunch of money on a wedding. Looking back, we’re glad we saved that money, but maybe we would change a few things. I wouldn’t change my lovely bride, though! The wedding was two weeks after a car crash which nearly killed me; it left a scar on my forehead that we decided to hide with a hat. A hat. I can’t believe I was wearing a hat. Oh, well…

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Something I noticed right off was her tender care for kids. She had always wanted to be a mom, she told me. We didn’t get married in order to immediately settle down and start a family, it just happened that way. While we were thousands of miles away in a mission field. Stressful, yes. But it paid off in nice ways, such as the fact that we’ll still be young enough to enjoy our grandkids for many years, and we’re also looking forward to not being too old to enjoy the “empty nest.”

This is Kim with our daughter Jana:

This is Kim with our daughter Sara:

Kim with Ethan, our brand new nephew:

Kim with Ethan:

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Her many musical gifts also attracted me right away. She can play the piano in very soulful, spiritual ways. Having come up as a preacher’s kid, her first strength is praise and worship music from all eras. She taught piano for 13 years, cut a CD during that time, gave concerts, and led a church choir while being their pianist. She accompanies singers so well, it just comes naturally for her. She plays by ear, with intuition backed up by many years of lessons of her own. She sings to her own playing, too, and has even gotten out from behind the piano and sung to tracks in church a time or two. Everyone has her pigeon-holed as a musician, which she definitely is. It’s just that “musician” is not all that she is. Read on…

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She’s a great writer. She’s been published in an internationally read journal published by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
If you click here, I’ll take you directly to her article, a nice meditation on object lessons from the cornfield outside our front window.

Here she is relaxing not too far away from that front window.

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She’s a good friend, not just to me. She loves to take her girlfriends out to the movies or to the coast.

This was during a trip to Big Sur she made with one of her friends:

When she can catch up with old school buddies, she emails and sometimes visits (she puts me to shame here; all I give my friends is this blog!):

Good food and good friends make Kimmy very happy! Speaking of food, she’s a great cook. And she loves learning about foods from around the world. She took a cultural foods class in college, and she taught a high school cooking class. Here, she enjoys a get-together at our friends’ house:

And this picture isn’t the best quality, but it shows her cooking in her kitchen. Too bad you can’t get the great smell of cooking from the Internet!

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She loves taking pictures, making albums of pictures, and showing off pictures of family and friends to her family and friends. She took some of the best pictures we have of our children. She took the following pictures:

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Must love dogs! And she does. Actually she likes all animals. The bunny in the picture above was one of two she got for our kids. She tends to get our children just about any pet they ask for, because she was raised around all kinds of animals herself. We both see the value in surrounding our children with animals. Doves, finches, cockateils, parakeets, quail, fish, hamsters, hermit crabs, iguanas, rats, chickens, cats, butterflies, guinea pigs, ducks, and, of course, DOGS.

This is a miniature dachshund we owned named Amber:

Here’s a friend’s chihuahua, named Peanut, which instantly took a liking to Kim:

Here she is with a large mouse we found on a street in Anaheim:

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Family is important to everyone, but not everyone’s life reflects that truth. In Kim’s life it is clear that family is the top priority. Following are some family pictures.