Janet's Blog

All of my life, whenever anyone asked me to name my favorite color, I had a hard time answering. I would usually mumble something like "I don't have just one favorite color," or "any color except green."  To tell the truth, I have always liked lots of colors: red, blue, purple and, in my later years, even certain shades of green. I chose red as the color for my wedding attendants to wear because we were getting married right before Christmas, so it just seemed right. I became so tired of the dingy, pale green that adorned the walls of our hotel apartments that it was a long time before I was willing to embrace any shade of green. I love certain colors of pink and peach, but I am not really a fan of bright orange. Purple has always been a favorite, and who doesn't like blue? God has made so many gorgeous colors on this earth that it has been impossible for me to pick just one favorite. It was probably only a couple of years before Dad died, when we were all g...

Here it is, the middle of February already. Most years, I would be gritting my teeth and wishing for this month to end, because March should certainly bring some signs of spring. At least, I could hope. But this year is different. This year, I haven't been longing for winter's end because it feels like winter has hardly begun. Except for a couple of weeks--one in December, and the other in January--we've had no snow and no sub-freezing daily high temperatures. We've had more cloudy days than usual, and some horrific windy days that we could all do without, but most days have boasted highs in the fifties or sixties. It's been so warm that the squirrels have been skittering around outside for weeks, scurrying across the street in front of my car and scrambling up and down trees and fences. Instead of hibernating, it seems like they've been taking cat naps this year. The weather has been so mild that Millie's puppies have been able to play and poop outside near...

AI--Artificial Intelligence--can be a wonderful aid to research. I no longer have to spend hours at the public library, pawing through card catalogs and searching through the stacks to find the book I need. Instead, I can just type a simple question in the search line of my browser, and the answer will magically and immediately appear. If I need an idea for a recipe that uses the ingredients I have on hand, AI will produce one. If I want to converse with someone who speaks a different language, AI will translate. When I want an answer to some trivia question, I can simply ask Siri, or Google, or Alexa, and a calm voice will respond right away. When I asked Google the simple question, "What is AI?" this is how it responded:  Artificial Intellligence (AI) is a field of computer science dedicated to creating systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as reasoning, learning from past experiences, problem-solving, and understanding language...

When I was in the fourth grade at East Ward School in Fairbury, my teacher's name--by some coincidence that would only become apparent to me decades later--was named Mrs. Bauer. She was a good teacher, patient and kind. Her classroom was invariably calm. My classmates worked hard and generally did everything Mrs. Bauer required. (As I look at the photo below, I can't help but think that the overall class character was heavily influenced by the overwhelming number of girls in the class.) After all these years, I'm surprised that I remember the names of 90% of the kids in this photo. I'm standing in the middle row, second from the left. I was a good student. I loved to read, and arithmetic was always easy for me. I remember how Mrs. Bauer would assign our daily arithmetic assignments, always giving us ample time to complete the work in class. That year, long division was the newest, hardest thing we had to learn, but I caught on quickly. Not everyone did. Mrs. Bauer direc...

Look! The virgin will conceive a child!  She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means "God is with us." Isaiah 7:14 And just like that, Mary's and Joseph's lives were changed forever--as were the lives of millions throughout the ages who have believed in Jesus, our Savior. May this Christmas season bring you great joy and peace! Nothing can match the changes that Jesus brought into our world, but as I was thinking about writing this Christmas letter, I realized that my family's lives have been marked with much change this year, too. Back row, from left to right: Andy, Tobin, Lucy, Meagan, Bill, Levi Front row: Ari, Ruthie, Lydia, Evie, Janet, Victoria, Erin, Anna, Will, and Reed To begin with, Erin and Reed, with their two kids, moved from Ohio to Parker, Colorado, (a Denver suburb) in May, when Erin took a new job as an academic dean at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton. Reed continues to work from home. Will loves kindergarten...

Our floral couch sat in the living room for more than 25 years. We hadn't had it for too long when we celebrated November birthdays in 2000. That birthday party was special because it was Victoria's first birthday with us, her new forever family. She had lived in our house permanently for exactly one week. The couch was a perfect spot for a picture to commemorate the day. Bill's mother, Beth, was celebrating her 74th birthday that day, while Victoria was turning five years old, and Bill had just turned 46.  I remember going shopping for a new couch for the family room, sometime in the late 1990s. I didn't expect to be able to buy a new living room couch, too, but the furniture store was having a fantastic sale. So we bought a new couch for the family room, as we had intended, and a beautiful, floral couch for the living room—two for the price of one. That family room couch served us well, and was replaced at least a decade ago. The living room couch wasn't used near...