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Family

Nancy’s Funeral

As many of you know from Facebook, Tyla’s mom passed away early Sunday morning and her funeral is today, but I know that many of you cannot attend so here is the obituary that will be in the bulletin.

Nancy Marie Brandt

May 25, 1956– July 2, 2017

In Memoriam

Born on May 25, 1956 in Lake City, Minnesota, Nancy Brandt was the youngest of two children of Jess and Marlys Dose. She was received into the Lord’s family through the washing of holy baptism at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota. Later, she confirmed her faith in the same church. She attended St. John’s Lutheran School and went on to Lincoln High school, graduating in 1974 to attend Dr. Martin Luther College. Nancy married Don Brandt on October 28, 1978 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lake City, Minnesota.

Nancy worked with special needs children at Lincoln Elementary as a teachers’ aide until she moved to Kirkland, Washington in 1991. She was a stay at home Mom until returning to work in 1997. Nancy worked as a preschool teacher at Calvary Lutheran Preschool and Kindergarten in Bellevue, Washington from 1997 to 2003. From 2003 to 2009 she cooked and served lunches in the public school system. In 2010, Nancy began working for Evergreen Speech and Hearing Clinic transporting records as a courier and organizing the archival of patient charts. In 2014, she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Nancy stopped working in 2017 when her declining health prevented her from continuing.

Nancy Brandt is survived by her husband, Don, and their three children, Logan Brandt of Redmond, Washington; Tyla (Ben) Martens of Woodinville, Washington; and Megan Brandt of Kirkland, Washington; as well as her one grandchild, Elijah Martens. She is also mourned by her sister, Gloria Burmester. She was preceded in death by her father and father-in-law.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be directed to Calvary Lutheran Church toward the roof replacement project. The church address is 16231 NE 6th St, Bellevue, WA, 98008. Alternatively, gifts can be directed to Evergreen Hospice Care. evergreenhealthfoundation.com/support-hospice

Heaven

Tyla’s mom, Nancy, has been battling cancer for three years and very early yesterday morning, we got the call that she had passed away. As adults, it’s a lot to deal with, but it has also been a big challenge to guide a four year old through it.

Who knows what really goes on in the mind of a four year old, but he seems to be taking this all in stride. For the past couple months, I’ve been preparing Elijah for the death of his grandma. He knew she was sick and we talked about how some day she wouldn’t be around anymore. That was hard for him to understand, but what he did understand that she was going to join Jesus in heaven. There have been a number of times when he has walked over to a crying family member, stood there quietly and said, “It’s ok. She’s with Jesus now.” Oh the faith of a child!

We are all comforted knowing that Nancy is in heaven right now. There are still a lot of tears as we come to grips with the fact that we’re not going to see her again here on earth, but the separation is temporary because we’ll be reunited in heaven. Nancy knew that she was a sinner and deserved only God’s wrath and punishment. But when Jesus died on that cross 2000 years ago, he paid for her sins and she believed that. The Bible says that anyone who believes and is baptized will be saved. It really is just that simple. Heaven is our free gift and requires zero effort on our part (thank goodness because I know I’d screw it up if any of it depended on me!) Reject that message and the result is much different.

If you’re in the area, you’re welcome to attend the funeral on Friday at 3pm at Calvary. Don’t expect to hear how Nancy was “a great person” or other common funeral quotes. Instead, you’ll hear something like what I wrote above: Nancy was a sinner like all of us, but when she died and stood before the judgement seat, God declared her not guilty, not because of anything she had done, but because Jesus had already paid the debt for her sins and she believed that.

Cape Disappointment State Park

Last weekend, we headed down to Cape Disappointment State Park in the very southwest corner of the state. Don, Nancy and Megan had a campsite for their trailer and Logan, Tyla, Elijah and I stayed a short walk away in a tent site.

This was only Elijah’s second camping trip in the tent and he did great! He went to bed around 9:30 every day (about 1.5 hours later than normal) and slept solidly all night until pretty far into the morning. It definitely gave me confidence to do some more trips with him.

The park itself was really nice. The beach was huge, sandy and perfectly positioned for beautiful sunsets. There are a lot of other parks nearby and we went across the bridge into Oregon to check out the 1906 shipwreck at Fort Stevens State Park.

The only major bummer of the trip was traffic. We left at 2pm on Friday for the 3.5 hour drive. It took us 5.5 hours (plus 30 minutes of stops) to get there. We only hit an extra 30 minutes of traffic on the way back but it all came in one big messy accident backup.

I was very impressed with the camera on our Galaxy S7’s. All of the pictures you see below were taken on our phones except for the shipwreck. It’s gotten to the point where I feel less and less of a need to lug the big dSLR around with us. It still has its uses, but I don’t feel nearly as bad as I used to if I forget to bring it along.

A huge thanks goes out to Don for doing all the heavy lifting when it came to meal times!

Laser Cut Decorations

If you talk to Elijah, the first thing you’ll probably hear is that he is four now. For his birthday, Tyla came up with the idea of a Winnie the Pooh theme because that’s pretty much the only thing that Elijah watches or listens to these days. He had a Tigger shirt, a cake with all the characters on it and decorations around the house. Thanks to Tyla for putting that all together!

She also had the idea of having him hold a large 4 and posing for some pictures. Instead of buying one, I decided to cut it out on the laser. I did two of them with the top one also having his name cut out. I painted the top piece yellow, painted the bottom piece black, and then glued them together. The hardest part of the idea was getting a four year old to smile and look at the camera!

Discovery Bay

For Memorial Day weekend, we packed up the car and headed west with Tyla’s family to stay in a condo on Discovery Bay. It was great to get away for a while and we had a couple fun day trips to Fort Worden State Park and Hurricane Ridge. In the evenings we filled our time with board games, including our first attempts at 7 Wonders which quickly jumped near the top of my favorites list. The weather was beautiful for the entire trip!

Aviation Day 5K

Tyla, Megan and Logan decided to run a 5K together and they picked the Aviation Day 5k. Logan finished in just over 25 minutes (his first ever 5k!) and all three had a good time. I went along to snap pictures and join them for the aviation display after. There were a bunch of planes on display as well as some historic planes that took to the air throughout the day.

I feel silly at events like this because I love to snap photos but i know there are plenty of better photos available online of the same planes. Oh well, it’s still fun to try and get a great shot.

CLPAK End Of Year Program

Last night was the end of year program for Elijah’s school. The kids sang some songs, Pastor shared a devotion, and there was a graduation ceremony for the two kindergartners. It’s always fun to see the church so full of people who don’t normally attend! The program went well. A huge thanks goes to Mandy, Grace and Linda for all their hard work preparing the kids for the program and to the parents who helped with the rest of the night too.

Mother’s Day Excursion

Since we were spending time on Tyla’s family on Sunday, we decided to celebrate Mother’s Day with just our family on Saturday. While Tyla was showering on Saturday morning, Elijah and I made a run to the donut shop. He picked out the biggest donut with sprinkles that he could find.

After that it was off for another ride on the Edmond-Kingston ferry. This is becoming one of our favorite family activities. We park in Edmonds (street parking is free east of 6th Ave) and then walk onto the ferry. Kingston has a number of little restaurants near the dock along with a park. Kudos to Elijah for snapping a picture of us.

We stopped at a new place for lunch, Main Street Ale House and had a great lunch. We had previously eaten at Drifters, and while that was fine, I think the Main Street Ale House will take precedence. For dessert we walked across the street to Mora Ice Creamery. That was delicious and filling.

The timing worked out well and a ferry was leaving so we got back on and rode back home. The weather was much nicer than we expected and I think we all had a great time!

Elijah’s Favorite Shows

I wrote about Elijah’s favorite songs back in December and that list is still pretty accurate. I thought it might also be interesting to record the shows that he likes to watch the most:

  • Winnie the Pooh
  • Fox and the Hound 2
  • Cars – He’ll specifically tell you “Cars 1, not Cars 2”. I agree.
  • Thomas the Tank Engine
  • Curious George
  • Bob the Builder
  • Clifford the Big Red Dog

The top two are the only ones he’s asked to watch for the last month or so, but the others have had their time in the spotlight of obsession too.

It’s pretty cute how much he loves Winnie the Pooh right now. One of my favorite games is when he pretends that he’s Roo and I’m a Heffalump. He leads me around the house and explains things too me. Usually when I ask him to tell me about his day, he says, “I didn’t do anything. I just laid on the floor. All day.” But when he’s Roo, he goes into great detail. I love it!