Last night our son James and his family hosted a sleepover for 3 of their cousins. We have had the house full for the past week since we returned from our vacation to the West. It has been wonderful to see family members become reacquainted. Last night Russ and I chose to go to the Irish Festival downtown rather than stay here and join in watching "Karate Kid". We have been very happily impressed with the lovely parks and the free events available here in Dayton. I recognize that beer is a traditional "Irish" thing. But as we sat to watch some wonderful Celtic dancers and had a man sit behind us that had been enjoying too much of the beer tradition, I began to wax philisophical, as I often do. I find it sad that to altogether too many people, enjoying themselves requires either losing touch with reality or spending money, or both. The suicide rate is continuing to rise as well as the number of people seeking treatment for depression. Yet we keep spending money and coming up with more and more ways to avoid reality: alcohol (the old favorite), cocaine, heroin, marijuana, ecstasy, and on and on. Our children have access to far more "entertainment" than we adults did. For my generation, we might have watched "Lassie" and "Disney's Wonderful World of Color" once a week and maybe even daily watched half hour programs like "Howdy Doody" and "Mickey Mouse Club". But we never sat for several hours mesmerized by characters on a screen like kids today do. Are these kids happier? I don't think so. In fact, it seems that the more video games, computer games, and movies they see, the more they want. Rather than becoming satisfied, they become less satisfied with what they have. Imagination seems limited to what requests they can come up with rather than what they can pretend with sticks and rocks or make with paper and glue. Recently I read an article in the "Reader's Digest" about the benefits of being bored. If we are busy and being entertained all of the time, our minds never have a chance to ponder, dream, and possibly be inventive. Adults are even prey to the disease. There are adults who are only happy when they are spending money. For what? More stuff so they have to throw away the old, boring stuff to make room at some point. Either that, or they become the horrific hoarders who barely have paths to wend their way through their houses. I realize that we have a consumer economy. Buying more stuff enables more people to have jobs....I guess. On the other hand, much of what we buy is plastic or has plastic components. Surprisingly few adults think about the fact that plastic is a derivative of fossil fuel, combined with other chemicals. We stress over the cost of gasoline for driving to the store to buy more stuff that's made out of what we would rather use for our vehicles, or even Jet-skis or snowmobiles or ATV's. Entertainment, entertainment..............we are truly spoiled. Maybe we could benefit from inviting our neighbors over for a lemonade and actually conversing face-to-face rather than texting, e-mailing, or talking on the endless cellphones. Maybe we could go to the library and read a book that would educate us rather than only novels or watching tv or movies to entertain ourselves. Maybe we could sit in a lovely park and watch bird or feel a breeze and meditate.

Just for fun

As I get older, vanity slowly disappears. I find the jokes and stories about being old enough to have earned wrinkles and grey hair amusing. I'm not quite 60 and "OLD" seems to be defined by a more advanced age as time goes by. However, I rarely wear make-up anymore and I don't find it necessary to be concerned about 5 pounds here or there. My daughter Angela and my daughter-in-law Susanne were sweet enough to want to include me on a "girly" excursion to get pedicures. This is only the 2nd time in my life I have had one and have never had a manicure. My toes are the reddish ones with the oriental-style leaf design at the top of the picture. Susanne's are the blue ones, Angela's at the bottom of the photo. There is a little bit of a "vacation" feeling left even after returning from our trip. Russ and I are trying not to get back too deeply into working on the house but there are still things to do. But it has been wonderful to spend time with out children and grandchildren.

An awesome experience

Susanne's brother, Johannes has been sailing most of his life. While we were visiting he chartered a 46-foot sailboat for a day and took us for a wonderful ride around the San Diego bay. We were a little concerned about my mother being able to go. At 82, neither of my parents have ever gone sailing and we all wanted them to go. It took 4 adults to get Mom on the boat but we managed it. She and Dad enjoyed the 5-hour trip to the bridge and back. There were plenty of snacks and drinks and the weather couldn't have been better.
The kids never complained about any seasickness or anything and really enjoyed the day. However, on the drive home, one of the kids "lost his cookies", literally, all over the car. He had been eating cookies with bright blue frosting. Cleaning it up was easy because it was so colorful you couldn't miss any spots! I was impressed at Gloria's ability to focus on driving safely with so much excitement going on in the car while driving on a California freeway: trying to socialize with parents and Russ and me, keeping up with her 2-year old's constant chatter, and her oldest bathing the inside of the car in bright blue. She remained calm and capable!
Russ was thrilled when Johannes gave him a turn at the wheel. The number and variety of boats in the bay was pretty amazing. There were boats from kayaks and jet-skis to large sailboats, party boats (3 stories of scantilly-clad happy people with loud music), and even air craft carriers. We will never know exactly what that little excursion cost, but the experience was priceless to most of us!

Happy Fourth!

The Fourth of July was spent at my sister Gloria's house in San Diego, CA. The first event was a local parade. Rather than try to find more parking spaces, we managed to crowd everyone into 2 cars. Russ got the fun seat in the trunk space of Gloria's mini-van. This is our grandson Jarom on the left, Gloria's oldest son, Trevor, in the middle and second son, Tyler on the right. The parade was really nice with several school bands (they were pretty good), horses, fire trucks, and politicians, and we all enjoyed good seats on a blanket in the shade.
After the parade we went back to Gloria's house where the kids, and some of the adults, played some classic outdoor games like "Duck, Duck, Goose" and "Red Rover". Even Gloria's youngest joined in attempts to crash through the other team's arms. At the barbeque, besides Russ and me and Gloria's family,were our son James's family, James's brother-in-law's family, my parents (they drove over from Arizona) and a surprise guest, John terHorst. He was in California as a part of his training to be a pilot for Sky West. He's doing well and we're so proud of him but we will all be relieved when he can be with his family more than a couple of days a month.

After the hot dogs and hamburgers were barbequed, we enjoyed a wonderful meal together. Gloria's backyard is beautiful but it's shocking what they had to pay to have it landscaped. I guess it's normal in Southern California but we were shocked. Later in the evening, we walked up on the hill above Gloria's house and watched some local fireworks. Russ, a passionate lover of fireworks, would have preferred a much closer view but it was convenient to not have to drive and look for places to park and sit.

The "fun" of travel

We flew out of Dayton around noon, had a delay out of Cleveland and arrived in Las Vegas late at night. We had to wait awhile at the car rental place and you can see our enthusiasm. We had reservations at Circus Circus where we immediately headed once we got the mini-van. It was scorching hot in Vegas (100-120 all day and only down a little under 100 at night) and we just wanted to go to bed. We were unhappily surprised at the crowd waiting to check in at the hotel. It was after midnight Vegas time (3 a.m. for our biological clocks) when we finally got to our rooms.

This is the view from our room. We realize that RV's can be a convenient way to travel but this just didn't appeal to us as a place to "camp". It was nice that Circus Circus makes a swimming pool available but it must be quite a strain to keep the RV's cool enough to be even slightly bearable in this open parking lot when the outside temperature is well over 100 degrees. We were happy to have air-conditioned hotel rooms. Our first day we went to Hoover Dam. That was my favorite part of our visit to Las Vegas

I had been unaware that the primary function of the Hoover Dam was, and still is, flood control of the Colorado River. The electricity produced by the generators is only a secondary by-product and serves areas all the way to Southern California with only 25% of it going to Las Vegas. Our guide told us that the power they supply is not the primary source of power for any of the areas they connect to. It was pleasantly cool down in the "bowels" of the dam.

Proud of my kids

Russ and I feel really blessed to have been born of "goodly parents" who taught us to be responsible, honest, trustworthy, kind contributors to society. We have done our best to pass on the admirable legacy to our children. We have just spent 17 days traveling with James's family in the western US. In California Russ and I stayed with my sister Gloria while James's family stayed with James's brother-in-law who happens to live nearby. We all got together at Gloria's on July 4th for a barbeque. Here is James cooking the traditional American barbeque fare. He helps prepare and clean-up wherever he goes.
He and Angela did the cooking the last time we were at Victoria's for a barbeque.
They don't have to be asked to help. They are just very willing to lend a hand and will try even things they may not have done before. When they come to my house, if they're not busy taking care of their own children, they can be found washing dishes, serving food, sweeping or mopping the floor or just about anything to help. I have posted pictures previously of the work my kids have done in our yard. I don't have pictures of Ammon or Lisa working in our yard but they both did plenty to help beautify this property. Lisa lives too far away to be able to help regularly but Ammon painted, tore apart rooms to re-do them, along
with lots of yard work. They also take good care of children- whether their own or others. Here is Angela leading the music at Nicholas's baptism while holding Brooklyn, her youngest niece. They will cuddle, change diapers, intervene during toy sharing battles, and anything necessary to make all of the children feel safe and loved. As a matter of fact, a person barely acquainted with Ammon described him as "such a good father he was like a mother". My children work hard, laugh together, and are honest and dependable. I know there are other people in the world like them but I feel content that I did allright in teaching them. I know they are each individuals on their own and not everything about them is a result of being in our home, but they turned out pretty well. I'm glad we can share this legacy with those who have married into our family as well as John terHorst that we informally adopted into our family. Now if we could only change the world to be the same way.
This last picture was taken awhile ago because, like I said, Lisa isn't close enough to get pictures enough to choose from. Here she is playing with her nephew, James's oldest son, Jarom. She also doted on Angela's boys and continues to be loving and helpful toward all of her nieces and nephews. She is currently working hard to exercise and has lost a considerable amount of excess weight put on over the years of having a couple of kids. GO LISA!