Holiday feelings

I don't have any photos for this post. Russ and I are leaving for Germany the day after tomorrow and I have not had time to send out my usual Christmas newsletter. Maybe some of our friends and family find that to be good news. Anyway, I did want to take the time to send out a message of hope, love, and a desire for peace- not just the "NO MORE WAR" kind of peace. There would automatically be no more war is people would stop being greedy, self-centered, uncaring, and just plain mean. My desire is that we could be better at communicating- not twittering or texting or posting videos or pictures- but real, meaningful communicating. I wish that we could understand each other better to avoid all of the hurt and anger that results from misunderstandings. I wish we could all have a desire to better take care of each other's needs so that nobody would be a couch potato leech and nobody would have to just give and give and do and do. We all have different resources- talents, skills, money, connections. We could so benefit if we all shared better.
Russ and I have been greatly blessed over the years to have many wonderful people as our friends- some of them related to us and some not related as far as I have yet determined! It is heartwarming to us to look at old pictures or receive a call or letter from someone who has given of themselves to make our life brighter. I'm grateful for good examples of reaching out in love, giving even by sacrifice, and tenacity in the face of great obstacles. When I stop to really analyze it, my life is pretty easy. Sometimes I indulge in self-pity and feel discouraged and I'm sorry for that. I'm working at being stronger in faith and determination. I'm grateful for the love and forgiveness I receive from those that love me- my friends, my family, and my Lord and Savior. I am happy to celebrate His birth and the good news that He came to give us the opportunity to go on to a place where people will be loving, helpful, forgiving, and willing.
Merry Christmas and may 2010 be a year of growth, achievement and peace.

Home at last!

Angela has known for a couple of weeks that Scott would be able to return from Afghanistan before Christmas but she actually managed to pull off the miracle of keeping it secret from her 3 sons. People in her ward (church) and family and Air Force circle knew, but nobody let it slip. The boys left the house Saturday night with the impression that they were going out for some ice cream because they had helped to clean the house. Rather than go to Friendlys' as promised, Angela headed to the airport. It didn't take long for these very intelligent lads to figure out why they were going to the airport. Airports (at least Dayton, I don't know about other places) are now allowing service personnel families to go past security to greet or say farewell to deployed loved ones. So Angela and the boys were able to go to the gate to greet Scott. Russ and I missed getting to see their initial reactions but this is what we saw when they all got to the main part of the airport where we were waiting along with some people from the Air Force base. Sorry about the men in the way but I guess they just didn't realize how important the view was to us! Martin's first reaction was to ask Scott if he was only going to be home for two weeks. It was happy news to him that Dad was home to stay!
I just had to make a sign. Somehow I didn't feel that the sight of us just standing there smiling was enough to let Scott know how excited we were to have him safely returned. I tried to be a little humorous.......

In the bag are some balloons that we had taped around the edges of the sign. We were getting ready to leave when I realized I hadn't gotten a photo of the sign so we unrolled it but didn't bother taping the balloons back on before going back out into the cold wind.

We are happy for the Orme family. Scott has received several medals, including combat medals. I guess it will be okay to hear some stories now that we know he is out of range of the bullets. But he may not want to spend a lot of time reliving it. That seems to often be the case with returning soldiers. I don't blame them. I don't even like reading or hearing the news stories of war or violent crime!

Now we are hoping that our other son-in-law also gets to return home safely. We pray for him and for my nephew who will be having to leave his family to go over for a year. It just goes on and on......

Thanksgiving

(I'm a little late in posting a blog about Thanksgiving. Oh well, sometimes life is like that.) When I think about Thanksgiving, I generally picture a Norman Rockwell version of an extended family sitting around a large dining table with Grandma in her apron smiling and Grandpa standing at the end of the table carving a large brown roasted turkey...or maybe the family with heads reverently bowed in a prayer of Thanksgiving, which is the purpose of the holiday. I'm posting photos of the Thanksgiving we had this year- not at all like the images in my mind. But we did enjoy the holiday and traveled safely and are VERY grateful that the Lord heard and answered our prayers for everyone to remain healthy and to have decent weather and no traveling mishaps. My oldest sister lives in Alabama and her older son and family live right next door. We stayed at my sister's house but some of the time was spent next door. This photograph is one of the favorite activities of the children. You can see the mothers (my beautiful daughters and daughter-in-law) watching in the background as the children show their amazing engineering skills in building a railroad. Tanis is 14 and was the oldest but he was really wonderful in NOT acting the usual part of the sullen teenager. He was very patient and caring with his younger cousins. His superior track-building abilities were appreciated! The other favored activity was in the living room just inside the above lovely sunroom. As you can see, the boys were all captivated by video games on the large television set.

We did manage to eat a fairly traditional meal- and LOTS of it! This is Carol's house (she's the one standing in the middle of the picture) on Thanksgiving day. I don't know that I could begin to remember all of the foods laid out there. Her family was so generous in their offering. We didn't supply anything but appetites! The two turkeys were deep-fried. We had southern dumplings along with the mashed potatoes and stuffing. We had quite an assortment of pasta-type salads. Angela did make a couple of pecan pies to go with the other yummy desserts, which we had to eat a couple of hours after the main part of the meal due to lack of stomach space. So the meal wasn't quite the old-fashioned meal like 50 years ago- but we did say a prayer of thanksgiving before eating. We were together as a loving, extended family. We had a wonderful feast! I think we were all grateful and happy to be together living in a land of prosperity and freedom. The next photo was one I wanted to include because I thought it was cute. As we traveled back to Ohio, I turned around to see 3 of my grandsons all sucking on lollipops, looking at a book together. I so love my family!

He liked to smile

Thirty years ago, God gave us the gift of this son. He smiled and laughed so much that sometimes it got him in trouble. I hope he is smiling today, happy to be with our Savior.
Ammon gave us more of a gift several years later in the form of the wonderful young woman he married and the 3 delightful children they created. Happy birthday, Ammon. We miss you.