Trip to Kansas

Jesse has limited vacation time and even more limited visitation time with Jer, but he has wonderfully taken a week with Jer to visit my family in Kansas!

We are having a wonderful time. It is hard to believe that it is so close to over already.

Last Saturday, we were up early and caught a plane to Kansas. Our first flight was delayed, but we still made our connecting flight. A couple of my siblings and my mother met us at the airport. After a couple of more stops while we were in the "big city," we headed to my home. My whole family is home this week!!

For supper, my college roommate, Christina came for a visit with her husband and 7-week old daughter. It has been almost 8 years since we've seen each other!! I was so happy to see her and her family!

About 20 minutes before they arrived, I caused a couple of folding chairs to fall on the back of my leg. Instantly you could see the bulging veins and swelling. I spent most of the evening with ice on my leg and now have a very colorful bruise the size of a plum.

I also got to see SR's engagement ring in person for the first time on Saturday. The wedding is still 17 month away, so she isn't too far into planning or worrying about it yet--she has three semesters of college to finish first.

Sunday was church with fellowship breakfast, Sunday School and worship service. It was wonderful seeing old friends and meeting the new pastor and his family. They have kids that are just slightly older than Jer. We are scheduled to have supper with them tonight. Also at morning church, Pastor asked for one of the kids to pray; Jer volunteered and was picked. He did a great job. He also got to play with some of his step-second cousins that are close to his age. He seemed to enjoy playing with all the kids.

Sunday evening, D gave the church an update on her work and the ministry of GFA. I do enjoy hearing her talk about what God is doing!

Monday - My Great Aunt Marie came home from the hospital (they'd been adjusting medications for the past week or so). Very shortly after arriving home, she fell and had to be taken to the ER for some stitches over her right eye. She's back at home and we have instructions that we need to make it out to visit her yet before we leave. We did go out and visit with my Grandma this evening. It is always so good to visit with her! It is sometimes still hard to believe that she's the only living grandparent I still have.

There was a primary election on Tuesday for several important local offices. Grandma stopped by after voting. There was a storm in the evening. We only got a bit of rain and wind, but reports as close as half-mile away include pea-sized hail and tree damage. We made a visit down to the stucco house. That's where I lived for the first seven years of my life and my cousins are now remodeling the home. Tuesday was also my parents' anniversary! Other than all being home this week, we didn't really do anything for them, but we did wish them happy anniversary.

Wednesday was the beginning of the county fair. SC took Jer up to see the animals arriving and then took him to the drug store for a slushie and picked up a Kansas post card for Jer's collection. In the evening, we all went back up to the fair to see L model her outfit in the style revue and then do the narration for several of the girls as they modeled. The clothing and demonstrations were judged last week, so they announced the results--L got a Reserve Champion and Grand Champion for her outfit (one for modeling, the other for her sewing) and a Purple (top quality) on her demonstration. We also got to see a couple of surrounding events, including the crowning of the king and queen for the fair. Then we had homemade ice cream! Yum-Yum!!

On Monday, SC had fixed up his old bike that he learned to ride on. Since then, we'd been working with Jer on riding a bike. This morning, I got some video of Jer riding with only a little help from his dad! I may have to see if I can convince my brother to bring the bike with him when he moves back out to Virginia next month.

We went back to the fair to enjoy our free lunch with our $2.00 button. During lunch, a police officer that SR knows was hanging out in the area, so she had him come over and visit with Jer. Jer was very impressed! Officer G invited him to come sit in his patrol car after lunch, which they did. While Jer was in the car, Officer G received a call! (That ended the visit.) Unfortunately, we missed getting pictures, as I didn't have my camera and D wasn't around to take pictures.

After lunch, we went to check out the results so far. SR got best in Breads and Baked Goods with her Pecan Twists. Mom and L both got blues on their entries (1st in their categories), except for some cookies of Mom's that only got a white (3rd in category). L then got a couple of food items judged in the 4-H division and got blues (better than average, but not top) on both of those items. While she was doing that, we visited the other animals and booths. Jer enjoyed the kiddie barn area. He wanted to take home a kitten (free), a dog ($50), a turtle (free), and the raccoon (not for sale). He also wanted to take home a rabbit when we visited that area of the fair.

In the evening, we walked (L rode her bike and Jer practiced riding) over to the Pastor's house to have dinner with his family. D, Jesse, and I got a sneak peak of a video the pastor put together commemorating the church's dedication--55 years ago this Sunday! That brought back memories!

Tomorrow is Friday--our last full day. We have so much we still want to do. Visit grandma. Visit Great Aunt Marie. Find a bell with a Kansas symbol. Maybe visit the thrift shop. Visit Dennis and Jeannie and Carmen. And celebrate D's birthday by having a bunch of the family over for dinner.

My First Christmas

No, those are not the words on an infant's decoration or toy - those are to me!

For a multitude of reasons, my family has never celebrated Christmas much. The most we've done is attend the occasional Christmas Eve service or participate in my dad's family's gift exchange. I think those two events might have even happened on the same year! My reasons have never been particularly profound - mainly the typical "It's commercialized and nobody is paying attention to Christ's birth, so I'm not about to join in," sort of reasons.

One of the great things about being married is that there's another point of view and a different thought process that is with you every day - questioning and prodding one's own viewpoints.

If nobody is celebrating Christmas the "right" way, how should it be celebrated?
Why don't I celebrate it the "right" way regardless of others?
Are all the gift-giving, trees, and lights bad ideas, or is being distracted by them the problem?

After being bumped from my standard rut of being something of a Scrooge about Christmas, I've partly resettled. Not particularly far from where I was, but certainly far enough that I gladly enjoyed and joined with the in-law portion of my family for my first Christmas! We even had a very white Christmas!

StG was good enough to give us a ride out to the airport at 4:00 in the morning. I think that I, for the first time, saw Charlessa grumpy that morning! The poor alarm clock is supposed to be making a really annoying sound! :^)

But in spite of getting up at an ungodly hour, we had a great trip out to KS and arrived around noon. We were even in good spirits after we each grabbed naps on the flights!

Early morning basketball games, going out to feed the cattle, hauling hay bales, playing with Magnetix, spending lots of lazy days sipping "friendship tea", watching the snow pour and drift, shoveling LOTS of snow, building a snowman, playing with Magnetix, reading the Bible, visiting with family and extended in-family, going caroling, more basketball games, singing hymns and carols around the piano, discussing the Church and Bible, sharing presents with each other, playing with Magnetix, and teasing LG - it was a GOOD Christmas!

Certainly nothing very exciting, but very, VERY nice!

While I still haven't congealed my thoughts on Christmas celebration, this was a pretty good way to go about it! :^)

Week of Vacation

It's been a week of "vacation" for us, though maybe not all of it as relaxing as other parts.

A week ago (Friday), Jesse picked up Jer for a week of vacation time. Friday evening, Jesse and Jer trimmed our hedges--which were VERY much in need of trimming. I'd borrowed the bush trimmer from our neighbor Miss K and we needed to get it back to her before we left town.

Saturday was the first clogging competition for the Orange County Cloggers to host and the first ever for BRTC to participate. We did quite well, especially if you ignore the fact that we were the only team in our age division. The team's age division is determined by averaging the ages of all the dancers in the routine. Most of the teams there were solidly teenaged and younger with maybe a couple 20-somethings dancing as leaders in the group. On Thursday at the rodeo, there had been talk of Jesse participating in a round of Cowboy Poker on Saturday at the rodeo. But by the time we headed home from the competition, it was too late for that and I was ready to head straight home and finish packing.

Sunday morning, we headed to church with the car packed for our trip to PA. After church, we grabbed lunch, made a couple of other quick stops, picked up a dog and headed north. Our first stop north of Pittsburgh was to say "hi" to Jesse's sister Margaret at work. We met the entire family--Linda, Ray, Margaret, Katie, Ryan, Christy (minus Dave--We missed you!)--at a mexican restaurant. Margaret was able to get off work a few minutes early so we wouldn't have to wait so late for supper. It was SO good to catch up with everyone!

It was the first time I had been up to Jesse's home since we got married. He'd made two previous trips, but I hadn't been able to join him for either of those.

Sunday evening, we all stayed at the house, so we got to visit more that evening and the next morning. Katie, Ryan, and Christy had to head back home on Monday afternoon. Ryan had injured his ankle some time back and had been unable to work. Just a couple days before, his doctor had released him for "light duty," but his employer didn't have any work for him that qualified as light duty. They were still figuring out their options following that news. They had also recently signed a contract with an agency to represent Christy for possible ad work. We'll see where that goes. Maybe someday, I'll be an aunt to someone famous. :-)

Monday through Thursday involved a lot of sleeping in, relaxing, helping with the family business, visiting, and having fun with Jer.

Jer and I spent one afternoon learning how to play Uno. He had found a game of Attack Uno in the game closet and wanted to play. So we played several games. The first round we didn't use the attack machine and we mostly just concentrated on matching colors or numbers and saying "Uno" when he got down to one card (he won!). With each successive round (and using the attack machine), we talked about some of the different special cards. Of course, his favorite part was hitting the attack button and having the cards spray out at him. Then he had to spread the cards out all over the floor to be able to see them, since he had so many. For the last round, he was starting to complain about never winning. So, we talked about the goal of the game being to get rid of all the cards and I insisted he only push the attack button when he was required to. That round he only had one card left when I finally went out. He would still need some tolerate co-players to play much, but he is definitely understanding most of the concepts!

I was especially pleased that Margaret was able to take off a couple days and spend time with us while we were there! I'm still far from fluent in my signing, but I'm picking up more of conversations and can even contribute a bit of my own. While Margaret has always been Jer's favorite aunt, I think this was one of the first visit's that he really had to try to understand that Margaret is deaf. Previously, there relationship was largely physical teasing and rough housing type activities. This time, Jer was trying to carry on more conversations with Margaret--ask her to play games with him, etc. We kept having to remind him that she was deaf and that she wouldn't hear or understand his requests unless she was looking at him. It was very cute when he wanted her to go outside with him to listen to the evening noises. When we reminded him that she was deaf, he mimed his request to her--please, go-outside, listen?

Other highlights of the week:
Monday was our 7-month anniversary. Ok, we didn't do anything really out of the ordinary, but I always enjoy having a reason to remind him that I'm glad I married him! :)

Wednesday, Jesse had a chance to meet with his sensei and another karate student to have a workout, even though there was none scheduled for the week. After the workout, we made a stop by Grove City College where he attended college. We got to walk around the campus and see in a few of the buildings. The library was closed (shorter summer hours) by the time we visited campus.

Thursday, we headed back to Virginia. We stopped at clogging on our way home. We got to hear a bit more about the results of the clogging competition. Jesse also heard a rumor that he'd been assigned some new responsibilities at work while he was gone. He made sure to head to work on Friday morning to find out more about that!

In his heading to work before I did Friday morning, I forgot to pick up my keys from his car, so I was left stranded at home for the day. I've been relaxing, working on unpacking, checking work e-mail, and reading a couple books--one fun and one for work.

We've got another weekend ahead of us! Life is grand!

It Happened!

As my sisters, D & SR, have testified, we did get married! The wedding went wonderfully, thanks to the generous help of numerous family members and friends!

We have some pictures from family and friends already. We are expecting the digital photos from the photographer very soon.

If you have pictures that you want to share with us or if you would like to receive an e-mail notification when we have digital photos to share, drop us a line at jmcg.wedding@gmail.com.

This is our first days back at work since before the wedding. We had a great time in Las Vegas and got to relax at a resort in the Shenandoah valley.

Hopefully we'll get more details about the wedding and photos posted soon!