Happy Birthday!

Even though Ben (in October) and Bethany (in November) received birthday packages at school, how can you truly celebrate a birthday long distance? So when Bethany and Ben arrived home for Thanksgiving break--a week vacation, way-to-go Grove City College!--we celebrated together, in person. Happy Birthday to each of you, Ben and Bethany!

It's A Small World--Story #1

Following a long wait due to a cancelled flight—not sure the reason for that—weary travelers boarded the plane in Dallas, Texas bound for Memphis, Tennessee. I made my way to a Center seat—odd, because I always try to get a window seat. Maybe they were all taken when we booked my tickets. A woman settled into the window seat and we began talking about where we’d come from and why we were going to Memphis. I had arrived from Reno and she had arrived from Portland. I shared about visiting Chester, California (Ideal and Les’s new home) and she shared that she had spent time at a family cabin on Lake Almanor—the Lake near Chester—every summer of her forty-something life; most recently she’d been there in August. We conversed and I learned more about the town and the lake.

This is my first installment in what I imagine will be an on-going series of Small World stories. Some details about this one: Chester has a population for 2,316. California is a big state and there are a lot of people there and this woman lives in Oregon. But she knew exactly where I’d just visited. Not only that, but after she settled into Seat 11F—I was sitting in 11E—a man came along who asked what her boarding pass had on it. Turns out she was supposed to be sitting in 10F.

Thanks to the cancelled flight I did not get to visit with Nathan on his last evening before heading out to Air Force basic training in Texas on November 13. But it’s OK: I know the Lord is with him and I have every confidence He is fulfilling His purposes in Nathan’s life. And we’ll get to see Nathan in December!

The Saga of the Steinway

OR How Nathan Moved A 600 Pound Upright Grand Piano 600 Miles And Lived To Tell The Tale

When my aunt decided she was ready to pass along the upright Steinway piano which has been in the family for over 70 years, we determined that it should find a home at my mother’s until Bethany-the future owner-would have a place for it. Moving the piano from Morro Bay to Alturas became the current project. And Nathan—since he was in California—accepted the challenge!

One Monday morning in October Nathan and his cousin Trevor drove from Reedley to Morro Bay (146 miles) in a truck pulling a trailer and thankfully my aunt had called church friends to help load the piano from the house into the trailer. Back in Reedley (146 miles) the piano was loaded into Uncle Les’s trailer which he pulled up to their new home in Chester (349 miles). On Thursday Nathan drove up to Redding (357 miles); he and his cousin Jacob drove to Alturas (145 miles) to pick up Grandpa’s truck to drive to Chester (139 miles). Uncle Les worked some magic to transfer the piano from the trailer into the back of the truck which they drove back to Alturas (139 miles). Thankfully—again—church friends arrived to unload the piano from the truck into the house. Mission accomplished!

To Nathan and all those who helped: Thank You.

A Visit to Northern California

I enjoyed a wonderful visit with my parents and my sister Carolyn and her family in Alturas, CA--high desert, one of the "sagebrush counties", truly in the middle of no-where :-)--and also squeezed in a side trip to Ideal and Les's new home in Chester, CA--a mountainous area just a little out-of-the-way from my return drive to the airport in Reno, NV.

Daddy showed me around the new greenhouse which Nathan helped him build this summer; he's already producing an amazing variety of vegetables and his crop will flourish all winter long! We looked at dozens of Mother's pictures from the past 80 years; she has many scrapbooking projects in the works. We ate Alturas Chinese food and pancakes at the Veteran's Hall and celebrated Daddy's 92nd birthday. It's always a special thing--and a bit eye-opening in a deja vu kind of way--to spend time with "just the birth family" because everyone knows all the favorite sayings, jokes, memories, wisecracks; everyone laughs at the familiar idiosyncrasies and habits. And we rejoice in being with the people who have known us and loved us the longest.