Big Weekend

I have many things to write about with regard to the past weekend.  In summary, we had Jeremy's graduation in Echo from ECHO on Friday night.  We got there on time, which after a 5-6 hour trip with nine children, is a feat in itself.

On Saturday, Joe's mom hosted a wonderful open house for Jeremy at the Belview Community Center.  Thanks, so much, Mom, for all your planning and work.  Thanks also to Aunts Nyla and Laurie, and cousin Chris for the things you brought and the help you and your families offered.  It was so great to see you all.

Sunday was another busy day.  I got to sit with my husband in church, a rare treat.  And we heard a good law and gospel sermon by Pastor Dan Faugstad.  Of course, I only heard it in snippets, being busy with little ones, but the parts I heard were wonderfully insightful.  I hope to ask him to mail me a hard copy, if he uses one, so I can get the context for all those nuggets I heard.

After church we went to Morton for a bitter sweet afternoon with Joe's mom's entire family.  Grandpa K is in a nursing home and Grandma K has been living in an assisted living facility.  It's not an easy transition for them, especially having to be separated.  But after the kids (Joe's parents generation) kept up the empty home through the last winter, Grandpa and Grandma have had to make the difficult decision to sell their home.  Since everyone was around for the weekend, they took that opportunity to sort through Grandma and Grandpa's many things.  Grandma and Grandpa were both there, too.  What a hard thing for them!  Although they both know they "can't take it with them," it's still so hard to see all their lifetime of things being divided up and packed away!

On Monday morning, we got up and got Jeremy's stuff all loaded into the van, along with a few of the things we got from Grandma and Grandpa's and headed home.  We left our four older girls with Joe's parents, so it seemed like a quiet ride home with only four littles and two bigs of our ten children.

We came home to cold, damp and windy weather, with even a tornado watch late Monday night.

To end on a humorous note, the young chickens had all gotten out of their pen while we were gone, so they were free-ranging in the church playground when we got home.  (Sorry to our memeber if they were there on Sunday morning.  Really, really sorry.)

I had Matt drop me off to get the mail and as I walked past the church on the way up to the house, the chickens started following me.  So I continued to the back yard instead of the front and they followed along like the Brothers Grimm's children of Hamlin followed the piper.  When I got the chicks all back into the pen, they were all present and accounted for, so that's a blessing.  They were hungry, though, so I dumped a bunch of feed in for them and continued inside to work on the human food.