December 2019 Update

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays to you all!  If you weren’t one of the families blessed to get our Christmas card, here it is:

Our families are:  Greg, Krista, Abigail, Amelia, Zach, Jem, and Levi Matthews; Carissa, Matt, and Ruby Wilkinson; Kortney, Mat, Daisy, and Bea Rhode; Caitlin and Ben Updegrove; Hannah, Kevin, Alma, Alex, and Ansa Mickle; Ella, Cody, Hazel, Ivy, and Josie Sommer; and Cai and Amy Matthews.

 

The picture is from our family vacation this past September (see my September update below if you have forgotten about our September excitement).

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving with our local families.  As usual, everyone contributed to the meal.  My biggest contribution was in eating it, and it only took me two weeks to lose the weight I gained.  I think Levi won the weight gain contest where some of us weighed ourselves before and after the meal.  If I remember right, he gained three pounds, and I’m not surprised by the way he was wolfing down the rolls.  He probably worked the weight off within a day or so.  Oh to have a young metabolism again!

And the Bills gave us a great Thanksgiving present by dominating the Cowboys, so that made the day even better!

Our celebrations this month were Zach’s birthday on 11/23, Amelia’s birthday on 12/3, and granddaughter Josie’s 2nd birthday on 12/5.  Amelia had hinted that she’d love a surprise party, so Levi planned one for her which I think we actually pulled off.  We coaxed her to our house on the pretext of hanging out with Abigail on 11/30, and everyone was there to celebrate her day.

My barbershop chorus has done a few Christmas sing-outs this month.  We did a tree lighting party for a local town on 12/5, sang at a local mall on 12/10 (and we’re doing a different local mall tomorrow night), and last night we did caroling in the neighborhood around our rehearsal hall.  I love singing about my newborn King!

On 12/7 we went to see my granddaughter, Alma, dance in her Christmas recital.  The kids were all incredibly cute but one of them stood out as the cutest by far (no bias here, I assure you).  She was in a group of Sugar Plum fairies.  A few days later, she and Hannah went to see adults perform, and she got to meet the adult Sugar Plum fairy.  She was very excited!!

This past Saturday 12/14 was a cold, rainy day here.  But we had planned to get our Christmas tree that day, and there was no stopping us.  Krista, Jemmie, Levi, and I braved the damp misery, murdered a tree, and took its carcass home to display for a few weeks, until we decide we’re done with it, when we’ll literally toss it to the curb.  It’s an interesting custom, which I actually love.

I hope your celebrations at this time of year are great times of being with those you love.  More importantly, I hope you know the greatest gift ever given when the eternal, unchanging, all-powerful God of the universe became a helpless baby, so He could live, die, and rise again to fulfill all of God’s promises to His people and redeem us who had rejected Him.  Now we, who don’t deserve it and never could have earned it, can be restored to fellowship and joy and fulfillment in our relationship with Him when we surrender our lives to Him and repent of our sins by trusting only in Jesus’ death and resurrection on our behalf.  <End Christmas sermon>

Alex really gets into his toy playing!

On to 2020!

November 2019 Update

Hello to all again!  This month’s celebrations were my birthday on 10/19, my Dad’s heavenly birthday on 10/21, granddaughter Daisy’s 3rd birthday on 10/28, Levi’s birthday on 11/14, and Carissa and Matt’s 4th anniversary on 11/14.

Last month I mentioned possible videos coming of our chorus and quartet competition back in September.  I still don’t have video of the chorus, but here are links to my quartet’s two sessions.  This one https://youtu.be/Ynh64uIJk-Y?fbclid=IwAR0K0066SgbPqu9sFPCPPofGxam8kd7D6ZUWuuuohiYtIlkb8u9l22-zUuQ  is from our Friday night competition.  This one https://youtu.be/hhKc1NlAfHE is our Saturday “mic tester” set (don’t panic when you just have audio, no video, for about 5-10 seconds).

Ella and Cody hosted a Halloween party at their house for those of us who live around here.  They did an amazing job organizing themed snacks (like mummy babies pigs in a blanket, deviled brains/eggs and spider web taco dip) and games (like digging for spiders, vampire marshmallow grab, and mummy making).

Abigail doing the vampire marshmallow grab

Levi and Hazel

Cody and Krista digging for spiders

Abigail and Cody making Jemmie a mummy

In sports, we proudly cheered the Seattle Sounders to their 2nd MLS cup championship, and we’re impressed by how well the Seahawks and Bills are doing.  We won’t talk about my fantasy team.

In weather, we had our first significant snow of the season last week, about a foot, causing the cancellation of some activities.  It’s really pretty, but not fun to drive in.  It took me an extra half hour to get home that day.

Our backyard (photo credit Jemmie)

This past Saturday, we watched Hazel, Ivy, and Josie while Ella and Cody went out to a movie.  We had fun reading Christmas books and playing with our adorable granddaughters.

Hazel reading to Ivy and Josie

Now it's Krista's turn to read

Yesterday, my quartet sang for another birthday party.  The man who hired us apparently found us online when he was looking for a barbershop quartet.  He and his girlfriend had heard a barbershop quartet on one of their first dates, and he thought it would be fun for her to have one sing at her birthday party.  It went over really well, and she was impressed.  He definitely scored a lot of points with her!

Finally, I talked with some of you about this separately, but we found out recently that my 16-year-old daughter, Jemmie, has hypertrophic cardio myopathy.  It’s not life-threatening or anything, but we were researching because it can be genetic.  We haven’t yet determined anything conclusively, but the only link we’ve found is in my Taylor side of the family (my Mom’s side) there has been a history of heart problems, although quite minor—nothing that caused early death.  Anyway, we’d appreciate prayers as we continue to investigate what we need to do about it.  I had a echocardiography this morning, and I don’t have HCM, and we haven’t found it in anyone else yet either, but most of us still have to have the echo test.

I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving, and cheer for the Bills when they play in Dallas!

Until December!

October 2019 Update

Welcome to another installment of the Greg Matthews’ Family News.  This month we celebrated Ella’s birthday on 9/21 and Alma’s birthday on 10/6.  And we did a few other things, like…

Our pastor was on vacation on 9/22, so I took a turn preaching again.  CAUTION:  It’s a sermon about money, which I know makes people nervous, but if you want to hear it, you can do so here:  http://www.gracebrockport.org/forms/Media.aspx#/mediafile/276.  I learned a lot doing it, so I trust God used it to build up His church.

Our barbershop chorus district convention and competition was on 9/27 and 28.  This was the first time I’ve participated in the quartet competitions, and both my quartet and my chorus finished about in the middle of the pack.  I’m very pleased for our quartet because this is the first time for two of the four of us, and we got mic tester, which is sort of like honorable mention.  We didn’t compete in the finals on the 2nd day, but we were the first to sing that day to test the sound system to make sure it was ready for the competitors, an honor they give to the best of the non-finalists.  Eventually, I should get links to a private YouTube page where our chorus and my quartet performances recordings will be, and I’ll let you know.

On 10/5, my quartet got to sing again.  We had been hired to perform at a Celebration of Life service for a friend of our lead’s.  We sang one song during the service, and then provided background music during the meal.  It was sort of hard to sing while everyone was talking and eating.  Very few of them were actually listening, I think, but we gave it our all anyway.  The man who had passed away loved trains and had worked for years for the Pennsylvania Railroad (yup, just like in Monopoly), so during the service we sang an arrangement of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”  It was fun and again we got paid both with money and food, so I’m not complaining.

This past Saturday, 10/12, our local families all went to a farm market to enjoy fall activities.  The day was sort of rainy, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.  Watching grandkids enjoy hay mazes, picking pumpkins, doing a corn maze, and laughing at silliness can make any day enjoyable.

Amelia, Alex and me on the hayride

I guess this is a sort of short monthly letter, but we “talk” again in November.