June 2025 Update

I don’t seem to have any pictures from this past month, even though we had some exciting and fun times.

 

Late in May, my daughter and granddaughter, Amelia and Faye, visited from Kentucky for a week.  We got to spend some time with them, including on Memorial Day, and it was so good to see them for a while.

 

On Memorial Day, we did our usual gathering at my daughter, Hannah’s house, where her husband, Kevin, made some wonderful barbecue, and we all provided lots of yummy side dishes.  The weather had been pretty bad, but that day it was perfect—sunny and in the 60s, so not too hot, but a beautiful day.

 

Last Saturday, my granddaughters, Alma and Ansa (Hannah and Kevin’s girls), had their dance recitals.  They were obviously the best dancers in their classes, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them.  We were afraid that Ansa’s recital in the morning was going to be cancelled because it was held at our local high school auditorium, and a nearby maintenance building caught fire about an hour or two before it was supposed to start!  Fortunately, our great firefighters got it under control, and everything went off without a hitch, other than having to go a long way to get into the school campus to avoid the burning building.

 

Of course, this past Sunday was Fathers’ Day, and a lot of local families met at Five Guys Burgers for lunch with me or later at a local ice cream stand for dessert with me.  It was a great day, and our church had another photo area like they did for Mothers’ Day, so I got a picture with my three daughters who go to our church with us, just like Krista did last month.

That’s it for this past month, but tomorrow we’re looking forward to a visit with my Wirth relatives.  My uncle Erle and cousins Kevin, Wayne, and Wes, and Kevin’s wife, Janet, are in our area, and we’re going to meet them for lunch tomorrow.  Hopefully, I’ll have some pictures from that to share next month.

 

May 2025 Update

Since I wrote last, we had an opportunity to take a big vacation with several members of our family to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.  My son-in-law, Kevin, has a membership at the Hard Rock Resorts, and every few years we get to join his and Hannah’s family on one of these nice vacations.  Besides them and Krista and I, Abigail and Bernie and their kids, Zach and Brandi, and Levi and Kayla joined in on the fun.  The resort was beautiful in every way, and we had lots of fun lounging by the pools, eating so much good food, and spending time with each other.

Grandson Alex making a diving catch into the pool

Breakfast with Kayla and Levi

Zach and Brandi playing with Emmett

Bernie, Abigail and Emmett

At the hibachi restaurant, the chef made a snake out of eggs!

Sort of related to that vacation, I wanted to give a health update on myself.  The resort was very large, and it required a lot of walking to get everywhere.  You may remember that I have had problems with plantar fasciitis.  We had tried exercises, stretches, seeing a podiatrist, better supportive shoes, etc., but nothing seemed to help.  I’d still have a lot of pain if I walked too much, even just like mowing our lawn (which isn’t that big).  Krista and I were worried after the first day of walking and walking at the resort that I would be miserable for the rest of the week.  But, praise God, I wasn’t!  I had no PF pain all week!  Now she and I have been able to go on walks again around home, and we’d really missed that.  It’s like a mini-date when we can just go for a walk down the street.  So please praise God with us for His goodness to me in this way!

 

I also had my latest check up with my urologist for the 2-year follow-up to my prostate cancer surgery.  Everything is still looking good with that, so now I only have to see him annually for three more years, and if everything stays good, we can be done with it.  Again, God is so good to me!

 

As if that wasn’t enough excitement, my son, Levi, proposed to his girlfriend, Kayla, on May 10!  He had planned to propose at the Lilac Festival in Rochester, and then have Krista and I and Kayla’s parents and some friends join them there for a celebration lunch.  Well, the weather was perfect that day, and the Festival was packed!  Lots of things he hoped would go a certain way were thrown off by the crowds and the lack of parking, and people not being able to get there at the right time, but he managed to get a “Yes!” anyway, and we celebrated later that day at a restaurant near home.

 

That night, Abigail, Ella, Jem, and I went to see the latest Marvel movie, and we all enjoyed that.  It made for a very full day!

 

Of course, the next day, May 11, was Mothers’ Day.  Jem and I quietly celebrated Krista with lunch at home, with lots of other kids and grandkids dropping by at various times throughout the day.  Our church had a great place to get Mothers’ Day pictures, so Krista took one with her three daughters who go to our church with us.

Hannah, Krista, Jem, and Ella

And we’ll talk again in June!

 

April 2025 Update

Time for another Greg Matthews Family update!  I know you’re excited!

 

Our church holds Euchre tournaments about twice a year.  I’ve played in several and always enjoyed them, even though my team has never done super well.  My son-in-law, Bernie, and I played again on March 29 and did about our usual.  For a while, we were in the top 10 (of about 32 teams), but then we hit a couple of bad games and dropped into the bottom half to finish.  We still had fun, and our picture made the church’s newsletter!

We look happy, but unfortunately, this was one of our bad games 😞

I mentioned last month that our 20th grandchild, Atlas, was born on March 3.  Krista, Jem, and I finally got an opportunity to go to Philadelphia for a long weekend April 5 – 8 to meet him and see Carissa’s whole family, as well as Caitlin’s family who live right nearby.  We loved seeing all of them, holding Atlas, going to church with them, taking the kids to a park, and just being a part of their families for a little while.  Once when Krista was holding Atlas as he slept, he must have been having great dreams, because he was smiling.

Isn't he the cutest thing!

Our final special time this last month was on April 15.  No, it had nothing to do with taxes, thankfully.  Abigail and Jem went to a Dancing With the Stars live show in Buffalo, and Bernie had to work, so they needed someone to watch Maya and Emmett.  Krista and I gladly filled that need, and we had tons of fun playing with them.  Levi and Kayla came over for a while too to make it more enjoyable for both us and the kids.

 

That’s it for April, so we’ll talk again in May!

 

March 2025 Update

In the last month, we reached a milestone:  Our 20th grandchild was born!  On March 3, Atlas Wayaki Wilkinson was born to our daughter, Carissa, and her husband Matt.  He joins big sister, Ruby, and big brother, Milo.  We have many more granddaughters than grandsons (14 to 6), so we are delighted to add to the male grandchildren!  As a matter of fact, this is the first of our kids’ families with more than one boy!  Atlas’s middle name is sort of an homage to his father’s upbringing as a missionary kid in Papua New Guinea.  Wayaki is the last name of Matt’s best friend from there.  We’re planning a trip early in April to meet Atlas.

The only other thing I can think of from this past month is something many of you may have experienced too, and that is the lunar eclipse we had overnight on March 13th to the 14th.  I woke up about when it was at peak (just before 3AM our time), and so I went outside to take a look.  I took a picture with my phone, but it isn’t that great.

I think I might have zoomed too much, and it made it fuzzy

Here's a professional picture I found online.  Much clearer!

 

And we’ll talk again in April!

 

February 2025 Update

As I look back at the previous month, I don’t see a lot that happened, but I may be forgetting something.  I’m sure if that’s true that someone will tell me, “Hey!  Why didn’t you include… “, and I’ll say, “Oops.  I’m old, and I forgot”, and then I’ll update here, so you may want to check back in a week or so if you care.

 

The one big event I do remember is my son, Levi’s, official graduation as a Monroe County Jail Deputy.  Krista and I attended the ceremony on January 29, and we were very proud to see him graduate.

This week we had a pretty good snowstorm covering several days.  It started really getting challenging this past Saturday night.  Our church canceled the 8:30AM service we usually attend so that their plow guys could get things cleaned up for the 10:30AM service.  We got more snow throughout Sunday and overnight into Monday so that I’d say it was over a foot all told.

 

My boss told me to work from home yesterday because it was so bad, but I did make it into the office today.  The roads weren’t too bad this morning, but there were some times when white-outs made it difficult to see very far.

 

And that’s really all I can come up with for this update, so we’ll talk again in March!

 

January 2025 Update

She finally came!  As I mentioned last month, we have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of our 19th grandchild, and she finally came!  Faye Ariel White arrived to my daughter, Amelia, and her husband, Ben, on December 20, and everyone is doing great.

 

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s, starting with a Christmas Eve service at our church, followed by a party at Hannah’s, and then a quiet evening at our house with just Krista, Jem, Zach, and me.  Christmas Day was a lot of fun with brunch at our house and visits from most of the local families sometime during the day. 

 

Since some people couldn’t make it here on Christmas, we had a whole local family get-together on December 28 to exchange gifts, eat good food, and enjoy each other’s company.

 

On New Year’s Eve, Ella hosted a party and the adventurous stayed up there to welcome the New Year.  Krista and I went home around 9pm.  I made it to midnight (barely) at home but I was by myself.  It was all great, however, and a fun time celebrating.

 

Our biggest event of the past month was the wedding of our son, Zach, and his bride, Brandi on January 11.  Everyone made it home for that, and it was a beautiful wedding and a fun reception.  My grandson, Alex, said, “I never knew a wedding could form into that kind of party!”  And my granddaughter, Josie, asked Kayla, “Can you and Levi get married tomorrow so our whole family can just stay?”  The only picture I have is me holding Faye at the reception, but you can contact Zach or Brandi if you want to see wedding pictures.

 

The day after the wedding, everyone (including the bride and groom!) came to our house for a brunch and to spend time together since we’d all been too busy having a wedding to really get to talk.  It was a crazy, chaotic, loud, and fantastic time with all 42 of us crowded into our not very big house!  And we got to watch the Bills crush the Broncos (sorry to any of you Broncos fans getting this)!  By God’s grace, everyone made it here and home again safely, and we are so glad to have had this time together.

 

Happy New Year to you all!