May 2018 Update

Welcome to real spring in Western New York!  I think the weather has finally figured out that it is supposed to be warmer, but we still know where our shovels and boots are, if needed (please, God, no!).

 

On April 21, Levi participated in a Trek (7th and 8th grade Awana program) Bible quiz at our church.  There were only two teams, and the other church’s team won, but it was fun to watch.  Krista and I helped with the scoring, and Zach was a judge.  It was just a small local event put on by our church with one other church participating.

 

The next day was one of the first really nice spring days we’ve had, so after church and lunch with everyone (local) at our house, we all went for a walk.  We ended up at a small park near our house to let the Mickle and Sommer kids play.  OK, some of the old folks played a bit too (not mentioning any names). 

 

 

Alex trying to figure out how to climb the stairs without letting go of the football

Josie enjoying her swing

 

Alma trying to pass him because he's taking too long

Ivy getting ready to slide

Hazel (and Abigail) tandem sliding

Alma on seesaw

After I got home from work on Friday, May 4, we left for a quick weekend visit to Philadelphia to see the Wilkinsons, Updegroves, and Cai and Amy.  We spent Saturday morning enjoying Ruby.  She was really wonderful and let us hold her and play with her even though she really doesn’t know us.  Saturday afternoon we met Cai and Amy and her family for dinner at Red Robin.  We sort of made it a combination celebration for Amy’s college graduation and Cai’s birthday that day.  We told the Red Robin staff about the celebrations so we could get some free dessert.  That was really the only motivation—it certainly wasn’t because of the quality of their singing.  Then we went back to the Wilkinsons and Updegroves with Cai and Amy to spend some more time together before Caimy had to leave.  “Caimy” is their celebrity couple name, sort of like “Brangelina” was for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.  Every couple should have one, so if you are part of a couple, and you don’t, please work on that.  I’m not sure if we’re Gresta or Kristory or what, but we’re something.  Anyway, Sunday morning we went to church with the Wilkinsons and Updegroves before heading home exhausted but very happy with the quick trip.

 

Ruby and Mom-mom

I know these pictures are practically identical, but she was so cute!
(You decide whether I meant Ruby or Krista by "she"--both are correct)

Caitlin made this blood orange spice cake for Cai's birthday. Delicious!

Ruby in all her cuteness



More cuteness

Here's a video of Ruby talking

As we did two years ago, Kevin and Hannah invited us to join them on a trip to Mexico, this time to Cancun (two years ago Krista and I went with them to Riviera Maya).  Kevin’s membership in the Hard Rock resorts makes the trip very affordable.  This year we took Jemmie and Levi with us.  The weather was beautiful, and we all got sunburned on the first day there, and then suffered the rest of the week, but it was well worth it.  Krista, Levi, and I took a zip line tour that was really fun and exciting.

 

We spent a week there and loved every minute of it.  It was sort of hard to return home, although home is definitely more, I don’t know, homey or something.  There’s something about your own home and bed and car and routine that is comfortable.  So, yeah, it was a fantastic trip, and we have lots of pictures and wonderful memories.

 

At the Cancun airport

On the shuttle to the hotel

In room Jacuzzi!

Going to zip lining

Posing with parrots before we risk our lives

Ready to start!

Did we know it would be this high in the air?!?!

The last line was a roller coaster!  Krista and Levi went tandem

Greg went solo

We finished the day with a swim in a "cenote" (sinkhole)

Levi and Krista did the daring plunge!
(Greg was chicken)

Alma playing in Kids Room with black lighting

The view from our deck

View #2

Our room

Going for a walk

Happy Alma!

Back: Kevin, Alex, Hannah, Krista, Levi
Front: Jemmie, Alma

Saying adios

The Monday we were there was Kevin’s birthday, so we took Alma and Alex with us so Kevin and Hannah could have a special birthday dinner.  The kids were really well behaved for us, and it was great to spend so much time with the Mickles for a whole week.

 

I’ve been studying Spanish with the DuoLingo app on my phone, so it was fun to use a little of my still weak Spanish skills with the staff at the resort.  Most of the staff there that work with tourists a lot speak English, but the housekeeping staff doesn’t really.  It helped when I needed to ask for towels (toallas) and to tell them not to bother cleaning our room one day (no limpiar, gracias).

 

I thought the trip might turn out badly because they assigned us room 666, but we had a good time anyway.  You have to give people your room number all the time, so I did it by saying “seis seis seis.”  Somehow that sounded less demonic.

 

I’ll close this month by remembering that today is my Mom’s heavenly birthday.  Seven years ago by our time, eternity in hers now, she left this earth and went to be with her Savior.  I look forward to our reunion when my time here is over!

 

Until June!

 

April 2018 Update

I began February’s update talking about 70 degree weather in winter, and March’s update talking about almost two feet of snow.  Spring and winter are still confused here.  We had an ice storm this past Sunday that forced the cancelation of church due to the dangerous conditions.  Kortney and family (in the Minneapolis area) got close to two feet of snow that same day!  I was supposed to sing “Desert of My Days” (look up Larnelle Harris singing it on YouTube if you want to hear a better version than mine would have been) for special music, but that has now been postponed to April 29.  I’d appreciate prayers for God to use it to comfort His people with the assurance of His help through our troubles.

 

Ice storm!

The only family celebration this month was Carissa’s birthday on 3/23, which we had to celebrate from afar.  However, we’re excited that we’re going to visit Carissa, Matt, and Ruby, Caitlin and Ben, and Cai and Amy in early May for a quick weekend trip!

 

We had the family over for Easter, including Krista’s sister, Nanita, and her family.  The Mickles and Sommers came over the day before to decorate eggs and get other things ready.  Josie (Ella’s youngest) and I spent some quality time chilling together.  She told me some great stories about the family, which you can hear in the video below.  After our Easter Sunday dinner, we did an egg hunt in the back yard.  Krista went above and beyond with the prizes in the eggs!  It seems like every year she ups her game a little bit.  I’ll have to draw the line, though, when she starts putting car keys in the eggs.

 

Easter egg hunt

I just finished reading a book called “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” by Frank Turek and Norman Geisler.  If you’re a Christian, I highly recommend it!  It will give you the credible facts that form the basis of our faith.  Our faith is not blind belief in something far-fetched, but rather the best conclusion based on the evidence of the world and history.  If you are not a Christian, I highly recommend it!  It will challenge your faith in lesser things than the one true God of the universe!

 

This past Saturday 4/14, Carissa’s barbershop chorus, Jersey Sound, competed in their regional event and did very well.  We were able to watch the live stream and were very impressed.  I think you can still watch the recorded stream if you want https://www.region19sai.org/webcast.html.  Her group is in part 2 about 27 minutes into the video.  My barbershop chorus is working on our annual show on 5/19 in Penfield, NY (near Rochester).  If anyone is interested in tickets, let me know.

 

Watching Carissa's chorus (she's on the bottom left)

Hopefully by the time I write May’s update, Spring will have figured out the correct weather.  I’ll let you know next month!

 

March 2018 Update

I began last month’s update with “Greetings from the deep winter of western New York where the high temperature later this week will be near 70.  But we know all of the weather’s tricks, and we’re too smart to put away our snow shovels, boots, hats, and gloves when it’s only February, because we know that upper 60s this week can still be followed by 2 feet of snow next week.”  Just to prove my point, God sent us a heavy, wet snowstorm at the beginning of March with close to two feet of snow.  That snow is still on the ground now, over two weeks later because our temps have not gotten out of the 30s since then.  Welcome to spring in Western New York!

 

March 2 Snowstorm



Our family celebrations this month were Ella and Cody’s fourth anniversary on 2/22, Caitlin and Ben’s second anniversary on 3/5, my brother, Ken’s, birthday on 3/6 (I’m not allowed to post his age due to a binding NDA, but it rhymes with blixty-blee), and Kortney’s birthday on 3/17.

 

Other than the snowstorm, our month was pretty uneventful.  Cai and Amy continue to work on wedding plans for an August 18 wedding near Amy’s home in Canton, CT, and we are excited about that.

 

Zach helped with the T&T Games for our church’s 3rd – 6th grade Awana clubbers, and Levi participated on our Trek Games team for our 7th and 8th grade Awana clubbers.  We only have 4 kids at our church that are actually that age, so we had to import T&Ters to fill out the team, so we weren’t very competitive, but I hope they had fun anyway.

 

Levi at the Trek Games (in middle with red on the bottom of his sneakers)

Basketball relay

Three-legged race (Levi on the inside)

Sprint race

Tug of war (Levi in front)

Agility race

Marathon Relay

On Sunday 3/18, our pastor was away on a family vacation, and I had a chance to fill the pulpit.  He has been going through the book of Genesis, and I noticed in my personal devotions in the book of Luke the same three themes our pastor had been highlighting from Genesis.  If you care to listen to my message, you can find it on our church’s website here http://www.gracebrockport.org/forms/Media.aspx#/mediafile/193.

 

That’s it for March, so until April!

Grandson Alex enjoying his meal

...and his dessert!

February 2018 Update

Greetings from the deep winter of western New York where the high temperature later this week will be near 70.  But we know all of the weather’s tricks, and we’re too smart to put away our snow shovels, boots, hats, and gloves when it’s only February, because we know that upper 60s this week can still be followed by 2 feet of snow next week.

 

We had a pretty dusting of snow yesterday morning that melted away by afternoon, but it still served to cover up the old, gross looking snow piles left by shoveling and plowing, at least for a little while.

 

Family birthdays since last month’s update are:  Jemmie 1/21, Abigail 2/2, Cody 2/11, my brother David 2/14, and Caitlin 2/18.  In addition to the parties for Jemmie, Abigail, and Cody, we of course also had a Super Bowl party.  Since we have family in Philadelphia and since their opponent was the Patriots, we were all very happy with the result.  My pastor is a big Eagles fan and loaned me a jersey to wear during the game.  He kept it relatively mellow Sunday morning at church, just wearing an Eagles tie, but his wife and daughters wore jerseys.

 

Our Eagles-themed Super Bowl party room

Me in my borrowed Eagles jersey

This is pretty short, but I’ll finish with the big news of this month.  We are pleased to announce the engagement of our son, Cai, to Amy Crocker!  They are planning an August 2018 wedding in Connecticut. 

Congratulations Cai and Amy!

 

Talk to you in March!

 

January 2018 Update

Happy New Year!  I hope all of you thoroughly enjoyed your holiday season!  Here are the highlights of our last month.

 

My barbershop chorus performed at another mall during the season (other than the one I mentioned last month), and we went out caroling in the neighborhoods around our rehearsal hall, so that was lots of fun.

 

We were blessed to have lots of family home for Christmas.  Cai went to Amy’s house, so we missed them, but everyone else was here.  There was a lot of stepping over other people for a few days, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

 

Alex and Alma Mickle (Hannah & Kevin), Hazel, Josie, and Ivy Sommer (Ella & Cody), Ruby Wilkinson (Carissa & Matt), Daisy Rhode (Kortney & Mat)

The tree loaded down with presents

We don't have a chimney so the stockings were hung on the couches with care

Grandpa (wearing a Christmas crown) and Ruby (photobomb by Jem)

Mom-mom got Daisy to sleep in her arms (photobomb by Zach)

We also celebrated my son-in-law, Matt’s, birthday while they were here with a delicious Oreo ice cream cake (or was it a pie—who cares when it tastes so good).

 

For the last several years, we’ve been having a family Christmas Extravaganza, sort of like a talent show.  Krista’s sister, Nanita, and her family joined us for the fun this year.  They did a piano and tenor recorder duet and joined us in a few other songs.  We followed that up with a karaoke time before calling it a night.

 

By New Year’s Eve, all of our visitors had gone home, but all of the local families got together to watch movies, eat snacks, and make noise at midnight.  Well, some of us didn’t make it all the way to midnight, but as the song says, “It’s 12:00 somewhere.”  (Yes, I know the song really says 5:00, but work with me here.)

 

We’ve had our typical western New York snow where we’ll get a foot or two over several days, then it will warm up and mostly, if not totally, melt, and then another foot or two will come.  I’m so thankful God created snowblowers!  Lately, we’ve been in the 20s with a few colder snaps (they call them that because if you’re outside too long, your fingers snap off), so our snow has stayed around.  It’s pretty in a cold sort of way.

 

Jan 6 was Hazel’s 3rd birthday and Alex’s 1st birthday, so we had a party that Sunday afternoon for them both.  We had to work their party around the Buffalo Bills first playoff game in this millennium, and we were glad to have a party to take our mind off of the disappointing result of that game.  Now that the Bills made the playoffs, the longest playoff drought in the major sports belongs to the Seattle Mariners.  So, let’s see if we can knock that one off in 2018, shall we?  Now, since there’s no Bills or Seahawks in the NFL playoffs, I’m just rooting for anybody-but-the-Patriots.

 

Stay warm, and I’ll talk to you in February!

 

December 2017 Update

First an update on Krista’s condition since last month’s update.  She still is not 100%, but she is feeling better.  We’re convinced now that she has erythema nodosum, although our doctor isn’t willing to say for sure that is it, but in our reading online that seems to best fit what she is experiencing.  Please continue to pray for her!

 

We had a really nice Thanksgiving.  Since Krista was still laid low, we all had to do a lot more cooking than normally, but it turned out really well.  Cai and his girlfriend, Amy, came home for the weekend, so that made it even more crowded and fun.

 

Nov 23 was also Zach’s birthday, but he had his dinner and dessert choices in the following days since turkey and pies were sort of forced on him on his actual birthday.  We also celebrated Amelia’s 12/3 birthday, and one more birthday since I wrote last that I’ll talk about later.

 

Nah, it’s so exciting, I’ll just talk about it now.  Josephine Hope Sommer was born to Ella and Cody and Hazel and Ivy on Dec 5 at 6:12AM.  She weighed 8lb 2 oz.  Ella and Josie are doing great.  We discovered that with all of our family, it took until this past weekend for Levi to get a chance to hold her.  We felt bad that he didn’t get a chance until then, but he made the most of the opportunity once he got it!

 

Josephine Hope Sommer

Levi and Josie

On Dec 7, my barbershop chorus sang at a local mall (Eastview).  We’re also singing at Marketplace Mall on Dec 21 7PM in front of the old Macy’s if anyone is in the area.  Anyway, it was fun to sing a bunch of Christmas songs, even though there were more of us in the chorus than were sitting to hear us.  We had several passers-by who stopped for a song or two though.  We were told to wear something festive so I bought a special sweater. I got many complements on it!

 

Now I just need a Seahawks ugly Christmas sweater!

Last night (Sunday, Dec 17) was our Christmas program at church.  I led a choir that sang two songs (I wore my sweater again!), and Levi was in the children’s program.  It was a lot of fun and the gospel message that started in Genesis and was incarnated at Christ’s birth was clearly presented.

 

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, and anything else you celebrate during these days with a blessed time with family and other loved ones during this season.  I hope you understand and believe the bad news of Christmas:  we are so wicked that God had to take the extreme action of becoming a man to save us.  I hope you understand and believe the good news of Christmas:  God loves us so much that He became a man to save us from our own sin.

 

Until January!

 

November 2017 Update

We’ll start this month’s update by remembering the birthdays since last month:  me on 10/19, my Dad’s heavenly birthday on 10/21, my granddaughter Daisy on 10/28 (1 year old!), and Levi on 11/14.  11/14 was also Carissa and Matt’s 2nd anniversary, so congrats to you two!

 

In my barbershop chorus, I was recently awarded “Spark Plug of the Month” for jumping right in and getting involved in the competition I mentioned last month and being faithful at rehearsals and sectionals.  Or something.  I’m not really sure why I got it, but I did, and it’s an honor, so I’m honored!  You get to wear a fancy vest at rehearsals and get free drinks at our bar.  Since I don’t drink, they said I could have free pop.  Well, I hardly ever drink pop either, but I took some home each week for my kids or wife.

 

Fancy vest selfie

Levi finished his flag football season with a win, so they were able to go 3 – 1 on the season.  I think he had fun.  I know it was fun to watch!

 

We were able to find a car for Krista to get around town in.  We bought a used 2002 Honda Accord that she named Mary Poppins.  No more hitchhiking for her.

 

Krista's car

On November 1, Amelia moved back home after about a year living with Kortney and Mat in Minnesota.  We are glad to have her back!  She is living now with Hannah and Kevin as their live-in nanny, so she gets to be Auntie Boo-boo for Alma and Alex.  Boo-boo is a family nickname she picked up when she was a little girl.  I think the story was someone asked her what her name was, and that was the answer she gave, and it stuck.  I’m sure someone will correct me if that story is wrong.  Anyway, she decided Auntie Boo-boo was easier to say for her little niece and nephew than Aunt Amelia.

 

This past Sunday, we had one of our church’s missionaries here.  Before he spoke, he and his son did a special music duet of “Amazing Grace” on the violin and bagpipe.  I’ve always loved bagpipes.  Back when I lived in Seattle in the 80s, Krista and I used to go to a restaurant there on St. Patrick’s Day that would have bagpipers walking around.  It made it hard to talk when they were anywhere even remotely close, but it was really cool anyway.  Anybody from the Seattle area remember Clinkerdagger, Bickerstaff, and Petts?

 

Our traumatic experience that started Sunday (well, really a week or so before that) was that Krista got quite sick.  She had had a fever for about a week, and then noticed peculiar spots on her arms, legs, and back.  We are blessed to have a Nurse Practitioner and an Emergency Department nurse in our family (Hannah and Kevin), so we consulted with them.  She went to our doctor last Friday who diagnosed her with a staph infection and prescribed an antibiotic.  After two days of that treatment, she was no better, so our nursing consultants recommended we go to Emergency.  The doctor there diagnosed her with Lyme disease and admitted her to the hospital and started IV antibiotics.  We don’t know for sure how she was infected since she hasn’t been hiking in the woods or anything, but they said she could have gotten it in our own backyard.  They aren’t 100% sure it is Lyme, but they are confident it is some kind of tick-borne infection.  She is home now (came home yesterday) and starting to feel a little better.  Your prayers for complete healing are appreciated!

 

Looking good even when she's sick

That’s all for this month, so until December!