February 2020 Update

The news for the month since I wrote last unfortunately has to start with some hard things.  The day after I wrote I went with two other men from my church to a Church Security Seminar hosted by our local Family Life Network.  The seminar was excellent and really encouraging in a lot of ways.  The hard parts were driving an hour plus in tricky weather, and the fact that a Church Security Seminar is a needed thing these days.  But we learned that providing a safe place for our church family to worship is essential to being a welcoming and joyful congregation.  We are working on the best ways to implement what we learned there at our church.

The other hard news was the death of a dear lady in our church in a car accident.  Again, an example of our fallen world.  We are confident in her love for the Lord and that she is in heaven with her Savior, but praying for grace and comfort for her family.

On to happier news now!  We celebrated Jemmie’s birthday (1/21), Abigail’s birthday (2/2), Ansa’s first birthday (2/4), Cody’s birthday (2/11), my brother David’s birthday (2/14), and today (2/18) is Caitlin’s birthday.

Jemmie's birthday cheesecake

Abigail's birthday Mississippi Mud cake

We had a combined party for Abigail and Ansa

Birthday buddies!

Krista and I finally got around to breaking out our cross country skis that we’ve had for years.  We got new boots for each other at Christmas in 2018, but never got around to using them last season.  It was fun and tiring (that's me breathing hard in the below video), but I’m glad we did it.  I fell a lot so I obviously need to practice a lot more.  I’m sure with our weather around here, we’ll get more chances.

Our pastor was called away for a family crisis, so I got another opportunity to preach on 2/9.  I preached from Philippians 4:8, and you can hear it here http://www.gracebrockport.org/forms/Media.aspx#/mediafile/291 if you are interested.

This past weekend I participated with my quartet in Singing Valentines.  Our chorus offers them almost every year as a fundraiser, and we sang for about 30 different people between two quartets.  It was really fun singing to people.  Some were delighted, some appreciative, some embarrassed.  There was at least one young woman we sang to that I think may make her man pay dearly for embarrassing her like that.  We sang to her at her job in a hairdressers shop.  Everyone else there loved it, but she almost looked like she might kill someone.

Our Singing Valentine ad

If you go to my quartet's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Achording-To-Us-290163201860439/ you can see a video posted by us of the Singing Valentines.  Also check out the Visitor posts for more videos!

Until March!

January 2020 Update

I’ll get the dad joke out of the way right away by saying, “Welcome to the year of good vision!”

We had a wonderful Christmas!  Carissa’s family went to visit Matt’s mom in Michigan, but everyone else got to be here for at least part of the time, and we celebrated greatly.  The kids gave Krista and me tickets to go see The Lion King show, and the costumes and music were really amazing.  The way they portrayed the different animals made you forget a lot of times that there was a person in there.  And the African drums and harmonies were beautiful.

We all love Aunt Amelia!

The Lion King

Our view to the stage

Drum sets on both sides of the stage really set the mood

We also celebrated our grandchildren’s birthdays:  both Hazel and Alex were born on 1/6, so we had a combined party for them on 1/5.  They seem to enjoy being birthday buddies.  My son-in-law, Matt, also celebrated a birthday this past month on Christmas Day.  As I said, he was with his family then, but we sent thoughts and good wishes his way (and a card and gift).

Birthday buddies (photo credit:  Ella)

 

Wow, for such a full month, it’s amazing to me how short this is.  I probably forgot something, which I’m sure I’ll hear about.

Until February!

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!