It's Been A While...

It has been a while since my last post - quite a while...months!!!  Well, let's see if I can bring you up to date with some of the things that have been going on in my life since that time.

Well, I celebrated another birthday - 61 years and loving it!!!  I can remember as a child thinking that anyone who was 50 years or older was REALLY OLD.  Now, I have passed that 50 year mark and I feel great.  Health-wise I have no real issues, I love my salt and pepper hair, I could probably stand to loose a few pounds (I really need to work on that).  So, all in all my life is great.

Of course, I have the loves of my life (my children and my grands) who always brighten my days.  My son married earlier this year and his wife (pictured below) is a real sweetheart.  She has a daughter who just fell right in place with my grands - it's like they were meant to be a part of my life.

I spent a lot of time working with my siblings and their children planning our family reunion, which was held in July.  This really was a time consuming process, since my sisters and I all live in different cities and our children are also located is different cities.  There was lots of emailing and conference calling to try and pull the reunion together.  I had my first experience in shopping to feed over 100 people - now that was a true experience for me, but I learned a lot from it (lots of returns, exchanges and doubling up).  My niece created our family logo - which is AWESOME:

Our focus this year was to identify the various generations that make up our family.  We had five generations represented this year and each generation was identified by selected colored ribbons (1st generation - purple; 2nd generation - green; 3rd generation - red; 4th generation - blue; and 5th generation - orange).  We had a great weekend - Friday Night Fish Fry, Saturday Picnic in the Park, Sunday Family Worship, Dinner and Closing Program.  It was so good to see so many family members.

On a sad note, my developmentally disabled brother who lived out of state with my younger sister, was very ill the weekend of reunion so he and my younger sister were unable to attend the reunion.  They were greatly missed by all who attended.  A video was made especially for the two of them to let them know how much they were loved and missed.  

He did have an opportunity to view the  video and we hope that he felt all the love that we sent through our messages.  Sadly he passed away 4 days after the reunion was over.  We miss you Jerry!!!   Here's a pic of him in his "Blues Brother" look.

LOVE AND MISS YOU BIG BROTHER!!!