July 13 -- Family "Reunion"

Sunday
(Written Monday morning)
What a wonderful family we have!
After church and communion at Crossroads Bible Church with our dear friends there, we shared our memories from the Holy Land Tour closing communion in the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem. I had taken two pans of cherry coffee cake made from our loaded cherry tree as a re-entry celebration. Then we hurried home (after picking up milk, root beer, and ice cream) because Bruce and Maureen and Lukas were coming over to see our photos from Ashcraft's in Spain and bringing burgers to grill and the rest of the fixings for dinner. Little did we know that the kids were planning a surprise celebration at our house for the day. What fun!
Everyone was here that lives in the area -- Jeremy had come last night to interview us on tape for a DVD he is planning to make from our trip, memories, and selected pictures and stayed overnight. Bruce's, Tom's, Dave's, Risa and Jeff, Travis and Aaron, and Marilyn showed up and we continued to be surprised. The only ones missing were Virginia's in Wyoming, Carsten in California, Adam and Mary Beth at her folks' in Michigan, Nathaniel at camp in Minnesota, and Katherine in the hospital for tests and IV's. We missed them.
Maureen brought all the fixings, Bruce grilled hamburgers and polish sausages, Heather and Dave made two big containers of homemade ice cream and brought roasting ears and watermelon. I had made 3 cherry pies for Bruce's and we enjoyed them.
It was so much fun to all be together and to continue to share experiences throughout the day. The kids were busy running all over the farm. Twice we lost Ian and Noah. Later, we played Apples to Apples and pinochle. Tom and David soundly defeated Verle and me in the pinochle game. After dark, Verle and Dave showed some of our trip pictures on the garage wall with a projector. It was a beautiful evening and fun. We only got through part of the pictures from Israel and the pictures from our visit to Petra in Jordan. More would have been an overload for all of us. The kids added background entertainment by shooting off fireworks.
When I got up Monday morning, Jeremy had cleaned up everything and put in a load of wet towels to wash before he went to bed here. It is like old times when he spent 3 years on the farm here while he went to Centennial High School. Today he plans to help me pick more cherries.