She Sent Me an E-Mail!

February 27th was a special day for us! Hope has her own email account now and she sent me an email. She was excited to send it and I was so happy and VERY surprised to hear from her in that way.

She doesn't remember the Mandarin Chinese that she was speaking when she joined our family all the way from Beijing -- just "Mama" and "Baba", the Chinese version of "Mommy" and "Daddy".

The picture here is from the night we celebrated Christmas with her, Kevin, and Barbara. Nadean was sick that night, so we missed out on that part of our Christmas visit.

Here's Hope's email to me (I love it!):

Dear grammie, guess what? I got a email address.So now i can write to people.And people can write to me.I am having fun sending emails to every one. So how are you ? Well if you ask me i am doing pretty good. Well i hope you are doing good yourself.So how is grammpie and grammie Ruth? Well i hope they are doing okay.  Baba thinks he knows every thing except 23 things. So every time he says that i  ask him questions. The number of things that he does not know always goes up.And he thinks he is a spy.But i know he's teasing me. And when i think that he really tries to trick me.Well he has not told mama yet i don't think. Well i am having fun writing this letter to you! I still want to have another game day/ night. Tell everybody i said hi.bey!

Grampie emailed back to Hope and told her there are actually 26 things that "Baba" doesn't know, and one of them is that "he doesn't know what he doesn't know".

We owe Hope a game night, so we have to get that on our itinerary!

P.S. (In case you haven't noticed, we think our grandkids are wonderful.) And they ARE!!!

"Just Ripening For The Great Harvest"

People ask us what it is like to be retired. And we give some answer that translates, "we don't know. We're too busy to find out."

This is a new phase of our lives -- and I want it so much to be the most beautiful of all. After all of these years, we are now able to be together most of the time. It is my deepest desire that things will settle down enough for us to share the deepest thoughts of our hearts, to live in harmony with the LORD, who is the head of our home and our marriage, to gracefully age and continue to work on the legacy that we will leave to those we love so dearly -- from the oldest child, down to the tiniest life now being formed in the warmth and depth of its mother's body, we love you more than we can even begin to say.

Dearly loved ones, the greatest joy we could ever imagine will be to stand arm-in-arm with all of you before the thrones of our Lord Jesus and our Heavenly Father. Right now we are "just ripening for the GREAT harvest". But while we are getting ready for the greatest journey of our lives, we are praying that when we get to the "end of the way" that our "circle" will NOT be broken. We don't want one of you to be left behind!
This is our prayer.

89 Years and Counting!

EIGHTEEN of us had such a nice time celebrating Mom's 89th birthday on February 19th at our home in Glenburn.
Here she is with three of the younger guys: Eli Cain (Zach's and Holly's son), David and Samuel Buza (Stephen's and Jeannie's sons).

Folks tell me I look older than she does (true, since I have almost pure white hair and she is just sporting a few gray hairs here and there).

There was a lot of love to go around, cards, gifts (flowers, blouses, an orange, chocolate). And she even got a Kindle. Now we are wondering: how many 89 year old folks have a Kindle?? It is a great gift for her, since books tend to be a little heavy and burdensome.

Some of you had to miss this party for various reasons -- you were too far away, etc. We are hoping to have a BIG splash for the 90th!

I'm thanking the Lord for allowing me to keep my Mom for so long -- it's been almost 68 years for the two of us. What a blessing to have her in my life.

So "Happy Birthday, Mom" -- I love you!