On Friday, May 16, we drove from Goshen, Indiana to Holly, Michigan where we got settled at Groveland Oaks County Campground. We were able to get a beautiful spot that overlooks the lake and is very close to the beach area.
Once we were set up, we cleaned up and headed out to the first of our many adventures. We attended the 100th birthday dinner celebration for our church, First Presbyterian Church of Royal Oak. Three hundred members and former members including the Tom and Ellen Kirkman, the children of our former pastor who married us about 51 years ago. It was a wonderful evening filled with hugs and hello's with so many of our friends made over the years. Dean and Bethany set with us along with good friends Ray and Marge Crawford and Roger and June VanDyke. The entertainment included a series of skits "remembering" many special moments, groups and activities that have taken place over the years at FPCRO. They also had a slide show that ran throughout the dinner. Each of us went home with a small memorial vase and a single rose from the arrangement of them on each table as the centerpiece.
Saturday we enjoyed time with our kids and grandkids including attending a Relay for Life in Farmington where Scott's "house band" from the School of Rock were providing entertainment. He was selected as the bass player three months ago and has many opportunities to play in various venues. It was great finally getting an opportunity to see him play "in person".
Sunday Ken sang with the choir for the very special 100th birthday worship service. His tenor friend, Jim Baldwin, had sent him all the music plus practice tapes so he could come prepared for all of the special music including a piece written by our organist, Joseph Jackson, written especially for this service. Music was also provided by a small group of instrumentalists and the bell choir. Following the service there were a wide variety of things to do including food service in three different spots.
Unfortunately we couldn't stay for that part as we immediately left for a family party at the Hannon hilltop home on Lake Erie in Huron, Ohio. Carolyn's Aunt Margie, who is 93, has lived in this beautiful old home for many many years but has reached the point where she needs to live with her daughter, Laurie, who resides in California. So this planned gathering brought together many of the family members in the area as a last chance to be together with her. Our daughter, Bethany, attended with us. Carolyn's brother was not able to come at the last minute so called after we arrived and enjoyed a long conversation with many of the attendees as the phone was passed from one person to the next starting with Margie.
Monday, Mary 19, we enjoyed a long lunch with good friends Bill and Elaine Patton. They live in Waterford which is about a half hour from here so we were able to enjoy a meal together at Wing Lauk a favorite Chinese restaurant of ours for many many years. Since this was only a couple of blocks from our former home we also took time to drive by and see how it looks. All of the landscaping we did in the front is maturing beautifully although the flowering crab tree in the center of the yard that we put in about 13 years ago looks like it may have been injured badly by the awful winter they had this year. We've noticed alot of dead or almost dead trees and bushes caused by the deep freeze and heavy snow.
On Wednesday, May 20, Carolyn attended her Ruth Circle meeting at FPCRO giving her a chance to visit with all the members of that group.
On Thursday, May 21, we were off to Pinckney to visit with our friends Steve and Libby Weber in their beautiful home on Portage Lake. They just recently returned from their winter docenting at Casa Grande in Arizona. We spent a delightful day including doing a bit of geocaching in the area to see how it is done.
The weekend was spent enjoying time again with our daughter, Bethany, her husband Dean and the their two boys Scott and Jason. We especially enjoyed some time Sunday with the boys going out to eat at their favorite spot, Leo's, and the going to see Godzilla at the Great Lakes Shopping Center. Well, all the guys went to the show and Carolyn did alot of window shopping including finding a new suit for Ken which he tried on after the show. This was the final clothing item that he needed to replace after losing almost 50 pounds in the past few months.
On Memorial Day, May 26, the Thayer family came out to spend some time with us at our camp site. Scott brought along both his bass and guitar so he and Jason could do a bit of strumming together. We set up the ladder ball game and enjoyed several games.
In an earlier post we described our lovely day on Tuesday, May 27 with Rick and Bev Ratcliffe. This covers just a little over a week of our time here but is certainly enough for this post. Mixed in by the way with all of these happenings were several doctor and dentist visits as well as a bit of necessary shopping. You can see why we've not had time to regularly put up posts on our blog. We've just been too busy!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment