Things have been rather heavy around here lately, I thought it’d be good to write about some little things that happened recently that I’ve overlooked.
My middle daughter turned 7 on the 5th. She got her Schaefer tradition of breakfast in bed, which for a 7 year old is really cool. We also gave her a chioce of us buying her gifts or spendign the money on a party for her friends. She of chose the party and had an absolute blast. It was a princess theme; they made princes hats (which look like fancy decorated dunce caps!), played ‘braid the princess hair’ (using plates with princess faces and golden yarn hair hung on the wall) and played kiss the frog. That’s basically pin the tail on the donkey ecept that the donkey is a frog (with crown) and the girls put on bright red lipstick and had to kiss the frog poster blindfolded. Closest lip prints wins.
Emily is so energetic and social, she was in cloud nine after the party. She just loves life and lives it with more gusto than most.

Well, we’re back and we had a great trip. Our friends are doing well, staying in his parents basement for now while they get their house ready and wait on their stuff to be delivered. We stayed there too. His parents were generous enough to go stay in their camper in the barn while we had their room and the kids got the spare room.
The part of Wisconsin that they live in is beautiful. It was cloudy most of the time and drizzly, but not too cold. His parents have about 80 acres. The house, two barns, garage and a couple other small buildings are all in one corner of the property. The field that he farms is about 150 feet up a steep, rocky hill. Byron, our girls and I climbed the hill to the field and walked through the woods to the rock overlook to look down on the house on Thursday morning. That afternoon we went 6 miles down to their place and took a tour of their 103 acres by ‘Mule’. By ‘Mule’ I mean a small 4WD Kawasaki mini truck. The women and all the girls rode in back and he and I up front. Their place is more rolling hills, with the farm land in 7 different fields separated by steeper or wooded areas. They have just the house and a 2 1/2 car garage and a barn that has fallen down. Their house is small but cute 2 bedroom with arches in the doorways and an unfinished walk up attic that will become their master bedroom someday.
That night at dinner we noticed that Emily had a tick on her chin, probably from the woods at his parents place. We were in a nearby town and his brother’s vet clinic was nearby so we stopped in after dinner and had him check it. Ended up that Emily had 4, one on the chin, two behind her ear and one in her hair. Jessica had two, one in her belly button and one we found later in her arm pit. Jessie was ‘freaked out’ (her words) but Emily wasn’t phased at all. My friend found one later too. Only Audrey and I came out of the woods clean.
On Friday we went to this place called House on the Rock. It started as a get away house in the country that a guy built on the top of this rock that stuck up out of the ground. He built it to get away and study art. It’s grown into this museum that includes a tour of the strange house that uses the actual rock for some of it’s walls and then his eccentric collection of various items, doll houses, circus models and lots of other stuff. The house includes a glass walled ‘infinity room’ (see the picture) that is cantilevered 218 feet over the valley. You can look straight down through a glass ‘table’ at he end. It was kind of spooky as you can feel the thing move around a lot as you walk out there. He and I were pretty uneasy about it (it moves a lot) while the women and the girls just went on out. A central theme to the museum is the guy’s fascination with using air, like the bellows of a player piano, to make musical instruments play. There must have been a dozen of those playing every kind of musical instrument. Some have been converted to CD’s and they just look like their playing, others actually work. The one’s that work don’t sound real good. There was also a neat collection of old music players, most from the 1800’s. There were several that played huge discs, 2-3 feet in diameter for a single song. They also have the worlds largest carousel, but you can’t ride it or even walk around it. It’s a real strange (and large) collection of stuff. From there the women went in to Madison to scrapbook while he and I took the kids home. He took me by some enourmous power generating windmills near there on the way which was cool. The afternoon was pretty nice and the kids spent most of it on the trampoline.
We spent Saturday around the house relaxing. The girls had fun with his brother’s kids playing around the farm. They have cows and a couple of horses there. Jessie (my 9 year old) really wanted to ride, but they didn’t think the horse was tame enough. They also had two new calves and a real young horse (all less than a week old). Jessie learned to drive the go cart, amazingly enough. She did pretty good, with me sitting next to her, and wanted to take everyone for rides. We took another ride around their place in the Mule so he could collect soil samples to get analyzed.
Sunday morning after church in Madison we had butter burgers, fried cheese curds and custard and it was off for Ohio. All in all, a rather mundane and unremarkable collection of activities for the most part, it was the company that made it fun. We really miss those guys. It’s great to have a relationship that can make riding in a cramped, open truck on a cold, damp day collecting soil samples fun. We’re looking forward to going back.

My oldest daughter, Jessica, turns 9 today. A double whammy week to make me feel old, 11 years of marraige and 9 years of parenthood.
She got this big, posterboard birthday card from her class. On the right hand side were comments from the kids completing the sentence “Jessica is a good friend because …” This is some of what they wrote:

She shares.
She helps people.
Shows others how she wants to be treated.
Nice.
Compassionate.
Listens well.
Cheers people up.
Willing to play with anyone.
Respectful.
Shows honesty.

All the A’s in the world can’t top a report from school like that, as far as I’m concerned. She’s excelling in the things that are most important to God, that is, how we treat each other. I’ve in fact noticed these things my self at home in how she treats her sisters, especially the youngest. Way to go Jessie, I’m proud of you.

Today is mine and my wife’s 11th anniversary. We had plans tonight for a dinner out with no kids, but alas, Maria has a sinus infection and 2 of the three kids are sick. Oh well.
It’s hard to understand where 11 years have gone. It’s been a wild journey through 2 states, 10 jobs between us, 4 apartments and a house (plus a brief stint in my sisters basement), 6 cats, 3 kids, 8 cars/vans, 2 swing sets, lots of joys and a few sorrows. Looking back, it’s also a bit amazing that in a short 9 months of 1992 I was able to decide that Maria was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It seems like such a short time to make such a monumental decision. Even more amazing is how right I was, more right than I could have imagined at the time. I was absolutely certain at the time that she was the right one, and knew she was amazing, but looking back I really had no idea the blessing she would turn out to be. I truly stand in awe of God, who answered my prayers of that year for a wife by giving me the perfect mate. She has turned out to be more than I asked for or imagined (and I thought I had asked for and imagined a lot!).
She’s an amazing woman with amazing passion and drive. Her ability to take on 4 times as much as I would try and get most of it done still amazes me. She keeps me on track, constantly reminding me of things I’ve forgotten and pushing me at times to reach higher rather than lower. My life would be absolutely empty and bland without her. She’s just another example of God’s graciousness to me that I would get her. (I’m not sure what it says about God’s graciousness to her!) I love you, honey, and happy anniversary.