Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Crew
From the back moveing forward: Kameron with his back to us, Dianne, Captain Herb, and daddy-daughter. What a morning and day we had . . .
Uncle Paul with stop on Coast to Coast Journey
About a month ago we received a call from my brother that lives in the Seattle area . . . Uncle Paul ! ! ! what a nice surprise to let us know he was planning a stop in the U.P. on the way to Washington D.C. for this coming weekend, 8/28 gig at the Kennedy Center and Lincoln Memorial, a get together someone might have heard of . . . Even though we only had them for a day, we packed in an early morning fishing trip to Gratiot Lake, Michigan ending with dinner and a picture show displayed on the TV . . . do you remember when your parents would whip out the slide projector and put up the screen and look at family shots during a slide show? Technology makes the family night of laughing and looking at funny family pictures less of what would seem like an hour and a half workout wrestling with the projector and screen, hasn't it? HDMI plug in to the lap-top and seconds later it's where's the popcorn dude? So awesome to have Uncle Paul and Dianne here as company in our home. We don't have Packham/May Family visitors very often, and when we do it is so fun . . . always . . . a lot of laughing, reminiscing, and story after story . . . man I love that . . . I miss that . . . I need that . . . Having 13 brothers & sisters with no-one farther east than Ft. Collins, Colorado. Not just east of the Mississippi, but east of the Continental Divide for crying out loud. Though isolated from the family, I wouldn't trade my 5 acres for anything in the world . . . well maybe a mile down the road right on Lake Superior, but that's about the only "anything in the world" I would go for . . . I love it here . . . we love it here, and my wife has an awesome family here in the U.P. and Minnesota that is super cool and that I have a ton of fun with. If fact in the morning we are heading to the Twin Cities to visit Margie Jo's grand-parents. Nothing like the kids hanging with great-grandparents. Breanna has always been painfully bashful until she knows you, and with her great-grandmother she has always just gone right up and sit next to her as if they have been friends for eternities . . . it's kind of touching actually, it fact within the blog I believe there is a picture of Annie sitting next to Great-Grandma playing with the beads. Lots-n-lots of beads.
Don't you hate that feeling inside when you say good-bye to someone you love and want to stay . . . but they can't and have to leave . . . it feels so . . .
I heard a talk once that said our memories are all that we will have; that our memories, our total accumulation of what we have done which turns us into who we are will be all that remains in the end . . . man I love the memories of great family visits . . . making memories that I know will endure forever . . .
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Northern Lights 8/3/2010
When I heard that we had the possibility of experiencing the Northern Lights up here, I set my phone alarm to go off just after the sun went down. We all gathered as a family in the living room where our windows have a northern exposure and this picture that I copied on-line is precisely what we saw from our window. Unfortunately, we don't live right on Lake Superior, but a mile or so from it, so we had our tree line as a horizon instead of an un-obstructed horizon. Still the same, it was amazing, and we enjoyed watching the light show as a family.