New York with the Fam

Evelyn and I drove just past Harrisburg, PA last night and stayed overnight before driving the rest of the way into the city today. I had never taken the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan, nor driven in Manhattan before. But Geoff gave me perfect step-by-step, turn-by-turn directions, and, actually it was a breeze. The traffic on 40th Street across to Third Avenue was stop-and-go most of the way, but we weren't in a hurry, and it gave us time to soak up the city atmosphere and make sure we were in the right spot.

I  snapped this picture out my windshield stopped at Broadway and 40th Street.

We got checked into our hotel in Long Island City in time to change clothes and walk the few blocks down to Geoff and Lisa's apartment. Matt and the kids were already there, and after awhile, we walked to the subway to meet Lisa and Jen in the city (Lisa was at work, and Jen met with Orchard Group yesterday and today.) We took the subway to Central Park where Lisa managed a family photo shoot. That had been Evelyn's request--a picture of all of us since we were all going to be together. Two of Lisa and Geoff's good friends met us at the park and actually snapped the pictures of all 8 of us, using Lisa's camera. And Lisa took pictures of the smaller groups herself. We took pictures in at least three different locations, and we're looking forward to Lisa's Photoshop work to turn them into masterpieces!

 

Then we subwayed to the location for our celebration dinner. The occasion was our 40th wedding anniversary. The kids had picked out a wonderful restaurant, The Harrison, where we enjoyed a long, relaxing, wonderful dinner. Lots of laughter, great food, a very fine time. And our dessert came with a special greeting from the chef.

We walked the Highline after that and returned to Geoff and Lisa's apartment full of memories of a wonderful family celebration.

A Busy Weekend

Yesterday I wrote about Friday and Saturday: three (plus ) hours to Ashland, Kentucky Friday night, car shopping and nice visits and then three more hours home (about 30 minutes of it in a driving rain) Saturday night. We walked in the door after 10:00.
Sunday I was up by 6:30 or so in order to get to church early for the 8:30 chapel service where I was hosting. I also hosted at 10:30, which meant I was at church till after 11:30. (I ran to get gas and pick up a few things at the grocery store at 9:30!)
We at Jimmy Johns vegetarian sandwiches for lunch and were back in the car by 1:20 to drive to Grove City, Ohio, where one of Evelyn's former students and D-group members was getting married.
We were there by 3:00, and it started raining about 3:03. It rained till almost 3:30, when the wedding (set up in the courtyard beside the banquet room at the golf club) was supposed to start.
The groomsmen scurried and dried all the chairs, and we were seated. We had been waiting outside, and I don't remember ever feeling hotter. The rain just made the humidity all the more oppressive, and the temperature was high. I was SO glad when the short ceremony was finished and we could get inside to the air conditioning.
We found a few CCU people Evelyn knows to visit with during the "cocktail hour" and found our seats in the beautiful ballroom sometime after 5:00. We stayed till almost 7:30, but we still made it home not long after 9:00 p.m.
It was a long weekend, with very little time at home. But we have some nice memories.
We're getting ready to drive to New York Thursday afternoon and Friday morning for our long weekend with all the kids. We talked with Geoff tonight to nail down possibilities. It will be nice!

Evelyn posed with Jimmy and Monica, the bride and groom, and Lynn, all former students.
We had a nice time visiting with Lynn and saying hi to several other former D-group members
who were in the wedding party.

New Wheels

I asked Evelyn's brother, Ken, to snap or picture Saturday beside the new (to us) used car we bought that morning. Ken has a friend in the Russell church who has a small used car lot in Ashland, KY, where they live. "I'll never buy another new car again," Ken said, because his friend, John McKinney, at River Cities Motors, buys reliable cars at excellent prices at the car auction and passes along the savings on good vehicles to his customers.
We think we got a good one, a 2012 Hyundai Sonata GLS with only 35,600 miles, 25,000 miles remaining of factory warranty and an excellent price.
I told John we might be sending some friends to Cincinnati his way. It would be worth the drive!
We drove to Ken and Susan's Friday night after my work. Got stuck in traffic behind a wreck on I-275, which added about 30 or more minutes to the trip. We drove through Wendy's for chicken nuggets and got to their house just after 8:30.  Susan had made a tasty dessert-bar-cake, sweet and tasty under mounds of wild blackberries they had just picked.
Susan made us a wonderful breakfast casserole the next morning, and then we went and visited the car dealership. It was great fun getting to know Ken's friend John.
We rested and visited in the afternoon before eating at a wonderful little Italian restaurant in a magnificent old building in downtown Ironton, Ohio. We left there about 7:30 and were home before 10:30.

It Was Wonderful!

This will be one of those "make-up" diary entries I mentioned yesterday. Let me be one of the last writers in the blogosphere to add my reflections about the North American Christian Convention last week in Louisville.
In a word, it was wonderful. I suppose if I were to add a second word it would be exhausting. By the time we were driving home Friday afternoon about 3:00, I was completely spent. Evelyn drove, and I napped.
Highlights for me:

• Getting to interview almost a dozen of the convention's main session speakers and special guests, including Wayne Cordeiro, Eric Metaxas, Ken Davis, and, most memorable, Joni Eareckson Tada. They were universally gracious, with meaningful challenges for me personally and every Christian. The interviews will be posted, one or two at a time, over the next couple of weeks at ChristianStandard.com.

Eric Metaxas was passionate and personal.

Wayne Cordeiro was warm and wise.

• Working with Tim Antkowiak of Southland Christian Church, who did all the videotaping of the interviews. Tim went above and beyond what we asked him to do: brought in a green screen so he could insert unique backgrounds behind the interviewer and his subject; created a lead-in tape with background music; edited the feed from two cameras into one smooth program. He told me he's spending about 3 hours of editing for each 10-15 minute interview. And he couldn't have been more pleasant or flexible or dependable during the convention itself.
• Bunking with Miles and Jennifer (as well as Evelyn!) in the Marriott for the week. It was a special joy to see Miles enjoying the convention, meeting Jennifer's friends, and showing his potential as a young Christian man. And he's fun! 
• Hearing Sam Stone choke up when he got to the end of his speech at the Cincinnati Christian University banquet, on the line, "There's no one I would more like to see receive the Legacy in Leadership Award than Mark and Evelyn Taylor." There are so many years and experiences and shared memories contained in that moment.

Sam and Gwen posed with Evelyn and me after the CCU banquet.

• In spite of the busy schedules, enjoying special times with relatives, coworkers, and friends at several special meals. I'm thinking in particular of our Tuesday-night meal with the Aulen clan, my Tuesday-night dessert with Paul Williams, and our Friday-afternoon lunch celebration hosted by Robb Faust for all of us who had helped him pull off the Standard display. 
• The sermons! As I wrote at the Christian Standard website, the preaching moved me more this year than any year I can remember. You really should go to the NACC website and listen to several of them. My favorites: Matt Proctor, Aaron Brockett, Randy Harris, Rick Atchley, Joni Eareckson Tada. (And the other two were outstanding, too! Listen to all of 'em!)

It's My Diary. I'll Be Gross if I Want to!

"You're going to POST that picture?"
Evelyn was somewhere between disdain and shock when I showed this to her. But, hey, it's my diary, and next year or 10 years from now I want to remember this--in all its grossness.

The shingles are scabbing over. I wear a shirt with a collar during the day to hide the most of it. But I'm not shaving, and my best efforts to look preppy are wearing thin.
We're a week and a day into this process. I'm hoping the medicine truly will speed this up (I've heard stories of suffering from 4 weeks to as long as 6 months!).
They really don't itch and chafe too much--mainly because clothes are not rubbing against most of them. There's a dull ache that comes and goes. I seem to be able to stave it off with ibuprofen. It LOOKS worse than it FEELS most of the time.
I think my testimony has moved more than one person to investigate the shingles vaccine. I say, "Go for it!"
We're in the midst of a massive heat wave here. Along with all my other "this could be worse" scenarios is this one: I'm glad I'm not laying asphalt or stringing telephone wire for a living. Of course, in that case, I probably would have called in sick and stayed home in the cool. I've been working up a sweat the last couple of evenings just hauling water for my patio pots. Thirty minutes of mild exercise creates the need for a clean T-shirt.
I need to do some retroactive diary entries. I have pictures to post and commentary in mind. I hope to get to it soon.

A Life Well Lived

We went to the memorial service for Verna Weber's mother, Mildred Holmes, this morning at 11:00. She passed away quietly earlier this week after being moved from the hospital to hospice care at Mason Christian Village on Monday. She had been sick all that weekend after suffering a small heart attack, stroke, and two different infections. "It took all that to finally get her down," her granddaughter, Miki Brooks said. Miki and her brother, Donovan, sang "Amazing Grace," and Bill Weber offered the eulogy. He was concerned that he wouldn't be able to get through it without breaking down, but he did a fine job. When his voice momentarily broke or his eyes watered, we all thought, Well of course! How could you not show some emotion about a person you loved so much? 
Mildred had just celebrated her 97th birthday. Her life story is too varied and full of adventure for me even to remember, let alone try to chronicle here. She overcame illness, obstacles, the deaths of husbands and children, and more with a firm commitment to Christ and the church in the midst of a lifetime of service. "Plucky." "Spunky." "Determined." All those words describe her.
It was our special pleasure to know her. We were in the habit of getting together with the Webers for various holidays, and often Mildred was with us. Sometimes we picked her up at her apartment at Mason Christian Village and took her to the party at the Webers' place in Price Hill. Sometimes some of the Webers brought her to our place.
Donovan and his wife, Jocelyn, asked Jennifer if she would write a history of Mildred's life and compile it in a book to give to the rest of the family several Christmases ago. The result contains all those details I can't remember. In the process of spending hours and hours with her taking notes for the project, Jennifer fell in love with Mildred, and it seemed the feeling was mutual.
In his talk this morning, Bill said his sister-in-law, Mildred's daughter-in-law, said, "All our memories of her are good and positive and happy."
That's not hard for me to believe. And one more legacy Mildred has left is the challenge to each of us to live so that those closest to us will say the same about us when we're gone.
Today's pictures are two I posted last December (search "Mildred Holmes" in the blog for the diary entries). The first is on Christmas Day as the Webers were getting ready to go home after our Christmas dinner and I snapped Mildred smiling with great granddaughters Nora and Ruby.
The second was taken a few days later when Jennifer was in town for the holiday and went to visit with Mildred at Mason Christian Village.

Friday with Friends

Yesterday I said good-bye to one friend and spent good time together with a couple of others.
I sold our Camry to Jim Nieman who bought it for his son, Craig, to drive to college. The car has served us well for 169,964 miles, and I think it will make the perfect auto for Craig's needs the next 2 or 3 years.

 Evelyn and I will drive her Corolla to Louisville for the NACC, and then we hope to go to Ashland and buy a car from a dealer there recommended to us by Evelyn's brother, Ken. Hopefully, we'll be making a new fuel-injected friend in about a week!

Last night we met Milt and Maribeth Pippenger for dinner at the Golden Lamb in Lebanon. They've been camping there this weekend on their way to the NACC in Louisville. We spent the day with them on the Fourth, and they're visiting with Dale and Judy McCann today. We plan to meet 'em at church tomorrow and all share lunch together.
After dinner (a very fine dinner), we followed them to the campsite and sat in their roomy fifth-wheel motor home and visited till 10 o'clock. We decided Thursday that it's been about a year and half since I had seen them and even longer since the four of us had been together.
We first met Milt and Maribeth in 1976--39 years ago!--when we stayed in their home while interviewing for the Christian education minister position at First Christian Church in Longmont. We became close to them there in a Bible study/prayer group that was a great support as each of us comtemplated major career moves--Milt to a teaching position at San Jose Bible College and I to the editorship of The Lookout at Standard Publishing. It's a great treasure to have lifetime friends like these.

A Quiet Fourth

No, I didn't take this picture. But it does remind me of the fireworks we saw this year--from behind the house across the street from us. A family over there shoots off a remarkable fireworks display almost every year. We don't always know when it will be, and sometimes we miss it. But last night Evelyn and I heard the thump-thump-thump of the explosions clear downstairs where we were watching TV. We came up to see if this was THE night, and it was.
The display went on for almost 30 minutes, and honestly, the fireworks were almost as grand as you see in a professional display. We sat on the front porch step and watched before Evelyn came in to go to bed and I went back downstairs where I was uploading vacation pictures to Facebook. I'm slowly sorting out those that seem good enough to share, place by place.
But I didn't get any more uploaded today. Our longtime friends, Milt and Maribeth Pippenger, came to see us about 11:00 this morning and stayed till about 10:00 tonight. We had a fine time catching up with them, sharing updates from our families, and eating two wonderful meals Evelyn prepared. She fixed her favorite Amish breakfast casserole for brunch and a new recipe, prosciutto-wrapped chicken breasts, for supper.
It rained the WHOLE day, alternating between showers and downpours. I was glad we had planned a quiet day at home. I know hundreds of outings were cancelled or dampened by the daylong deluge.
It did finally quit after supper. So we decided to get out of the house and onto our feet and take a walk to the nearby park. Then we came home, finished looking at some vacation pictures (their idea, not mine), and had dessert: Graeter's ice cream and chocolate chip cookies ( a new recipe Evelyn had found with less fat and sugar and more fiber; in spite of being "healthier," they're really quite good--especially with Graeter's ice cream!).