Happy Birthday, Diane!

There are at least two good things about birthdays. if you're in the right situation. If you're on Facebook, you get lots of greetings from all kinds of people you may not hear from any other time.
And if you're on the Magazines staff at Standard Publishing, you get free lunch with all your other co-workers at the place of your choice.
Today was Diane Jones-Dunham's birthday, and she chose a place new to her--and me! The Rusty Bucket on Mason-Montgomery Road. I was surprised at how good it was, and how hard it was to choose what I wanted from all the interesting possibilities on the menu.
Happy birthday, Diane! Today's celebration was the perfect proof of a truth we sometimes forget: "It's more blessed to give than to receive." I've received another great idea for where to take Evelyn for lunch on Sundays or dinner anytime! (Or dessert! I had a couple bites of that cookies and cream sundae Diane got free for being the birthday girl. Let's see . . . just six more months till mine!)

Road Trip

Oh boy, I'm SLOW in recording our fun September weekends, but better slow than never, I guess.
I promised to quick rundown of our road trip to Levittown, PA September 18-22.

We had been looking forward to this trip for a long time. Why?
• Extended time with our buddies Bill and Verna Weber.
• Opportunity to see our grandson, Miles Johnson, perform with his high school marching band.
• Celebrate Miles's birthday Friday night and Saturday.
• Spend time with our whole family, Jen and Matt and Geoff and Lisa, in addition to Miles.
• Hear Matt preach and attend church at Levittown Christian Church.

And all of the above is exactly what we did.

Evelyn got home from teaching Thursday afternoon after 4:00. The Webers had arrived here some time before that (they drove here from Indy--this was a long day on the road for them), and soon after Evelyn rolled in, the four of us rolled out, on our way to PA. We chattered all the way to New Stanton, where we spent the night (after a nice dinner at--where else?--Cracker Barrel!).
We were on the road in good time Friday morning and made it to our hotel outside Newton, PA by 3:30 and to Jen's by about 5:00.

We stopped and got sandwiches and made it to the football stadium in plenty of time to get good seats for the whole evening. It was Homecoming, so we got to see floats and the king and queen and court.
But the main attraction was the marching band. (Oh yeah, the home team won the football game!)

Geoff and Lisa made the long and challenging trip to be there--Geoff drove with Frankie, and Lisa took  no planes but trains and automobiles to meet us there. I really appreciated their effort to join the party.

After the game we retreated to Jen and Matt's for wonderful birthday cake (four layers, cookies and cream cake--it was wonderful!).

The next day we met late in the morning to ride together to Philly, where Jen and Matt had picked a wonderful Chinese restaurant for a family birthday dinner to celebrate Miles's 16th birthday. We had wonderful food--just too much of it. Evelyn and I wished we had split a meal. We walked around the city--to the riverfront, to a festival--enjoying the sunshine and the company--and a stop at a favorite
tourist site to try Mr. Franklin's ice cream.
And then we crashed at Matt and Jen's place before supper.

Geoff and Lisa left for the trip home, and then the rest of us enjoyed sandwiches and salads for supper, followed by a bonfire and s'mores in their backyard. What a fun, fallish evening.

Sunday morning we enjoyed worship, including one of the best sermons preached anywhere in America that day, all about Gideon by Matt. Jen fixed a wonderful lunch (country ribs in the slow cooker!), and after lunch we went to a state (?) park for a nice long walk. Nikki enjoyed the walk and we enjoyed the scenery. For supper we went to the Johnsons' favorite Mexican restaurant, and Bill treated. (Thanks, Bill!) The evening was still young, though, so we decided a stop at their whippy-dip place (I'm writing this too long after the events; I'm forgetting the names of things!) would be the best way to end the day. Oh, it was good!

We stayed as late as we dared (Matt is an early-to-bed guy, and Miles had school the next day). Jen wanted us to hang on after the guys went to bed, but we had a long day of driving ahead of us Monday, so we said good-bye about 10:00. It was a weekend we'll always remember.

It's a long drive home from Philadelphia, but we made it in OK time (lots of bathroom stops for us oldsters, plus a nice lunch), and said farewell to Bill and Verna about 7:00 p.m., thanking them for the weekend of fellowship as they began two more hours on the road to their place in Indy.

Nice Weekend, Happy Birthday

I've always believed birthdays are one of the best reasons to be on Facebook, and this year was no exception. In a pretense of humility, I will not count up how many birthday wishes I received. It wouldn't be easy, anyway, because some commented in response to my last blog post, some commented in response to a quote about aging I posted, and some commented in response to a shameless self-promotion plug I posted the day after my birthday--all in addition to Facebook's birthday notification at the top of friends' home pages.
It IS nice to hear from folks I might not communicate with any other time, though. I'm not planning on signing off of Facebook!
Actually, this year, I got my birthday cake as a result of one of those posts (not sure which one). My big day was Sunday, and it was a busy day at church. Evelyn and I had Welcome Center duty, and I filled-in as teacher of the Seekers class at 9:00. Then I had been asked to emcee a fundraising lunch that happened in the church parlor after the last service. When the event organizers, Dave and Valerie Reed, saw it was my birthday, they stopped by Kroger on the way to church and bought me a cake so everyone could sing "Happy Birthday" during the luncheon. I loved it!
The lunch was very nice, designed to raise funds to name a room in CCU's remodeled Rine Hall after

I opened my eyes and snapped this picture during the
closing prayer at the end of our lunch Sunday.

Vic and June Hunter. June was a graduate of the school and an active supporter. Her "adopted" daughter, Marilyn Pitzer, gave a fine tribute to Vic and June and presented Dave Faust (he was there and made a nice presentation, too) with a check for $25,000 from the Hunter estate plus a personal gift from her family. It was a moving, enjoyable day. We sat with Dale and Judy McCann and Cliff and Becky Leighty, plus one of the students who accompanied the Fausts to church for the event.
I attended the 10:30 worship in the gym (I'm usually in the auditorium or the chapel) and was especially blessed by Trevor's sermon about Solomon. I plan to discuss again with our men's Bible study Thursday four words Trevor chose to characterize Solomon's life:

• Compromise
• Exception
• Meaningless
• Duty

A couple of quotes I jotted in my bulletin:

"The road to folly starts with the word except."

"When a good thing becomes a god thing, that's a bad thing."

"Do something big with your one and only life."

We stopped at Kohl's on the way home and used a coupon to buy my birthday gift, a new pair of Skechers I can wear to work on jeans Friday.
Anticipating rain on Monday, Evelyn and I mowed grass after we got home. (For the record, that's lawn mowing no. 4 this year.) Shirley Wuske wanted to come dig some hydrangea sprouts from the bushes in the front yard, so we invited them to come share my birthday cake. After grass, before the Wuskes, both of the kids called, and we enjoyed nice catch-up visits with them. We had a great time digging and eating and visiting with Terry and Shirley (they brought ice cream to go with the cake!), and by the time they left, we were ready to get ready for the week.
It was a busy day, which is why I didn't have time to write about it then.
The birthday continued Monday; Evelyn got up in the morning and baked two coffee cakes for me to take to work. And then today the Magazines people took me to lunch. I chose Jason's Deli, the restaurant Sev and Paul Friskney had introduced us to earlier this year.
So I feel fully entered into my year as a 64-year-old. It was a happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, Evelyn!

We've been celebrating Evelyn's birthday since Wednesday night when the Coopers came for dinner and brought a gift for Evelyn and a candle for the chocolate chip cookies!

This morning we met Terry and Shirley at Half Day Cafe in Wyoming for a wonderful brunch.

Bill and Verna Weber are here tonight. Verna's been attending a conference in Cincinnati, and needs to go to Louisville for the NACC meeting Monday, so she's staying the weekend. We said, "Well, Bill should come over Saturday night, too, and we'll celebrate Evelyn's birthday." We've had a wonderful evening. They took us to dinner at Raja India in West Chester, and then we came home to have birthday cheesecake (from J. Annette's in Mason) and lots of laughs as well as serious talk about faith, the past, and the future. It's been great!

Birthday Lunch, First Day Back

First day back at the office: Catching up on e-mails, making a list of everything I need to get done this week, checking the status of outstanding assignments, finishing up a couple of projects I started yesterday afternoon.
Nice surprise: I wrote a column to be posted this week, but I already have a column  scheduled to post tomorrow. So now I have next week's column written!
Today was the first day all of us would be in the office at the same time to go out for my birthday. We had lunch at First Watch (my choice), and it was wonderful.

A Wonderful Weekend

Friday was my birthday, but we decided to cut grass instead of going out for a big dinner! Afterwards we went to the Raja India restaurant in West Chester and had a wonderful meal.
Saturday morning I was up early to get the oil changed. Then I met Dave Lautzenheiser for breakfast (he treated--at First Watch) before driving to the new Natorp's Garden Center on Snider Road. They have 3-1/2 acres under roof, resplendent with perennials, rose bushes, blooming annuals, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and herbs and more, much more. We spent at least 90 minutes there oooing and ahhhing over the beautiful, bountiful displays. Checked out some bushes and trees outside too. I didn't buy anything Saturday, but I will be back!
Evelyn and I rode to Indianapolis about 2:30  to join a family-and-friends celebration of Peggy Sweeney's 60th birthday. Peggy is our daughter-in-law's mom; she and her husband, Ed, have been friends almost since the time Geoff and Lisa started dating. We've been with them on family vacations at least twice, and they hosted us at their time share in Hawaii once; and we've been with them unnumbered other times for family gatherings: recitals, weddings, and other times.

Shannon and Lisa ALMOST got
through their sweet tribute to their
mom without crying!

Lisa and her sister, Shannon, and Ed planned a surprise birthday party for Peggy and invited us and the Webers, who have become mutual friends, and Shannon's in-laws, and two dear friends of the Sweeneys from Taylor University.
We were waiting for them at a private room at the Meridian Restaurant in Indy when Geoff and Lisa ushered Ed and Peggy upstairs. I think Peggy really was surprised, which was the first delight of a wonderful evening.
 The food was remarkable. The laughter and fellowship was special. The testimonies offered by Lisa and Shannon and Ed were tender as well as funny. And all of us around the table offered tributes to Peggy. (I even wrote new words to an old tune: "P is for how pleased we are to know you; E is for your energy--you glow! G is for the giggles we've shared with you. Gee, we've had such fun together on the road. Y is for the youthful way you've lived dear: hiking, biking, boating--you have done it all. Put them all together, they spell Peg-gy. Happy birthday, we think you're a doll!")

After dinner we adjourned to Shannon and Craig's house for more visiting, coffee, and a mini birthday cake for me! (Yesterday was the third anniversary of MY 60th birthday!)

Shannon and Craig Lewis's house was the perfect place for picture-taking!

Evelyn, Peggy, and Verna catch up

Lisa, Geoff, and Bill stopped to pose in the middle of a serious conversation.

Larry and Betsy Lewis, Shannon and Craig Lewis . . . and Binkley!

The Sweeney girls, with their handsome husbands and wonderful parents.

We stayed overnight with Bill and Verna, and then the Webers and we and almost the whole party from the night before met at the church where Shannon is events coordinator: College Park Church on the north side of Indy. It was an inspiring worship service, wonderful in every way.

Shannon gave us a tour of the large building, and then the Sweeneys, Shannon and Craig, Geoff and Lisa, and we drove to Taylor Creamery for a superb brunch. The restaurant is tucked into one corner of a huge, working farm. The food is organic and fresh. The time together was as special as the whole weekend had been. Lisa showed me some tricks for using my new camera. 

Two fine and fine-looking people!

We stopped by the little dairy store that's a part of the complex, and then stood in the parking lot and visited for another 30 minutes probably. We were on our way home by 2:00 and arrived here by about 4:00. Just the right amount of time to rest a bit, gear up for the week ahead, and have a nice, long phone visit with Jennifer. We ate popcorn and split my mini birthday cake while we watched an On Demand episode of "Elementary."

Happy Birthday, Wuske Men!

Our dinner table was pretty in pink this evening for a birthday celebration for Terry and Brandon Wuske, whose big day was actually Tuesday this week. "Terry doesn't want a party," Shirley had told us, even this year's birthday was a BIG one for him. So we decided we'd at least have a nice dinner, which we did.
Evelyn made barbecued beef brisket, cole slaw, and green beans. I had found a new recipe for macaroni and cheese, which Evelyn helped me cook this afternoon. (We wanted some hearty choices, since Brandon is eating vegetarian now.)
A chocolate birthday cake from Kroger's ("Happy Birthday Wuske Men") completed the meal. We had a nice time laughing and talking together.
Evelyn and I started the day quietly, drinking coffee and reading newspapers. I went to the store (it was quiet, too, on a Friday morning!), we took our walk, and I piddled around outside a little. I even had time to doze a little in the armchair this afternoon before a few last-minute duties to finish getting ready for dinner.
We had a beautiful sunny day, with temperatures topping out above 50 degrees, and tomorrow's supposed to be the same. Evelyn's decided we're cutting grass!

Happy Birthday, Evelyn . . .

Yesterday was Evelyn's birthday, and she celebrated by NOT driving to her office at CCU. Thursday and Friday were fall break for students, and Evelyn decided to grade papers at home those two days (plus tomorrow) and save herself the commute.

Appetizers

She met me for lunch at Servatti's on Montgomery Road, and then we went across the street for her to use her birthday 20% off coupon at Stein Mart (a perk of being a Stein Mart preferred shopper).
We had thought about going out to eat that evening, but an invitation from Bill and Verna Weber trumped that idea. We had a nice time visiting and laughing and catching up with them, and Verna cooked a wonderful dinner.
I said I'd bring the cake and ice cream, but Evelyn and I liked the look of the pies better than the cakes at Servattii's. (Well, actually, the cakes looked beautiful there, but they were all very large; they would have fed 16, and there were only four of us.) So we had birthday pie (apple) and ice cream to celebrate Evelyn's big day, complete with cinnamon and/or vanilla ice cream from Graeter's. It was a low-key but a very enjoyable celebration.

Main course

Birthday pie for dessert

Today I was at a meeting at the church all morning, Evelyn was at a baby shower in the afternoon, and then the two of us were with a church group for dinner this evening. The church is on the brink of some exciting new days in the future, and I'm looking forward to seeing how God will work among us in the coming months and years.

Happy birthday, Susan!

Evelyn made this pretty package for Susan's birthday party tomorrow.

Evelyn and I are off for Ashland, Kentucky, to visit with her brother and his wife, Susan, who is celebrating her 60th birthday. Well, I guess she's celebrating it. She should, because her husband and his sister and his sister's husband all passed this milestone some time ago. "Sixty sounds pretty young to me!" Evelyn said.
Happy birthday, Susan! Welcome to the club! Sixty is the new 50, you know, and you've got a lot of life left to live.
We're looking forward to a great time at their comfortable home. It's a party!

The . . . SMELL . . . of Love

What does love smell like?
Well, in the case of my daughter's love for me on my birthday this year, there are two decidedly different answers.
The first is the sweet smell of Paul Sebastian after shave, cologne, and deodorant.
The other is manure tea. Yep, that's right, you can actually buy concentrated manure (she chose horse, but cow is available) in little brown bags that you soak in water for 3-5-days. This isn't any old crappy fertilizer, mind you. This comes from livestock raised "on native grass pastures, . . . free of hormone added grains, antibiotics, and pesticides." This is ORGANIC horse poop. Just wait till you see the pictures of my flowers later this summer!

As I planned, I took donuts to work today (3 dozen; one lonely sugar twist was left when I checked before coming home at 5:30), and the magazines staffs took me to lunch for my birthday. I chose Abuelo's, and it was a wonderful meal and an enjoyable time together.
Jennifer arrived at our house a little after 6:30. She flies to Jacksonville tomorrow for a meeting on Wednesday, and then back here for wedding errands and fun Thursday through Saturday. Then on to Indianapolis Sunday to attend the Christian Missionary Fellowship board meeting.

Evelyn made pasta bean soup for supper, and for dessert we had chocolate pound cake with strawberries and whipped cream leftover from my birthday.
Now, with the wrapping off the presents Jennifer brought me, my birthday is officially over!
Today at work was typical of many: some unanticipated tasks completed, some of today's goals unfinished. I have high hopes for tomorrow, though!

All Weekend Long

Maribeth Pippenger, a longtime friend who lives in Kansas now (she and her husband, Milt, were in a small group that was important to us in Longmont, Colorado, 37 or so years ago), wrote one of my favorite Facebook birthday greetings:


A very happy birthday to you, Mark. All day. All weekend. Spread the celebration over several days and let us enjoy them with you on your blog!


In a way I've followed her advice. Evelyn and I ate brunch at First Watch Cafe this morning after church. I signed up for their e-mail promotions some time ago, and one of the perks is a coupon for a free meal on your birthday. Today was the day to redeem the coupon!


The rest of the day was typical Sunday. Sang with the worship team at the Blended Service at 9:30. After lunch, came home to do some desk work (read two proofs and wrote a draft for one editorial) before going to the grocery store and then getting the lawn mowed before Sixty Minutes and supper.


But I decided to use today to repeat and reflect a bit on some of my favorite Facebook birthday greetings. 

The cake pictured here was one of them, included in a greeting from the other side of the world.


Two of my favorite greetings:

I love working with you, I love laughing with you, and I love being your daughter!

Happy Birthday to the best father-in-law a girl could ask for. You make us smile, you encourage us with your kind words, you delight in your family and we feel your love.

A couple that are encouraging as I think about my work:

I'm so indebted to you for helping me do some writing. Thank you for all you do to advance the kingdom of God.

Thanks for committing your life to the church.

Keep up the great job at Christian Standard.

Some of the greetings caused me to stop and take stock of my life:

I know this is a great period of time in your life and I hope you enjoy each moment!

May this be the best year of your life!

May this be the most productive year of your life!

And one poster, a friend who was in the youth group at Central Christian Church in Waukegan, Illinois same time as me in the late sixties, wrote this:

Many happy returns on the day of your birth. May sunshine and gladness be given. May God, in His mercy, prepare you on earth for your beautiful birthday in Heaven. Remember saying this in the pre-Sunday School service at Central?

Yes, indeed I do remember the whole church reciting the verse as those with birthdays that week went forward and deposited their offering in a little plastic bank during each week's Sunday school opening assembly. Wow, I wonder if anyone reading this goes to a church where they still do that!

My birthday celebration will extend one more day. The people in the magazines group at Standard are taking me to lunch tomorrow. I'll bring donuts to share with the whole office. And Jennifer's coming to town on work business and wedding business, and she wrote to say she's bringing me a present! We're saving some birthday cake to eat with her. And THAT will be the last day of my four-day birthday. 

Good Friends, Good Day

It's late, and I'm tired after a long day with good friends.

This morning we were at Terry and Shirley Wuske's place  by 9:00 to help them with their move. They decided not to move furniture today, since rain was predicted. (A good decision. It POURED, off and on, all morning and afternoon.) But the kitchen had not yet been packed. So we packed dishes and gadgets and silverware and the pantry into boxes that we drove a few doors down the street and then unloaded and unpacked and put away into drawers and cabinets at their new home. A friend brought pizza for them and their helpers at 1:00, and we were there till about 3:00.

Then we hurried home to get ready to go to dinner at Sev and Paul Friskney's place; Bill and Verna Weber were there too. 

Wonderful food. Lots and lots of laughter. A relaxing and memorable evening with good people. Evelyn had baked a chocolate pound cake, and she served it with strawberries and whipped cream after everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to me. It's nice when a birthday doesn't end in one day!

I snapped this picture of the Friskneys, Evelyn, and the Webers before we ate dinner.
 The smiles continued all evening.

Happy Birthday to Me . . .

I decided to take off work on my birthday . . . to work in the yard!
That's not all I did. I woke up at the regular time, read through the newspaper with a cup of coffee (a luxury sometimes enjoyed on Saturday), checked Facebook, ate a cup of yogurt and watched a little of the  Today show, checked Facebook some more (those birthday greetings on Facebook are great, aren't they?).
Finally got outside a little before 9:00. It was cold! I was bundled up like Nanook of the North. Tried out  my new handy-dandy Stihl edger, tried it out for more than an hour, that is. The grass growing over the edge of the sidewalk was a thicket, all up and down our driveway and along our front sidewalk. But the new edger slashed through it all, leaving piles of grass to sweep up. The clean-up took as long as the edging. My handy-dandy blower isn't nearly as handy. After 2 or 3 stints of yanking the start-up cord maybe a dozen times, it finally started, and I was able to blow away the dust and small pieces of grass after having filled half a garbage can with the big stuff. I was ready for a break--and getting hungry at 11:00, so I came in and fixed myself some scrambled eggs and toast and coffee and checked Facebook some more while I ate it. Then I settled into that easy chair in the living room . . . and fell asleep for a few minutes.
About 1:00 I was back outside, digging weeds around trees and bushes in the back yard. It doesn't sound like much, but there were a LOT of weeds in those beds, and I found a couple of perennials that needed to be moved. So I was still at it about 4:30 when Evelyn got home from work.
Hopped in the shower so we could leave for our special birthday dinner at Ember's, a wonderful restaurant in Kenwood. I had a Groupon I was saving for a special occasion, and we decided this was it.
Ember's specializes in steaks, and I had the pan-seared 6-ounce filet mignon--tasty with mushrooms and onions and gnocchi. Evelyn had the sea bass, over pasta with artichokes and tomatoes. I had a taste, and it was yummy; my steak melted in my mouth, really. We split the Asian egg rolls and the chopped salad, and the restaurant comped us dessert since it was my birthday. Every bite of the whole meal was great.

The waitress snapped our picture when the creme brulee came. That's an "Embers" cookie resting on top of it.

After that we stopped by Old Navy to use a 20%-off coupon we had found on Facebook, then to Macy's where I picked out an immersion blender that Evelyn said she'd give me for my birthday. Then, the major accomplishment of the evening--a swing through Dillard's resulting in TWO mother-of-the-bride dress possibilities in our proud possession. Either of them of are much cuter than the first choice.
Evelyn's going to try them on for Jennifer when she's in town next week.
Not a typical birthday, but all in all, a very pleasant one!

My Birthday Is Tomorrow . . .

My birthday is tomorrow, but the Facebook greetings have already started coming. Isn't it fun? I said last year one of the best things about Facebook is getting all those birthday wishes from people I wouldn't hear from any other way.
I guessing, however, that no greeting--or card, or gift--will make me smile as much as the post on my timeline from our "adopted" daughter, Wendy Wagoner. She's serving with CMF in Tanzania, and she just finished language school in another part of the country. A friend met here there, and they went to see the gorillas in Rwanda before making the trek across the Serengeti back to her home in Arusha. She has some remarkable pictures on her Facebook page, and she chose one of them just for me . . .

The greeting? "Happy birthday from me, Milo (her dog), and Murphy!" Wendy asked me if I wanted a gorilla for my birthday. I told her it would probably cost too much to ship. The picture is the next best thing, though, and one genuine smile in the day.

Serendipity, Stott, and Sheryl

I mentioned yesterday that I was preparing for the men's small group I was to lead this morning. I was deciding whether to use the study questions in the guide written by John Stott or to go with the questions in the margin of my Serendipity New Testament for Groups. Well, I decided to use some from both.
We read and discussed Romans 10. Of the Jews, Paul said, "I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge" (v. 2). A question prompting quite a bit of discussion was, "How can zeal for God sometimes get in the way of knowing him?"

"It's all about our relationship with him," Tom said. And I spoke about the tension I've often felt to establish the right balance between being and doing. Too often the focus has been on actions when character is the most important issue. We all could think of Christians so preoccupied with doing good things and so pleased with those good deeds that they think more about themselves than the Lord.

Later, we read aloud verses 14, 15:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"

Stott's commentary on the text is rich:

The essence of Paul's argument is seen if we put his six verbs in opposite order: Christ sends heralds, heralds preach, people hear, hearers believe, believers call, and those who call are saved. And the relentless logic of Paul's case for evangelism is felt most forcibly when the stages are stated negatively and each is seen to be essential to the next. 

One reason I'm posting these diary entries is to look back later and remember what I've done and thought. Will I be able to say, maybe a year from now, that someone has called on the Lord because I took him or her the good news?

Today was a birthday celebration at work. My colleagues in the Magazines Department at Standard Publishing celebrated with Sheryl Overstreet, assistant editor at The Lookout, whose big day is actually Saturday. She chose Cracker Barrel for the get-together, and we had a great time. I was looking forward to the biscuits all morning!

Shawn McMullen, me, Diane Jones, Sheryl, Mike Helm,
and Jim Nieman ready to enjoy the Cracker Barrel feast.