Celebration Complete and Fulfilling

I hardly remember where I left off.....Oh yes, we were leaving for Shipshewana. We are home once again........well, we aren't home yet, we came directly to our daughter, Lauri's. Tomorrow is her 40th birthday....since we are busy tomorrow with our niece's baby shower, we came to celebrate tonight. I bought two wonderful looking pies from Das Esenhaus in lieu of a birthday cake. I called Lauri for her choice and bought both the raspberry creme and strawberry she suggested. They are cooling in the refrigerator now and both Ken and I are salivating as we have seen them. Actually, my friend Cindy introduced me to the raspberry creme and it is delightful. It kind of reminds of the Turkish Delight with which the White Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia wooed Edmund into trouble. After weighing in at the doctor on
Thursday, I feel like eating a piece of pie would be as detrimental as the Turkish Delight was to Edmund. Oh well, Lauri's fortieth only comes once a lifetime. The pie will serve as my dinner tonight. It's so easy to be lead into temptation.......

We celebrated our 45th anniversary in real style. We enjoyed the wonderful concert by Dino last evening. His piano talents truly are inspired with his faith in God and his entertaining gifts are unusually delightful. We spent the night in a spacious and super neat bed and breakfast. There was another couple approximately our age that were staying there as well. We didn't meet them until they returned from the same concert we attended. Our new friends and we sat up until after midnight sharing our lives. We found them to be people of faith and easy to share heart with. They are from Celina, Ohio, are parents of four grown sons and eight grandchildren. We concluded our bed and breakfast stay by sharing our breakfast together. We stayed until we had to be out at ten o'clock. Before we parted, it was decided to meet at the same place on the same days next year. The reconnection is planned. As we stood at the car, each of us commented on the common things we have experienced. Margie said our meeting was a "God thing". Nothing is so fulfilling to me than building relationship.

We also had opportunity to reconnect with two sets of friends that live in the area. One of those couples we met on a trip to Korea over twenty five years ago and we have kept in contact all these years. We count them as good and true friends. Another couple are our Amish friends. When we arrived at their home, the parents were not home but two of their adult daughters were. We visited with them for awhile and then left promising we would return when their parents returned home. We did return around one o'clock and spent an hour or more visiting. They are such interesting and pleasant folk. Today, we talked about the high cost of feeding their horses and what it cost to replace the daughter's horse after the last one died. It was really cute as she explained that she just loved her horse and how perfectly he met her transportation needs. Harley told us he and his son put 35 miles on their bikes last Saturday which ended in their handle bars got tangled and he got thrown out onto the highway. His elbow is very badly bruised but seems to be healing. Their lives are so different in one way and so similar in other ways. When Mary was explaining her excitement over her new horse, I could just hear one of my kids say the same things about their new car. All is relative.....(a phrase I learned in German class at Trinity Christian College and have understood more fully as time goes on).