The quiet is eerie!

Ronan, along with Mom, Dad, and doggie Jericho, left Friday morning and arrived home in Charlottesville, Virginia, 12 1/2 hours later. We miss them already, but they had to return and we had other things on our schedule as well.

The kids did manage to sneak away for a couple days and went to the Indiana Dunes National Seashore and did some hiking and "swimming" in Lake Michigan. From the pictures, it appears my grandson loves throwing sand and sitting in the water playing with his bucket and shovel. While they were gone we kept Jericho, their black standard poodle. He is a real sweety, but stayed glued to my side while they were gone. Their departure that day led to the reappearance of Bailey. Bailey for some reason does not like Jocelyn and prefers to keep his distance. He lay in the back hallway at the back door while he was inside. Once they were gone and he realized it, he came back out and communed with the rest of us. When they returned a few days later, he was back in the hall. Hmmmm. Strange behavior.

I took the kids down to the woods south of Warsaw where Mom and Dad (my parents) and Jim and Nita (sister and brother-in-law) live. They had wanted to see where they live and see Jim and Nita's new house.

This weekend was my 40th high school reunion. Friday night there was a "mixer" at the local Travel Lodge and we always enjoy those. We had a good time and I enjoyed seeing people I had gone to school with, some for as long as 13 years. They had lots of food and drink and no one went away hungry.

Yesterday, some of us met at the Olympia candy kitchen in downtown Goshen. This soda fountain/candy kitchen is an institution in Goshen and most all of us spent time during our high school years slurping up milkshakes, sodas or rootbeer floats after ball games. It was so much fun. Then last night was the big event. We met again at the Travel Lodge and donned name tags with our high school graduation pictures on them. It's the only way to tell who people are, because that is the way we remember them. What great fun. There were picture boards posted around with pictures of the last reunion on them and lots of yearbooks and gradeschool and junior high books to help us recapture our youth. Hah. Snacks were laid out to nibble on while we mingled around and talked with people we hadn't seen in a long time. . . some for 40 years. Two of my best friends from high school were there, Luanne and Barbara. We had a lot of fun revisiting with one another. Luanne and I stay in touch throughout the year and we usually have dinner during the summer when we drop into Indiana. We are going to do the same with Barb and her husband. We just have so much to talk about!

Dinner was delicious. The committee did an outstanding job of lining up a caterer and the food was wonderful. We topped it all off with a graduation cake. What could be better! We had a DJ who started playing music after dinner and a lot of people joined in the dancing.

We really love going to our reunions. Each one is different. Terry's 40th is coming up in one month. One of the greatest despairs is that many people who don't attend are ones who live in town. It is a mystery to me why they don't come. They may think we know where they are at, but with a class of 258, it is hard to keep track of people. If you are one of those people who don't attend your high school reunion because you don't think people are interested in seeing you, YOU ARE WRONG!!! Make plans to attend your next one. You may just be surprised!

Till next time. . .

Dale