Saturday, December 19, 2009

Unexpected Blessing

We had a wonderful surprise last week when both Jason & Jeremy were with us for a few days. We had known for a few weeks that Jason was coming -- the meeting that he came for was scheduled back in October, and since it was at WinShape, he was able to stay with us for almost a week. Three days after Jason arrived, Jeremy called to say that he was coming to the States for the funeral of a colleague's father, and his flight schedule allowed him to spend several days with us. Their visits overlapped for only two nights & one day, but we made the most of that time. Allison has just moved back home from Chicago, and Amanda lives here in Rome, so Larry & I had the rare opportunity to spend an evening with all four of our children.



Many of you know that if you come to visit us, Larry will put you to work! So, of course, he made good use of that one day that he had the boys here together to get some work done on the barn.



Since Jason, Jeremy and their families live so far away, we just don't expect to see them very often. That's why we're so grateful when the Lord surprises us with an unexpected blessing like this!

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Sunday afternoon Larry finally used his birthday gift from last year -- a hang-gliding experience. We drove over to Lookout Mountain, and after completing a lot of paper work (if you read it all and think about it much, it'll scare you out of going through with it!), Larry suited up and was soon airborne. He didn't have to jump off a cliff -- this experience (actually a flying lesson) was with a licensed instructor, and they were pulled up from the airstrip by an ultra-lite plane.


A camera on the wing of the glider took these photos. Notice that in the 2nd & 3rd pictures, Larry is actually flying the glider. The instructor had a parachute, but they didn't give Larry one. If the worst happened, I guess he'd just have to hang on to the other guy!





Larry loved it and said he would do it again. Next time he wants to make it a group experience -- anyone interested?
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