Catching up - lots going on and that's good!

Today is 27 August 2024 - granddaughter Rooke's 17th Birthday and she was born on my mom's Hazel Sylvester Schultz's birthday who would have turned 98 today and died in 2010.  We can still feel her smiling and laughing from heaven.  

And weather!  Yesterday it was 92 degrees and "feels like" 115 - I am a huge believer in climate change.  We also had big storms and rain but thank goodness nothing fell on our house.

My park walk this morning and this was the hugest of the 3 trees that fell over on the paved park path so of course I had to climb and navigate and there was another woman a little behind me so we watched out for each other and did it!  3 mile walks are still the best thing and I miss them in winter.

Last weekend it was our turn to host the FAB6 group which we have been doing since 2009 quarterly and we rotate houses.  And this was a gift from Jeff and Donna who just returned from a trip to Norway and the words mean "Quick Lunch" and it's super good chocolate!

and the weekend of April 17 we attended the funeral of my Dad's first cousin Mavis who was the youngest of that generation and I thought I might be the oldest of the next but it turns out there's another guy ahead of me.  The Schultz family is huge and of course the Lutheran funerals and full of people, food, fun, stories and all that.  Ross is familiar enough to be prepared for 8 hour funeral days.

This is my brother Kent, wife Karen, Ross and I standing behind my parents tombstones and they don't have the big expensive fancy ones as my mom was frugal.

And since Mavis' family was passing out little flowers from the ones on Mavis' casket I placed one on my brothers tombstone and he died in 1983 - way too young at age 34 - leaving 3 little girls behind.  It was a rare form on leukemia which still has no cure and he died in less than a month from diagnosis.  It hurts me to think about him missing his 7 grandkids as he would have had so much fun with them.

Cousins - this was the 2nd food chat meetup just for cousins after the church service, ladies aid lunch at the church, burial ceremony and then this.

Mavis died at age 90 one day before she would have turned 91.

There are at least 30 Schultz graves in this country cemetery and lots of other relatives out of the 227 total.  I'm still trying to figure out the bottom of this which is in German - working on it!

My little hometown and it has certainly changed from when I was in high school there.

Going out the "main road" from my brother's hobby farm where we spent a couple nights.

Walked to the nearby Japanese garden 1.5 miles from our house and finally for now the drought is over and everything is lush and green and the waterfall is going strong in the beautiful park.

So apparently this is the weather prediction for this winter and it says to be prepared for a wild winter and plan to wear socks to bed!!!

Our 60 year Class meetup was in the hometown of Red Lake Falls at the Red Lake Falls annual Summerfest and there were about 12 people there, 13 or more not there and 17 have died out of the 43 or so in the class.  I couldn't make it as again we have house guests in our forever busy home - but we do like it and it is not stressful.

This is my old Immanuel Lutheran Church next to the Wylie cemetery but the church is no longer there but I do remember every detail about the sanctuary and the basement where we got homemade treats every Sunday after church.

I still get my "real" hometown newspaper every week and it's very interesting to read the police reports compared to what goes on in the big cities like ours.