Sunday, May 30, 1999 - Summer Vacation Begins

            I have made my way clear up to Revelation 3, now, with Daddy’s sermon notes, and I hope to finish in two days or less.  One evening I was typing away, when I came to a page without references.  I hunted and searched through my concordances to no avail; I sent email to my friends requesting assistance; ..... but it was the middle of the night, and I knew they wouldn’t read them until late morning.  And then I had a thought.

            I clicked onto Fundamental Christian Crosswalks Chatroom, an Internet site where they also sell Bibles and religious books and music.  Sure enough, there were several people in one of the chatrooms having all sorts of animated conversations.  I began typing bits and pieces of my father’s outline, and asked for help.  “Sounds like Paul!” said one.  “That’s in Peter’s writings,” said another.  Then, “Look at I Peter 1,” said one lady, a forty-year-old with a three-year-old Russian girl she’s adopted.  She will soon have a thirteen-month-old Romanian baby, too.  Her late father was a Baptist minister.

            Anyway, I looked at I Peter 1--and, sure enough, there it was.  Daddy had used different words than those in the King James version, so none of the words I was looking up matched.  And, it being the middle of the night, I was too sleepy for my brain to be in its best working order.  I offered everybody profuse thanks for their aid and support, and bid them all adieu.  Isn’t that neat?

            Monday, several classes, including Teddy and Joseph’s, took a field trip to the Water Treatment Plant.  Hannah escorted a few of them there in her car.  Thursday, the last half-day of school, was also the day of the annual “High School Picnic”, which takes place at Pawnee Park.  So ... school is over.  Done.  Finis, finale.  Denouement.  The end!

          Well, for three months, anyway.

            And it isn’t hard to tell, from the general appearance of kids’ knees and elbows and what-have-you, that summer is just getting into swing:  Hester has a thoroughly scraped elbow and a well-scratched arm from accidentally descending a tree while attempting to ascend.  Caleb has a couple of stubbed toes, and Lydia is bunged up good and proper from elbows to hands and from hip to knee from tumbling off the back bumper of the Suburban onto the white rock in Keith and Esther’s driveway.  (She was trying to reach her purse, which was just behind the third seat.)  Teddy and Joseph have several patches of skin rash from poison oak, and the whole kit and caboodle have been brightened up considerably from the sun.  So the summer fun begins!

            Tuesday, Larry worked on Lawrence and Norma’s van, putting on a new axle, new shocks, and new brakes.  That evening, he drove it home, then called them to tell them they could come to our house to pick it up, and that there was hot bread pudding and sauce waiting for them.

            I’d made four batches because, the day before, one of the Jenkinson cousins had brought us an enormous box full of all sorts of bread items:  French bread, sprouted wheat bagels, onion bagels, Kaiser rolls, whole wheat rolls, whole wheat hamburger buns, and so on.  This, because the bread store was giving away all their one-day-old things that day.

            So, Monday night for supper I made spicy pork-sausage Sloppy Joes.  Mmmm, yummy!  The bagels went down the hatch pretty fast; but by Tuesday, with everything being two days old, things were getting a bit dried out.  Bread pudding was definitely in order.  My favorite recipe is called Grandma’s Old-Fashioned Bread Pudding and Sauce.  We never can decide if we like it best hot, just out of the oven, with the pudding still unthickened, and the sauce a bit runny and soaking into the bread; or chilled, when the pudding is set firmly, and the sauce stays nicely in place in a thick layer on top.

            Friday afternoon, Hester and Lydia made banana bread.  We had just enough bananas for one loaf.  Unfortunately, the little girls followed my handwritten instructions for two loaves.  (I’d written them in a long time ago for Hannah and Dorcas, since, when I didn’t, they doubled some ingredients, and forgot to double others.)  It wasn’t long before Hester was standing beside my desk, informing me, “We don’t have enough bananas.”  So we had to use applesauce to make up the difference.  And do you know what?  It turned out tasting better than any plain old banana bread ever did!  Furthermore, it provided us with a loaf of bread to give to my brother Loren and his wife Janice.

            And a jolly good thing we gave one loaf away, too, because Esther made us a double-layer German chocolate cake that evening, and invited us to their house.  (Hester used to call them ‘German Shepherd’ cakes, when she was about three.)  The puppy (his name is ‘Duke’) is now house-broken, and is no longer afraid when our large family descends upon his little house.  In fact, he acted as if he remembered us well, and was soon engaged in a game of tug-of-war with the children with his favorite toy--a short, fat rope with large knots at either end.

            Yesterday we went to the cemetery to put flowers on the graves.  In the morning, or maybe Tuesday, I’m going to take some pictures of the cemetery with all the flowers; the grounds are simply covered with them.

            Now, I’d better go to bed; we are going to get up early tomorrow and head northwest to one of the pretty parks in Nebraska’s State Forests in the sandhills, where there are several big lakes well-stocked with fish.