Dear Family and Friends,
2010 was a very exciting year! Here is a recap from our side of things…
January
It started out with a trip to Washington, DC, with John, Nathan, Elizabeth, and Andrew. We traveled with the Pro-Life Wisconsin bus out of Milwaukee and spent 3 days and 2 nights in DC. While there, we had an opportunity to visit with John’s niece and also take in many of the surrounding attractions including the Smithsonian Museum, Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and some other sight-seeing. We also participated in the in Annual March for Life that weekend.
February
Both Nathan and Andrew participated in the Green Bay Youth Symphony Orchestra in the Spring Semester. Their final concert was in early March. The six older children have continued on with piano lessons this year. Gus is beginning to take lessons and shares his slot with Nathan. Their teacher has been coming over to our house now that we live closer to Green Bay.
March
Mary and Nathan took a CPR class and are now certified in CPR. Luckily, we have not had to use this new found skill.
April
In mid-April, Mary and John went on a trip to Switzerland. We were there the same time the airports closed due to the volcano ash issue. Luckily we were able to make our departure date and time without issue. We stayed with Uncle Willi and Aunt Trudy and toured many places in Switzerland. We visited the home where Dad grew up and the family that lives there now invited us in for coffee and some Schnapps (I think it was home-made stuff, it was pretty good.) We also toured a castle, went to Frauenfeld, Appenzeller, and toured Mount Santis. We visited with Urs and Vera in Ermatingen. We toured many beautiful churches including one in Kreuzlinger which has a 600+ hand-carved wood statue side altar with a complete depiction of entire life of Jesus. This same church had a fire years past and a number of the statues burned. Interestingly enough, the one of Judas is only half-burned. You can see this online if you google St. Ulrich’s in Kreuzlinger. We took a 2-day journey over to Ars, France, to visit the shrine of St. Jean-Marie Vianney, patron Saint of our youngest. He is entombed in a glass case and uncorrupt after 150 years since his death. He resides in the Sixtus Cathedral which is on the mission grounds. On that Saturday we participated in a pilgrimage from the spot of the “Encounter” to the Cathedral with French members in our church group. On the way back we stopped in Grenoble, France in a 1000+ year old church in a ski resort village. It was very beautiful and the church was built of stone (indestructible and not touched during WWI or WWII). We high-tailed it back to Berg, Switzerland, on that Sunday in order to catch the relatives we hadn’t seen yet earlier in the week and that had to go back to work on Monday. That little Opel got very good gas mileage. We only filled up once with 6 hours of driving across France and Switzerland. This is sort of like traveling across multiple states in the US. We had a fantastic time visiting our relatives in Switzerland and was a nice get-away for mom and dad.
May
In early May, Mag made her first communion. She looked as pretty as a button in her white dress. We had a little party afterwards and had some friends over. At the end of May, we made a day trip down to Milwaukee and went to Holy Hill for some fun and prayers with our church buddies.
June
In mid-June, we went to Wisconsin Dells to celebrate Gus’ 5th birthday.
July
In July we went Cherry Picking in Door County. Elizabeth and Francesca had many play practices and in early August performed in William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. Throughout July and in the summer months we went fishing about a half-dozen times to a lake nearby where we discovered we can catch “something” every time we go. Gabe is a very good fisherman and caught a number of little fishies this summer.
August
The 4 older children and John attended Hunter’s Safety Classes.
September
Jean-Marie (the youngest) turned 2 on the 8th. We all traveled to our home town in mid-September for a family get-together. This was our first opportunity to meet John’s niece's husband prior to their wedding. We also went to our old "neck of the woods" on Thanksgiving week and did some hunting with our new Hunter’s Safety skills.
Our status
Mary continues to keep order in the court. Sometimes it is a challenge with the arguing over whose dishes are still sitting on the counter in the mornings, or who never finished their chores the day before, but somehow she manages to make it work out. There is an endless flow of laundry, dishes, cleaning, and vacuuming. Mary is in the category of the living saints as she has the most difficult job of all, bringing new children into the world, and far surpasses the complexity and duration of most professional occupations.
John keeps busy at the Power Plant with a never-ending barrage of meetings, inspections, surveillances, deadlines, and many projects. The Reactor Engineering Group turned over again for the second time since I took the Lead Reactor Engineering job but somehow I carry on and just continue training new engineers. I spent one week at the Braidwood Nuclear Plant near Chicago in September working with an old buddy from Zion on an assessment at that plant. John is also involved in the Knights of Columbus group at our church.
In spite of all the hectic schedules, we are unclogging our lives a bit this past year. We have cut down on a number of activities we have been involved in over the years. The boys are taking a sabatical from serving mass after 9 consecutive years of serving. They are no longer taking violin lessons and are not participating in the GBYSO this fall semester. Both changes have cut down drastically on our amount of driving. The latter was mainly an economic decision, although it pangs Mom and Dad’s hearts because the symphony music is so beautiful.
Nathan works at a nearby restaurant as a bus boy. John and Nathan attended Engineer’s Day at UW-Madison in September. It preceded the homecoming football game day so we stuck around the following morning to see the Badgers win their homecoming game. Elizabeth baby-sits for 4 different sets of people. Francesca has started babysitting also. Andrew plays organ for the church now with the children’s choir. He has been taking organ lessons since this past summer.
Our door is always open and we love having visitors. Any time any of you want to come and visit, just give us a call. I daily thank God for my family, home, job, and health. I know at any time any one of these, or all of these could be taken away. It is truly our family and our friends and the close relationships which make this Christmas Season special!
You can be assured that you are in our thoughts and prayers.
Lots of love,
John, Mary, Nathan, Elizabeth, Andrew, Francesca, Gabriel, Magdalena, Augustine, and Jean-Marie
No comments:
Post a Comment