doing the family thing

i realized that i never posted about sunday's activities. sunday morning, alan, rachel and i headed to fayetteville for a heritage celebration at my home church. the church was celebrating 200 years in fayetteville and had invited many of the preachers from the past few decades back to participate. it was great to see carl, of course, but also a couple of the other preachers from my childhood. they had compiled memories from several generations of church members into a special book, and they had a lunch afterwards where we were all able to catch up and visit with one another. following lunch, we went back to the house for a little while to visit with mom and grandma, and then had to drive back home. for the record, that is a lot of miles on the road for ALL of us, but it was definitely worth it.
(i apologize to small group people, but i had laundry, groceries, errands AND the steelers were playing the night game. it just wasn't going to happen.)

last night, we had the pleasure of visiting with justin's grandma, who is down from west virginia for a couple of weeks (apologies to the TNT people this time--it's just been one of those weeks!) she tries to get down to visit about once a year and has a great time seeing all of us. she also annually talks about moving down here, but it hasn't happened yet :) justin's step-dad, mike, is performing in a play in ayden this weekend, so we're all going to see that as well.

i hadn't updated on justin's grandfather lately. we got the word last week that the myeloma is at stage IIIB, which is the most serious stage for this particular type of cancer. he is starting chemotherapy, but we are already making plans to head up to west virginia within the next couple of months. justin and heather are both very close to their pap, and the plan is to try and do a big family thanksgiving. we did miss out on the buckwheat festival last weekend, but there's only so much we can do right now! at any rate, please keep his family in your prayers and particularly his pap as he begins the treatment process.