I can't believe I only had 4 posts for all of 2012! One of my 2013 goals is to be more faithful with my blog. I want to bring you up to speed on the past year with some of the events that stood out and helped to keep shaping what I am constantly becoming.
On the family side, daughter Beth Ann bought a house...or at least is in the process of buying a house in the Broad Ripple area of Indianapolis. She thought she might close by the end of this year but it looks like it will be closer to the end of January. I'm proud of her for all the details she has worked out on her own. Hopefully this will be a wonderful starter home for her. In May, daughter Rebecca graduated from Purdue with a B.S. in Nursing, got married to her high school/college sweetheart, David Peck (who also graduated from Purdue with a degree in Civil Engineering), took and passed her nursing boards and started work at St. Vincent Hospital in Indy all within a 30 day period. I forgot to add that they pulled of a major move from Lafayette to Elkhart to South Bend to Indianapolis in that same time frame. It was my privilege not only to give her away but to co-officiate the wedding. How amazing is it that your daughter gives you the last word on her wedding day! They are living in Fishers, IN. Daughter Kristen must have liked the wedding thing so much that in August she got engaged to Jake Titus, who is the only man that I am aware she ever dated. They met at Camp Ray Bird as fellow counselors and fell in love not only with the ministry there but also with each other. So... we have another May wedding on the 18th in 2013. I had hoped for a little longer time for the pocket book to recover but we will be ready when the time comes.
One of the more significant achievements with my wife Nancy was to buy for her a new bike of her own. Her old Raleigh was donated some time ago and I was able to talk her into getting a single bike (as opposed to the tandem) and taking on some organized rides together. This worked out much better than I could have hoped. We took tandem rides on the Nickel Plate Trail between Rochester and Peru; to a quaint Amish restaurant in southern Michigan with two couple friends and the Blueberry Bicycle Cruise in Plymouth. The maximum distance on a single ride was 40 miles. We were a little less ambitious with our single bikes but Nan and I managed to ride 30 miles together on the Pumpkinvine Ride in the Goshen/Elkhart area. One of our favorite "stealth" rides was riding on the new US 31 bypass that is still being worked on and will not open until 2014. There are at least 12 miles of brand new paved roadway between Kern Rd. and south almost to US 6. It is wonderful not having to watch for traffic. Of course, we are pretty discreet about this and ride pretty much on the weekends only, so as to not garner more attention than we want.
I'm going to fill you in on some more but not now. I don't want to catch up all at once because no one will read this much. But I did want you to know that I am very optimistic for 2013 and will be more faithful with my blog, if you're interested! And I'll tell you more in the days to come. But for now this is it.
