Fun with Friends

When our children were very young, four families used to get together on occasion. Some of us even had children in backpacks as we went on backpack trips. Other times we took car camping trips, and paddled in canoes, and took day hikes.

Our lives got busy and our children grew up. We haven't spent much time together as four couples in our "mature years," but we are hoping we've started a new tradition. We spent part of a weekend together at our home in Santa Rosa recently, going to Bodega Bay for lunch one of those days.

We decided it was a good time to say a big "thank you" to Sue, since it was near her birthday and she has remembered everyone of us on our birthdays every year -- and we are just a handful of people she regularly contacts on their birthdays! She had just retired from a nursing career. Part of the retirement "ritual" Karen created was of her smashing an alarm clock!

Pictured are: Jerry and Sue Angove (Jerry is a retired UMC minister -- he and I were on the UMC conference youth executive team in college days); Bill and Kate Johnson (Bill is also a retired UMC pastor who preceded me at St. Andrew's UMC in Palo Alto, and was a co-officiatant at John and my wedding; Kate and John were in meditation groups together); Stan and Karen Johnsen (long-time friends who even lived with my former husband and I for a few months and they were house-hunting in Palo Alto. Karen is a retired teacher; Stan is close to retirement as a physicist at Varian in Palo Alto.) One of Stan & Karen's daughters, Dr. Jill Johnsen, was just on a National Geographic TV special program last night about nanotechnology. Talk about our children speaking a different language!