Well, we had a very nice day at the Chapman/Duerst family reunion on Saturday. Virtually all of Grandma Sarah and Aunt Janet’s kids except Craig showed up for the party. Craig was out doing what he loves, driving a tractor for one of the local farmers. There was way to much food to eat and everyone had a great time reminiscing about old times. Cousin Ann had put together some GREAT albums with old pictures, Cousins Kathy, Jon, and Neil were all there, too.

Aunt Julia and Aunt Jean had done a twelve mile run (no typo – that is EXACTLY what they did) the morning before the reunion. We were all so proud and sympathetically sore for them. I guess the plan is for Cousin Amy and Aunt Jean to run a marathon together later this summer. I would really like to be there when they do it. Cousin Charlie finished up college for the year at Oregon State on Friday, so Lorena went over to pick him up at his dorm. He stayed with us for the night and we all had just a GREAT time. We ate and talked and carried on about all kinds of things like you can only do with an inquisitive college kid.

On Sunday afternoon, Lorena, Kelly, Christian, and I went to Wendy’s after meeting, then we went on to Kelly and Christian’s last recital of the year at the big Baptist Church in Jefferson. It was a great recital. This was the end of Kelly’s fourth year of piano and the end of Christian’s second year. They both did great. Everyone commented on Christian’s use of dynamics in his piece and on Kelly’s composition. The Ramsdell’s, the Doolittles, and Tony and Martha all showed up to hear them play. If we go up to Seattle, we are surely going to miss them all.

I have a couple pictures of the family renunion that Cousin Neil sent me follow. I will try to put up a couple of pictures from the recital, too over the next couple of days.

The whole crew


Neil’s son Nicholas doing a play with Kelly and Christian