Last week I spent from Sunday evening, March 22 through Friday March 27 at home alone.  Madge had gone to Ozark to sit with our grandaughter Addison while her parents, Sam and Monica worked.  Addison had had her Adnoids removed and tubes put in her ears the Saturday before (3/21).  Because of this surgery Addison was not allowed to return to the daycare she attends.

I enjoy those times alone.  To come home from driving the bus though and find no one home is quite lonesome.  I learn to enjoy them most of the time. 

Madge came home on Friday evening.  Sam, Monica and Addison spent the night with us.  Philip, Sarah, Rene’e and Natalie from Booneville, Arkansas also came up, arriving shortly after Madge gets home.  Madge tells me, “All the kids will be here tomorrow.  We are going to take some pictures of the kids in their new dresses and clothes.”  Of course that meant the ones she has made.  She does do a wonderful job of making clothes for the grandkids.

Not long after Philip arrives he decides to go for a walk and ask if any of us want to go along.  It’s dark outside, cloudy, and the temp really requires a bit of a jacket at least.  Sam and me tell him that we will go with him.  My question was, “Wild or the road?”  Philip says, “Let’s go wild.”

We walk back behind the house in the pasture, and through the woods where no one ought to walk in the dark without some kind of light.  It was cloudy, with very little reflected light.  You could make out the outline of trees, bushes, and such.  So we stumbled along for over thirty minutes, and finally arrived back at the house.  That was the first time I had been to the back of this place in the dark; and I arrived with a bloody left hand; caused by a briar bush which got my hand as we were walking up a big, steep hill.

Saturday was pleasant with all our kids and grandkids arriving; that is the rest of them arriving.  We had lunch, watched movies on television, and had an all around good time of enjoying one another’s company.

Paul, Charity and children; Philip, Sarah and children; James and Amber; and Timothy, Sarah and their children all went home.  Sam and Monica spent the night with us again.  We are always glad to have them come.

Though it was an unplanned get together we all enjoyed being together.  They planned that we have an annual get together in July on the weekend of the 17th in Booneville, AR at Philip and Sarah’s home.  I look forward to it.

I thank the LORD for such a wonderful family.

-Tim A. Blankenship