Labor Day Weekend

The house was packed this weekend as Jim and Marilyn played host to not only us but to Amy's brother, Casey, and his family and our friends John and Scott and their families. Scott, John and Casey were three of my closest friends growing up. While it's been easy to stay in touch with Casey, it has been harder to keep up with Scott and John. I believe this was only the fourth time the four of us had been together in the last eight years. We've seen each other only at weddings (or stateside receptions for weddings that took place in France).

This weekend was fun because it gave us a better chance to get to know each of their wives. Of course, the guys know Amy very well since we all grew up together, but we're still learning more about Heidi, Micki and Gaelle. It was fun to watch them with these guys that I love so much and see how their personalities fit together.

To make things more interesting, all of us have had kids in the last 15 months. Add to the four one year olds, Casey and Heidi's three year old, Rylie, and our five year old, Xander, and it was a bit of a madhouse. We had four high chairs going, four naps going (not counting the adults) and toys strewn about like Toys-R-Us threw up in the living room. It was a beautiful mess.

I was particularly blessed by how patient everybody was with Xander. Xander is now a five year old boy who acts like a five year old boy. He can be loud, insistent, in your way and in constant need of attention, but everybody seemed to go out of their way to play with him, listen to him and put up with him. A prime example was when Amy painted his face like Spiderman.

There was a game of poker going on, complete with hats and mirrored sunglasses. Xander seemed to be taking an extraordinary interest in the psychology of the game as he stood and stared at the players at only about one foot distance. After this really began to unnerve the players it came to be understood that Xander had discovered that if he stood close enough, he could see himself in the sunglasses. You might imagine this growing tiresome after awhile. I slept through the whole thing after leading worship that morning, but I appreciate the fact that nobody killed my child before I woke up.

Other activities included Uno, s'mores, runs for some (Casey, Scott, John and Micki are all avid runners), family beach times, good food and a lot of conversation. John and I managed to sneak out for a ride Sunday evening. He's training for the World Amateur Triathalon World Championships next month in Hawaii and had to "spin easy for 30 minutes" as a part of his training for that day. His easy was a good excuse for me to ride with him since his easy + my fairly hard = my ability to stay with him and carry on a conversation at the same time. I hadn't ridden with John since 1998 when we stayed at his place on our way back from vacation in Canada. We've both improved since then, but he's now done the Ironman in Hawaii and all I've done is the Tour de Kota.

I was sad to see everybody go. It was a very therepeutic weekend for me. I was probably more quiet than usual and found myself observing quite a bit. If I tend to be an introvert, this summer has probably driven me further inward as I've struggled with issues of identity and have been humbled by the overwhelming support of friends and family during this move.

Jim and Marilyn invited everyone back to do it again next year. Hopefully I'll be more myself by then.