Saturday Voice - WE'RE HOME!

It was a great trip, but WE'RE HOME! Dorothy was correct, "There's no place like home." I wish all we had to do was click our heels, but yesterday was a 13 hour long day with a drive from Cincinnati to Columbus, Ohio to the airport. We flew over New Mexico to Phoenix, Arizona and then finally back to Albuquerque last night. Sounds crazy, but that's Southwest Airlines scheduling.

But, we did have a great time. We spent Thursday night through Monday morning with our son, Chris, daughter-in-law, Tracy, and grandson, Javier. Javier is a Junior at Mount Vernon, Ohio High School. He mostly plays on the Junior Varsity (JV) team on Saturday mornings, but he always suits up for the Varsity game on Friday nights. So, to be good supporters, we went to both.

While all of our friends here in New Mexico were enjoying 70 degree weather, it was raining and cold, cold, cold on Friday night. It didn't rain on Saturday morning, but it was even colder. I love New Mexico.

Mount Vernon won Friday night by such as large score that several of the JV players, including Javier, got to play some of the last plays. On Saturday morning he played most of the game, but they lost by an equally large score.

Javier plays nose tackle on defense because he weighs in at 310 pounds, so he can fill up a hole in the defense. Unfortunately, and unknown to everyone at the time, he broke his ankle during Saturday's game. He continued to play, but could hardly walk on Sunday morning. Chris took him to the ER and he has a chip fracture. So, he'll miss the last two games of the season, but we're happy we got to see him play.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to a local photographer to get some pictures made of the five of us, the three of them, and Javier by himself.

Sunday was spent watching pro football since Javier couldn't walk.

On Monday, we drove down to visit with our friends, Bob and Molly Dutina, who live in Batavia, Ohio -- outside of Cincinnati. We had a great time with them taking hikes in the beautiful Ohio woods and shopping at Amish stores and downtown Cincinnati markets.

On Thursday evening, we all drove out to another small Ohio town to do a wedding vow renewal for Bill and Melody Haines, more friends whom we married 10 years ago. It was a lot of fun.

As I said earlier, a great trip, but we are very glad to be home.

Here are some pictures from the trip.

Saturday morning's football game. Javier is number 69 in the black uniforms.

Javier walking to the bench. Unknown to us all, his ankle was already broken.


Javier still played. He's in the middle of the action on this play. He's a tough kid.


Here's a picture of Tracy, Chris and Javier at the photographer's house. He took some pictures outside. Everything looks great, right?

This picture was taken about 5 minutes before the one above. It was cold and it was starting to rain.

However, the next day was very pretty and Ohio in the Fall is gorgeous. This picture was taken about one mile from Chris and Tracy's house.

This is the drive up to their house.

Here are a couple of pictures around their house.

Here are some pictures from our visit with Bob and Molly on one of our hikes.

Finally, a picture of me and Betty doing the vow renewal for Melody and Bill.

Did I say how happy we are to be home?