many more visitors

Well after long planning and many secrets later my family decided to suprise me and came down to visit us. But the even bigger suprise is that my parents were coming as well. See to get my dad anywhere out of NY state takes some doing. So after some great convincing by my Aunt Faye he decided to come as well. YEA!!!! for us because I missed my parents and my siblings so much. So they arrived Friday night around 7 and it became very cramped in our little one bedroom apartment, but very well worth it. Saturday they just took a day to rest and I got to catch with my oldest sister, Yvette and that was great because we get along so well. I also got to spend time with our niece and 3 nephews.

I started to pray and I asked God for some pretty specific things to happen on Sunday and God worked things out so well. Dad made it through the contmeporary musice and loved the message and Paul became very interested as well. Allyson got to join the junior church there and she enjoyed it too. Andrew became ill so he only enjoyed parts of the junior church.

Melinda also got to come and visit and that is always a blessing. She was able to stay with us until Tuesday. So my family and my new husband (who still feels new to me) got to all be in church. Then we went to Chuck E. Cheese. We all got to enjoy the very funny games and win some prizes for the kids. And Joel and I got our picture drew while we were there. Monday we went and visited the aquarium. But sadly I became ill and didn't enjoy it as much as everyone else. But all is well because we got some good pictures with the family. Then back to work on Tuesday.

My family was able to come and visit the museum. That was another answer to my prayers as God made the mission of AiG familiar to my family and they want to come back and see it when it is finished. Then 2:30 Wednesday morning Joel became very ill. We were up the rest of the night and he finally stopped throwing up around 9:30, So I went and spent time at the motel with my family so he could rest. I came home and we took a nap and he was able to spend a little time with them Wednesday night. He developed a very high fever that kept me awake until it broke. He had no clue because he slept through it. But it was my first time to take care of someone that was sick all by myself and I hope I don't have to do it again anytime soon.

Thursday we spent until noon with my family when sadly they left. But we had a great time and I look forward to them coming again. God really blessed Joel and I with their visit. So thanks for coming and surprising me.

See photos.

two visitors

Another really cool thing this weekend was the fact that Michelle’s sister Melinda, and my friend Aaron came to visit from SC. We had a wonderful time and visited the cincy zoo on Saturday. It’s very nice although several of the animals were unavailable since it’s still winter. But I especially enjoyed playing with Aaron’s new Cannon digital SLR camera. Oh it was beautiful ... and we even took some useful photos with it.

During this adventure we went into the cat house. Overall the larger cats (serval, ocelot, etc.) were rather boring even though they looked cool. However Michelle stumbled upon a very entertaining and even frightening “chesire cat.” It was some kind of rock cat that was very active. She had her face pressed to the glass and the cat began to approach as if it were stalking her. Then suddenly it lunged claws first toward her face with stunning speed! And she definitely was ... stunned that is! She burst out laughing at the fact that a tiny little cat behind thick plexi-glass had just scared her spitless, and we were all very entertained.

In my entire life I can’t remember having one surprise birthday party. Not that my parents were against them or anything, I just never had a craving for one. Now that I’m out on my own with my wife I was curious to see what she was going to do if anything. My birthday was Thursday the 10^th, but she doesn’t work on Thursday. We have small group on Thursday night so she couldn't really do much then. Although she did make me a pound cake to take to SG and I thought that was it. The next morning we were driving to work and I was a little sleepy so I wasn’t driving too fast. Michelle never comments about my driving, but today she said I was going really slow. I didn’t think much of it and sped up a little. We got to work and she was walking really fast! Still oblivious I caught up to her and when I got to my desk there was a sign hanging at the entrance wishing me a happy b-day and balloons covering my desk, all instigated by my wonderful wifey.

I thought that was it, but after lunch she gathered everyone into the lunchroom and presented me a with an awesome cake and a song. So that was it. Cake, balloons and a song. What else could a 23 year old ask for! Any suspicions i may have had previously disappeared with the unexpected cake after lunch. A surprise party that night was the furthest thing from my mind! But that’s exactly what she had planned with what seemed like 20 people there! We had a wonderful time, and I just have to congratulate my great sweetheart on a job well done.