The Grand Family Reunion

I apologize to all our readers for the tardiness in posting on Our Blog.  I realize it was the first part of April since you have seen anything about Agimac River Outfitters.  Please accept my humble apologies.  We have been through some highs and lows here that have made it impossible to publish on Our Blog. 

Joanna and I left for North Carolina the first week of April to visit my Mom and Dad.  We spent ten wonderful days enjoying their company as well as my sister and her family.  Then we all drove to Gulf Port, Alabama where my parents had rented a three story beach house right on the Gulf of Mexico.  It was a gorgeous place featuring modern facilities throughout and even a small pool on an expansive sunning deck.  My other two brothers and two sisters met there as well with their children.  Our daughter Cherish flew down from Minnesota, but John had to remain in camp to take care of the place and feed the dogs.  We had 25 people in all.  Our son Jonathan and his wife Reseth and their 8 month old Aaron are presently stationed in Pensacola, Florida, so since he was working , Reseth and the baby came and stayed with us too.  I was thrilled to be able to spend so much time with Reseth and my grandbaby as you can imagine.  Thankfully, Jonathan's flight training schedule permitted him to join us on quite a few occasions.

It was one of the most memorable times of my life.  Having all my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, Mom and Dad, all in one place for a week...wow.  It had never happened before and I doubt it will ever happen again.  My mother's health is failing due to cancer and this was her greatest desire - to gather her family together one last time at the beach. 

All kinds of activities transpired during the week.  We played a board game together that left us laughing so hard, we were in tears.  Volleyball games, kite flying, sun bathing, boogie boarding, fishing, eating out, seeing lots of marine life go by, like schools of porpoises and manna rays, watching a Blue Angels practice on base, lots of conversations and interacting, tennis, tons of yummy food, did I mention laughter?, loving on the two toddlers, watching the two toddler boy cousins interact, and all culminating in one large family picture and a meaningful gathering the last evening together.  Unforgettable.

We returned home the first week of May to find that John had successfully arranged for the Bell radio telephone repairman and two tower climbers to work on putting up a new antenna on our 60 foot tower to hopefully restore our radio telephone to working status.  We had no phone service for three months!!  What the repairman determined is that trees may have grown on the hills between us and Silver Dollar, blocking our radio telephone signal.  So, they thought they would try to put up a more powerful antenna to transmit the signal.  We waited three months for this to happen.  Finally on April 27th, we were able to have a working phone.  I use that term "working" loosely.  There was a lot of static at first, then the static left and no one could hear us very well.  We are still trying to get more help from them on this issue.

However, more excitement was soon to follow.  The second week of May our computer crashed, then a few days later we lost internet access and had no idea why.  I took our laptop with me to town each week to try to keep up on emails, while we worked with a company in India to get our computer working again and tried to figure out what the problem was with either our modem, our cable or the dish for satellite internet.  After two weeks, we finally deduced that the cable was bad and replaced it.  Then there was the matter of restoring all our files and folders lost in the computer crash.  We're still working on that one.  So you see we were out of commission due to technical issues.  My hat goes off to those who can patiently
brainstorm their way through the maze of computer issues that plague us from time to time.  It is definitely NOT my forte.  I figure the Lord is teaching me patience and long suffering attributes to develop my character.  :)

Thank you for YOUR patience in hearing from us again.