Well, just when I'd begun to think that it seriously might be time to close up shop here (I mean, it's been over TWO MONTHS since I posted anything new!), something rather extraordinary happened that made me wonder if perhaps I should stick around and keep on blogging. For a little while longer, anyway. (More about that in a minute.)
This past Saturday, two days after Thanksgiving, my husband and I started a two-day trek out to visit our oldest son and his family in Iowa. We had just seen the families of our three VA boys (sons # 2, 3, and 4) over Thanksgiving, and we will be seeing them again for Christmas, along with our youngest son and his pregnant wife who will be coming from Nashville. But we knew that we were not going to be able to spend any of the holidays with our firstborn's gang; so we decided to squeeze in a trip to Iowa before the Christmas season starts getting too busy.
We drove about 10 hours on Saturday and stopped in South Bend, IN, where we stayed with one of my husband's younger sisters and her husband and caught the Notre Dame-USC game (on TV). We were joined by another younger brother of my husband's, along with a few nieces and nephews who go to school out there.
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| My sweet sister-in-law is the hostess with the mostest and I just love her. |
On Sunday we went to an early Mass at the crypt at Sacred Heart Basilica on the Notre Dame campus, visited for a few more hours with our Pearl relatives, and then set out to finish up the last five hours of our road trip. Our son had told us that his family was planning to go to a barn dance that day, where lots of Catholic families from his area in Iowa and even some from farther away (from Illinois and Wisconsin) were gathering at the farm of a large homeschooling Catholic family. The location for this barn dance was actually between South Bend and our son's house, maybe an hour from where he lives--we would have had to pass it anyway on our way to our final destination. So we decided to plan to meet them at the barn dance; we told him and his wife not to tell the kids we were coming, so it could be a surprise. We thought it would be so much fun to show up and when they saw us say, "Oh wow! We just wanted to come to this barn dance; we didn't know you were going to be here, too!"
It really was a hoot to walk up the hill that led to the barn and see our granddaughter (one of the 11-year-old twins) look in our direction, then look at her father as if to say, "What is going on?!"--and then look at us again and realize that her mind wasn't playing tricks on her, it really was us! We hadn't seen this sweet family since they came to visit in VA in September, and it was a joyful reunion, to put it mildly.
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| An awesome sign on the fence outside the barn. |
This barn dance was something else, I'll tell you. There must have been a couple hundred people there--lots of big families with kids of all ages, from teens down to newborns. Sweet, modestly dressed, well-behaved children all. It was a joy to watch them on the dance floor--big ones holding the hands of little ones, without any thought about looking "cool." There was an impressive pot luck meal and a man who was directing the dancers, showing them all the steps, acting as DJ for the music. Our granddaughters were particularly excited to do the Virginia Reel, which they'd learned at the last barn dance they'd attended at this place. (Apparently these amazing hosts have them four times a year!)
My husband left the barn to go into the house just before we were about to leave (I was still in the barn, talking to my grandkids while they gathered up their coats and got ready to go), and he saw the wife/mother of the family who owned the farm, so he stopped to thank her. She was talking to another woman, so he introduced himself to her. This woman told my husband that she recognized his wife. He thought she must be talking about our daughter-in-law, because how in the world would she know me? But then she said, "You have lots of sons, don't you?" He told her that we did, but again, he was baffled. How did she know this about him, and how did she know me? Then she told him that she recognized me from the picture on my blog. Apparently, this woman used to read it and recognized me, and she remembered that we had a number of sons.
My husband brought this nice woman from Illinois into the barn to meet me, and she actually gave me a hug as if we were old friends. We talked for a bit (not about the blog, but about how wonderful it was that these Catholic homeschooling families are creating this beautiful parallel community of like-minded people, even traveling long distances to get together, and things along that line). After a few minutes she hugged me again before she left.
Wait, I did ask her one blog-related question. I asked how in the world she ever found this little site of mine. She couldn't remember how she'd stumbled upon it, and it had been a number of years since she'd read it. But it touched me beyond belief that she'd once been a reader, and that she'd come to know my boys a little (they are so worth knowing, according to their not-at-all biased mommy!). Meeting this very kind woman, a mom much younger than I, reminded me again that aside from being an online scrapbook of family memories for me, this blog might have something to offer readers I will most likely never meet. I felt extraordinarily blessed to have met this one.
Anyway--
I think maybe I'm back. I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much I should have written about the past couple of months but didn't. There are SO MANY birthdays in the Pearl family in October and November, and I never blogged once during those months. Perhaps I'll do a little family news recap before all else is eclipsed by Christmas goings-on.
If you're here, you're probably related to me by blood or marriage, and you know I love you! If you're not related to me and you read this blog anyway, God bless you and thanks so much for stopping by.
This post has gone on long enough, so I'll end here. But in the next few days, I'm going to have to do a photo dump to show you our oldest son's amazing little farm (it's more of a homestead, I guess, but WOW). I'll leave you with just one picture, until next time.
