I laugh every time I see this photo of my brother, Jeff, playing dress-up at my sister, Becky’s, wedding. He reminded me of someone we used to know a long time ago when we still lived in Nebraska.
Jeff hams it up
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Tag Archives: Jeff
Look who’s 40
Today my brother, Dan, and sister, Debbie, who are twins, turn 40 years old. Amazing. I am the youngest of seven children (five boys and two girls; an eighth child, Donny, died when he was 18 months old). Dan and Debbie are the next youngest siblings. When we were kids, we tended to play games together and were perhaps closer to one another than we were to older brothers and my older sister. Individually and together, we have gone through a lot over the years.
Partly in celebration of their birthday, Dan and Debbie are going on special trips soon. I’m a bit jealous 
because Debbie is going to Florida for a week, and Dan is going to New Zealand for two weeks to visit with my sister, Becky, and her family.
Now tomorrow is another family birthday, this time, for my brother, Jeff. I wish Debbie, Dan, and Jeff well on their special days.
A wedding weekend
This past weekend was spent with my side of the family. My eldest niece, Britta, was married on Monday to Roger. The marriage ceremony was held underneath the spreading branches of the huge old oak tree in front of her parent’s house, and it was a beautiful setting. The weather was sunny and warm and couldn’t have been better. About 100 or so people were present, many from Great Britain and elsewhere (Roger is from Great Britain). Some photos by my brother, Jeff, are available here. It is hard to believe that Britta is all grown up and now married. I saw a lot of people at the wedding whom I hadn’t seen in years and it gave me a sort of Rip Van Winkle kind of feeling, like I had been in a time warp and had just woken up to see that everyone had grown up or gotten a lot older while I was asleep.
Some family photos
My brother, Dan, digitized many family photos a while ago. I’ve chosen a few to show here.
Below is a photo of all of my family members on the afternoon of our wedding in January 2000, including my six brothers and sisters and almost all of my nieces and nephews and one of my cousins. This is the last photo taken that includes all of my siblings and parents. My sister, Becky, is married and lives in New Zealand, so it is very unusual to have her in a recent family photo. And then my father died almost exactly two years after this photo was taken.
First row from left to right: Dan (brother), Ben (nephew), Keegan (son), Pelle (nephew), and Nils (nephew); Second row: Lars (nephew), my mother with Kerstin (niece) in her lap, my father with Bjorn (nephew) in his lap, and Sam (nephew from New Zealand). Third row: Debbie (sister), Bradley (cousin), Linda (sister-in-law), Jeff (brother), Jocelyn (niece), Tim (brother), Petra (sister-in-law), Kevin (brother), Britta (niece), me, Michele, Becky (sister from New Zealand).
Here is a photo of my mother and father on their wedding day in September 1958:
This photo is of Grandma McCallum, my mother’s mother. I was really close to her and miss her even to this day. This is the last photo taken of her not long before her death in October 1982. The baby in the stroller is Nils, my oldest nephew:
Below is a late photo of Grandpa and Grandma McCallum, the only grandparents I ever knew (my paternal grandparents both died before I was old enough to remember them):
I like this photo of all of us kids (except Donny, my parents’ third child, who died of unknown causes at 18 months of age). Left to right: Dan (#6 and twin to Debbie), Kevin (#1), me (#8) in Kevin’s lap, Tim (#2) with Debbie (#7 and twin to Dan) on his lap, Jeff (#4), and Becky (#5). At this point we still lived in Nebraska:
My Kiwi brother-in-law, Martin (top), along with some friends, pretending to do a Maori war dance called the “haka,” on a beautiful beach on the North Island:
Finally, here I am for my third birthday:
The plan for today
The plan for today, Saturday, is not very ambitious. That’s what I like We plan to set up the nice pool my brother Jeff bought for Keegan a few years ago. It’s a 20′ pool and it hasn’t been set up in a while. We skipped setting it up last year because we were gone so much that summer. I just hope that everything works, there are no holes, etc. It will take a lot of work to clean it before filling it up. I also hope we will have the energy to tackle another project, which is to rip out the overgrown shrubbery around our patio in the back of the house, and dig a hole to put the pond into the ground where it belongs. If we can get that done, I can clean out the pond, fix the pump and fountain, and plant the water lily we purchased for it. We can also go shopping for fish to put in it. As it now stands, it’s just serving as a wonderful breeding ground for mosquitoes. Uck. It is such beautiful weather today, a pleasant 70 degrees and a bright, sunny sky. Here’s to a great weekend!
No more pacifier for Tristan
After more wintry weather these past few days, we now have about a foot of snow on the ground, and I still haven’t managed to dig out the driveway…Even I am beginning to long for Spring. It’s nice to have Michele and the younger children home again after they were gone for a week, staying with my in-laws. While they were there, Michele managed to wean Tristan from his pacifier — AT LAST. In celebration, we threw a party for him on Saturday. He is growing up so quickly! Michele and I and the kids are looking forward to a trip to Florida. We’ll fly from Indianapolis to Orlando and then drive to New Smyrna Beach, where my brother, Jeff, has rented a townhouse for a week. My mother will be there, too, and so will my brother, Dan. It’ll be a fun time, and we hope for some warm weather. I’ve never been to Florida, and neither has Michele.
Refugee shipment
Summer is on the downward side as the days march on. I need to get in gear and complete the part-time side job I agreed to work on many months ago. But I am having trouble getting motivated, even though the job involves some really interesting work. I am working on a special collection of primary and secondary source material of C.S. Lewis and other notables such as Dorothy Sayers. This collection includes personal letters, photographs, and of course, books, as well as other items. Yesterday I saw the book given to Joy Gresham by C.S. Lewis on the occasion of their first meeting. It’s a copy of Mere Christianity, with the flyleaf inscribed in her hand to commemorate that meeting. Neat stuff! Lots of things have been happening in other areas of our lives. My brother, Jeff, bought Keegan an 18′ swimming pool, and we now have that set up. Keegan is as happy as a clam…er, fish. He is in the pool so much that I’m fairly certain he will soon grow fins and scales. I finally managed to install the wonderful Tiffany-style hanging lamp that my mother gave us. She and my father had bought it almost 30 years ago and it hung in our house all the years I was growing up, so it possesses many memories for me. We had a short but sweet visit from my in-laws this past weekend. As they normally do, they brought along a huge array of special grocery items for us from Trader Joe’s, which we can’t get around here. It’s what we jokingly refer to as the “refugee airdrop shipment.” Ah, ecstasy, to enjoy Trader Joe’s black licorice, English toffee, almond clusters, dried tropical fruit mix, plus tons of homemade bread and other goodies. Saturday evening, we met my mother and brother, Jeff, for supper in Lafayette at a nice Greek restaurant. My mother had made us a wonderful chocolate cake, plus her special banana bread. We can snarf on delicious food for days now, if not weeks .