Saturday afternoon we met my brother Tim and his wife, Linda, and their youngest, Elsie, for lunch. Afterward we went to Volo Bog and had an interesting tour. We had a great time!
My brother and sister-in-law, Tim and Linda, played this for us when we had breakfast at their house yesterday. It just blew me away and I had a good cry. God uses the most unlikely people, and the most unlikely circumstances, to make a huge statement about His love. I love my great God.
My second oldest brother, Tim, and most of his family (missing: Ben).
Nils, my oldest nephew, with his fiancee, Emily.
My oldest niece, Britta, and her husband, Roger, now married for a little over a year.
This funny situation occured yesterday. Michele tells about it:
“This morning I was checking my email and the kids were upstairs playing together. No loud noises, no crying, no arguing…all is good. A bit later Brinley came downstairs and said that Tristan and Cohen got in and it went round and round. HUH? I asked her what she was talking about and went upstairs to investigate…”
The funny part is that I used to do this when I was little, too. And my mother often tells the story of one day when my oldest two brothers were little and she heard this funny noise: THUMP THUMP giggle giggle THUMP THUMP giggle giggle. When she went to investigate, she found that my brother, Kevin, had put my other brother, Tim, in the dryer and turned it on! So there must be some weird abberation in the Oberg gene pool.
We’ve been going through a lot of uncertainty about our move back to the Chicago area. For one thing the time it is taking to get our Indiana house ready to show to potential buyers is enormous. There is so much to do and it is overwhelming. My brothers Dan and Tim helped out tremendously when they came last Friday through Saturday to paint and clean up the yard, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of the burden has fallen on Michele because I have been at work and during off hours, I have been working on catching up with grading and other work for the class I’m currently teaching for the LEEP program at UIUC GSLIS.
I’m happy to note, though, that last week we finally found a place to live in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago. The town we will be living in has a wonderful location about an hour’s drive from my in-law’s, with great schools for Keegan (and Tristan, who will start kindergarten next year). Our house is across the street from the commuter rail station so it will be a short walk to take the train to my work. There is a Starbucks one block away. The nice public library is a short walk of about four blocks. We won’t have a yard of our own but there are lots of parks and playgrounds we can walk to. We really praise God for providing for us and we are looking forward to the move in a few weeks.
We have a local family coming to see our house early next week and we hope that they will make an offer on our house. That would be a real answer to prayer, also.
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 entry title is a nod to the classic Simon and Garfunkel song…and is meant as a lead-in to an explanation of why there haven’t been many entries in this blog of late. Stuff happens. Mostly, I needed a bit of a break from blogging due to preoccupation with other matters. There is always plenty to discuss here, but the motivation isn’t always plentiful!
During the 4th of July weekend, my family and I went to visit with my side of the family in east central Illinois. We had a good time, and it was especially good to spend time with my mother and to see my many nieces and nephews. They have all changed and grown up a lot somehow in the last six months or so, especially one nephew, Ben. I really enjoyed perusing a scrapbook of his recent three-month stay with his cousins in Manitoba, who own a farm and raise pigs and cattle. The scrapbook of photos and a diary of the daily events was put together by his aunt. It was quite well done and gave me a real picture of the fun, but also hard work, that Ben had on his trip. Ben’s dad, my brother, Tim, had just finished laying new hardwood flooring in his house and that was duly admired. Michele wants that kind of flooring in our house, so I asked some questions of Tim as to how to lay hardwood floors. He and Linda chose a nice birch flooring from Bruce Flooring.
Keegan had a lot of fun Sunday night (the 4th), playing with his cousins and lighting off lots of firecrackers. One of the days we were there, we drove through some of my old stomping grounds, the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It has changed a LOT since I was a student there. Of particular interest was the new Siebel Center for Computer Science, which just opened and is likely one of the world’s most technologically advanced buildings. I was pleased to hear that my oldest nephew, Nils, recently began a full-time job as a systems analyst for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, working on a five-year grant that relates to the Deep Tunnel Project in Chicago.
Another highlight of the trip was going to an incredible bakery in downtown Urbana, called Mirabelle’s. I bought an olive rosemary loaf, as well as a honey walnut loaf, and some raspberry brioches — all very delicious! I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t have their almond horns, which is a kind of pastry that, well, is to die for. Michele’s comment was, “We badly need a nice bakery like this where we live!” To which my response is, Amen.
Well, our family has grown by four. I discovered that a feral cat had a litter of six kittens in our garden shed. As of this afternoon she was nowhere to be seen and two of the kittens had disappeared, so we made the difficult decision to take the remaining four inside and try to raise them. They are about three weeks old at most, and barely have their eyes open. One is all black, two are brown tabby in color, and one is black with white markings. Michele and I are both allergic to cats so are we insane, stupid…you name it? Go figure. Now we’ve got four kittens to feed every three to four hours. Gluttons for punishment, that’s what we are. We heard good news today about my sister-in-law, Linda. I spoke with her husband, my brother, Tim, this evening. He said she’s doing better. The baby is ok although located near the cervix rather than near the top of the womb as it should be. I saw a new bird at the bird feeders, a gray catbird. That was kind of exciting. I didn’t sleep much last night so am pretty tired and hoping tonight will be different.
Today is a sad and troubling day because Michele and I heard from my mom that my sister-in-law, Linda, is very sick again and hospitalized for intense pain in her stomach region. She spent two weeks in hospital about four months ago for similar pain and had an operation to clear up intestinal adhesions. Now we wonder if that really is the problem or not. She is in surgery as I write this and we are praying for her and my brother Tim, as well as their children. Fortunately Linda’s parents are over here from Great Britain and staying with them right now. I’m regressing into feeling worse again with this cold or whatever it is, and it looks like Tristan has come down with it, too, judging by his runny nose and general crabbiness. Today I accepted an offer to teach a course this fall as an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science in their distance education curriculum, known as LEEP. It’ll be a great experience but it scares me to death as I’ve never done something like this before. Just the thought of developing a syllabus is awfully intimidating!