The Changelog

This weekend, Terah and I drove up to Nebraska to visit Cliff and Marilyn. We have never met them before, or even talked to them on the phone. We just know them from blogs -- Marty (Cliff's nephew) introduced us to them. We really had a blast -- quite a fun weekend, and we met lots of interesting Morrows.

I supose there's always something unexpected that happens when you visit people you've never met. With this visit, it was singing in a Baptist choir. Terah said, "Well, we've never even been to a Baptist service in English, but sure, sounds like fun!" I think it took Cliff about 2 seconds to decide we should both sing in the choir once he realized we're in our church choir back in Kansas. I suppose that's risk you run when you go and visit a choir director. Off course it's all fun with Cliff. We really enjoyed it, and Cliff & Marilyn's daughter did a fantastic job on the piano.

When we first arrived at Cliff & Marilyn's place, the first thing Terah noticed was that Marilyn had set out a giant Hershey's kiss and a Dr. Pepper for her! This was great. Terah's still talking about it, and is very impressed with a solid piece of chocolate that large.

At dinner on Saturday, I think Cliff and Terah were having a bit of a competition to see who could have the driest sense of humor and the most sarcasm. Maybe it was just a little Kansas bias, but I think Terah gave him quite the run for his money, and even edged him out by a bit.

Terah was also something of a celebrity around the Morrows, in one way anyway. It seems that, one way or another, almost everyone had heard about her carefully-planned underwear rotation scheme. And had gotten quite a good chuckle about it -- as well they should.

Cliff asked us to bring some photos of our home and family with us. I think he might be regretting that now. I downloaded as many as I could fit onto a laptop -- about 3000 -- to give us plenty to look at. Of course, we didn't look at 3000 photos, but you just never know what might come up. Cliff and Marilyn did a wonderful job of not falling asleep anyway.

We also got to see their photos, and they have some spectacular ones. Marilyn enjoys stereo photography and has some incredible stereo photos. I especially enjoyed the pictures of Germany.

Marty's parents were also around this weekend and were full of interesting stories. His mom makes a wonderful cheese spread. I think I need to have a putty knife to spread it on nice and thick. It's the sort of cheese spread that's good enough to layer on about twice as thick as the cracker. The cracker is just sort of a cheese delivery device.

I kept hearing that Marty had told the Morrows all about me. They all claimed that Marty said only good things about me. But we all know how the Morrows like to tell stories. So I made sure to get a few about Marty before we left, just in case. Don't worry, they're all good, Marty.

After church Sunday, there was a carry-in meal. We knew about this in advance, and Terah brought some of her famous chocolate-cherry cookies along from Kansas. Cliff later admitted to stealing "no more than one" during the sermon. But he couldn't quite say it with a straight face. Terah's cookies were a hit, though -- it seemed that lots of people were trying to figure out who brought them. A few enterprising people pulled out the lid from the pan, but of course seeing Terah's name there didn't really help all that much. I think she promised recipes to about half a dozen people.

We went geocaching Sunday afternoon. Cliff, Marilyn, and their grandson came along. We found the Summit Lake #1 cache with their grandson -- it was his first time geocaching, and I think he enjoyed it.

Well, that was a long post. I'll probably remember more to write about later in the week, and stay tuned for photos!