The Changelog - Family

Jacob's Fun Answer

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:36:05 -0500

Jacob is starting to learn about the world around him a little bit. He seems to have four categories of people: men, women, children, and babies. He can say "man" and "baby" pretty clearly. Earlier today, I heard Terah telling Jacob "Dad is a man. Mom is a woman."

Maybe an hour later, I walked into the kitchen. Jacob and Terah were there. Terah proudly asked Jacob, "What is dad?"

Without missing a beat, Jacob said "Fun!"

He must have seen me smile, because a second later, he added "Happy!"

Can't argue with that.

Jacob Update

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:42:15 -0500

It's ben a little while since I wrote about Jacob. He's about 20 months old now.

For awhile, he was on a whole hugging spree. He wanted to hug anything happy. It could be me, a stuffed animal, a rock, or even a book. To hug something, Jacob holds it up to his cheek, leans his head over onto it, and says "Awwww". Very cute!

Then he started saying "hi" to things. He'd greet people, toys, rocks... Seeing a pattern here?

Lately he likes to say "bye". He gets a big smile when he says bye to someone and they wave and say bye back to him. As I leave for work in the morning (on the days when I don't take him to daycare), I'll say bye to Jacob. He will keep saying bye to me, smiling all the while, as long as he can.

Last weekend, we had some heavy rains here. I had the idea that Jacob would love to play in the water puddles left on our driveway. Terah wasn't so sure, but we got Jacob dressed in old clothes and took him outside. He loved to run through the puddles, splashing water as high as he could, cackling the whole time. Then I showed him how he could throw a rock into a puddle and make it splash. So, he would run through a puddle, then carefully select a rock, run to the next puddle, throw the rock in, splash through, and repeat. He'd always want the rock first.

I knew when he was done playing because he said "bye" to the water puddles.

Jacob Update

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:32:00 -0500

It's been awhile since I wrote about Jacob, who is 1.5 years old now.

He loves to give hugs lately. He'll walk up to one of us, wrap his arms around our legs, and go "Awww." Jacob's hugs always have sound effects, and it's always "Awww". He also hugs his stuffed animals, other people, or even a book with a picture of a dog on it.

He also has really gotten into saying "hi" and "bye". He likes to wave goodbye to me when I leave in the morning, and sometimes gets a big smile and says "bye" along with it. Yesterday he was picking dandelions from our lawn, and carrying them around. Finally he dropped them on the ground, and said "bye" and waved goodbye to them.

Jacob also really wishes he could jump by himself. He likes it when I hold him and jump. He tries to jump, but just can't quite get the hang of it yet.

Visiting Indiana

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 15:31:39 -0600

It was two weeks ago now that we hopped on an Amtrak train in the middle of Kansas at the bright and early hour of 3AM, bound for Indiana.

This has been our third trip with Jacob. He's 14 months old now. We never really enjoyed long car or airplane trips before we had a baby, and haven't really had the desire to try a long car trip since. So we try to take the train, or if time is short, fly.

Jacob enjoys the train. There's lots to see and do. The one thing he doesn't like doing is waiting for food to arrive in any situation, so when we have sit-down meals in the diner, things can get challenging.

We arrived in Indiana the same evening and spent a few days with Terah's dad out at the farm.

Jacob enjoyed grandpa and grandma:

Jacob got his first ever ice cream there. Despite the concerned "unknown food alert" look, he opened up quick for another bite.

The big hit of the visit there were chickens. I've never seen Jacob so thrilled about watching something before. He was so excited he was just moving his arms all around, almost jumping up and down. Here he is watching them:

Terah wants us to get chickens now. Just because we still have a chicken house left...

On Tuesday, we went north to spend a few days with Terah's mom. On the way up, it became overcast. Terah's mom calls it the winter "permacloud", which is the best description of it I've heard yet. I didn't believe Terah at first when she said that they don't see the sun for 3 months in winter up there, but I believe her now.

Jacob found a rocking chair just his size there, and was able to make it rock. But the big hit of this stop were refrigerator magnets, at Jacob height.

He spent a long time with them, and got pretty good at working with them, too.

He also thought he ought to check out the camera in great detail. So of course, the camera checked him out.

Terah's mom wanted to spend some time with Jacob, so on Wednesday, Terah and I headed up to Niles, MI to visit some antique shops. We found some postcards from small towns in Kansas dating back to the 1930s, an old metal fan (still works), a wooden "apothecary box" with pull-out drawers, and some furniture we might have purchased if we were closer to home.

For the first time ever, Terah was the first one to say "aren't you done shopping yet?" She was getting tired, so we started heading back. Magically her energy returned as we approached the road leading to the South Bend Chocolate Co. factory and retail store, so we headed in that direction. The next tours didn't start for almost an hour, so we bought some chocolate, looked around a bit, and then left.

Terah's mom had a good time with Jacob while we were gone.

Thursday was the O'Connor Thanksgiving. Terah's grandma and some other relatives were there. Here's Jacob with his great grandma:

Jacob enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, and managed to keep finding things to munch on all afternoon.

That evening, we went over to Terah's Yoder grandparents and spent a few days there. Not long after we arrived, Terah's uncle showed up and brought his adopted greyhound with him. Jacob was very excited about this, though the dog wasn't so sure about Jacob.

Eventually the greyhound calmed down and Jacob got to see him up close and pet him. Jacob didn't even mind getting his whole face licked.

The next morning at breakfast, Terah's grandma had set out the high chair that she used as a girl for Jacob to eat in. I got some pictures, but Jacob was far more interested in asking to have food ready to eat.

Here's Jacob with his Yoder great grandparents:

Later Friday, it was the Yoder Thanksgiving. Jacob got plenty of attention. He also was looking VERY CAREFULLY for Waldo.

Jacob wasn't feeling the best all week, but despite having a busy week and feeling not so good, he did really well. He has been walking with help now, holding on to one adult finger with each hand. He really enjoys that, but is short enough that adults have to bend over a bit to help him. I imagine several people had sore backs after the week was over, including us.

On the train trip home, I took him to the lounge car to go walking. Usually he likes to walk as fast as he can for as long as he can, but there he would only go a little bit at a time. He'd stop at each group of chairs to look at the people, and most of them were really happy to see him, too. After he was done with the lounge car, we walked back through the coaches to our seat. As long as he kept walking, he again would stop at each row of seats to make friends with anybody that wanted to.

We tried to find a nice place to go for lunch during our layover in Chicago. But let me tell you, downtown Chicago -- at least the part near Union Station -- is dead on Sunday and the fact that it was just after Thanksgiving probably didn't help. We wound up finding a place in Union Station to eat. Jacob fussed for awhile, then went to sleep on my lap (he rarely manages to go to sleep while being held). Then on our connecting train back to Kansas.

It was a fun and busy week, but it's nice to be home too. Our train arrived in Kansas at 3:15AM Monday morning. So we went home to catch a few more hours sleep before going to work. As I went outside that morning, we had a gorgeous Kansas sunrise. As the sun was coming up, it was lighting the underside of the clouds with a vibrant deep red and orange color. The whole sky to the east was lit up like that, and felt so warm and inviting on a bitterly cold morning.

Christmas Is Just Around the Corner

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:47:00 -0600

Last week ended in a rather annoying way. Apparently my car had developed a flat tire overnight one night, and I left while it was still dark the next morning, and didn't notice it. I had driven on it all the way to work with it fairly flat, which damaged the tire (but not the wheel). So that needed to be replaced, and it was still under warranty from the place I bought them, which is 45 minutes away. We had a family gathering on Saturday, but couldn't be there all that long because we had to get to this place before it closed.

After we got home, there was a bit of work to do out in the yard. Jacob was tired of being indoors, so I took him out with me. He came with me as I put air in our 5-gallon air tank, and watched as I used the tank to do the monthly tire inflation on our pickup. (When you paid $75 for the vehicle, fixing a tire that only has to be inflated once a month doesn't seem all that cost-effective)

And then he got his first ride in the pickup. We were just moving around trash on the yard, and he enjoyed it. We hopped in and out several times to load or unload things. Though he was very annoyed that I didn't let him use the stick shift while I was driving. My parents said that he sounds like his dad.

We have a bedtime routine for Jacob, and I read a book to him right before putting him to bed every night. This morning, Terah got out the book that I read to Jacob last night. I was in a different room, but Terah is quite sure she heard him say "dada read this!" That's his first sentence (that one of us heard, anyway)

Some of you may have read that my relative Venita had a brain aneurism recently, and remarkably, seems to be recovering from it. Today in church, our pastor said, "I'm happy to report that this morning, Venita called me, asked me to thank everyone for all the prayers, and to ask the choir to sing up to heaven -- and they have." She's still very weak, and just sitting up to eat is a struggle, but she is improving.

Terah and I had invited my two aunts that grew up in what is now our house over to help decorate for Christmas. They were here today, and we spent all afternoon decorating, and we had spent the last couple of days finding decorations. It was a fun time, and the house looks great and feels more like home. We're happy to have had the help thinking about where to put everything, and actually putting things there. The tree isn't up yet, but it will be soon. We're thinking that it will be nice to be decorated early this year, rather than our usual just-before-Christmas decoration event!

It was neat to hear a few stories about how my grandma decorated the place; she died when I was young, and I don't remember her. Jacob, of course, was in on all the action. He watched, played, and threatened to make the nativity scene quite unpeaceful, but more interesting to a 13-month-old.

The Goerzen Christmas will be here this year. The last time Goerzens celebrated Christmas in this house was 7 years ago -- a month or so before I met Terah, as it happens. It seems so long ago in some ways. The house has changed; the 1970s yellow wallpaper is gone, as is the drop-ceiling tile that grandpa had installed to save on the heating bills, as is his wood stove and the metal tractors that he had in his closet that I used to play with when I was little.

But as I sit here typing this post, I'm looking at the spot where I used to play air hockey on grandpa's table during family gatherings -- and whenever else I could convince grandpa to get out his air hockey table for a game. Over in the corner is where he always had his Christmas tree, with the woven wheat ornaments my grandma had made. Terah decided that corner would be perfect for the tree, before she ever knew where it used to be.

Here's a picture I took at that Christmas 7 years ago:

Sitting here right now, looking at all that has changed, and all that hasn't... 7 years wasn't that long ago after all. I'm sure this year will be the first of many happy Christmases to be celebrated in this place.

OSCon and Portland Photos

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:02:32 -0500

I've taken my camera around OSCon and Portland a bit. Here are a few photos that I've taken so far.

At OSCon Itself

(click here to see all)

Overflow from breakfast. Most tables had powerestrips and laptops on them.

Debian booth at the expo hall. And the only one with beanbags. Sign reads "The developer is in."

Filing in for the keynotes. Everyone seemed to want a seat either at the very front or very back.

Simon Peyton-Jones explaining how locks with traditional threading can be improved upon with transactional memory.

Run for your life! The bell will attack at any moment!

I didn't hear it ring all week.

Around Portland

(click here to see all)

The Japanese Gardens were beautiful and tranquil. Jacob actually feel asleep while being rolled around on his stroller.

For some reason, this one reminds me of the Jedi Academy in one of the Star Wars video games.

One of the many bridges in Portland.

Terah's favorite find: Sweet Masterpiece Chocolate and Coffe.

We went there after the Blossoming Lotus Cafe, which was an interesting experience but not quite as good as I had hoped.

Trip to Oregon

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:34:00 -0500

Last week, Terah, Jacob, and I boarded a train in Kansas. We were bound for Los Angeles, then would go up the coast of California, eventually winding up in Portland for OSCON.

Our first train was the Southwest Chief out to LA.

Jacob had a great time on the train. This is a picture of Jacob and Terah in our sleeping car room. Jacob slept in his carseat at night and played with us during the day. See all recent photos of Jacob.

We had the option to get off the train for a few minutes in La Junta, CO. I took some photos trackside.

Here's Jacob enjoying the lounge car. There were dozens of Boy Scouts on our train, heading to the Boy Scout camp near Raton, NM. Many of them hung out in the lounge car, so Jacob had plenty to watch and keep him entertained.

The lounge car has wrap-around windows. We got an expansive view of the Rockies on the first day of our trip, and of the California desert on the second. This route really gives you a feeling of being alone sometimes. There are times where you can look out the window, and as far as you can see, there is no evidence of people or civilization.

Here's a picture out the lounge car, looking at the train as it rounded a curve.

The lounge car was in the middle of the train, so the train really was longer than it might appear here.

We had a bit of an adventure in Lamy, NM. Apparently a terminal cancer patient was riding the train, and died in the night. We were held up for about 2 hours for authorities to arrive, perform their investigation, etc.

While we were there, passengers could get off the train and look around. I took a few photos there.

This is a photo looking towards the front of the Chief. It uses bi-level cars, so every car has an upstairs and a downstairs.

Just outside the Lamy station is an old dining car. It is now a stationary restaurant. The restaurant had closed just before we arrived, but they let me in to take a few quick photos anyway.

Just past Albuquerque, one of the two locomotives on our train failed. That meant that, combined with the delay at Lamy, we were more than 3 hours late into Los Angeles. That, in turn, meant that we missed our connection to the Coast Starlight. So the new plan was to take a bus to Bakersfield, then the San Joaquin train to Sacramento, where we could catch up with the Coast Starlight and get to Portland as scheduled.

Jacob really enjoyed the Bakersfield train station. I carried him up to the stone walls, which he enjoyed exploring with his hands.

This is the Bakersfield station. It's a nice building. But their large metal sign reads "To trains and busses." Someday I will forget about them misspelling "buses" on a large metal sign.

I've got two more pictures of Jacob at Bakersfield that you'd enjoy: one, two. He sure was a popular baby. We got countless compliments from strangers, and he got even more smiles and greetings from people. Even when he was fussy, people kept saying what a good baby he was. We were a little surprised at that. A few people even found his cry to be cute and funny!

One of the nice side-effects of missing our connection was seeing the grand old Sacramento train station. A beautifully-decorated building. We were there until about 12:30AM because the Coast Starlight had been delayed as well.

Terah saw a sign out the door saying "Quiznos: Now Open." I figured that meant that the store was open, not that the place was open late into the night, but she wanted to check. She stepped out and then back in again. "As soon as I got out, homeless people started yelling at me! Plus the store wasn't open," she reported.

On the Coast Starlight, we discovered the absolutely stunning Pacific Parlour Car. These cars were originally built in the 1950s for the Santa Fe railroad, and have been renovated and restored by Amtrak for service on the Coast Starlight. That's the only train where they run, and they are available only to first-class passengers.

I noticed stairs going to the lower level of the Parlour, and was curious what was down there. So I went down to check it out, and it is a small (18 seats, I think) theater!

We sat down there for awhile and talked to some of the other people.

The view from the Coast Starlight was amazing. The trip through the mountains was particularly nice. We saw mountains from the distance, up close, and at some points could look out our window directly down into a deep valley below. There were lakes, waterfalls, and little creeks all along.

And finally, this is the grand Portland train station. Still an active station and a sight to see, though not as nice as Kansas City's.

So that's the trip to Portland. More to come on the convention and the city itself.

Camping

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:35:00 -0500

After my brother's wedding, a bunch of us Goerzens got together out at our creek. We had a hot dog roast, some smores, and then eight of us remained to camp out at the creek. That included Terah, Jacob, and me.

My uncle loves camping and has organized camping at the creek many times over the years. This was the first time it worked out for me to join them in quite awhile. Jacob slept well overnight, but woke up 5 minutes late -- 6:35. Never mind that he got to bed hours later than his usual time, he still woke up at the same time as always. He's funny that way.

My uncle brought with him supplies for making pancakes over the campfire in the morning. They were great. After breakfast, it was time to take down the tent and get back home to shower before going to church.

Now, a word about Terah and camping here. Terah had only gone camping with me once since we were married, and that was two years ago. This time, we had a larger tent, warmer weather, and most importantly, a complete lack of raccoon fights all around us.

I had visited a Coleman Factory Outlet store in Wichita in the morning, before the wedding, and bought a new Coleman Crestline tent (the one on the left above) and some other supplies. It's a very nice tent with a lot of ventilation options and plenty of little pockets to store things. Jacob slept in his car seat (which he likes to do) in the tent with us.

I think we might not have to wait two years before going camping again. Though I'm sure Terah will correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Wedding

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:19:00 -0500

Last weekend, my brother Peter get married! It was a lot of fun to be around Peter and Katherine during the activities last week. They are a wonderful couple and it is great to see them so happy. It was also fun to watch them get their pictures taken, to watch the groomsmen trying to find a key to their car so they could decorate it, and to see all the family there.

But most of all, I'm happy for Peter and Katherine. I never knew how much happiness a wedding could bring until I got married myself. And I'm sure this was a moment they'll look back on fondly for many years.

What We've Got Coming

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:59:20 -0500

That was me on my first birthday.

You might need to view the large version to see that yes indeed, I was very intent on that fire and probably would have loved to touch it.

Now, Jacob is about 8 months old right now.

I have every reason to believe that if I were to set a lit candle in front of him, he would not focus on it and reach one finger towards it. No, I'm sure he would focus on it and lunge for it with at least two hands. Possibly so suddenly that we'd have trouble keeping him back.

This sure does keep us on our toes.

I also have no doubt that Jacob's first birthday cake will wind up looking like mine did:

Jacob Update

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sat, 19 May 2007 10:34:01 -0500

He's almost 8 months old now. Terah and I went outside today and took some pictures of him.

He was quite interested in the grass, so it was hard to keep him sitting up straight. He kept trying to lean over and pull at the grass. But I think we got a few good ones anyhow. He's wearing his grandpa's outfit in all of these.

To see more, click here to view them all.

Jacob Update

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Thu, 03 May 2007 22:50:12 -0500

That's a picture of Jacob in his "suit", with his soft shoes. Both came from Indiana.

He's been really growing, and is big. He's about 7 months old now, and is a lot of fun to play with.

Sunday was child dedication day at church, and Jacob was dedicated that day, wearing his suit. (Here is an explanation of Mennonite child dedication if you're curious)

We took him to the front of the church (along with another family who also had a newborn). We promised to nurture him as a child from God, said a few words, and then the pastor -- as he always does -- carried Jacob down the sanctuary aisle.

Jacob watched as the pastor introduced him to the congregation. He said "these will be your Sunday School teachers, mentors, and friends." He pointed out Jacob's grandparents. And he said, "These are the pews your Great Grandpa Alvin sat in. If he were here today, I know he'd be proud of you."

After it was over, we went back to our seats, breathed a sigh of relief that Jacob wasn't screaming during the whole thing. And promptly had to take him to the nursery because he started screaming right about then.

Christmas Memories, Part 4

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 18:05:00 -0600

In my other posts about Christmas, I wrote about my memories of Christmas awhile back.

In this final post, some more recent memories.

Terah and I don't really have a Christmas tradition yet -- things seem to keep changing.

Our first Christmas after being married was in Indianapolis. Our church there didn't have a Christmas Eve service, so we went to a different one. We also bought a tree from Tree Classics that year:

The next year, we moved to Kansas. Our church has a children's program on Christmas Eve, but Terah likes the more meditative lessons and carols service that her church used to have on Christmas Eve, so sometimes we've gone to a different church that evening -- or even to two different services.

This year, we're in an apartment, and we've got Jacob. That makes everything more fun. Here he is in a festive holidy mood:

Of course, the one thing that a festive holiday mood is sure to lead to in a 3-month-old is a not-so-festive holiday bout of fussiness.

Our tree this year is borrowed. Ours, along with all of our Christmas decorations, lights, and wrapping paper, is in storage. So some of our gifts aren't wrapped. But that's OK -- we enjoyed Christmas all the same.

In this, my last post on Christmas for this season, I wanted to follow up on my earlier post about my Grandpa Klassen. I wrote:

Grandpa was great with the harmonica. And the song I best remember him playing at is Nun Ist Sie Erschienen. I remember sitting on his lap many times listening to him play it. And I'm pretty sure it was a year-round song for him. Terah and I even had it sung at our October wedding -- if it was year-round for Grandpa, that was good enough for us. It's always special to sing the song in church.

I was going to have a picture of Grandpa with his harmonica here, but I didn't get it ready in time. So I'll have to describe it. Imagine a black and white picture of a gentle man, dressed conservatively, holding a harmonica in his hands. He's looking towards it tenderly -- it seems to be something important, and maybe it represented fond memories for him, too. I'll post the photo as soon as I get a copy of it.

Well, here's the photo:

Christmas Memories, Part 3

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:33:00 -0600

In the first two posts about Christmas, I remembered Christmas at home and with my dad's family. Today I'm remembering Christmas with my mom's family, and tomorrow -- the last post on this subject, I promise -- more recent Christmases.

The first thing that comes to mind about Christmas with mom's family is Grandma's peppernuts (pfeffernuesse to any Germans reading this). Grandma made wonderful peppernuts. And she made huge batches of them for Christmas. I remember gallon jugs being passed around.

Peppernuts are a small sweet dough, rolled out, and cut into pieces about the size of a peanut M&M, then baked. My mom has been making them, and they look like this:

In fact, I can't really remember what sort of main dishes we used to have. Guess I had a one-track mind. I suspect that we also had some of Grandma's famous cherry moos (rhymes with "close").

Us kids usually were the only ones to get gifts there, but that was fine with me. It was also great to spend time with my uncles and aunts, none of which lived in the area. They were always good for some jokes, or maybe a math puzzle.

I seem to recall that Grandma and Grandpa also joined our family for our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve some years. Here's my Grandma reading from the Bible to my brother one of those Christmases:

Grandma has always loved being around her grandchildren, and she always seemed to have plenty of time for each one of us.

Thinking of my Grandpa Klassen reminds of first of the German hymn Nun Ist Sie Erschienen (MP3 and PDF in the comments at that link). It's still sung, in German and English, at Christmas in our church.

Grandpa was great with the harmonica. And the song I best remember him playing at is Nun Ist Sie Erschienen. I remember sitting on his lap many times listening to him play it. And I'm pretty sure it was a year-round song for him. Terah and I even had it sung at our October wedding -- if it was year-round for Grandpa, that was good enough for us. It's always special to sing the song in church.

I was going to have a picture of Grandpa with his harmonica here, but I didn't get it ready in time. So I'll have to describe it. Imagine a black and white picture of a gentle man, dressed conservatively, holding a harmonica in his hands. He's looking towards it tenderly -- it seems to be something important, and maybe it represented fond memories for him, too. I'll post the photo as soon as I get a copy of it.

Back on December 1, 1990, just at the start of Christmas season, I remember the phone ringing. Dad answered, and I knew quickly that something was wrong. Grandpa had died earlier that day, while doing something he loved -- visiting his children and grandchildren in western Kansas.

His funeral followed shortly. At 11, I was starting to become interested in photography, and I set up my tripod and took this picture of the church on the day of his funeral.

So many people still remember the church that day and commented that having the sanctuary all decorated for Christmas was the perfect way to remember Grandpa.

Grandma still talks about it, too. My mom and I played a piano duet arrangement of Nearer, My God, To Thee. After we finished, Pastor Epp said, "If the music in heaven is anything like that, it will be a wonderful place indeed." He passed away not long after that, too, but Grandma still remembers that comment verbatim (and I'm sure would gently correct me if I made the tiniest of mistakes recalling it here).

In a few days, we'll be celebrating Christmas with Grandma -- and also her 92nd birthday. I bet there will be some peppernuts there.

Memories of Christmas, part 2

nospam@example.com (John Goerzen) — Tue, 26 Dec 2006 23:14:58 -0600

In part 1, I wrote about Christmas at home growing up.

Today I'll write about Christmas at my Grandpa Goerzen's place.

The family usually got together sometime between Thanksgiving and New Year's, whenever it worked for everyone. Names for a gift exchange would be drawn well in advance. Each person would give and get one gift at the gift exchange.

Except for us kids. Grandpa always had something extra for us. And it always seemed to be just what we wanted, too. After all the other presents were exchanged, Grandpa would somehow produce a few more. He'd get a sly grin and say "Here's another one." And with that, we'd get to open it. As I got older, I knew my parents were probably giving him suggestions, but still -- there was always something special from Grandpa.

That grin went something like this.

The main dish for Christmas at Grandpa's was usually ham, or maybe his famous beef borscht. I always hoped for the beef borscht, anyway.

After the meal, people would do dishes or sit around and talk.

Sometimes I'd get bored and try to leave, but other times there was exploring to be done. Maybe I'd discover some long-forgotten game in the cold storage room upstairs.

On Sunday, I had the good fortune to have 5 reels of old family slides pass through my hands. I've been feverishly scanning all 500 of them on my slide scanner. At tomorrow's Goerzen Christmas, I'll bring along DVD+Rs of these scanned images for people -- I think it'll be great.

One of the slides was this picture of Grandma and Grandpa Goerzen's Christmas tree in 1971.

It's really neat to see pictures of the house we'll move into shortly from so long ago.

And just a few slides past that, there was this photo of my grandparents on the 25th anniversary. It wasn't at Christmas, but it's fitting:

That sure looks like a happy couple to me.

Terah and I had been talking that Christmas this year wasn't quite the same, with all our decorations and even wrapping paper being in storage, not having a house to decorate anyway (we're still in the temporary apartment), etc.

But being different doesn't mean that it's worse. The best gifts we have don't come in boxes under a tree. They're the love we get and give to each other every day of the year.

Grandpa had the same smile in his anniversary picture that he had at Christmas 19 years after Grandma died. I think he's understood what the best gifts are for a long time.