Rejoice & Weep

Today in Peoria was bittersweet. We were rejoicing with the Stickling family & Ginzel family and weeping with the Hemmer family. Tori Stickling and Josh Ginzel were baptized today while an entire extended Hemmer and Woerner family were having the visitation for their beloved mother Marian Hemmer. In church Tim Funk had the morning service while Craig Stickling had the afternoon, it was SO GOOD to be back in church after missing last Sunday. Mom, Mark and I left right after the baptism to rush over to Wiltons where we stood in line for almost 2 hours waiting our turn to talk to Chuck and his children. These 2 hours were amazing, we were able to visit with many many of our brothers and sisters in the Lord from years past. Two we were especially glad to be with, in fact in line just in front of us were Rick & Mary Plattner from Fairbury and Ron & Linda Kipfer from Bluffton.
Once home we quickly changed and started moving in round bales. Two in the middle paddock, one in Raven's paddock, one in the weanling paddock and one in the first paddock. Rhoda skipped to visitation to get some riding time on Ella, after enjoying her pulled out DaMita to go riding with Mike, saddled her up then got the phone call that she needed to leave NOW for her volley ball team. She galloped DaMita back, threw off the saddle and drove away. This left Mike without a rider so he called Rich Schock to see if he would come early to potluck and ride with him explaining that Rhoda had to leave for her volley ball game. After a fun ride with Mike on Jewel and Rich on Jenis, Rich comes into Diane's house, see's mom and exclaims, "are you already back from your volley ball game?" Mom was a bit confused until she realized Rich thought SHE was on the volley ball team instead of her grand daughter Rhoda. Now mom is good at volley ball but not THAT good, after all she will be 80 in 5 months.
Benjie and Kristin Hodel were suppose to come to Mike and Diane's for potluck but Kristin's brother was flying in today from Iraq at 6:00pm, Diane asked us if we would be fill ins. We rarely turn down a free meal and of course said yes!
Pictures below are of our fabulous meal:



We played 2 games of scrabble after dinner while visiting with each other and had a great time.