Travels

Since my last post, I have literally been from one end of the country to the other. My trip to Colorado with Penny over Memorial Day weekend went very well. It was good to see Colorado, learn to know her family better, see Tom & Lois and girls in Wichita, and spend some quality time with Penny. I am especially thankful for traveling mercies - we traveled over 2,500 miles over five days and had no problems whatsoever. I often take that for granted until I hear about how my co-worker's daughter's car broke down in Nebraska, or of a Ohio pastor who was killed over the weekend traveling back from Iowa. Anyway, I will try to post some pictures of CO soon. A highlight for me was the outdoor graduation ceremony with Pikes Peak on the horizon. It was a beautiful day with beautiful scenery.

I arrived home late on Monday (May 28) from my Colorado trip and worked at GC on Tuesday. Then at 4am Wednesday morning I left for Orlando to go to a Jenzabar (administrative software) conference for work. There were a total of six of us from GC that went. It was a good conference, but not great. It did help me get an idea of what the conference is like and who the college should consider sending in the future. We want to try to get 2-3 users of the software to the conference each year. Weds, Thurs and Friday were full of seminars and meeting many people. One evening we went out to eat at a Thai restaurant (the curry dish I got was too hot for me), and one evening we ordered pizza and watched a movie. On Friday evening we had the opportunity to go to Epcot Center as part of the conference. Unfortunately it rained the entire time we were there, so my first purchase was a Mickey Mouse rain poncho. But we tried to be positive and noted that the rain did cut down substantially on the crowds of people.

Then, yesterday (Saturday) I left the conference early to fly back for a wedding in Toledo. Instead of flying back to South Bend, I flew to Toledo. The flight from Cleveland to Toledo was on a very small plane (capacity 19) and there were only four people on the flight! It felt a little like my own private charter jet. Luckily, we arrived 20 minutes early in Toledo so I arrived in plenty of time for my friend Susie to pick me up and make it to the wedding. The wedding was Melanie Histand and Jason Schmucker at Toledo Mennonite Church. Melanie was my student assistant for five years and also the daughter of my boss. It was a very nice, fairly simple wedding. I finally arrived home about 9:45pm last night and basically fell into bed.

This morning I was in the toddler nursery for church so I didn't get to participate in worship. This afternoon I went to my cousin Sheila Yoder's high school graduation open house and then came home in a heavy rain storm.

Pictures of some of these events will be posted soon. Stay tuned and have a good week!