What's in a Name!!!!

So, what is in a name.... EVERYTHING! I'd recently gone back to blogging and thought I'd go for something a little different... "On the Porch"....  but then what happens??? Patsy Clairmont announces that she is going to be doing a little something called "On the Porch with Patsy".... yeah. So what is a girl to do?? Go back to the original Blog - Neal at the Cross... and remember why I started to blog in the first place!!!

So here I am... back home, where it all started. I will admit it has been kind of fun to go back and see some of the pictures that I've posted. Some of the stories. Most of which seem like a lifetime ago...but really aren't.

This has definitely been a busy week. Saturday is the Pekin-Eastern Alumni Banquet, and I'm the treasurer for the committee that puts it all on. I graduated from Eastern High school a LONG time ago... 1977! That is 36 years ago!!! Isn't that crazy?! Last year, my class gathered for our 35th reunion...

... yes 35 years... and we had a BLAST! It was wonderful to get to see so many friends. This was about 1/3 of our class... and I think that is great!  But I digress....

The Alumni not only give away hundreds of dollars in scholarships to graduating seniors, but it honors those who have been out of school for 50, 25, and 10 years. This year is middle daughters 10 year class reunion! Only a few of her classmates have decided to come to the banquet, but I am excited to see them! Just a few more of the 25 year class will attend than the 10 year class. And the 50 year class has a little over half of their graduate attending.

This has made me wonder, when my class gets to its 50th year out of school... how many will come to the banquet? How many will even come to a reunion? There was a time when people graduated from a school, they didn't move very far away. They got jobs, married, had kids, and did it all where they were born an raised. That is just no longer the case!

As honored classes searched out addresses so that I could send invitation letters to the banquet, many had a hard time getting current addresses. And the 10 year class just had a hard time finding classmates, period! People had moved. They'd married (or divorced!). They were living out of state. And some were living out of the country. I sometimes find this a hard concept to understand... but this is coming from a girl who lives 52 of her 54 years on earth in the same town.... until this year!

We have become a society on the move, and I wonder if that is really a "good thing"! It has me wondering... where are your roots? Where do you call home?  And if you've moved... and you think of home... is it where you live, or where you grew up? To me, Pekin will probably always be "home".... even if it isn't where I live....

And that brings me back to my original question... "What's in a name?" The answer for me... family history... and at the Alumni banquet tomorrow, there will be three generations of our family present! Four generations have graduated from the Pekin-Eastern schools... I think that is pretty impressive!!!! No matter how far away you may travel from home... never forget your roots... your history... it is part of who you are!

Have a Blessed Day!

Lynn

A little more Christmas!

Over the years I've accumulated several Christmas houses... this picture shows a few of them... I have 5 more that I have on a shelf above a window that I leave out all year long. I began getting these home in the late 80's when I directed the choir at the church I attended at the time. Each year, following the Christmas Cantata, they group presented e with a different church....

Later on, my family got in on the act... the picture below was the addition that Carly gave me last year. I love the fact that you can actually see a lady inside the kitchen cooking! And Mickey gave me the "newspaper guy" when I still had The Good News Monthly. I've also got a school house, a Fire/Police Station, a long cabin and an Antique store. Carly is the main giver of houses now... I love getting them.... and someday I'm going to have to expand the display area!!!

And I LOVE putting up our christmas tree... we make a point of buying ornaments on EVERY vacation that we take. So as we are putting up the tree, we have fun talking about where we got the ornament, and the memories we made on that trip. We have a Micky and Minnie from our Disney trip... we have Panda from our recent DC Trip... where we went to the National Zoo to see their Panda exhibit. We have ornaments from our Gatlinburg trip, our Myrtle Beach trip, a Hershey Kiss from our Pennsylvania trip... you get the picture....

But I also have some ornaments that have been on the tree for YEARS!!! Like the ones below... My mom got me these handpainted angels when the girls were little. One to represent each girl.... they have had a place at the top of the tree ever since.....

When Michael came along we had to one one for him.... so since his FAVORITE character is the Gingerbread Man from the Shrek movies, we purchased this ornament just for him. He LOVES to put it up each year..... and the little angel beside it... that is Carly's as she played the Sax for several years....

While we were in China getting Michael, we purchased this angel....

And we ornaments for each of the grands.... plus ornaments that we have purchased with the addition of each one... there is an ornament for our exchange student, Sara... which we still place on the tree each year.... and the ornament below we purchased as a reminder of Kishsnider, the young boy we sponsor through World Vision. We have faithfully sponsored him for years now.... it has always been so much fun to receive updates and pictures.....

We have ornaments that were gifts, ornaments that wqere "created" by our children, and I have an entire bag of ornments that we no longer use that I will be keeping because of the memories that they hold. As I look at our tree I am reminded of so many memories... each of which are a part of our holiday season.... and it makes me smile.

If you get the chance to share a little about your holiday memories or traditions, let me know... I'd love to read what you have to share.

Have a blessed Christmas season!