Anniversaries and Awards

This posting will have only indirect connection with our trip, but it has some things I would like to share with those of you who are following this blog.

This past weekend our family was in Brooks, Alberta to celebrate my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary. Over the past couple of weeks most of my spare time was focused on planning and preparing for this big event (thus the Europe trip was temporarily put on the back burner). It was a splendid celebration, with over 200 family and friends gathering in the Tilley Community Hall for a meal, program and dance. Many laughs, a few tears, and lots of music filled the evening. The part of the preparations for this event that I personally enjoyed the most was looking through all the slides my Dad took over the years, it brought back many memories. I scanned the slides I thought might work for the program, then my brother James put the show together using a slick Mac program - it turned out great. Every child and grandchild (except little Ava) performed a musical number or dance in the program. Much to our astonishment when the program concluded (with a family choir singing an arrangement of "This Little Light of Mine") the crowd gave us a standing ovation. It made me feel glad to know that we were able to put together and present a special program to honour the wonderful people that my parents are.

At the 50th Anniversary Celebration Thomas (our son, representing the grandchildren), gave a little talk about how his grandparents always had such great food around, but also how they instilled in him a love of travel through all their stories and pictures from their many trips over the years. That got me thinking, perhaps it is partly from my parents that I have this desire to travel. So far the travel has primarily been limited to North America, but the upcoming trip to Europe has been something I've looked forward to for years. Ironically Thomas' first trip outside Canada or the United States may end up being cancelled or postponed. He is taking a Spring Term Class through Luther College at the University of Regina that was supposed to travel down to Mexico to study Food Economics in a couple of weeks. Due to the outbreak of the Swine Flu they may not be making the trip. Hopefully the Swine Flu problem will not spread too far, or be too virulent so that our Europe plans will be affected. Time will tell. If Thomas' trip is indeed cancelled I will feel very sorry for him since he was really looking forward to this trip.

Now that my parent's 50th Anniversary celebration is over, Beth and I can focus on our celebration (both the trip to Europe and some kind of party back home). I remember planning and preparing for my parent's 25th Anniversary the year Beth and I got married, and now we've reached that milestone as well. Time truly does fly.

This same past weekend, while the Anniversary party was happening in Brooks, a different kind of gathering was happening in Nipawin, Saskatchewan - it was the annual gathering of the SCMA (Saskatchewan Country Music Association). Jennifer Jade Kerr was at this event, partly because the CD I produced for her was nominated for a couple of awards. I found out today that her album "somehow it always does" won for Gospel Album of the Year! Though this recording really isn't a country album, it has enough country elements to have been considered by the SCMA. Jennifer is a great singer/songwriter and it was a pleasure working with her on this recording (which took almost 3 years to finish from conception to completion). Since last September Jennifer has been working in a Lutheran church out in Kelowna, BC - so I don't get to connect with her very often, thus it was nice when she stopped by for a visit today (bringing her award along with her for me to see). So even though this event has nothing to do with our Europe trip I simply needed to share this exciting news with all you folks. If you would like to check out Jennifer's music visit her website: http://www.jenniferjadekerr.com/

To wrap up this post I want to point out that we are less than 5 weeks away from the beginning of our travels. In the coming weeks there will be a lot of finalizing details, figuring out what to bring and what not to bring, fretting over whether or not we have forgotten anything. We will be sure to be posting more often in the coming days. So check back often. By the way, we gave our mini-laptop a test run this past weekend when we traveled to Brooks and back - it worked pretty good, though we need to get used to its smaller keyboard. I look forward to using it to type up blog entries throughout Europe and sharing them with you. Thanks for being along for the ride.