Today is a beautiful day. Hannah, the daughter of one of the pastors at Evergreen is celebrating her 25th birthday today. She has Downs Syndrome and us the guest of honor at a surprise party thrown by friends in the church.   The day is pleasantly warm (as long as the sun is behind the clouds), there is a nice breeze, the smell of barbecue, and over a hundred people in attendance. The sheer excitement and delight on Hannah’s face was worth every bit of preparation.

The whole scene reminds me of those classic movies or a Rockwell painting and brings back many memories of summer evenings growing up in the Midwest, and that makes me smile. Sure the humidity was generally too high, the AC was generally out of a window unit, and there were never enough people for a full baseball game, but the days seemed endless and with enough imagination sticks became swords, crabapples became tiny grenades and cinderblocks became end zones or bases.

While we didn’t have a lot of the electronic advances we have today, we always seemed to be occupied and entertained. While I am definitely not anti-technology, I have to admit that I do feel a little sad sometimes when I see MLB 2017 on XBOX being played more than pickup games in the neighborhood.  I am not naive enough to believe we will ever go back to those carefree days, and I am not disillusioned enough to believe that there were no bad days back then, but I am nostalgic enough, at least today, to sit back, take it all in and smile.

Have a great week and talk to you again soon!