Boxing Day, 2016 Dear Family and Friends, We have had quite a year this year! It could be labeled the Death Year with eight of our family members dying. It could be called The Hall Year with us making major progress on finishing The Hall. As we look back, we wonder how we lived through it all, but we do know that it is obviously God’s grace that keeps us standing. The deaths began in February with my younger cousin dying of cancer; it was my first experience of extended visiting of a hospice facility. I discovered through Roseann’s circumstances, a lovely one exists in Ithaca. Then, shortly afterwards, in the midst of helping to move my mother-in-law to a personal care unit of her retirement community, Roberta’s (Glenn’s sister) husband was diagnosed with cancer and died twelve days later. Then Glenn’s mother died in June. Then, in rather rapid succession, I had two aunts, an uncle, a cousin’s stepson, and then the same cousin’s husband die (her mother was one of the aunts who died). I now know all about ordering flowers and became better at it as the year progressed. I do not recommend learning this skill in this manner, however. I attended all but two of the funerals, one of which was in California and one of which will happen after the holidays. How we managed to continue in our jobs and make progress on The Hall is beyond me. I believe we just did it out of desperation to keep our sanity. So we now can report, we have hot water in The Hall, which needed the prop room walls and floor finished before we could put in the water heater. Glenn got up more than one day very early before going to work in Painted Post, and I could hear him knocking the floor together. The stairs to the prop room still need to be finished, but there is a railing and all is safe. They just need paint and treads. I am hoping to get the props out of the root cellar and into the prop room this week!! With the addition of the water heater, we can now end the nightly heating of water on the stove for dishes and the trek over to the guest apartment for showers. We can use the shower in The Hall. So we truly can have better amenities for guests. The guest apartment can sleep three—two in a double bed and one in a pull-out loveseat. The Hall can sleep two in pull-out love seats. The prop room can sleep two, if we put a bed in it, which we are thinking of doing for the winter. Then we can blow up at least three different rather comfortable air mattresses for a total of four people. (Have you tried a modern air mattress with an electric air pump and deflater? Being over two feet tall when blown up, they are quite comfortable.) And then there are the camping pads and sleeping bags that can be put directly on the floor of The Hall for three or four more people. (Are you counting?) So, if there is some kind of conflagration in the cities and suburbs as preppers have been predicting and you need to be 40 miles from a city (we are about 35) to “head for the hills” as ‘they’ say, we are in the hills. Stop by for a visit, and you just might never leave, especially if you like lawns and gardening and country. For neighbors, we have a rather boisterous turkey who regularly bullies a guinea hen in the summer. We have all kinds of birds because we have a lot of snags in our woodlot and no pesticides. My Aunt Lura and Uncle John stayed for about three weeks this summer and survived it. Grandson Gavin stayed six weeks with one week commuting to acting camp, after his brother Callum’s birth (yes, we have a new grandson!!! who is extremely athletic, so much so I am predicting he will be walking by nine months). Grandson Toby, going on four, drops in from Ithaca off and on and enjoys sleeping in the “boat bed.” Starry, Justin, and Emmalyn (who is a sweet, almost two-year-old) survived a week here. We managed to rig up a temporary office for Justin but realize we need better wifi for his high-powered programs, for which we will be searching in the next round of improvements. We will be reading all of your Christmas cards we saved to read on Christmas Day as soon as this message is sent. We thank you for them. We will be praying for you as we read them. Remember us in prayer: Justin (with his health challenges and work in robotics on a self-driving car), Starry (with her contractual accounting jobs for Pittsburgh County while staying home with Emmy), Emmalyn (praise God she has been released from all the developmental ‘therapies’ doctors have ordered for her since she was born), Matthew (in his job hunt since the Duluth, MN eliminated his parking manager job in October), Chanti (as treasurer of their church and mom of a son and new baby), Gavin (in his therapies for toe walking and challenges in second grade), Callum (as a seven-month-old adjusting to life and growing), Nathan (in his cyber security job who is mapping out the family history finding we have several Revolutionary War soldiers in my line), Hannah (in her roles of condo president and board member of Ithaca Moms and mother of Toby), and Toby (learning social skills at preschool because he already knows the alphabet and how to read). Glenn continues on as pastor of the United Church of Painted Post (a Presbyterian/Methodist combo), while I am teaching grade 10 Brit Lit and grade 11 American Lit at Ithaca High School. Pray for the spiritual development of ALL of us as we live together as a family and as a witness for our LORD. We all need to be more like Him. Our prayers are with you and yours this season as we read your greetings, Shirley Kennedy
for Glenn, Starry and family, Matthew and family, and Nathan and family (all twelve of us) | 