Chapter 28

The year Bethany turned 10 and the boys turned 8 the whole family went on a 6 week holiday. I made arrangements to rent a large motorhome in Seattle and after travelling to Seattle from our island, we headed out to sightsee and visit the various families. Ever since our initial meeting with Jennifer’s parents’ families, we’d kept in touch, sending them pictures of the kids and generally keeping them abreast of what was happening with the kids.

Over the next 6 weeks we managed to hit all kinds of attractions from pure amusement places such as Disneyland to natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon and Carlsbad Caverns to historical places such as The Alamo.

When we were planning where to go we discovered that we’d be near a Bluegrass Music Festival and made plans to take the festival in. We were truly delighted to find that there were a number of the old-time Bluegrass songs sung – ones from the likes of Jim and Jesse, Earl Scruggs and the Country Gentlemen. Jennifer and I had developed a taste for Bluegrass and this was a chance to let the kids experience live music. Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.

As we meandered around the country, we made sure to visit with both of Jennifer’s families where we were warmly welcomed by all. A visit to my ex-wife and her family gave us a chance to meet a daughter-in-law (Ken’s wife) who we’d only seen pictures of as well as the grandchildren.

While we’d really enjoyed our trip, we were oh so glad to be home. When we stopped at the store to get our mail we discovered a wedding invitation from Martin. We’d met his lady friend when we were there but as we discovered in the letter Martin had included with the invitation, he hadn’t yet proposed. As he’d planned, he’d proposed to the lady the night after we’d left them and of course she said ‘yes’. We were so happy for Martin.

There was a sad note though, when we got back to our island. Faye had woken up one morning to Ralph crying loudly and when she went out to see what the problem was, she discovered that Maggie had died peacefully in her sleep. While this was a sad time for us, it wasn’t a big surprise. We didn’t know exactly how old Maggie was, but we knew she was getting old and had mostly been just lying around, snoozing. The kids were quite upset but after we explained what happened and that as far as we knew, Maggie hadn’t suffered, they accepted the situation.

Life continued to be good for us. The kids thrived in school and had developed some close friends on the main island. One weekend, Bethany stayed on the main island with a friend of hers and the boys each brought on friend out to stay with us. The next weekend, the opposite happened. Once Bethany entered high school, we arranged for her to stay with the ‘aunties’ and go to school full time in town. We made the same arrangements with Ben and his wife once the boys entered high school.