Marty had his missionary farewell today and did such a wonderful job. He's an excellent speaker -- very thoughtful with a great way of expressing himself and his ideas and confident.
When he gave his talk in church with all the graduating seniors, he did an amazing job. So I knew he was going to do great with his farewell talk too and didn't worry at all about bugging him to work on it. I knew he had it.
We'd been up late celebrating New Year's (Happy New Year!) and gratefully have afternoon church now. The Paul's left early in the morning (Sad!) to go back home to Chicago. (We didn't know that Marty's farewell would be Sunday when they booked their flights. Darn!) And then soon after I was up getting everything ready for his open house after church. With the accident, we kept things simple and ordered eclairs and lemon bars from a bakery, California Rolls from Itto's, and veggie trays from Costco. I had so many friends offer to bring treats, but felt we had it covered. Is it any surprise I found a plate of cookies on my porch dropped off by Jen G. and another plate dropped by from Kelly H.? Love my friends.
Speaking of friends, Suzy R. texted the day before with the offer of using the wheelchair from her husband's dental office to get Chris to church. It was a lifesaver. She even had thought through the plan of getting another chair from the back to prop his leg on. Love my friends.
It was very important to Chris that he be dressed in a suit for Marty's farewell. I thought he should just go in a white shirt and tie with sport shorts, but he wasn't having it. We woke him up with plenty of time to slowly get ready. We came downstairs and washed his hair in the kitchen sink (with the sprayer). He was able to get his suit on over his leg (and over his sport shorts) and looked fantastic. Green in the face, but the rest of him looked fantastic. Getting him in the car was tricky -- the hardest part was trying to get his leg in when it wouldn't bend. But we managed it. And we all drove over together. On time!
The great thing about having his farewell so close to Christmas is Gram and Papa and my Mom and Dimitrios were still in town so they could be there too. What a gift to have them there! It was so fun to have 5 rows filled with mine and Dan's families and Chris, Courtney and Marty's friends and many more family friends and parents of Marty's friends, all there to show love and support Marty.
He looks so handsome in his suit and presented so well. As a bonus, Nicholas and two other 11 year olds were presented as graduating from Primary and asked to bear their testimonies. (Shoot! Didn't have time to prep him, but he did great!) Also,the two youth speakers, McCartney R. and Peyton J. gave very thoughtful talks as well. It was a pretty incredible meeting.
After Sacrament, we came home with all our family and any friends who wanted to come over (asking the church friends to come after church was over). We had a huge houseful! It was so fun!
I thought Chris might want to go straight to his room and back to bed and have his friends hang out with him there, but instead he wanted to be with everyone. In spite of his face being so pale and practically green from the effort of being up, he had a huge smile and it was good to see him up and about.
Everyone left about 3:30. We thought more might come after church ended, but no one really did. Many of our good church friends were out of town for the holiday. But it was nice to have the rest of a quiet evening together. The Jankes dropped by -- the whole family. We love them and loved that they wanted to see both Chris and Marty!
Chris stayed downstairs the rest of the evening. We all sat around with Marge too snacking, talking and enjoying the quiet and normalcy after such a fun and crazy holiday!
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