Summer Travels

While Alma was in Germany, the Bents Family Reunion was held on the last weekend of June. Rod, Rodrick and I flew from Louisville to MSP and Victor flew from Huntsville, AL. We met at the airport and traveled together in a rental car to Cumberland, WI.

Three weeks later Mark & Lori Bents had a celebration in the same locale and invited all their friends and family. Alma wanted to go, since she missed the reunion and she could see a lot of people she wouldn't see for 18 months. So we drove up. Our '98 Saturn is still running quite well, getting 36 mpg sometimes.

Soon after we sent out an announcement that we were going to Taiwan, we got a reply from Rose (her Chinese name is Liu Suyuan). Not only was she glad to hear from us, but more importantly, she was coming to Kentucky to teach Chinese at Bluegrass Community and Technical College in Lexington.

Rose

Rose was the biggest help to us when we went to China in 2000 to teach English. She was teaching English at the college in Jinan and she looked out for the foreigners. Then at the semester break she became a tour guide for six of us, making train and plane reservations and choosing sites to see. We went west to Xian, site of the Terracotta Warriors. We went south to Kunming Province and then east to Guangzhou. The six of us continued to Hong Kong for a meeting of the BYU China Teachers and Rose returned to Jinan.

Rose arrived in Kentucky on August 10 and we picked her up on August 13 to come to our home, along with Linda (her fellow teacher) and Linda's daughter Lily. We took Annmarie and Bailey along to see the Stephen Foster Story in a large, outdoor amphitheater
.

We introduced them to Mr. Tierney who was in the hospital that week.

They stayed with us two nights before returning to Lexington.

A week later we drove to the Chicago area for a wedding of a cousin once removed. It had been a long time (40 to 50 years) since I had seen Norma Kay Silbaugh Trautmann and her brother Joe Silbough, my cousins. It was Norma's daughter, Denise, that was married. Also present was my cousin David Schmidt, his daughter Sarah, and his wife Jeanette (not in this picture). It was good seeing them all again.

Just before leaving home we were invited to Grandparents' Day at the Elementary School where Amanda attends Kindergarten (Rodrick and Donna are raising her). She is the middle child waiting in the lunch line and they were marching in place just for fun.

Finally, the last two weeks in Kentucky we were frantically cleaning and moving things out of our ground floor. Here you see our living room, devoid of everything except the piano and organ. The smaller stuff was carried to the basement and the larger stuff (two couches and a bedroom set) were taken to our property on Hill Street. We are renting out our home while we are gone to a family named Cassady.