Midlife, Old Programmer, Girl Table, Leslie's Wedding, Boyish Talk

Dear Family,

I (Sherry) hope I’m not the only one writing a family letter today. I get so tired of FB blurbs and text messaging. I want long letters! And I have a great need to feel connected to my original extended family. The aunts did too good of a job with all the family reunions and 3 day weekend get togethers to see the museums or aquarium in Chicago. Not that I expect us to be able to keep up with all of that now that so many of us cousins are married and managing two or more sides of a family for our own children.

I turned 39 last month and am definitely feeling a keen awareness of midlife (but no midlife crisis). For one thing I find that the more things change, the more I want them to stay the same. Meanwhile the more some things stay the same, the more I want them to change. Ryan’s flipping to the other side of the coin as well. It seems like just yesterday he was the new programmer at work, complaining about all the older programmers who were “stuck in the ways” and “unopen to new ideas.” Now he has lots of complaint about all these young new programmers who “don’t think we (older programmers) know anything!” The clash at work between the old and the young must be getting pretty heated because they’ve now started assigning people from each side to go out to lunch together so they can get to know each other better.

Last week Ryan got paired up with one of the younger guys for lunch. When the other guy asked Ryan where he wanted to go, Ryan said he was open to pretty much anything (but he had something like Apollo Burger in mind). The younger guy suggested the go to a Peruvian restaurant that he really liked. Not wanting to offend, Ryan agreed and on the drive over found out this place specializes in some kind of raw fish (but not sushi). “Um……” said Ryan. “Do they also have any meats that are cooked????” They did, but whatever it was, it wasn’t very tasty to Ryan. But he seems to have had a good time chatting with the younger guy and did find a few things in common with him.

Jared has successfully learner to navigate school with that bully in his class and has helped some other kids in the process. He now sits at the “girl table” at lunch and has gotten quite a few of the boys to follow him. He says they have many “interesting conversations about Minecraft” and comes home happy nearly every day. Another one of his friends that was in his class last year got moved to Jared’s class and the two of them have bonded even tighter. They play every day and even made up nicknames for each other. But we are absolutely forbidden to call Jared his nickname. “Only Kanon can call me that!”

We went to Leslie’s wedding and had a wonderful time. Jared even suffered through the seemingly ended photo shoot afterwards. Leslie’s parents insisted that we be included in their family picture and we felt very loved and definitely included. I think Jared hugged Leslie more that day than he does in a year. We met Bryan’s parents and his mom was especially excited to meet Jared. Introducing ourselves to new people was a bit of a juggle. If someone wasn’t family and asked how we knew Leslie, we’d just say that we were good friends. If that person was family, we found we could proudly say, “we’re Jared’s parents” and were well received every time. Bryan’s sister was especially welcoming to us. I was talking to Leslie’s friend Norah at the reception. I got to telling her how at the adoption training classes we had to go to this one couple shared that they got together with their son’s birthmother once a month for dinner at Olive Garden. Ryan and I were horrified! There’s no way we could picture ourselves being comfortable enough to do that. And look at us now!

A couple highlights for me were these: after we’d said our goodbyes at the luncheon to Leslie and Bryan and had turned to leave, we overheard Leslie say to Byran about Jared, “I guess he does kind of look like me.” :) Jared looks so much like Leslie! She has a hard time seeing it though, but everyone that met him for the 1st time kept saying how much he looks like her. The 2nd thing was that I was a little worried that the wedding would leave Jared feeling split between his birth family and our family. But he didn’t . In fact, as we left he happily announced, “now I’m part of 5 families! I’m a Keller, a Burt, a (Leslie’s side), a (Mike’s side, his birthfather), and a (Bryan’s side).” This is my absolute favorite picture from the wedding:

And I’ll end with this delightful exchange I overheard from Jared and his friend Dominick as they were setting up to play Sklyander’s a couple weeks ago.

Jared: “Do you dare battle my blizzard chill????”
Dominick: “Oh, I dare!”

Which reminds me, I feel like I’m constantly giving girly replies to Jared’s boyish questions or stories about his day. This is a typical after school conversation:

“Today at recess Jake destroyed Sean’s base!”
“Oh, poor Sean!”
“No, mom! Not poor Sean. It was a battle.”

Well, I think that’s about it for now. Hope everyone is having a nice February so far. We have our ups and downs, but overall I can honestly say that life is good, we’re happy, and the Lord is ever mindful of us. Love you all!

Love,
Sherry, Ryan, and Jared