road trip

Watertown, WI. I spent my formative years in the town of water. It's a nice place to visit and a fine place to live. If I won the lottery*, I would buy the nicest house in town and live there for, oh, just 6 months out of the year (obviously, the winter months would be spent somewhere warmer...). *You gotta play to win. Too bad I don't play!

So since I'm not living in Watertown anymore it's fun to visit once in a while. Last week I drove down on Thursday and spent the afternoon with my friend Sue. She snuck away from the pie shop just long enough to venture to Madison for dinner. We had fun catching up on each other's happenings. Our meal at BD's Mongolian Grill was interrupted by a power outage (for the entire East Towne area!), but since we were the only customers in the restaurant, the servers were very attentive. Good thing the grill was gas!
That evening we stopped by the rehearsal for The Music Man, a production that MBBC was putting on this coming weekend. When I was young I think we watched the classic movie every year and I loved it! It was disappointing to hear they wouldn't be performing the song Shipoopi...well, not really... My real favorite song & choreography of the movie is Marian the Librarian.

Friday I spent part of the day on Maranatha's campus visiting with former co-workers and seeing the changes around campus. Then I went to lunch with two friends, Sue and Donna. We too had a great time catching up on each of our life happenings. Donna's sister has cancer and it was sad to hear about what's going on with her, but it was good to find out how to pray more specifically for Donna and her family.

After lunch I chatted with a few more peoples on campus and then headed over to see my old OSM boss, Doug. I say "old" because he was at home recovering from shoulder surgery. This man has had more surgeries on his joints then I've had...well, I can't think of anything funny, but he's had a lot! His whole family was home so I was able to catch up with everyone! I can't believe how big the kids are getting - including Nic who will be graduating from college and getting married this summer! It was especially good to see Kris who's also had quite a challenging year as she had cancer.

My visit with the Richards family was a bit long-winded so I had to fly across town to get back to Sue's house where I was staying. She was cooking dinner for me and my Watertown family: Kurschner's, Lawson's, & Chowanec's. (That reminds me of my Guam family. Anyone remember what we named ourselves when we combined our last names to make one big new name?...hmm...Traucht, Flaming, Nixon, Thompson, Clodfelter...how'd we do that?!)

Anyway, Sue cooked a delicious meal and we all got to catch up and also be entertained by the two little munchkins, Noah and Leah. I've included a few pics from that evening below.

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On Saturday I met my Watertown family at the pie shop for breakfast before I headed back to the City of Lakes. Wait! this is a town of water, too!?!


All in all it was a great road trip! Beautiful weather. Safe driving. Wonderful fellowship. Believe it or not, there were plenty more people that I wished I would have had time to catch up with. So if you're one of the people I missed hopefully we'll connect next visit! See you soon!