Move those wagons to Pennsylvania!

Our nephew, Matthew, married Jami Shuleski last weekend. In preparation for this event, Rus, Dennis, Laura and I loaded the wagons and headed east for the trek to Wilkes-Barre. The 8-hour trip on Friday was not eventful. We arrived around 3 connecting with Grandpa Bill, the Colorado branch (Kathy) and AZ (Rob) branch of the Koch family before the rehearsal dinner. Once there we met the couple, the PA branch (John, Mimi, Collin) and the NC branch (Michael, Dianne, Nicholas and Logan) of the Koch family and the Shuleski family. It was fun to see everyone, especially the beautiful grandchildren of our PA branch. The Boston (Brian and Megan) and Florida (Don and Debbie) contingents arrived when we returned to the hotel. It was a huge gab-fest with lots of laughing being emitted from Rm. 213 until midnight. Then it was off to bed to rest for the big day.

On Saturday, the Koch family, in its entirety, met at the church at 1. The lovely wedding went off without a hitch. We went back to the hotel to rest before the reception. Everyone enjoyed the food and conversation at the wedding. Everyone sang Happy Birthday to Grandpa Bill, who turned 88 on Sunday. Early Sunday morning, we gathered for an early breakfast as everyone prepared to go their respective ways. It was wonderful to see everyone.

Our branch of the Koch family (Ohio and Boston) had plans of our own. At 10, we met with the Gernon side of our family - our own Uncle Bobby, and Aunt Susan - at Friendly's for breakfast. As always, we spent a fun-filled 2 hours, luckily is a separate room, talking, joking laughing and catching up, face-to-face. It was a sad good-bye as we all headed off on our separate ways at noon.

As the wagon headed West, we stopped at Bucknell University to see Laura's wonderful friend, Natalie. What luck! It was Parent's Weekend so we also saw our good friends and former neighbors, Tony and Nina, and met Natalie's boyfriend, Zaf at the AXΩ sorority house. We had a great chat with all of them, everyone talking at once - just like family! It was so wonderful to see all of them and very sad to leave, again!

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We listened to Dan Brown's Deception Point, as we made our way back to Columbus. We, weary travelers, arrived home safe-and-sound having heard the same from the other contingents. Looking forward to the next time we can all get together with both sides of our family for another happy occasion!