When this family's quiet, it's easy to walk by them.

That was Sarah, 7:56 Sunday morning.

Alas, this family being quiet is quiet ... I mean, quite rare. Friday night after work I met Martha and the kids at the Grand where Minot Chamber Chorale was performing its first concert of the season. (She sings soprano in Chorale for ... I think this is her second year running since Sarah and Jeffrey were born.) By the time I arrived the Chorale was midway through its first song of a popular medley, Sonny Bono's "The Beat Goes On" -- in fact, that was the name of the whole program -- and I sat down at the table with Sarah and Jeffrey and two of Martha's Trinity coworkers (but in different departments), Steve and his wife Tammy. Also got our latest family snapshot that night before we left the show for dinner at Fuddruckers, one of the new restaurants come to Minot in our area's oil boom wake ... well, we can at least say we've been there.

My sister Margaret turned forty-one this Friday too.

On our way home Jeffrey's tummy went on him and he threw up because of the mix of Fuddruckers and the seasoning on the Chex mix that was situated at everyone's table during the Chorale show at the Grand Hotel. (And that's the hotel on north Broadway's name THIS season ... but I digress.) So everybody -- well, after Martha delivered the papers Saturday morning -- got to sleep in but me, but that's ok because this year I'm able to get to Bethany Lutheran's Breakfast with the Boys, but I have to leave practically after breakfast to get to Marketplace and work an eight-hour shift Saturdays. I'm technically scheduled Saturdays and Sundays, but Eli the Dairy/Frozen Food department manager there is limited on how many people he can schedule how many hours, so I'm usually off Sundays. I don't mind that since I already do work Dakota Pawn during the week and the paper route four days.

My niece Breanna (Margaret's oldest daughter) is nineteen today.

Anyway, after I left Marketplace for the evening Martha, the kids and I accepted Steve and Tammy's invitation to visit with them eleven miles east of Minot on another fireworks enthusiast's farm. In fact, Steve and Tammy create their own fireworks, operating their own business and presenting shows with them; they also showed us how to do them and we even set a few off! We suspended them from a tree and lit the fuses (important: never light a fuse straight on, always at 90 degrees) and backed away -- the percussion wave alone knocks your hearing for a loop! Then we sent a few rockets up and were invited to come back again the second Saturday of next month -- we got there too late for dinner so we ate at Schatz Truckstop back in Minot where Jeffrey had his signature line of the weekend!

My dad Robert would be eighty-eight today, but he died this day eight years ago.

Martha was remarking about the fried chicken she missed back in Halliday, the town we first lived in when I moved up to North Dakota from Florida after she'd graduated Minot State University. And the chicken at the Truckstop reminded her so much of it that I remarked to the kids that place was one of our favorite places to go when we lived in Halliday (was also one of the ONLY places to go in that town of less than 300 people). Sarah said something because we remarked that we weren't married to each other at the time -- we were engaged, but I lost a few friendships over it -- and Jeffrey responded "Mom and HIM", which came out in a funny-if-you-know-Jeffrey-can-be-snarky way and then we looked and he amended himself "Mom and Dad"! The next day Sunday, I delivered the papers and Martha helped me put them together, then came church and more of life

that I will relate tomorrow because MY workday's nearly half done, David