Reading Audrey Helbling’s Minnesota Prairie Roots blog on Oak Ridge Cemetery in Faribault prompted me to write about a very special cemetery to our family.
In Lancaster County Pennsylvania, where my husband grew up, there are many old cemeteries simply because the East Coast was settled much earlier than the Midwest. Outside the doors of Middle Creek Church of the Brethren, the country church my husband attended as a child, is an cemetery surrounded by picturesque, small farms in the rolling countryside of Southeastern Pennsylvania.
In Middle Creek Cemetery lies seven generations of the Bollinger clan. My husband enjoys genealogy research and has traced his family back to Rudolph Bollinger who came over from Switzerland about 1720. Rudolph is not buried in this cemetery but his tombstone was found in a farm field nearby. This was a very exciting discovery by my husband and his brother. Rudolph (died 1770) is the fifth great-grandfather of my husband.
The first Bollinger in the church cemetery in my husband’s lineage is Abraham Bollinger, a son of Rudolph. His tombstone in German tells us he lived from 1756 to 1814. My husband’s younger brother Richard, who died in 1986, makes for the seventh generation.
Since Abraham, each succeeding generation of males (and their spouses) in my husband’s direct Bollinger lineage have been buried in this cemetery. On our last trip to Pennsylvania we visited each graveside. I think it is unusual to have seven generations buried in one cemetery in the Untied States. It’s a wonderful family history.
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Wednesday I received two gifts…the first gift is our newborn granddaughter…Aria Grace. She arrived Wednesday morning weighing 6 pounds 15 ounces and is 20 inches long. She’s beautiful! It was wonderful to be able to hold this sweet baby girl.
T-shirts are a popular item to create and give away for awards or gift items…It’s a practical gift and if you can get the right fit they are fun to wear.
When our boys were growing up we had a tradition of buying them new Easter shirts to wear to church on Easter Sunday….just like girls getting new a Easter dress I suppose. The shirts would often be the same style but a different color or pattern. That tradition continued into high school (although the shirts no longer matched). Often we would take them to get a picture taken with their new shirts.
One year I made Easter baskets for them. A friend and I were taught how to weave baskets and we would get together after the kids were in bed and to make them. That’s when I could stay up past midnight.
You can’t miss the sea of blue when you drive down 4th Street in our town. There is an amazing display of the blue, spring wildflower, called 
We had a wall repaired in our living room and then the walls repainted so we needed to move our two tall book shelves out so the painter could paint. One evening it took about thirty minutes or so to transfer the books into boxes and moved the shelves out of the way. We were amazed at how many books were on those two book shelves. Both my husband and I love books so we’ve collected a few over the years, although I borrow many books from the library, especially the books I read for book club.
I got to throw a party over the weekend…a baby shower for my soon-to-be-born grand-daughter, due May 1. I love to plan a party (this one with a dear friend) and I love to decorate, especially using the antique dishes I have collected over the years.
Right before the shower began I was attending to some finishing touches. I wanted to float some freshly washed rubber duckies, with pink bows and bibs, in the punch, but all three duckies went “bottoms-up’! People started to arrive and joined us in the kitchen all suggesting different ideas to try to make these ducks stay upright. Nothing worked. Finally we set them along the rim of the punch bowl which looked fine… but the ordeal was quite comical.
Introductions were made, a children’s book was read – and a devotional too – snacks were eaten, presents opened and questions answered as part of a “game”. The gifts were generous and laughter plentiful.
To celebrate our anniversary on Saturday we went out for dinner. We like to try new places so we went to a restaurant we had never been to before. We were seated at a “half moon” booth and had a relaxing and delicious dinner. Before we left home we had decided to exchange our cards at the restaurant…we always buy a card for one another. This year we were in for a surprise. We bought the same card! We laughed and wondered, and were amazed. We didn’t even buy them at the same store. I’m pretty sure that will never happen again.