I'm Not Losing a Son, I'm Gaining a Family!

The Anger and Belcher Families
(minus Noah and his fiance Dana)
(Sorry about cutting your head off, Big Dana!)

Our oldest son Chris has been back this week, visiting us with his fiancé Elizabeth and her entire family. It was his way of showing his ‘new family’ our home here in New Hampshire, and giving us all an opportunity to meet and get to know one another prior to his June 18th wedding next year. It was a brilliant plan.

It was our very first time meeting them all, and it was everything I could have hoped for, and more. The Anger Family is from Buffalo, New York, and their only daughter Elizabeth, is the second of four children. Oldest son Dan is a high school English teacher, and is married to Steph, who teaches high school Chemistry. They own a house with quite a bit of land near Belmont, NY, have goats and a little farm … (fellow ‘back-to-the-landers’!) They brought us some of the surplus from their bountiful gardens: a harvest of the most fantastic carrots I’ve ever seen (or tasted), zucchini, peppers and summer squash. Elizabeth comes next … and she is everything we could ever have hoped and prayed for in a future wife for our son. A senior this year at the University of Pittsburg, she is majoring in Neuroscience, has a full scholarship there and has maintained a 4.0 average all through college. Not only is she smart and very self-motivated, but she’s beautiful, has a fantastic smile and a great sense of humor. Next in line is Tim, an Engineering student at the University of Buffalo, followed by John, who is 15 and still living at home with his parents, whose names are Randy and Sue. In both of them, Dana and I have found true friends … such gracious, loving, happy people … down-to-earth, unpretentious. The first night we had dinner together, Randy gave a very touching toast to our soon-to-be-married children. The few times that Dana and I were able to steal away from our work here at The Lodge to spend some time getting to know them, will be treasured moments for me between now and the wedding day. With a name like “Anger”, it is almost ironic that they are just about the happiest, most fun-loving, and affectionate families I’ve ever met. Obviously a loving and nurturing upbringing has paid off for this special family. While the saying goes that you can ‘pick your friends but not your relatives’, in this case, we hit the jackpot: they are one and the same! (Next time my husband tries to tell me I'm 'filled with anger', I'll take it as a compliment!).