And We'll Have Fun, Fun, Fun............

Hello there, this is Marie, Paul’s favorite sister-in-law. We are heading back from spending a long weekend with the fam, where we re-celebrated Paul’s birthday, met the wonderful Huffords, saw Ron Ayler’s (next door neighbor) new car, competed in pumpkin carving contest, ate, laughed and watched almost two seasons of The Office. It was a great weekend, Paul is such a wonderful guy, and looking good with his curly hair all grown back, stylin velour pants, and a few other choice outfits that you can see in the pictures below. Friday we took Paul clothes shopping for his birthday present, because since the accident, his wardrobe as been slowly absorbed into his brother’s’ closets. We also went with him to the appointment with his personal trainer. Paul is lifting weights! Saturday we had a big family dinner, and a pumpkin carving contest. The judges of the contest were Jerry’s parents, Frank and Judy Hufford. The Huffords are active, loyal West Virginia football fans. This is important to know because one of the teams in the carving contest played to the judges and carved the WV team logo into their pumpkin. Obviously, they won first place. The rest of the carvings you can see below...it was quite fun. Sunday we attended Mass at Father Jack Durkin’s parish, Saint Monica’s. Incidentally, this is the parish where my sister Anne works. Father Jack concelebrated our wedding Mass in January, and is a close friend of Jon’s, so we were able to briefly catch up, and also see the place where Anne works! The weekend was spent relaxing, eating a lot of ice cream, and just being together with family. There are not many more details of the weekend, nothing spectacular happened. But the joy of being with family, the love that is shared, the laughter and hugs that are over abundantly present when one is around family can’t be topped.
I did forget one incident....the poker games. Those of you who knew Paul before the accident, or ever spent time at Casa de Fidero were probably involved in at least one round of Hold’em. We played poker throughout the whole weekend, and it was just like old times. Paul was right back to himself, dealing out cards, calling all the shots, quite the pro.
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As a side note (from Rebecca), I have to say it was a wonderfully relaxing weekend with my family. Jon and Marie took us to the natural foods grocery store they found the last time they were here. They gave us a crash course on healthier eating. Due to our extremely busy schedules, we have slipped into the eat and run mode and have the worst eating habits! Paul is up to 151 pounds, but his eating habits are not healthy ones. So Marie and Jon did almost all the cooking and showed us some fast and easy ways to improve our habits. And.......while we ate ice-cream, it was completely organic ingredients with non refined sugar, no additives, hormones, or antibiotics added to the dairy products. Jon and Marie were a delight to have around, as their enthusiasm and love for one another are contagious. Jon and I have decided we will try to do more cooking together so we can gain some much needed time together. It is a perfect way to accomplish a needed task and also share our day's events. We all spent most of the weekend sitting in the kitchen and helping get the meals ready. It was an awesome reminder of the beauty of family and friends simply gathered around, sharing laughter and love.

The pumpkin carving contest was just hilarious. Each team had a room to work in and Judy and Frank walked around and took pictures. Once we all caught a glimpse of Mike and Anne's pumpkin, with the West Virginia logo - the easiest pattern ever - we knew we had stiff competition. Frank loves that college football team and we all knew where his one vote would be cast. Our attention was caught when Mike went out to the garage and turned on the air compressor and had us all curious as to why he needed that. He used it to clean out the pumpkin and to finish with his etching of the W V, since they didn't actually cut all the way through the pumpkin. The candlelight behind the etching was terrific! Jon's immediate concern was where all that pumpkin mess went as Mike was 'blow torching' it!

When Jon and Marie left Monday morning, Paul and I said a decade of the rosary before we left for the day. Paul very softly asked God to bless his brother with these words, "And please bless my brother Johnny, who I love so much and also need so much more than ever. Keep him and Marie, who I also love, safe." And He did. Praise be to God.

May the Spirit of the Lord renew your hearts today,
Love,
The Fidero Family

(The pictures are posted in 3 separate postings below)