Labor Day in Ohio

We went to Cleveland for the weekend to see my family and to go to a wedding. The wedding was for Chris & Laurie Williams. Alexi and Chris were best friends when they lived in Haiti in 1991 and 1992 - Alexi's parents moved down there to be the teachers of the children of hospital staff in Deschappelles where Hospital Albert Schweitzer is located. There were only about 10 kids including Alexi and his brother, but they all talk about those years as the best learning experience of their lives. This is mostly because Alexi's dad is an incredible teacher. He had students ranging from 5th through 8th grade and he somehow challenged all of them at the same time. They drew maps on the floor when learning about European history, got up at 4am to learn about astronomy, went to the ocean to snorkel after learning about reefs, took apart a defibrillator to learn about motors, made different colored borax beads to learn about chemistry,.... Dr. Matousek even wrote and directed plays for the kids and set up a Medieval festival.

The Williams family (back to the wedding) has lived in Africa and Haiti and Dr. Williams (the father) travels back to Haiti and Malawi to do medical work about once a year. His wife, Karen, is the author of children's books. One of her books - Galimoto - was even featured on Reading Rainbow (I know - I couldn't believe it either). Her website is here.

Here's the link to pictures of the wedding. They probably won't mean much to anyone reading this, but Alexi couldn't stop reminiscing about those years in Haiti and all the kids and how they've all done some pretty incredible things since then - so I wanted to write about it for him.

We also got to spend some time with my family - and even got a picture of EVERYONE - mom, dad, Marcus, Meagan, Matt Bliss and his wife Andrea, Jen and her husband James, their daughter Natalie, and Lex and I (and baby Samuel). We're getting to be a large bunch - in fact - it's getting to be very difficult to take a good family picture. Someone is always blinking or something.