| Wow… wow, wonder of wonders. My open house is over. It was yesterday. It now seems like a nothing but the memory of a vivid dream. Perhaps the concept of a hundred people all gathering together and giving gifts and cards just because of me still seems too good to be true. But it DID happen. Yet I feel sad because such a wonderful thing is now over and liable to not happen ever again. Okay, enough of THAT stuff. Yesterday was GREAT! I’m going to write a lot of things, like REALLY a lot. So if you don’t have a lot of time, skip down to the *SHORT VERSION*
It started out rainy and muggy. The ground outside was all wet, terrible for playing volleyball. Who wants to smack a grassy muddy ball? And who wants to dive for said ball into cumulative amounts of mud and grass. “Not I” said the graduate. But the weather turned out to be just great: Sunny, a few clouds, a little wind.
I decided to spice up the indoor area by making a playlist of all the fastest, most upbeat songs on my Sansa Clip, plugging that into the tape adapter and putting that into the tape player of the boom box which is hooked up to two speakers in the fellowship hall of my church where the party was *gasp*.
We brought to the open house a bunch of my achievements, medals, certificates, etc. But my dad decided it would be a good idea to bring a book I wrote when I was four years old. I wrote is using a pen, seven sheets of paper, and a bunch of scotch tape. It was called “Dave Goes Hunting”, or rather, “DAV GOS HUNTING”. The weirdest part of the story is, “WEN DAV WUZ HAF WA HOM THEN HE WUZ HOM” people were asking me all kinds of stuff like, “What? How was he half way home and home at the same time?” “Are those doxen dogs?” “What does ‘UWA’ mean?” “Is that a flying squirrel?” “Why is there a giraffe randomly sitting there?” Come on, guys, I was four years old. Give me a break. I don’t even remember writing it.
Now, I’ll give a guest list as best I can remember. Of course there was my family.
Church People: The Hoekstras, The Gills (they helped a LOT), The Cooks (except Greg (he’s in Texas)), The Brown family, Mark & Karen (she bought the cakes), the Roberts (they brought a spicy pasta salad), The Bolthouses (& Andrew), Ron Slawson, The Bakers (minus Anne and Zach), And Pastor Robert Barnes.
Family: Aunt Terry & Uncle Cabot with their children Miranda and Cameron, Uncle Kirk & Aunt Jill, Grandma & Grandpa Nyman, Aunt Alice, Uncle Rick & Aunt Dianne, Uncle Dave & Aunt Sandra, Cousin Josh (his bro Chris was working 12-8, bummer), and Uncle John.
Band/HPA: the Reigers (some girl named Kaylin was with them), The Lewises, the Vermeers, the Lucases, Katy Peutz, Adam McNutt, the Praniewiczes (& Ken), the Vissers, David, Michael, and Rebecca Schwartz, Michelle Eddy, Alana Van Der Maas, her brother Nathan and friend Tiffany, and I got a card from the Disterhefts but I didn’t see them there. They must have sent their card with someone else, but I don’t know whom.
The Gommesens were all there minus Andrew, BJ, Thaddeus, and Phillip, so nine Gommesens.
Jenn VanderPloeg I met online, and I Josh Kolman I know through Briana.
I spent pretty much all day drinking water and soda and eating cream puffs. I took one of those white-colored ones to try it, but it was mocha flavored and I didn’t like it. I don’t like anything coffee tasting at all. Nope, not even that. I ate a lot of carrots too. There was one time when I actually got a plate of food. I got some carrots and one BBQ meatball. I ate my meal with CJ while we talked about my book I wrote.
The Vermeers were the first ones to come and also the first to go because they had to go to a funeral visitation, and then visit their grandmother, and make it to their church in time to help out for Vacation Bible School. So my open house was just the first part of their busy schedule for the day.
I had a nice little conversation with little Jonathan. I first asked him what kind of plans he had for the fall, but he said nothing. Then I held up a little corn chip on his plate and said, “What do you think about this chip?”
He said in his tiny little voice, “I do this!” as he dips it in the nacho cheese sauce.
“Oh, that’s a good idea. That way you can eat the chip and the cheese at the same time.”
“Yeah” he says. Then he points to my cup and says, “A”
I realize he’s pointing to the second letter of my name, JACOB M., which is written on the cup. “Yep, that’s an A allright.”
“What’s this?” he asks, pointing to the J.
“That’s a J, and this is a C, and a O, B, M and this is a period.” I lead him around the cup a few times, “J, A, C, O, B, M, period.” Then after I say period again he bursts out laughing and smiling his little squinty smile. I said, “Yeah, Period is a funny name, isn’t it.”
When the Lucases were here, Adam Lucas had a nice conversation with Ron. I was surprised because they don’t even know each other at all, but Adam just sat next to him and started chattering away about his family. I overheard him say, “She’s nineteen and she’s in College” Ahh, it was so sweet.
I played a little volleyball, but I let my team down because on the game point serve when the other team was serving against us, I went to bump it and I never bump the ball, but I decided to do it this time for some reason. But I moved up too far and the ball hit my elbow pits and fell to the ground. I stink.
When Uncle John was leaving he said, “There’re a lot of nice-looking girls here. Are you with any of them?” I told him no, because I’m not “with” any of them. But there you go all you attending girls, my uncle John says you look nice, especially that one girl. You know who you are.
I was so glad that Adam McNutt made it. I love that guy. He’s so much fun to hang out with. He didn’t know very many people at the open house. More accurately, he knew one person at the open house. He said, “You’re like the only person I know here, so I’m gonna be hovering around you probably.” And he was, but it’s okay.
I played a game of beanbags (the official game is called Cornhole) with Alana, Nathan, and Tiffany, guys vs. girls. I was surprised at how quickly the three of them all caught on. It was a very close game, but the guys won in the end. At one point, Alana tried talking to her beanbag to see if it would help. She held it up close to her mouth and petted it a little bit. Then, after the beanbag was persuaded by the Alana’s smooth, soothing voice *pffFt* it proceeded to fly all the way to the left and roll across the ground without so much as touching the board.
Nathan drew a diagram of the fourth dimension. Ask him to draw it for you next time you see him. It's very impressive and I totally understood exactly what the fourth dimension was as a result of this so well-put-together diagram, and this sentence is 100% sarcasm, except for the second-to-last phrase. If you look at the diagram he made, it looks like a wireframe diagram of a bratwurst.
The part of the evening that made me laugh the hardest was when I was playing a VERY informal game of volleyball with Alana, Nathan, Tiffany, David, Michael, and Rebecca. Nathan told Michael to hold the ball out straight like this, so he did. Then Nathan went to kick the ball out of Michael’s hand but instead just kicked his hand.
“AHAhow!” said Michael as he squatted down and fell onto the ground holding his own hand.
By 7:30 everyone had left except for the Van Der Maases and Tiffany who were giving me a ride to Catherine Kellogg’s open house. Dad asked me if I wanted to leave because nobody else was probably going to come, but I didn’t want to risk it. Then, about ten minutes later, Michelle Eddy shows up! She was the very last guest to come, and the last one to leave. Even I left before she did. We were both going to the same place anyway.
Nathan told me his last name is pronounced Van Der Mass, not Mahss. I didn’t know that.
The car ride to Catherine’s was eventful. We had to double back two times so even though Michelle left after us, she got to the open house way before we did. There was some album playing in the car to which the lyrics to one of the songs were, “something something something something” No kidding, those were the actual lyrics. It’s that type of song that’ll make you look silly when you sing it because even though you know it very well, everyone thinks you forget the words at that part.
I played some tackle football outside of Catherine’s house. It was a little bit fun, but the mosquitoes were trying to bite me all over. At least I didn’t take my shirt off like Dan Tanner did. His full name is the same as the dad on Full House.
It was a late night. After we left Catherine’s, my family and I still had a lot of things to take care of. I didn’t get to bed until after midnight. I did get a chance to look up at the clouds and the stars. That was tantalizing to see the giant clouds moving so swiftly against the beautiful backdrop of the night sky.
***SHORT VERSION***
The weather was great. A lot of cool people came and I had an amazing time. Then I went to Catherine’s open house and then I went to bed. |
