Recently in General Category

Busy week here, regrouping and catching up after being gone for ten days!  Have had an overnight guest - our nephew who is enroute to a new job, my devotions group here yesterday morning, and tomorrow Delaney and her friend Anna will come over for a little while before I take them to our church for a "Lock In" overnight till Saturday.

Yesterday I spent quite a few hours outside in the flower beds and plantings, dealing with weeds and deadheading flowers.  Today I will do the same in another spot.  Thankfully we had just enough of a rain shower on Tuesday that I can get by without taking time to water until Saturday. 

It was a wonderful trip home to Minnesota, which makes all of the "catching up" here worth it!

On Friday Delaney and Ella completed their first "real" painting project ever!  They scraped, sanded and then painted our bench swing and did a fantastic job of it.  This swing is old - we got it for a housewarming gift when we bought our first little house in North Minneapolis in 1974.  It hung inside the front porch there for four years, then we had it on the front porch at our first house here in Indy from 1979 till 2000.  When we moved to this house, we bought a metal swing frame and hung it from that and it has been on our back porch for 21 years.  Added all together, we have been swinging in it for 37 years!   It started out just stained a light color on the wood, but in the last 15 years or so the wood had become very discolored and bleached out.  So it has now been "Carolina Pine Green" for quite awhile.   Nothing like sitting outside on a summer day, swinging away on a bench swing!

We have shelves full of photo albums - about 40 years worth - and I just finished two more to add to our collection!  The latest two are from our trip to Honolulu and I had great pleasure working with the photos, all the while remembering back to the wonderful time we had. 

I am also remembering back to last year at this time when we were planning our trip to Europe - it all seems like a dream now, that we actually went to six different countries and had the most fantastic time!!  Memories to last a lifetime...

...just didn't get at it!  That is, to say

Happy Birthday dear Gloria, and many more returns of the day to you!!

We celebrated her birthday a day early, on Thursday of this past week, by going out to lunch at Ruth's Keystone Cafe, and then a walk through the plant nursery  and Yellow Cottage Gifts at Sullivan's Hardware.  The weather was still nice and warm that day, unlike now when it has turned rather raw and gray.  It is fun to mark birthdays in simplem, fun ways like we did!

Another nice day, and made even more so by the weekly visit from Delaney and Ella.  They are such good helpers - they can handle almost any job on "the list"! 

Today they helped carry old boxes up from the basement for Steve to break down for recycling.  Next they Swiffered all of our wood floors and then wiped them clean with damp cloths.  Heading outside, they raked up piles of acorns from under the oak tree, bagged them up and we took them over to the woods to dump out.  They also bagged up newspapers which we then took over to our church recycling dumpster. 

 It was lunchtime by then, and Delaney made herself a fried egg and 2 toasts and sliced apples. For Ella she made a peanut butter hot dog  (what we call peanut butter spread in a hot dog bun!!), apple slices and yogurt. While Ella rested, and Steve worked on the computer, Delaney and I went to the grocery store for a few things. 

Then at 3 o'clock we all headed over to the YMCA to swim. Steve went in the pool with them this time while I watched the fun!  We came home and had time to eat some pizza for supper before Taylor came to pick Ella up.  Delaney is spending the night, and the highlights have been watching the local boys of Butler University win their NCAA playoff game and seeing the "Super Moon" in the eastern sky!

All in all, a wonderful Saturday!

Happy 31st to Taylor, as hard as it is to believe!  He was born just a few months after we moved down here from Minnesota, so he is part Minnesotan and part Hoosier I guess. 

We had a nice brunch for him this morning and when we sat down to eat Ella said "It doesn't seem like everybody is here!"  After thinking a moment we all said that it was because Matthew and Davie were missing - during the 2 1/2 years that they lived here, we enjoyed many a Sunday brunch together, and it sure does seem empty without them!

Today Gloria had a 60th birthday party for me at her lovely home (or as Delaney says "Mrs. Worth's mansion"!).  It was wonderful, six of my very dearest friends honored me with their presence and we had a fun time of laughter, food and companionship.  Each of these ladies adds so much to my life and I am truly blessed to call them "friends".  We had champagne mimosas and cashews, then a delicious luncheon of stuffed turkey wraps, gourmet salad and homemade rolls.  My birthday cake was white with raspberry filling - delicious.  Everyone brought me a very nice gift, and as a complete surprise, my folks had emailed Gloria a picture of the gift they were giving me - a handmade quilt rack from my dad's workshop!!

Thankful for such perfectly wonderful friends to celebrate my birthday with!

Heading into the season of "plenty to do"!!  I have started doing some smart Christmas shopping, cutting waaay back this year and I've happened upon some very good deals for online and store purchases.  First comes Thanksgiving, though, and I can smell the turkey already.  We are so blessed to have our family all together at our house, and can't wait till Matthew and Davie arrive.  We haven't seen them since last March and miss them so much. 

This week we have a little choir concert to go to on Thursday night.  Delaney is in an after school choir group at her school and the performance is at 6:30 pm on the 18th.  It is remarkable to have her in a program as that is one thing she has never liked, being on stage!!

Then on Friday Steve goes up to Minnesota to visit with his folks, and Gerhard and his daughter Annette from Germany.  I do wish I was going too, but this seemed the most prudent way for things to go smoothly.  Actutally, I wish that all of those folks could be with us on Thanksgiving Day as well!

I must add that the birds are busy too right now, feeding like crazy, and I am seeing a big variety of them.  So many sizes, shapes and colors - just spectacular!

The weather was beautiful today!  Labor Day is usually quite hot, but this year was an exception I guess.  Steve worked part of the day on the website for his client, and I worked outside with some watering  and inside dealing with trip photos!  Had a nice phone call from Matthew and Davie - we miss them being here for our annual Labor Day get together. Taylor, Melissa and the girls came over for supper around 5:30 - we had good steaks on the grill, and afterwards we sat outside for awhile before they left for home.  It is a school night so bedtime is a bit more important.

The evening is so cool and nice, a sure sign of fall...

This afternoon we took the girls to the Y to swim.  Steve and Delaney were in the deep end, and she was determined to learn how to dive.  Steve gave her some demonstrations and pointers, and before we knew it she was diving like a pro!  Unbelievable.  It's amazing how well she and Ella swim, considering they have never taken a single swimming lesson.

As for me, I took lots of swimming lessons at Cross Lake while i was growing up.  The one thing I never quite learned to do (fear factor!) was to dive.  I did do it in order to pass my Junior Lifesaving class.  But I haven't made a dive since then, which is at least 45 years!  Safe to say, my diving days are done!