A week apart

We drove to St. Louis last Sunday evening after dinner to stay with Emily and Joe that night and get Steve to the airport early Monday morning to catch a flight to Syracuse, NY via Philadelphia.  After a miserable night's sleep on both our part, I left Steve on the curb at Lambert International Airport at 5:00 am and returned to Columbia for a very quiet week.  Teaching lessons, puttering in the yard and around the house, feeding and walking the three dogs, finishing up tying all the quilts, watching Master and Commander - the Far Side of the World and Sherlock (second to last episode - Watson's wedding) and Woman in Gold (boy, what a marvelous movie).  Steve, on the other hand, was having a VERY ADVENTUROUS week which I will only relate the parts that I know......

He flew stand-by and made it on to his 7:10 flight to Philadelphia by the skin of his teeth.  Then, he languished in the Philly airport for almost twelve hours as he hoped for a seat on three flights throughout the day.  No idea what he did but I imagine he read the magazines he packed and slept.  He finally made it on the last flight to Syracuse and arrived around 10:00 that evening.  A wonderful family in Elise's ward offered a lovely room in their home for him to stay that night and Tuesday night.  Tuesday was packing the truck.  Elise lived on the third floor of a home and her belongings were stored in the basement so it was a day of hauling upstairs and down.  Thankfully, it wasn't just Steve and Elise.  Some men from the ward came to help. 
Wednesday was driving-to-Indianapolis-day.  Normally a 9.5 hour drive.  But, add into that number a later-than-hoped start time of noon and the need to drive only 45-50 mph (they were towing Elise's car) and Steve and Elise didn't pull into Indianapolis until about 5:00 am WEDNESDAY MORNING!  Ugh.  Poor souls.  After a 4-hour nap, Julina and Steve drove up to Carmel (where Elise and Tonks were staying) to tour the Indianapolis Temple open house and eat lunch.  Back to Greenwood to nap again at Julina's and then they left around 4:00 pm for Columbia.  They got to the house sometime after 10:30 Thursday night - which looks pretty good on paper but remember they lost an hour going from Eastern to Central standard time.  Since arriving home, we (Steve, me, Elise, Steven, and an Aaron Gibbons from our ward) unloaded as much of the truck into a storage unit Friday afternoon and what couldn't fit is now in a quarter of our garage. 
Here are Steve and Elise unhooking the trailer from the truck.

Tonks went into hiding until Saturday morning.  Now, she walks around teasing Bones and Sadie.  This is Sadie on "high cat alert"

Trissy is pretty "meh" about her.  But then, all Trissy does these days is sleep, clean her private parts,  and scratch to go outside - then scratch to come back in (often six times in a single hour - I think she forgets she's been out)

We have put Elise up in the quilt room and now she begins looking for a librarian job...