May is just about over.
Wow. The last two weeks of this
month have been fairly routine which is one reason I did not blog last Sunday. Another reason is that we had stake
conference and my usual morning blog time was taken up in church meetings. We had two visiting General Authorities –
Elders Arnold and Carpenter.
Speaking of visits, we had a nice surprise Wednesday, the
18th when a high school buddy of Steve’s contacted us to say he and
his wife were driving through Columbia in the evening and would we be home to
stop and visit. Happily, we WERE home
and we had a great hour and a half chat.
They have lived these past
fifteen years in Lincoln, Nebraska and this is the first time we have
connected. Hopefully, it won’t be
another fifteen years before we visit again.
Some milestones in the past two weeks: Steven turned 34 on the 17th and
Julina turned 40 (!!!!) on the 18th.
And, we celebrated twenty years in this house on Parker Street on the 18th.
Netflix report – I have not had a lot of time to watch
movies but I did see “White Fang” with a very
young Ethan Hawke. And, Elise and I watched "The Lovely Bones". It was good but kind of strange and Elise wondered how it compared to the book.
I have been trying to take care of some projects that have
been hanging over my head. For example,
I needed to take care of some of our walls – cleaning baseboards and touching
up scuffs and dings with some paint. I
could never see how the “magic eraser” could help me since I no longer have
kids to mark up walls but I am here to testify that they are amazing. The scuffs came right off! Another project was to deep clean the little
grooves in our bathroom floor. The truck
needed to have tax and license paid by the end of the month.
Steve and I took a little outing on Wednesday, the 25th
to Apple Wagon Antiques located about 30 miles from Columbia.
So fun!
I bought a front basket for my bike so I can take Sadie
on rides. She was somewhat nervous the
first couple of times but now she rides like a pro. I just make sure she is strapped in so she
won’t jump out.
More “Christmas” amaryllis blooms.
Yard work never ends.
I finally planted the Mother’s Day azaleas. I finally weeded the fancy iris bed. The pie-cherry tree is starting to get ripe
so out came the net to keep birds from feasting. I am picking strawberries and the
blackberries and raspberries are almost ripe.
The vegetable garden is looking mighty fine
but, sadly, a large branch from our old peach
tree broke off the other day.
I am involved in a photo project for the Refugee office
for International Refugee Day in June. I
picked two families to feature. One
family - a mother, and her son, three
daughters and two grandchildren is from Somalia and the other family is from
Eretrea.
Sharing Day was yesterday. LOTS of stuff to give away. I was able to collect items to go to the
refugees. Do you spy Steve in this photo?
Melanie moved to a one-level apartment on Friday.
Melanie drove the HUGE moving truck all by herself!
I will close with a shot of Steve and Trissy on one of our morning walks...
