Wow, this past week sure went by quickly! But that might be because we drove to Indiana on Friday, starting the holiday weekend a bit early. Stratton, Julina's step-son, graduated from high school Friday evening which is the reason for the trip. Only, we missed attending. The drive from St. Louis to Greenwood is four hours. Add a couple of pit-stops and it gets closer to five hours. Only our trip took seven hours thanks to construction and a huge slow-down (and dead stop at times) because of an accident in the middle of Illinois. So, at 7:00 pm, when the ceremony was to begin, we were still somewhere near Terre Haute slogging our way across interstate 70 in the rain. I had opted to stay in St. Louis Friday morning to attend a string quartet rehearsal (since we have a performance Father's Day weekend) thinking that by leaving at 12:30, we would have plenty of time to get to Greenwood. Sigh! One "perk" of the trip was that we were able to listen to the rest of season 1 podcast of "The Dream". It was fascinating. Since arriving here with Julina, it has been a pleasant visit. Their guest room is now "up and running" so we didn't have to get a hotel this time. We also brought the dogs. We had their kennel set up in the back of the Element with their beds inside and they slept the whole way. They are SUCH good travelers.
They have had brief interactions with Banjo since arriving and Linus is perfectly comfortable with his "cousin". Sally is a bit more wary. Julina and Alex have their handyman coming this week to start renovating their kitchen and laundry room/pantry so we spent part of Saturday helping to unload and pack up cupboards. THAT will be a big, messy project and I don't envy Julina for having to work around everything for hopefully just a week. We had a little visit with Shiloh at a local ice cream place called Mrs. Curl's. She is doing well - working at a different job about an hour's drive away at a Honda manufacturing plant.
The week leading up to our Indiana trip was busy. I had a late-evening St. Louis Civic Orchestra meeting Monday. Steve and I had a Zoom church meeting Tuesday evening. Elizabeth Crippen came into town Wednesday to pick up her finished mother-of-the-bride outfit and she took Steve and me out to lunch at Red Lobster. She stayed for dinner to which Beckie also came. We enjoyed a good game of Scrabble afterwards. Thursday the dogs got baths, we cleaned house, we packed for the trip. We watched a movie "Please Stand By" that night. It was recommended by Elise and is about an autistic young woman trying to make her way from San Francisco to Los Angeles on her own and the challenges she faced along the way. We started season 3 of the Great Pottery Throwdown and we also watched "Paddington" sometime this past week. It was cute but forgettable enough that I didn't enter it into my daily journal and now I can't even remember when we watched it!
Graduation photos of Stratton were through Jostens which was ridiculously expensive so I refused to purchase them. But, I wanted a photo of him so this evening, I took a couple of shots. Plus a group photo minus Alex.
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