Third week of February

I took this photo of Stacy, the dog we were taking care of until last Monday night when Fred came home.  She is cramming herself into a tiny bed for Sally!

Speaking of Monday, it was an awesome day because I had the day off (President's Day).  Completely off!  Steve and I finished the 4th season of All Creatures Great and Small and we slogged through the second DVD of the 2 disc set of Cleopatra (see last week's blog). I say don't waste your time on it.  I multi-tasked and cracked walnuts and worked on my photo album scanning project so MY time wasn't completely wasted.

The rest of the week was busy, as usual and was finished by a Friday evening dress rehearsal and a Saturday evening performance with the St. Louis Civic Orchestra. Steve couldn't attend the actual concert due to a church commitment so he came to the Friday rehearsal.  And, in between those two events was a Saturday morning trip to the Science Center with Quinn for his birthday. We walked around the Science Center for awhile, checking out the usual hands-on displays plus the engineering exhibits that were part of an engineering fair going on that day. We saw Extreme Weather at the Omnimax theater, bought some souvenirs for Quinn at the gift shop and then ate lunch at the Culvers in Ballwin.  I will close with photos from our outing...

 

Hooray for president's birthdays!

I don't have to go ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING tomorrow on President's Day!  I love it!  We actually got some unexpected free time Friday afternoon because this fell....

.....and it impacted our planned temple visit which closed early that afternoon.  We were planning on having Elise here for a weekend visit but she had to turn back twice because of a blocked interstate - once Friday evening and again Saturday morning - thanks to ice and snow.  Had Elise been here, we would have gone to the Southerlands for Saturday dinner and fun.  So, having almost five inches of snowfall was a mixed blessing.  We really need the snow and it was very pretty but we are sad Elise couldn't be with us.  

Speaking of being with us - only one more day of dog-watching Stacy.  She has behaved just fine and Sally has tolerated her.  Her feeling the need to bark at EVERYONE - including us when one of us comes home from somewhere - has been annoying.  She barks at my in-person cello students so much that she has to be shut into a separate room.  I guess that is the German Shepherd in her? 

Having no Fred to walk with in the mornings this past week has meant that Steve got to walk with me all five days and that has been nice.  We also spent time together going to Culver's for Valentine's Day dinner.  We have watched two television shows and two movies (see below) together this past week.  And, he came along with me Thursday afternoon to run stuff to the Habitat ReStore, to redeem aluminum cans, and to do a quick shop at Schnucks that turned out to take a bit longer thanks to post-Valentine candy sales :)

All Creatures Great and Small and an episode of Bull were the television shows.  Steve has hooked me on Bull - a crime type drama showing on Paramount Plus. Buck is a documentary about a "horse whisperer".  And we have watched about 3/4 of the epic 1963 film Cleopatra.  It is kind of a tedious film with a story that didn't need four hours to tell.  Elizabeth Taylor is not a great actress, in my opinion, and the costume department really pushed the boundaries with the censors of that era with the risqué clothes she wore. I can remember when the movie came out - it was quite a big deal. So, when I heard the soundtrack on our local classical radio station while driving home a week or so back, I thought I might check it out from the library these sixty years later.

Before the snow fell, we had unseasonably warm weather for February and I was actually able to do a teeny bit of work in the yard which was enjoyable.  Temperatures are supposed to climb again next week.  Welcome to Missouri weather....

I close with some Gary Larson President's Day humor...

 

Well, another week has zoomed by...

Steve and I were in Indiana over the weekend so this blog is a day late.  We had a good visit with Juli and Alex and saw Stratton briefly.  Didn't see Shiloh/Willow this trip.  We arrived Friday evening and left Sunday at about 1:00 pm.

My Mondays have just gotten crazy with the addition of being at the women's meeting at the Welcome Center in the morning.  We started doing embroidery with the women during the second hour this past week.  I bought some flour sack dish towels and stamped them with simple fruit designs and brought a massive amount of embroidery floss in all colors (acquired several years ago at a free give-away at the church from a serious craft hoarder who could no longer do embroidery because of her poor eyesight and hand neuropathy).  The women seemed to enjoy the project and we continued again this morning and will also next week - probably up to Ramadan when the Welcome Center shuts down for the month....

Wednesday was another crazy day because it was a Happy Hooker day and I had lots of things to donate that I had been working on for the two months since I had last attended.  I brought six fleece baby blankets, six small zippered pencil bags, seven zippered large tote bags and ten nifty knitter hats of various  sizes.  At each meeting, all the women put one or two dollars into a community pot and when enough is collected, that money buys gas cards for families with patients in the VA hospital.  Our total for the last several months had reached $180 so it was time to buy a new batch of gas cards.   Here are all the bags of  items ready to be taken to the various charities to which we donate (women's shelters, children's homes, schools, VA, etc). We have the meeting at a local restaurant/diner that has absolutely NOTHING gluten free on the menu except salads and I will be darned if I will pay over $10 for a food that I really am not crazy about.  I always bring my own lunch.  

 Wednesday evening, Steve and I got to enjoy part of our Christmas gift from the kids.  We attended concert #1 (of four total concerts) with the St. Louis Symphony.  This was a chamber series concert featuring the four principal string players in the orchestra plus the principal pianist.  It was held at the Sheldon, a smaller venue, and it was such a BEAUTIFUL performance!   

Wednesday also was the beginning of me coming down with a cold.  Blaaa.  Thankfully, it has not been a terrible one.

Thursday afternoon, I focused on finishing up the civic orchestra program and I was able to get it sent to the printers by Friday noon, just before we headed east to Indiana.  

When we got back home Sunday evening, we went down to Fred Olver's house to pick up his dog Stacy who we are dog-sitting until the 19th when he returns from Texas.  She is a good enough dog and I am happy to say that, after having her here for twenty-four hours, she has calmed down and Sally has decided to tolerate her.

 

While we were in Indiana, Steve and I watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  I thought it was an excellent ending to the collection of movies and now I want to re-watch all the others...yes, even the fourth one!  I also finished the book My Antonia on the trip.  It was a beautiful story.

This is my six hundred and sixty seventh blog!?!?!

 As I was waiting for my slow computer to upload Blogger, it had the number 666 for blog number.  Yikes!  But, this blog is the 667th which just boggles my mind.  But, if one divides by 52 - one blog per week which is my goal - the number is almost 13 years and I guess the number makes sense...

It was a quiet week at the Lambson house.  On Monday, I went to my first Women's meeting for Afghanistan refugees.  It lasts two hours and there are two volunteer women who help with the numerous children while the mothers practice English and do various other activities.  Monday evening, we had the sister missionaries over for dinner and we caught the latest All Creatures Great And Small.

Tuesday we had gutter guards installed on the east side of our house.  We had the west side taken care of soon after we moved in because there was a huge pine tree in our next door neighbor's yard that shed needles profusely into our gutters causing them to overflow.  We didn't think we needed anything on the east side but we neglected to take into account wind and the huge oak tree in the neighbor's back yard.  So, we are now protected all around.

Wednesday was our actual 49th wedding anniversary and we celebrated with home grilled pork steaks.  I also used some of my very hard earned beginning string teaching money and bought myself a Husqvarna sewing machine.  I didn't get a high-end computerized one because frankly, I don't need that much machine and using Elise's can be frustrating as I try to figure things out on it.  I got the same kind that I used while we were on our mission and I was able to borrow one from the ward. 

Thursday evening was Kindness Begins With Me and I continue to learn more and more on how I can do my job.  

Friday I taught lessons in the morning, we attended the temple in the afternoon, and we went out to dinner to Bob Evans with our friends Mary and Walter Bell.  They bought dinner, which was very nice of them, and we offered to buy dessert at the nearby Culvers but Walter showed a sour face which clearly indicated he has inferior dessert tastes!  So, Steve and I treated ourselves to Culvers without them.

Saturday was the baptistry, lessons at the Southerlands, and I started a new cello student.  It was a pretty exhausting day, to be honest.  

Sunday was fairly usual although we did have a Welcome Center meeting mid-afternoon.  

And, that wraps up the week.  No photos.  No fun movies that we watched.  We started the latest Mission Impossible but, honestly, it was stressing me out with all the chasing and running and we just turned it off.