Early this morning I received the following text -

If you’re reading this text, do not reply. You see, I am now home with my Lord and Savior. I’m healed, happy, and hoping to see you here too.
love,
Dolly

The Lord is her shepherd, she was never in need.
He made her lie down in safe places.
He led her beside the waters of peace.
He restored her soul.
He led her in paths of righteousness and graciousness for His Name sake.
Even though she walked through the valley of the shadow of death,
She was never afraid of the evil one.

For she knew the LORD was with her, his strength and his grace, they comforted her.
The LORD prepared a table before her, even in the presence of the evil one and
He comforted her until her cup overflowed with blessing.
Surely goodness and mercy followed her all the days of her life,
and she will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Heaven’s gain.
Our loss.
We will miss you, dear friend.

Ups -

Christmas with Lara!  It was a quiet day, just the three of us.  And since we’re all “watchin’ what we eat”, we had to (sadly) forgo our traditional Conrad Sticky Buns.  But we did enjoy some yummy eggs Benedict Florentine that helped make our morning special.

We finished off the day with a lovely Christmas dinner at friends of Lara’s – and since we were there last Christmas too, it’s like we’re family. It was a good day – sometimes it’s hard not to be with the WHOLE family on Christmas, but we were with family, and in that regard we are blessed. Hope your day was filled with hugs and kisses and calories, and special reminders of the birth of our Lord.

But Christmas was only a small part of our time at Lara’s. Gary, of course, had a long list of chores he wanted to accomplish and Lara and I decided that we needed to have some project fun of our own. So we decided to tackle painting some furniture that she had collected over the years.
The first was a pink dresser that originally had magazine pages decoupaged on both sides and the top. Quite the design element. Once we got the paper scraped off, it was clear sailing to a pretty fine and functional dresser that now is the happy home to part of Lara’s yarn stash!

Then there was a plant stand that seemed to need a little refreshing -

But I think our favorite “re-do” was a little cabinet that had been in the family for probably 20 years and when we got it it needed to be refinished. By the time Lara got it, one cabinet door was broken and soon after the other door bit the dust and so it was definitely in need of some refurbishing. We not only refurbished it – we re-purposed it!

And in case you don’t instantly see the re-purposing, it’s now the cats’ private eating station. Safe from the prying eyes (and appetites) of the two dogs that share the house!


Pretty sweet, eh?
But of course, Gary never stopped moving. He had three big jobs he wanted to accomplish – build a better gate to the alley, re-screen the screened in porch, and spruce up the garden enclosure using the old wood from the deck.
The gate turned out great -

And well, the garden “upgrade” is quite impressive!
I don’t actually have an “official” before picture – but here’s a shot when he built the boxes and enclosure last fall.

And here’s a glimpse of it from October of this year when Gary was working on the fence -

And here it is now -

Now if those Brussels Sprouts would start producing……

We kept finding other little jobs for him to do, like lowering closet rods and adding shelving and building dog bowl decks,

so the screening is still a work in progress. But all in all – he’s been one busy dude!
And there has been one other major distraction –

And this definitely goes in the “Down” category!
What started out as a suspicious “sewer-y smell” turned into a cracked drain/sewer pipe under the house. Ugh. And Ugh again.
Lara’s house is “post and beam” construction – with about 8 inches between the dirt and the floor joists.

Gary did his best, but Lara had to call in a plumber.

The house was without plumbing for 48 hours – and folks were getting pretty creative in finding places to shower and (ahem) pee. We even had a little gathering here at the campground, cause hey, we can flush! And there’e a bathhouse for multiple showers! The plumber and helper (who also happened to be one of the housemate’s new fiance!) spent Friday in the dirt under the house (literally), and by the end of the day all drains were working. Phew. There was always the risk that the back bedroom floor would have to be removed to do the repair, so to get everything back on track without floor damage was a huge relief. Thank goodness for determined (and small) plumbers!

We’ll be in Waco until Friday morning when we head down to Giddings, TX and Camp Tejas – our January project. But we still have a bit of fun to look forward to before we leave. Like helping Lara celebrate her birthday tomorrow!
And then of course, there’s the porch screening to keep Gary happy for the next couple of days!

2012? Really? Have a Happy, Healthy, and Blessed New Year, everyone!

And what, you might ask, was Gary doing while we ladies were being kitchen mavens?


He was happy as a clam, building a wood rack for the new fire pit, and then enjoying the pit as he burned all the scrap from the fall projects!

Definitely a good weekend for all involved!

If you want a closer look at the pictures in the collages (along with a couple other random shots) feel free to check them out here.

We got there early and enjoyed watching the warm up

and we got to see the Baylor “Line” -

which is actually anyone (it seems) who has a gold/yellow shirt on running on the field to greet the players as they come out.
There was lots of team spirit

and it did rain off and on for the entire game

but in the end, it was a great game!

And, yes, Baylor WON!

The Big Event this coming weekend is Lara’s Second Annualish (did not happen last year due to the fact she had no kitchen) Cookie Baking Extravaganza! Definitely seems like a worthwhile reason to hustle back to Waco, doncha think?

I did not have the camera out too much (well, except for excessive pictures of the little boys), but I made sure that I got a family picture. There really aren’t THAT many of us – only twelve – but trying to find a time that both little ones were awake, and the girls were in the house and all adults were accounted for took a little doing. I finally just started directing people to the sofa.

 It’s a start – Abigail, Weston and Hayley

 Good, there’s Ellie joining the group.

 Yes! Papa Josiah is in his rightful place.

 Yea!!! Aunt Lara has arrived!

 OK, there’s Pops and I’m convincing Noah that he wants to join the crowd….

We’re getting close – up to 10!

 At last – we’ve all made the picture! And it turned out pretty well, I think!

I sure do love these guys!

The weekend ended with a safe trip back to our spot north of Dallas, and we were blessed with this beautiful sky as the day drew to a close.

Yes, indeed, dear friends, it was a very fine birthday weekend. Calls from the family (even a Skype call from Ohio!), mushy (and silly) cards from my precious sisters, and time spent with Lara and the gang in Waco. Very Very Fine.

Happy Birthday, precious little one!

How quickly you have become

the little imp that melts our heart!
We wuv you.

And so it was as we headed to Waco for our week between projects. Lara had some project ideas, but then again, so did Gary! Together, they put together an amazing project.

But, before I go into all the great work in the back yard that Gary did last week, I want to step up to the plate and say that I did not sit around ALL week and eat bon-bons. OK, so I did a little more sitting than Gary (no bonbons for either of us though), but with a some help and inspiration from Lara, the front yard had quite a transformation too.
Here is the house from the front when she first moved in -

October 2008
A bit over-grown, but it seemed that there were “good bones” waiting to be discovered!
After a summer of mind-boggling heat and drought it looked like this -


They had had some rain recently, so some things were greening-up (mostly the weeds), but still it was looking pretty pathetic.
We had Gary (we really can’t do much without him, huh?)dig up the big dead stuff, and then we worked on clearing out the rest.

I THINK it’s an improvement. Or at least it’s a start at something more manageable. A neighbor (who has a beautiful garden) walked by and asked if we had a plan. Hmmm. I think our plan was to get it down to basics and THEN develop a plan. She came back later with a couple of books on Texas Gardening – I guess she knew we needed all the help we could get!

Potential. It’s all about potential, right?

I started with the front yard pictures because Lara’s house is quite deceiving from the street. From the front it’s a darling Craftsman Style house (circa 1919). But from the back…..

It’s a big ol’ two story house with a great deck and back yard!
The project on Gary’s list was to replace the deck railing, which he did the first two days we were there. I don’t think that was even on Lara’s radar. But it brightened up the whole deck.

And with the whole deck looking so great, it got Lara thinking about how to really make that big ol’ deck REALLY fun! After a day of talking about and doing some research, whatever list there had been was replaced with adding benches and a fire pit to the existing deck. Let’s face it, if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it BIG!
Gary got to work on the planning and implementing, and Lara ordered the actual fire pit on-line.
Prototype for the benches – checking out the sitting angles!

Replacing the deck boards for that section-

Getting there…
.

And finally – the completed project (well, you DO have to imagine the stone fire pit in the center!)

The stone for the pit will be arriving by the end of this week, and then we’ll toddle down there the next weekend to (hopefully) get the masonry part of the job done.
Of course there’s currently a burn ban in Waco (and most of TX for that matter), so I don’t know when the first actual fire in the fire pit will happen, but the fire pit company sent this along as a bonus for the order!

So she’s ready!

The last several weeks our lives have looked surprising like our “old life” used to look.  Gary’s been getting up, going to work, and a little bit later, I’ve been heading to the office!  But don’t be alarmed – it just looks like our “old life”.  We’re still parked in Lindale, TX behind the SOWER office where I needed to be for the Trustee Meeting at the end of September.

Since I was elected as Vice President (gulp) I knew I needed a little extra time to get up to speed on that position (the VP is in charge of “Project Relations”).  Add that to the need to wrap up the loose ends of the Board meeting with my fellow Board member, Nancy (who was elected president! ) and it only made sense that we stay put for the month of October. But that did leave Gary out there with nothing to do. So, he signed up at a SOWER project nearby, and drove off every morning to Calvary Commission to work his SOWER magic! I would enjoy a nice quiet morning at the house and then head over to the office in the afternoons to get to work. I got to do some fun stuff (well, fun to me anyway) like updating the brochure and designing new business cards, and was able to familiarize myself with my new position. So as you can see – it’s been a lot like that ‘previous lifetime’ of ours!
But as is often the case in this current life of ours, things are about to change.
Tomorrow we’ll be packing up and heading to Waco, TX for our week “off”. The “off” part is kind of a joke, though, since Gary is already thinking about what house project he’s going to tackle at Lara’s house. If the weather stays cool, I might try to tackle some yard work – mostly cutting back all the vegetation that didn’t make it through the 63 days of temperatures over 100 this past summer (43 of them in a row). I don’t think we’ll spend many days at the campground where we’ll be parked, but it will be nice to be able to be in our own place. This is a picture of our view last time we were at the campground -

After those 63 100 degree days, and no rain to speak of for months, I’m thinking it might not be quite so picturesque this year! :/

OK – since it’s been so quiet, and let’s face it – looking at parking spots is not all that interesting, how about if I share a couple of family pictures? You’d like that, right?  Here’s Weston – he just turned three months!

 

Later ‘Gator