Did you have a good Thanksgiving? I hope so! Ours was wonderful . Our grand girls (ages 4,7 & 8.75) are getting so grown up!

We enjoyed every minute of our time with them.
But this year, I must confess, the two little boys, Noah (15 months) and Weston (4 months) certainly stole the show! Or, if not the show, certainly the camera! Noah was totally enamored with little Weston, and was right at his side at most every opportunity.

Noah seemed to instinctively know that he and Weston needed to stick together with all those girls around!
And of course, we did have Denali around to further add to the fun!

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!

We’re back at work today at Charis Hills Camp, but I wanted to share about our very fun long weekend in Waco. I’ll pretend that we went to Waco to celebrate my birthday, but the reality is, we returned so Gary could finish up that fire pit! So let’s start there -
So this is how things looked when we left back in October -

By the next weekend, the fire pit kit had been delivered

but it was still a long way from the backyard – and from actually being usable.
We just let that ol’ fire pit just sit there for a day or so while Gary continued on the prep work and the hearth.




One of the smartest things he did this weekend was take out a section of the fence in the back so he could drive the truck (and all those pavers and bags of sand/gravel/cement) up close to the deck. Man, those babies are H-e-a-v-y!


Once he got the three hearth rows down, he tamped them all into submission….

checked to make sure the opening was a good size for the ring

he started building up the sides of the pit.

What I don’t have pictures of is him putting mortar between the blocks in the hearth or how he cinched each level of the fire pit stone to make sure it was perfectly round and good and tight. But here it is – with one happy homeowner waiting patiently for the burn ban to lift!


And just in case anyone down the road wonders about it -

It’s signed, sealed and delivered!
But the weekend wasn’t ALL about the fire pit! Lara did have some of her friends over for a little birthday pot-luck for me on Thursday. (Of course, it might have just been a ploy to get those fire-pit pavers to the back of the house….). As often is the case, sometimes the most unusual items become the most interesting of the night. In this case – Lara’s Yarn Swift and Ball Winder….

Who knew? And it wasn’t even the kids who started wondering what those “things” were for!
Here’s our group picture from the night -

A fun group – and a fun evening!

By Saturday the construction project was over and we spent the early part of the day running errands. I know that Gary loved the trip to Lowes (mostly returns!), Tractor Supply and Harbor Freight. But I LOVED our stop at Kohl’s where Lara and I left Gary in the truck to go in and look for a new top for me. It’s my birthday after all! What started out as a simple shopping trip, soon turned into the “reveal” portion of “What Not to Wear”, and I walked out of the store with….drum roll……a new dress, sweater (basic black), dark dress jeans, a classic long black skirt and SIX tops. All for $156.00. Ok, I know that’s probably TMI for some of you – but SOME of you are delighted to hear of our shopping prowess. You know who you are! Lara and I had such fun, and since I can’t think of the last time I had so much fun with my own personal dresser, I had to share!

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.

I have five very wonderful and very precious grandchildren. Five! I’m in love with them all. Today, since it’s her 4th birthday, I thought I’d share a bit of why our little Maddie has such a special place in my heart.
1. She and I are share “birth order”. We’re both the third daughter and after a lovely reign of being everyone’s baby, we were usurped by a baby brother. Not that we don’t love that baby brudder, mind you, but still. It is what it is.
2. We almost share the same birthday. Today Maddie turns 4. Tomorrow I turn the “new 40″.
3. In a family of dark haired beauties –

she’s a little blue eyed blonde! And that, my dear friends, comes directly from her daddy’s side of the family. And we take full responsibility for that!

Happy Birthday, precious little one!

How quickly you have become

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

First, let me explain that our dear daughter (or any of our great kids) NEVER says to us -
“So, when are you coming so you can work on “stuff” at my place.”
The conversation is much more likely to go like this….
Us -Hey, is it ok if we come for a visit?
Them -Really? We’d love for you to come! How long can you stay?
Us – I think we’ll be able to be there for X number of days. Is that OK?
Them – OF COURSE! We can’t wait!
Us – Um, will you have anything for Dad to do while we’re there? You know how he likes to keep busy.
Them – Chances are we’ll find something to keep him out of trouble! But you really can just come and enjoy some downtime, you know.
Us – I know – but PLEASE, have a list ready,’K?

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!

…is because it’s been so quiet here.

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!

 

Sigh. I just love the instant gratification of cell phone pictures! They might not be the sharpest focus, but it does this far-away-grandma’s heart good!
And this girl and her puppy …..

…we’ll see tomorrow!
Goodness all around!

Later ‘Gator