A Good Week

This week found us working at a dizzying pace to finish the downstairs room before Rebecca, Dan and family arrived. (See earlier post.) We needed to finish painting, put in the baseboard, outlet covers, lights, fan, and return the food storage to its appropriate place.

It was most gratifying to get the food storage back in its closet, as that freed up the kitchen area and made it much neater.  I think it was Tuesday afternoon before we started on the food storage.  I took time off to go to a Relief Society “Out to Lunch Bunch”.  After Sister Giles and I waited about a half hour, we learned it was really NEXT Tuesday.  So we decided to lunch anyway and had a delightful conversation with each other over the meal.  Then I went to get my hair cut—but there was a line, so I scheduled an appointment on Wednesday.  I also did some visiting teaching in the afternoon… So you can see who was doing most of the work on the remodel at this time. J

By Wednesday morning the baseboard was on, and calked, and the curtain rods hung… and there were just a few places that needed a little more attention.  So we began dragging furniture out of the kitchen and the garage.  Of course everything needed dusting—either to get the drywall dust or months-of-sitting dust off of them.  Since Miranda had brought food storage and a bed over for us to keep while they await selling their house, we took advantage of both.  We used the food storage boxes to build a bed frame and then put her mattresses on top.  So we now have a queen bed, a double bed and a twin in the suite.  Good thing, we have company next week of Andy’s family and Miranda and Camden… so we’ll need all the beds we have.

We were in the process of finding mattress pads and making the beds when Rebecca and Dan and family arrived about 4:30.  HURRAY!  It was good to see them.  We chatted and visited and fixed dinner and chatted some more. 

Thursday was such an odd day.  We’d raced to accomplish… and it was done!  Ah… what next? Tom finished the last few things, but mostly we took a deep breath and regrouped.  I think Tom bush hogged some.  We also finished cleaning out the kitchen area and got the rest of those things put away and hung some pictures.

We took a stab at the garden on Friday.  Sigh.  It has overgrown asparagus, 8 tomato plants, 4 pimento peppers, and a gazillion weed the size of redwoods. Tom weed whipped the bushy grassy ones, and dug out a small area of the “trees.”  Then he rototilled the spot.  I’m hoping we can actually plant some things there.  Rebecca and family and I went to the new library.  It really is quite fantastic!  We met Wendy there with her children and chatted while the children played.  I can’t say that they read a lot—although Marian read 4 books.  Mostly they played on the computers, put puzzles together, and played with the things there.    They have a full sized tree (well, tree trunk) in the middle of the room, a gazebo for relaxed reading, and a bench with life-sized statues of children reading.

Saturday  Dan ran a 5K to kick off the Red, White, and Blue celebration at the college.  Everyone else joined them (but me) to see the finish and go to a pancake breakfast.  I worked on my Primary lesson.  In the afternoon, Dan and Rebecca went on a date and in the evening Tom and I went on a date to see the fireworks at the Red, White, and Blue celebration.  They were AWESOME!   Loud, of course, but really miraculous.  They lit of the sky in a dazzling display of color.  Waterfalls of color.  Streamers of glitter. Shooting stars.  Sun bursts.  Ah.  I love fireworks.

The grandchildren have had so much fun with the zip-line.  They gained confidence the first few days and now they’ll zip down from the tree house.  Then they bring the seat back to the next person.  They really play well together.  Marian is seeking and catching lizards.  They set up a small pool and had fun in that.  They are quiet when they wake up in the mornings and are really fun to have around.  Dan is a great dad.  He’s very patient and caring with the children.

Today Tom was called to be Bishop of the Mountain Home Ward.  It will be an interesting change.  On the mission we spent lots of time together and shared just about everything.  Now there will be confidences he will be keeping and he will have many meetings and things to do of which I will not be a part.  Still, I know the Lord has prepared him for this calling.  For the last 18 months he has been reading the handbooks and advising the branch presidents on how to be branch presidents.  Now he gets a chance to put it all into practice himself.  Is there some irony here?

Primary class went well, if you don’t mind kids crawling all over the floor.  I hope that if they learn one thing, it’s been a success.  And that one thing might just be that I love them.  It was cute, though.  We were doing role playing about forgiveness when a friend does something unkind.  I pulled out a picture of Jesus to use for something and they all said, “I want to play Jesus!”   So they were thrilled when I told them they could all  be like Jesus and do what He would do.