Wednesday, May 20, 2009

That Was The Week That Was

A few days ago (May 11) my cousins Ken and Bev from Grand Rapids came to T.C. to visit Fritz and Ruth. Fritz has just recently entered hospice care. We met Ken and Bev at the Omelette Shoppe for breakfast and had a really nice visit for about an hour and a half. They're a very adventurous couple, and it's fun to hear about their adventures from the mountains to the shore and from Alaska to Utah. This summer it sounds like they're planning a midwestern odyssey in their motor home. We enjoyed it a lot and it was fun answering Ken's "This is your Life" questions!

Dick has worked all day on the back porch. He has powerwashed everything - ceiling, walls, and floor - cleaned up the grill and the picnic tables - so now two more tables are ready for me to paint. I'm always amazed at Dick's inner drive to get things done and I'm also constantly amazed at his stamina. He is impressive. He's just a brush cutting, tree felling, chainsawing, leaf blowing, powerwashing, deck painting, window washing kind of guy.

We have the snowblower back from the shop - there were many things wrong with it so it's a really good thing that we took it in. The tractor is now in the shop - while we were dropping it off Dick looked at another new tractor - this one had a front loader. Those things are so expensive! That's why we're hoping the old tractor will be able to last a few more years. As Dylan once said, "It's not like you can have whatever you want."

Two landscapers have come to look at our front porch planting project, and we have picked Traverse Outdoor to do the job. We'll give them a call tomorrow. We haven't heard anything from Brown Lumber since they came to look at our porch railing project. Why is it that some folks just don't get back to you?

The findagrave.com project has been fun and interesting to do. We took two days and took pictures of headstones to put on that website. We found lots of Van Pelts in the Clark (Springfield Twp.) Cemetery, and even more in Kingsley's Evergreen Cemetery.

We want to have our family out for pizza some day soon. We have some baby toys for Drew to look at - we won't be needing them anymore. Plus we have a small job for Adam and Chris to do for us. (Young bucks with young backs!) We haven't decided when to do that = have to find a time that's good for everybody! What we'd really like to do is have those guys out here more often - at least once a month - just for fun.