June 26, 2014

Two Days, One Blog Posting

June 26, 2014

Today's posting covers two days.  It was just too late last night to get one done.  Yesterday was a very nice day - filled with nice activities.  I was up early, but knowing there would be a lot going on, I did not try to go to the gym.  I got my workout other ways.  I spent time in the yard and enjoyed the beauty of a clear day following a rain.  The air was so clean.  The birds were all chirping.  I love hearing them!

My youngest sister and her husband are in town and they came over with my mom about 9:00 and we had a nice visit and a tour of the yard.  Their yards (Mom's, and Janet and Joe Bob's) are beautiful.  Joe Bob has a little more time to work on theirs than I have for mine.  Theirs has inspired me to get to work on mine.  They are so creative with unique ideas for their yard.  Mom's yard is always beautiful.

My sister wants to make a quilt for her son.  I made one for her a few years ago with just cat print fabrics and recently her young adult son let it be known he would like one for himself.  I already had a small stack of cat fabric squares cut so I taught Janet how to use a rotary cutter and left her cutting fabrics when I went to work.  Mom was curled up napping on the couch and Janet's husband was visiting a friend.

At the office I paid bills and got a package ready to go out in the mail.  I worked on an assortment of little projects at work.  I left the office a little early to go pick up some roasted chickens for supper since several of the grandchildren were coming to our house for the evening.  I had first been told the four youngest would be coming.  Instead five came and two of them were still doing school work.  Since they are home schooled, they don't always finish their school year with the public school schedule. 

We had a great visit, good food, and lots of laughs.  Ron took our oldest granddaughter to the church for Children's choir when we finished supper and the others scattered to play and one to finish school work.  When Barb finished a meeting at the church for parents of kids going to church camp, she brought the oldest grandson and oldest granddaughter with her.  The oldest grandson is serving as an intern at the church this summer so he had been there all day for youth activities. 

This is the second grandson - he was still doing schoolwork.

Late in the evening Mom, Janet and her husband came back over to see the grandchildren.   Again, we all had fun visiting and watching the grandchildren play.  It was late by the time everyone left and so I didn't try to do a blog posting. 

As far as my hearing, I really had trouble at the supper table.  When the children and all talking at once and laughing and being silly, the sound processor gets overwhelmed.  But asking children who are bubbling over with happiness to talk one at a time just doesn't work.  They are so much fun!

I think Ron and I both slept soundly last night.  We were up on time this morning, but there was no way I was up early enough for the gym.  In the yard this morning, there were a lot of hibiscus plants with buds starting to open.  They were a little slow opening because of a rain overnight and a heavy cloud cover this morning.  I made sure to check on them this evening and I am sharing a variety of them in this portion of the blog entry. 

After taking care of things in the yard this morning, I got ready for work and went first by our doctor's office.  Ron and I each had a bill that we think should be covered by Medicare, but seem to have been coded wrong and I went to see if they had an answer about them yet.  Again the man we needed to talk to was not in.  Then I went by PaperJay - the place that has been printing my bird shirts.  I had bought a couple of blank t-shirts on Tuesday and took the shirts to PaperJay this morning.  They had one design ready to do and they printed the shirt while I waited.  It was interesting to watch the process.  There is a young lady there who is doing a great job preparing my photos for the shirts, but she is soft spoken.  I really have trouble hearing her.  Most of our contact is by email and that works well for me.  She is a kind, talented young lady.

My new t-shirt - hot off the press - literally!

From there I went to the office.  I prepared a bank deposit and took it to the bank.  By that time it was time for lunch.  When I finished eating I ran a couple of shop errands - I paid a bill at Sears and then went to Staples and bought ink cartridges for our printers.  On the way back to the office I stopped to buy ice.  I sure use a lot of ice!  I love my drinks with a full glass of ice.  The rest of the afternoon I worked on my files.  I found some that were messed up - things in wrong files or in the wrong order.  I got that all taken care of and then finished filing the most recent things.

After work we met Mom, Janet and her husband for supper and had a nice visit.  The place we go seems to me to be the quietest eating place in town in the evenings.  For lunch they are very busy, but not much in the evenings.  We had a good visit and most of the things I could hear.  The one negative is that this place like several others these days has TV sets in each room.  Why?  Can't we all be away from the TV while we eat a meal?  When the kids were young we decided not to have  a television that could be watched from the dining table.  There are a few rare occasions when we have broken that rule, but very few.  I think that is why most of the memories I have of our boys at home growing up is their laughter around the supper table.  They weren't glued to a show on TV, they were interacting with each other. 

Then my hearing was put to another challenge.  As I have said, I do very little on the telephone.  Our daughter-in-law from San Antonio called and I talked to her and to her niece and nephew who are our grandchildren - by love.  David and Diana are raising them and we have the joy of adding them to our family.  Sadly, we don't get to see them often enough, but we hope to work on that now that we are not having as many medical trips to Houston, etc.  Last year was really spent on so many medical needs that we didn't get to see some of the family members often enough.  When we had so many times when we had to close the office to go to Houston, there just was not time and money to make trips to San Antonio, etc. 

At the end of the evening we tried another new challenge.  We did Skype session with our youngest son.  We had never done that.  I had someone help me install it on my Kindle Fire HD, but had never used it.  Poor Stephen (who does not have a Kindle Fire) was trying long distance to talk us through it.  It took a lot of time and patience, but we finally got it going.  It was so nice to be able to see him while talking to him.  He looked great.  We are so thankful for all of our boys!

Oh, forgot!  I guess I got to see or talk to each of our boys or their families today.  There was the talk with daughter-in-law Diana and the kids in San Antonio, the Skype with Stephen in Dallas, the phone visit with daughter-in-law Vickey in New Mexico, and then on the 10:00 news there was an interview with our son, Jeff, talking about the serious situation with the thousands of children from Central America flooding across our southern border.  As Brownsville's Assistant City Manager, he was talking about how the city is working to meet the needs of these people.  We are so proud of all our boys and their families.  We thank God for each one of them!