Goings-on

Hi All!

So let's see... what's been going on lately?

Well, on Monday I pulled a muscle in my lower back, which seems to be a weak spot for me. I had been doing yard work and I guess I just did too much. :( So all week I've been walking carefully, sitting carefully, getting up carefully, groaning, moaning.... Am I garnering any sympathy here?!? :)

Jeff is in California this week on business, so it's just Phil and me until tomorrow, as Kiff is hardly ever home. She spends all her time either at work or with friends. Phil's been doing odd jobs for us around the house. Right now he's working on refinishing the back two-level deck -- a big job -- so we're glad he's around to do it.

And I don't think I've mentioned this here yet... Phil got accepted to George Mason University for the fall! He'll be studying engineering, and we are so proud of him! He's following in Jeff's footsteps, which of course Jeff is thrilled about.
We celebrated Kiff's 19th birthday about a week after Phil's...
In my free time one project I'm working on is transferring Grandma Enlow's old slides and photos to digital format. It's a big project!! But it's lots of fun because I get to see all kinds of fun memories of Grandma when she was a little girl, when she was in college, when she met Grandpa, early years in their marriage, when they had little Philip & Janice & Carol... and on and on. It's so neat! Here's my set-up in our dining room:
I can only do up to 5x7 shots using the scanner, but Uncle Phil can do the larger ones at his print shop. At this point I'm finished with the slides, but doing the photos will take quite a bit of time. Here's one of my favorites: a shot of Grandma when she was just a wee thing... Anyone see any resemblance to a certain family's children???
I think the Schneider girls look like they could be her sisters!! It's uncanny! Going through these pictures is an amazing experience. I mean, it's a very real reminder of the reality of our ancestors. They had real lives, desires and dreams, passions, accomplishments, fears, failures and successes... They were real people who just lived their lives day by day and had no idea who would follow after them. Here I am, years later, one of their descendents. And even though I carry in myself some of my Great Grandfather Truesdale's genes, for example, I never knew him. So close, and yet so far.

Ah, life as we know it on earth.

So remember how I said I was going to plant a garden this summer?? Yeah... Um... It has proven to be a much bigger task than I anticipated. Just getting rid of the grass is a monster in itself. We have successfully killed the grass, but getting it up so we can actually till the soil is another thing altogether. Here is the status:
Phil is going to work on getting the grass up later this week - at least that's the plan right now - but at that point we don't plan to actually plant anything this year since it's so late. We are thinking it will be best at this point to fertilize it over the winter and get it all ready to plant for next year. In the meantime, we'll be able to get a fence up too... with Phil's help, of course. Good old Phil.

And last but not least, our shelving project!! It's really coming together and looking good! It's not finished yet, as Jeff just hasn't had the time he would have liked to pour into it. But he is faithfully chipping away at it, and here it is at its current stage:
Nice, right? There's still the mantle to go in, and all sorts of finishing touches like molding and such. But Jeff is doing a fantastic job and I'm so proud of the way he can do things like this. :) It going to look so fabulous when it's completed.

This afternoon I'm off to Morningside to visit my dear elderly friends there...

Hope you're doing wonderfully today! God bless you all. :)