Saturday, September 5, 2020

Family time and the coming of Fall!

 I am running a little slow this morning. We had a wonderful visit from Stephen’s family Thursday and Friday. They stopped by for the night on their way home from Colorado. It was SO good to see them and have some time together! Those kiddos are growing up so much. The boys seem to grow several inches between our visits…especially Shepherd! They are constantly busy, too. They are either playing on the rope swing, or building with Legos, or playing with the homemade spears and knives that Dennis provides, or finding books for us to read to them. Gracie has grown from a baby to a little girl with her own little personality blooming. We had such fun together! She is such a “little momma” with her baby dolls. It’s fun to have a little girl to do things with. The boys all prefer playing with Grandad…boy stuff…but Gracie and I can do our own thing.

We also enjoyed our time with Stephen and Mandy. We usually have to wait until the kids are in bed to be able to get any real talking in. Which usually means we end up staying up too late! But it is worth the lack of sleep. It takes me a day or two to recover though…which is why I’m running slow this morning!

Dennis is out at the shooting range with a couple of guys from HC. They all have a hunt planned together at a lease in the Hill Country that Dennis found. So they are sighting in their rifles and getting plans made this morning. It’s hard to believe that bow season is less than a month away. My freezer tells me that it is true, however. All I have left is hamburger meat from last year’s bounty. I usually have some jerky meat left over that I cook up when the weather starts turning cooler again. Not this year! I need to do some reorganizing and cleaning out of my freezer before Dennis starts bringing in fresh meat! Even though my venison supply has dwindled, my freezer is full. Dennis’s fishing and my stockpile of vacuum sealed meals has made a big difference in my frozen food supply. I’m going to have to figure out how to make it all fit this year! (Isn’t that a wonderful problem to have?!)

In our remodeling project, Dennis finished up all of the touchup painting around the trim work and is working on the cabinet doors for our “entertainment cabinet”. He also got in a new piece of equipment that he had to get set up and familiar with…a planer. It will be very helpful when he starts making furniture. He plans (after finishing the remodel) to build a coffee table and 2 end tables for the living room that will match the mantle. That will be a ways down the road though! He has also planned, for decades, to build coffins. He wants to not only build our own but provide a cheap alternative for others who don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a box that will just be buried in the ground.

We are missing our annual Labor Day gathering this weekend that the Young family has hosted for decades. We’ve been attending for the past 20 years and always look forward to it! As with many other things this year, COVID-19 has interfered. So instead, we plan to spend Monday at Matt and Sheila’s house. Grilled hamburgers are on the menu, as well as enjoying some time together before we head off to the great wild west.

Speaking of which, it is less than two weeks until we leave for vacation! We are really looking forward to getting away for a while. Dennis has been watching the live cams at Yellowstone for weeks, and the crowds have started to thin out considerably since school started. We love planning our vacations in the “off season” to avoid the crowds. Our last trip to Yellowstone was planned so that we’d be there as soon as things started to open up with the spring thaw. This year, we planned it so we’d be there right before things started to close down for the winter. (It’s hard to think that late Sept/early Oct is when roads start to close due to snow!) I’ll be spending what time we have left getting everything in order for being gone almost three weeks.

I hope that everyone has had some relief this week from the hot dry summer! We received about 5” of rain, and the temperatures have moderated quite a bit. Next week’s forecast shows a couple of days with the highs in the 60’s and the lows in the 40’s…quite a change from the triple digits we hit just a week or so ago! I am enjoying the coming of fall weather. I love cool days and cold nights, the changing of the leaves, the appearance of pumpkins and other fall décor taking their places on porches and front doors around town, and others signs of the changing seasons. I love how God designed this world…such variety! I’m so looking forward to enjoying seeing more of it soon!

Be safe and be kind!

No comments:

Post a Comment