Happy Anniversary to Bill and Luann

We are going out with Bill and Luann today to celebrate their anniversary. Can't wait to eat some good seafood at Bonefish Grill. We are back and it was wonderful!

A Good Read

I just finished a novel called "The Year of The Fog" by Michelle Richmond. It is very good. Keeps you guessing the whole way and is filled with layers and layers of the human spirit. Give it a whirl. I had never read anything by her. She has also written "Dream of the Blue Room" and a collection of stories called "The Girl in The Fall Away Dress" She teaches creative writing in San Francisco and publishes an online literary journal called Fiction Attic. I am going to the library today to try and get one of her other works.

Travis Wilburn Demo songs

Our youngest son Travis has begun to write songs. He has a made four draft demos and has them posted on myspace. Check out the link at the bottom of the page to hear some of them. I think he is pretty awesome even if he is my baby! myspace.com/traviswilburnmusic

Go CATS!

Roger and I were lucky enough today to get some tickets to the game. My dad gave them to us and it was a glorious day! The weather was perfect and the seats were up high but great! He had to go in to work the 2nd half of the day so I thought I would add some new pics of the back yard. I did not take my camera to the game but wish that I had.

Beautiful Weather

Today the weather was beautiful just like yesterday. The sun has been shining and the breeze has a slight coolness that feels so good after the sun heats your body. The air at school had been broken for three days and it had been getting very hot inside. It felt as if the heater was on but this is in part due to the fact that we do not have very many windows. The ones that we do have only open a crack and don't give much relief. I got home today at 5:00 and stayed out in the swing reading until the sun set. I got two new books at the library after work and was home alone. Felt like heaven. No phone calls, no talking, no listening, just relaxing in the shade.

Mom has been in the hospital

This has been quite the week for us all. Mom had been feeling much worse than usual and had stomach pain that had been increasing in intensity. She finally went to the emergency room on Tuesday and they did a cat scan and admitted her with an abcess on the intestine. She came in just in time before it ruptured. They pumped her full of antibiotics and released her on Friday. She has to take another round of oral antibiotics and will go to the surgeon on Friday to schedule a surgery to clean everything out. They could not operate while the infection was so great. She is still feeling kinda rough.

Fencing at it's best!

Roger and I built a corner with latticework to hide the electrical boxes and to provide us with a raised bed for flowers and or vegetables. I'll post another picture after the completion. I snuck in to load the pictures of the tomato and the raised bed and post it. I know all kinds of ways to get out of work. Actually I was running under the guise of cooking supper.

Smiley Tomato

I had to include this picture of a tomato I grew. I thought it looked like a great smiling tomato. Maybe it was just trying to get out of the salsa or pasta sauce.

Sunsets from the bench

Roger made a bench for me from an old piece of discarded telephone pole which he cut in half for the posts. The bench piece was a very old piece of hardwood which he found. He had just built it in our old backyard before we moved and he lovingly moved it for me to the new house. We have been able to position it in the backyard in a location that has the best view of the most beautiful sunsets. The trade off of the traffic noise is almost worth it. As I was sitting here one night looking at the sunset, I wondered if years ago the farmer of the land had ever wandered upon this very sight and gazed at the sunset at the end of a long day. The next night Roger and I decided to take a walk in the neighborhood and went around the circle that backs to us. There is a spot that must have been intended originally to expand the neighborhood or add another road. We walked back to the fence at the top of a little hill and there right behind the street where my bench is positioned was an old barn that must have been built on the farm property and the sunset view was the same as from my bench. My pondering was answered and a sense of calm and connection to the past and nature was provided by God. Even the development of the land cannot rob the beauty and wonder God intended with the sunset.

Kindergarten Story

Thursday was our first guidance lesson. They will be every three weeks or roughly once a month. She was introducing herself and had a bag of things to pull out to give hints about what she liked and who she was as a person. She began to try and find out a little about them and one little girl held up her hand and said "We do kidwriting!" Anyone that knows me knows that this thrilled my soul because I teach writing using this process and loved it that the child thought this was a very important thing for her to know about our class. Hopefully this self image will continue to grow.

Lazy Saturday

Roger and I slept in and then drove to Danville to eat lunch with his sister Michelle. Drove back home after a quick stop to the store and we have been napping and being lazy all day. There is so much more that I could be doing that is way more productive but oh well.....I did make some salsa and freeze some tomatoes. Salsa is so very yummy this time of year with all of the fresh tomatoes. Why can't you save them for very long? Seems like you spend all summer waiting forever for the first one to turn and then Bam! So many you don't know what you are going to do with them all. I have not tried to freeze my fresh salsa but I think I am going to give it a whirl and see how it thaws. If it does okay I may just be in the salsa making business for a while.