How to climb a tree in three "easy" steps

When I was a kid we climbed trees the old fashioned way. By grabbing the branches and pulling ourselves up. Well, these kids, some of them belonging to me, attempted another way up the tree.

...and one meets with success.

When it rains it pours!

My husband has longed to have a nice big workshop of his own to tinker and build stuff. We have been in this house for 2 1/2 years and we are finally getting around to getting the shop/garage built.

After getting the permit from the city we hired a guy to do the foundation and flatwork cement for it. Last Tuesday he came with his crew to dig the trench for the foundation. In the process of digging they had to cut a couple sprinkler lines. My husband was warned about this and told not to run those lines until they have been reconnected.

During the day as I was watching the dig I thought, "we might want to shut off the sprinklers." But, that was the last thought of it until the next morning.

6 am, he and I were just waking up when he ran to the window. "OH NO!!" were his only words. Suddenly, the full impact of those words hit me and I remembered that I forgot to tell him....not knowing that HE had been told to turn the spinklers OFF and had also forgotten.

Well, to make a long story short, we found ourselves bailing water out of a moat for the next 2 hours.

This pushed the project off for a few days as the concrete guy had to have dry ground to work with.

Now, you should know that we have had NICE very hot weather for the last week or so. NO PROBLEM. It will be dry in a day. NOT SO! The next day we had rain.

NOW for the icing on the cake. Afterwords I hosed down my husbands shoes. As I set them on the front porch to dry I rammed my foot into a rock and broke my toe.

Yup! It's been a good week. ;)

The good things in life

This last weekend a group of friends my husband and I hang out with went on a camping trip. We had been planning this event for over a month. The date was figured out, the campsite secured, food assignments were handed out and the weather cooperated.

After dinner we gathered in a circle with all the kids to sing songs and hear stories. At one point I got up and walked to the back of the group and watched. "Life is good," I thought. Everyone in our group has had some trouble or other over the years. Some have had more problems than others, but here we were, all together, in a great big circle of support. We like being together.

In recent weeks as I have dealt with the loss of a friendship, I look to this group and feel an overwhelming gratitude for their friendship. To say that I love them doesn't quite speak to the warmth and total acceptance I feel from them.

“If we learn to appreciate more of what we already have, we will find ourselves having more to appreciate.”

—Michael Angier

Life is good!