Beth and I have finally come to a place where we're willing to de-clutter, I think. We got rid of a couple pieces of furniture last weekend by leaving it at the curb with a "free" sign on it. First an end table, which I left out and was gone by the time I looked again. Then an old dresser, which I left out and got to watch a couple from one of the apartments (I assume) try to get it into the trunk of their car. Anyway, moving furniture around to paint got us in the mood to get rid of stuff. We did a lot of cleaning out the green room, and Monday a lot of junk got hauled away. We took a huge load to Goodwill too. I also took Mom's jewelry leftovers to Snyder's in town, and she gave me $50 for a bunch of pieces. The rest was junk, so I tossed it. But she said she'd also look at the antique postcards I have from Mom/Grandpa, and she took then all for $25. Plus there was some stuff (a gold fraternity key (?) and some foreign coins) in Dad's stuff that she took for $24. So I got $99 total for some of my parents' stuff! Not a bad haul, it made me so happy to get rid of it.

I came up just a bit short in the "Fresh Outta Bed and Head to Head" tournament finals on Tuesday. I got up early and everything for it. It was within my grasp, too: I went up 2-0 with the first 2 questions, then there was one I had no idea on, she beat me by a red hair buzzing in on the next, and I guessed wrong on the last one, so I ended up losing 3-2. Dang it. Oh well. Try again next year.....

So Christmas. It was pretty low-key for us, as it has been for a while. No travel or anything, and mostly getting presents for everyone on Amazon again. Beth's big thing was a bread machine (from me, which she bought herself); mine was new sweatshirts and sweatpants (which were too big and I returned); Alex's was video games and accessories (natch); Missy's was books and a new guitar case; Natalie's was new boots and stuff from Beaded Peacock. Beth made a nice Christmas dinner for us all (we also invited over Mary Jane). It was supposed to be a turkey that we had had in the freezer for a couple years, which we were finally going to get rid of. What actually turned out was that it was just a big chicken from 2017. But it was still just fine, so we had a chicken dinner instead. Chicken, veggies, potatoes, rolls - and cheesecake. We drove all over looking for a cheesecake on Christmas eve, but we arrived at Kroger just a bit too late, at Wal-Mart just a bit too late (they closed early-ish, I think. Alex got to go home from work early and they sent him home with some goodies. We couldn't get in to get a cheesecake when we picked him up), but Meijer had some. So we had a nice dinner and a nice cheesecake on Christmas.....

The day after Christmas Missy and I started painting her room furniture. She had wanted to paint her bookshelf the same yellow we used for her room last spring, but we'd run out. So we finally got some new paint yesterday and started on both the bookshelf and her chair, which she had painted yellow and 'distressed' but she didn't like the distressed look any more. So just a good coat of paint.....Today we all went to Fort Wayne to spend some Christmas money at the mall. The kids all hit their favorite stores, got a bunch of stuff (Pop Figures for Alex & Missy of course), and we ate dinner at Red Robin.....

I played (and won) "Fresh Outta Bed and Head to Head" three times this week. I was supposed to start last Thursday, but the radio station was having technical difficulties so they had to make up time this week. I won all 3 (which were all in the tournament) so I will be playing again next week for the championship. There's a big trophy, an Echo dot, and a bunch of CDs as the prize.....The painting in the house is finally finished! Except for the one spot in the wall behind the TV where I had to fix a nail blister that bothered me. It just was so so visible after painting. I got satin finish paint, but it seems more glossy than I remember satin paint being. Anyway, Beth also wants to paint the kitchen in the same colors since we like it so much. There's plenty of the teal left over for it, I think, but I'm out of the gray. So I'll get some more gray, finish the wall behind the TV, and start on the kitchen. Probably after Christmas. We're also waiting for Christmas to be over before we put everything back up on the walls, and we'll review what pictures will stay up, and which ones will go.....Iris spent the night at the vet last week. She apparently ate a little mesh bag, and she has seemed to be in some kind of distress when using the litter box lately. Trying to go and then not. Doing that several times in a short span. So we were worried there was a blockage or something. The vet kept her until she could get a "sample," which took all day and all night, apparently, but there was nothing that seemed to indicate an infection or stones. So it might be stress.....We've got all our Christmas shopping done, mostly on Amazon again this year. This year especially, no real desire to go into big crowds.....All our Christmas cards are delivered, mostly at church. All of the ones that we hadn't seen in the past 2 weeks and we still had their card, we hand-delivered today by driving around town from one house to another, with Missy driving. She only has around 8 hours more to go to get her license.....

 Christmas season has really started up. Early this year, maybe, at least by our usual schedule. We already have the tree up and decorated, and other decorations up in the living room (mostly figurines of snowmen and Christmas trees). Last Tuesday the kids and I all had a fun time on the church scavenger hunt: starting from the church, we drove all over town looking for things on the list, taking pictures of them, and texting them back in to Bob. We started out just finding particular sets of big decorations in town (there is this one house on Market St that is all lit up, for example, or the front of the DePuy building), then driving around finding a manger scene, the words 'Merry Christmas' in lights, a tree lit only in blue, that sort of thing. All 3 of the kids and I had a pretty good system going on after a bit: I drove, Alex and Missy had a flashlight and the list in the back and kept track of what we'd found and what to look for next, everyone kept their eyes peeled for whatever we needed, and Natalie would jump out, get the photo, and text it in. We also had to go around the lights in Central Park finding particular things, and the one thing that prevented us taking first place was not finding the "hungry wise man," which was one of the traveling magi who, if you take the picture from the right angle, appears to be pointing straight at the McDonald's. We drove around furiously for 90 solid minutes (our time limit), then got back in time to get one last thing on the list which was a selfie with someone named Bob. After everything was tallied, we had come in third place. Great time was had by all.....the painting on the accent walls is just about done. The one in the dining room is done, anyway, and just the living room walls to go. Beth and I have moved all her cordial glasses out of the curio cabinet so we could move it, and everything is pulled away. I should be able to finish it up within a couple days.....Today Beth and the girls and I drove a long way out of the way to get a Chicago dog (actually only to Syracuse (Indiana))...

Things seem like they are getting back to the pandemic-normal, with both Alex and Missy finally off quarantine and back to school - even though Monday and Tuesday were e-learning days. Alex is back to work since black Friday as well, and already racking up some good hours......Natalie's 18th birthday (aka cheesecake day) was Thursday. She doesn't want to do birthdays anymore, so we'll do cheesecake day, I guess. She wanted to go to Fazoli's for her birthday dinner, so we did. We headed to FW, ate at Fazoli's, and went back home, where we had cheesecake. Beth took her shopping at the clothing and makeup stores as well.....Alex and I got his application for Digipen Institute started (at the last moment for the no-fee November), so we're on the way to getting this college stuff taken care of, finally.....I have the gray painting in the living room and dining room finished now, except for one more nail blister I kept seeing after it was finished and I had to go back and fix. It looks really good, very clean, very modern. I painted just a bit of the accent wall in the dining room and it became apparent quickly that it was much too green. Unfortunately you can't return custom mixed paint at Menard's, so we had to pick another color and hope we got it right that time. We stayed with the teal, but a much bluer teal, which looks very nice so far (I only have the wall edges and corners painted)......one reason I had to finish the painting in the living room quickly this week was so we could get the Christmas tree up. It's up, much earlier than last year, but still undecorated.....

 Thanksgiving this year had us all bored to tears, almost. Alex and Missy have been off school since getting contact traced and Nat was on Thanksgiving break all week, so nobody had much to do. There was a family dinner in Michigan, but we didn't feel comfortable going there and several family members ducked out as well. So, we sent our regrets and Beth made a ham. It was really good, too. We did have Mary Jane over for dinner, and Beth and I did a Zoom call with Laura & Thomas in the evening, but that was about it. I did catch most of the Lions getting pounded; a Thanksgiving tradition.....I continue to work on interior painting. The stairwell and hallway are done, the living room is mostly done with the gray. I keep finding dings in the walls that I need to fix before painting, or another old drywall nail bulge. But it's looking really nice, even though we're already thinking the teal paint we picked out as an accent wall is going to be too green, since the gray has a bit of blue in it.....I finally cut the cable last week, not entirely but I dropped our Comcast TV service and now it's down to internet only. I signed us up for Sling instead to get our TV, which altogether should save us $60 a month.....

 Coronavirus is surging across the country, and it has finally found us, or at least it almost has. Both of the kids in the high school got contact traced last week. On Thursday, Beth got a call in the morning that Missy had been in contact with someone who tested positive. She's got no symptoms, but she will be out of school for 2 weeks. So Beth went to get her, and literally 10 minutes after she got Missy home, the phone rang again. It was the school to tell her that Alex had been in contact with someone else who had tested positive, so he will be out for 2 weeks. He also has no symptoms. Both kids can go back the day before Thanksgiving, but since there's no school that day anyway, they'll go back the Monday after. Both of them are bummed, especially Missy, since a few of her friends have been out themselves and were just about to come back. So they are supposed to stay at home during their quarantine period, and they're already really bored with it.....Tuesday morning, before the contact tracing, I finally called in to a morning radio trivia contest (Fresh Out of Bed and Head to Head) on Pulse-FM, the one that we've been saying for weeks I should call in to because I always know all the answers. Well, I finally did, and I won it by answering 2 of the 3 questions before the other person did (Who won the Masters' golf tournament last year [Tiger Woods] and what was the Gilligan's Island Professor's real name [Roy Hinkley]). So being the champion, I got to play again the next day (and won again), and the next day (and won again, in double overtime), and the next day. So with four consecutive wins, I have entered their hall of fame, won a few prizes (including the controversial coffee mug, but I don't know why it's called that), and get to be on a tournament of champions at the end of the year.....We also went to Fort Wayne on Thursday, even though the kids were supposed to quarantine. Alex had a $500 paycheck from Walmart, and he wanted to be able to spend some of it. So we went to the mall, and let them shop. Alex bought a bunch of stuff at ThinkGeek. I think Missy is a bit jealous of the paycheck, because she's been talking about maybe she should get a job there herself. She can't right now, of course, and Alex is off work too. But Missy is back to her babysitting job with the small group at least, but that's only $20 every other week.....This weekend was mostly about leaves. It's been so windy lately that I didn't need to rent a big leaf blower, since the leaves were all against the fence in the backyard. But I did get a tarp and a rake and some kids and drag the leaves into a huge pile out in the back 40. Took almost all day, but then it snowed the next day, so my timing was impeccable....

 Maybe things are finally looking up for 2020. At least we seem on track to end it on a high note, with the idiot in chief being thrown out on his big orange @$$. But enough about that.....Halloween lasted a little longer than usual this year: our church had a trunk-or-treat last Wednesday as the kids' event for the month. People were invited to come in costume, set up in the parking lot at church, decorate their trunks (or, their whole car), and pass out candy. We probably had 20+ cars set up. We made up the back of the van like it was a cave, with spider webs and stalactites and bats (made of socks and construction paper). Missy was sort of a shadow, she dressed all in black but carried around her dragon puppet. The dragon was guarding the hoard of candy in the van-cave. I put on Alex's old crusader knight costume from when he was in 3rd grade and went around saying "ni" to people. Beth and Nat wore cat ears and had catty makeup on. There were also 2 food trucks there, one taco truck and one Cuban food truck from which we got the best Cuban sandwiches we've had since we lived in Orlando 25 years ago. Overall, huge success, and a lot of fun for everyone.....Alex has been working in earnest lately. He brings out pallets of stuff and puts the stuff on the shelves, then does it again. Hard work, and he's been scheduled for quite a few more hours than we had planned, but he likes the job at Walmart a ton better than he liked Culver's......We all found that the diner downtown, formerly B-Mac's on Buffalo, formerly Dig's Diner, is now Buzz on Buffalo. Friday we were going downtown to Mad Anthony's, but the diner was open, which is unusual for that time, so we stopped in and it turned out they were having a fish fry dinner since it was First Friday (even though FF had been cancelled). The fish was really good. We'll have to keep that place in mind..... I've started painting the living room, finally. Beth and I finally agreed on the colors for the room. We're doing a light gray with just a bit of blue as the main color, and a teal as a secondary color on the L-shaped wall and the dining room back wall. So far, I haven't got much on the wall, because I'm also getting the trim on the front door repainted and I'm painting the trim around the pantry white.....Voting in the time of coronavirus was pretty easy this past week; after all the fuss about it I walked in, voted, and walked out, maybe 10 minutes in total. More and more kids are testing positive or being contact traced at the school, things really seem to be building back up again like in the spring only this time nothing is closing.....

Halloween in the time or coronavirus didn't seem all that different, but there were fewer activities for the little kids for sure. Alex and Missy both got costumes together (Missy was a plague doctor, but she looked a little steampunkish too; Alex was a soldier character from some video game). I had found a red jacket for Alex at Goodwill, and he got some accessories for it at Dollar Tree (including a collander that he turned into a helmet using duct tape). Missy bought most of her things online. Then on Saturday (which was actually Halloween, with a full moon, and a blue moon to boot) they both met up with some friends to go trick-or-treating in Winona Lake, in the village and on the island mostly. Alex went to a friend's house afterwards for video games and Missy's friends came here to watch a movie (The Nightmare Before Christmas, which 2 of her friends had never seen). Natalie did her makeup like a cheetah but didn't go out. She did Instagram pictures of herself instead. Back at home, we had one family stop by for trick or treating, and we had to practically lasso them; a couple with 2 little kids (maybe 2 and 3) walked by on the road, weren't going to stop but Beth called them over (we're open! We have candy!) so they came up. Nobody else the rest of the time, so we ate the candy ourselves......

 Alex has certainly had a busy week. He's started at Wal-Mart in earnest now, with something like 21 hours scheduled per week (more than what he asked for, but he's going to try to get it back down, although I'm sure he will enjoy the money). He worked every day this weekend, including Sunday, so we had to rush him home from church a bit to get him to work on time. He's also working over dinnertime every working day (seems like 2:00 - 7:00 is common for him) so we are going to have to figure out that..... Beth went to an acupuncturist this week, first time in many years. What made me pester her to do it was hwer migraines; she had had a migraine for over a week solid by the time I called the place. Unfortunately that was almost a month ago, so when we went she didn't have it any more. But she got the treatment anyway because it was the only thing that helped them all those years ago. I'm hoping that it keeps them away, what with fall and all.....Saturday while Alex was working, Beth and the girls and I all went up to South Bend to visit the Studebaker Museum. It was really cool! Primarily Missy had wanted to go because they have the original 1951 Studebaker Commander that Fozzie and Kermit drove in the Muppet Movie. That was neat but there are a lot more cars there in a lot better condition.....

Alex finally heard back from Wal-Mart early this week, first word after being hired there as to when he would start. That turned out to be Friday, he had orientation for a couple hours. Turns out he will be working in the toy department, he had thought it would be electronics. I was hoping it would be electronics too, just because I think he would like it more.....Tuesday my group at work got together for lunch and games at Bixler Park in town. We played Yardzee, which is just Yahtzee played outside with big dice. We wanted to get together again before it got cold. It was good to actually see everyone again.....Tuesday was also game night at the church. The card/board game "club" (not really a club) has started back up again after a long layoff. I missed last month's game night but everyone except Bob and Lily did too. They were also the only other ones there this time, which is fine. We'll get there. Bob brought a game that I forget the name, but it's just like caroms. He made the board himself; they're going to try making some money by selling them where he works. I also brought Wizard, which I'd told Bob about before and he wanted to try. He and Lily really liked it, and he also likes that you can play 6 people, which is his whole family. Fun time.....Saturday Beth and Alex and I went to look through his senior pictures and pick out the ones we liked. There were some really good ones, so we picked 6 that we liked most and bought the digital package. It comes with an upload to something called Mpix which I understand is sort of like Shutterfly.....We were looking for somewhere to have lunch on Saturday (Missy had asked for B-Mac's, not sure why) but it looks like that place is closed, permanently, as is Shoop's, so we punted and went to Fazoli's instead. Yeah, that one. In Fort Wayne, 45 minutes away. We went to Hobby Lobby after we ate lunch but that was all we did in FW before coming back home.... Alex and Missy have fall break this coming week; I'm not sure what we would have done during the break but Alex is going to be working.....This weekend I finally broke out the paint, for all the wall prep I've been doing for so so long. Natalie wanted the downstairs bathroom painted (tired of the bright orange, I guess) so we settled on a light blue. I started painting the corners and edges Friday night. I wasn't crazy about it at first but it does look pretty nice on the walls. The living room is next, which I said I wasn't going to paint myself but I think I am, because I think it is going to be a lot cheaper. But Beth and I have to agree on the colors, still.....

FCC Kids made a comeback this week. It was different than in the past, and will be going forward for the time being as well. It looks like it'll just be once a month; not sure what exactly we will do when we have to be inside. But this week was bike night. Kids brought their bikes and there was a bunch of activities for them. Racing, safety demos, and the like. I was manning the obstacle course; my job was to time the kids as they went through it (it wasn't that hard). It was well attended, but we were outside so I think everything was fine.....Saturday Beth and I got up early to go view Alex's senior portraits, but it turned out we got the date wrong, it's next week. Later on we all wanted to go do something, but what we found took a lot longer to get there than to actually do it. We went to a corn maze. We tried to go to the same maze we went to a few years ago down near Mentone (Goshert Farms) but when we got there we found nothing. I had even looked it up online and found announcements about it but the barn where they had the shops set up was empty, and even though there was a sign that said "corn maze," the field right behind it was also empty. Harvested. So I'm not too sure what went on there, but I guess all the web pages I found were from previous years. So with tears in our eyes we turned around and headed towards Knollbrook Farms, near Goshen. Our GPS took us on what it may have thought was the shortest route, but it went through the country and turned every half mile or so. Not sure how long it took to get from one corn maze to the other, but quite a while. When we got there, there was quite a crowd, one that Natalie could not deal with so she went back to the car just as soon as we got tickets (I did find a super saving social deal for half price on 4 tix, and bought it while waiting in line). So the rest of us went and did some pumpkin slingshot and then walked the corn maze, which wasn't very difficult (more of a path than a maze). We might have stayed there for a grand total of half an hour, which was a shorter time than we had been driving.....Today Missy and Katherine went to Goodwill to do some shopping (just looking for something fun). After I dropped them off I found a jacket for Alex's Halloween costume and a really nice winter coat. A Columbia coat for $25, pretty much brand new. Missy came home later with a little wooden elephant she had found.

 Not too bad of a weekend. Friday everyone seemed to be in the mood to go to Red Robin for dinner so we did. Headed to the mall right after the kids were out of school, shopped at B&N a bit, had dinner, went home. Something to do. Saturday was busy, at least for Alex: He had an interview at Wal-Mart at 1:00, which went very well and ended with him being hired! He'll be making $11 an hour, I think, and starts next week. At 4:30 we had his senior portraits taken. We took him to a photographer just outside of town, and she took the photos outside at her property. Including some photos with a game controller and headphones, which she said she had a fun idea for, so we'll see how that looks......Missy had a phone interview with Kohl's last week, but they let her know that they won't be hiring her (even though in the interview they said they were desperate for workers). Beth and I suspect it was because she said she wanted to work there because it seemed to be low stress and she get anxious in crowds. Anyway, she wasn't too broken up about not getting the job, and she wants to apply at a couple other places that say they're hiring....Thursday was "gotcha day" for Natalie, or rather our new gotcha day. One year since the adoption was finalized. We had cheesecake and I took her to Ulta to celebrate....I made another apple pie this week, but it wasn't as good because I used a pre-made crust.....

This weekend was the (13th?) annual Marve's birthday weekend campout. This year, for the first time in a decade, we were at Yankee Springs instead of Michawana because of the coronavirus. There were some 49 positive cases associated with Michawana over the last few months so Marve and Beth didn't want to camp there, just in case. I don't know that it would have made any difference for us, especially since they're always nearly deserted this time of year it would probably have been safer for us there than at the crowded campground at YS. But, we do love Yankee Springs. Anyway, I took Friday afternoon off so we could get going just as soon as Alex and Missy were out of school; Natalie declined to come with us so we left her at home with Linda's and Mary Jane's and Nancy's phone numbers, a house key, and a little extra cash. We figured at 17 she could take care of herself for a weekend. The rest of us got to the campground and set up while it was still light, which is always nice. The last time at YS, we set everything up in the pitch black. Not the largest family group ever this year, but we did have Marve & Beth, Ric & Nickie, Ryan, Sam, Lauren, John & Steph, Julia, Trevor, Pete & Margie, Kristie & family, and some other Wiessner cousins (Dave, Sonja, their mom), so a good crowd. For the first time, Beth and I had the firepit campsite, so our place was the place. The weather was very comfortable all weekend, dry and never too hot or cold. Friday night we had one of the largest fires I've ever seen in a campsite, it was enough to make everyone start pushing their chairs back a bit. I also made some Dutch oven nachos over the fire which came out great, but I have some notes for it. Saturday most of us went out to an apple orchard near Hastings, and picked some apples (I'm gonna make another pie!) and found some other good stuff in the shop for that evening. During the day Missy and I did some hiking and geocaching and we visited the lake. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be but only Beth went in below knee deep. In the evening we made our fabulous tinfoil dinners and there was a birthday bash for Marve and Margie, with all the pies and cookies and such from the orchard. Another late night then around the firepit. Sunday we started packing up as soon as breakfast was over, and headed home so we could make it to small group on time.....Michigan still seems to be much more locked down than Indiana is. The restaurants are still closed except for takeout and drive through, apparently......We drove home just around lunchtime so we could make it to our (now rebranded as) life group at 4, but we were late anyway. First time together as a group since February? Yeah, that's about right. We were at the Pressler's which is way outside of town. After that, we had to go to the Igloo since we didn't make it to Plainwell Ice Cream after the campout this year.

 I made another pie this week. I'm not really sure where the pie thing came from, other than maybe because we couldn't pick blueberries a few weeks ago, but anyway this time it was blackberry (Beth's favorite berry). I didn't get the crust rolled quite as thin as last time, and blackberries make a lot more juice than blueberries, it seems, but that was an awesome pie.....The pool is drained. When it finally emptied out I got it turned over and put it up on a collection of chairs and tables and sawhorses, and I was lucky enough for a few warm sunny days in a row to get it mostly dried out. Then we laid it out on top of the camper.....We went geocaching Saturday. It was a nice day so we headed for Plymouth, to do some caching walking all over Centennial Park (where the blueberry festival is). We found 3, didn't find 2, but nobody else really seemed in the mood anyway. We walked around a while, then I got the 'I'm done' from all around and we just headed back, leaving like 6 still on the table.....Took Natalie to a cardiologist in FW Friday, to check if her low blood pressure and dizziness is heart-related, which it doesn't seem to be, so probably a meds issue.....Beth has been stricken with a migraine for a week, and it finally has just started to let up.....the county is up to around 1200 cases of coronavirus, with 17 deaths......

 My group at work had a little fun this week. We haven't all seen each other except online since March, so (my idea) we got together for a socially distanced lunch on Wednesday. We all brought our own lunch to Beyer Park in town, ate at the picnic tables, and played frisbee cricket (or, Canadian horseshoes?) (also my idea) which was a big hit. Nobody had ever played it before and everyone liked it a lot. Fun time.....this Saturday was supposed to be the company picnic at King's Island (similar to Cedar Point the last couple years) but it was announced to be cancelled maybe a month or two ago.....in lieu of the company picnic, we all went to the mall in Fort Wayne, mostly because Missy wanted to get a book that just came out. Headed there, went to B&N, looked around a bit (but nobody really wanted to shop), and headed home.....the city has been working on resurfacing our road this week. We were hoping when they came out to survey and see how bad the moat was, they would actually do something about it, but no such luck. They put down some kind of sealant layer on top of the road, without doing much of anything to the actual road. So the depressions and dips are all still there, just covered up. Better than nothing, I suppose, since at least the crumbling should stop. They also did put extra stuff in the broken-up curb at the bottom of our driveway, so some of those bumps are filled in, and it's not so jarring to drive up anymore....Pool season is officially over, I started draining it today. It's been pretty cold for a couple weeks now, and it looks like it won't get any warmer any time soon. I have been fighting algae in it this summer ever since July.......

 Labor Day Weekend in a pandemic - boring. Beth and I thought about trying to go camping this weekend, but we didn't think about it until just a couple weeks ago and it was way too late to get any campground reservations. Might have been nice to go to Lake Michigan but Holland and Van Buren and everywhere else was full. Well, the weather wasn't the greatest anyway. So, Monday off, but nothing much going on. I did take the girls to Hobby Lobby today just for something to do, but that was the extent of the fun. Beth wasn't feeling well this weekend either, migraines.....Monday I made another attempt to fly my RC plane. The current model has actually been built for over a year now, but I haven't tried to fly it, too lazy I guess. Missy and I took it over to the church since that's such a good place to fly it (big open space, not many wires). There were a couple little kids riding bikes with training wheels in the parking lot so we did have a bit of an audience for the plane to fly up and right back down. It flew for around a second before crashing, which broke off the prop mount and bent the fuselage, but otherwise not extensive damage. We took it home (had been at the church maybe a couple minutes before we left) and I've repaired it, so maybe I'll try it again. I guess I should change something in the plane, but I don't know what to change.....Thursday I made a blueberry pie. From scratch. Including the crust. My first ever. It was yummy. I'd sort of gotten a wild hair about it last week when we went to pick blueberries and there weren't any; Beth has also told me in the past that she can't make pie crust, and I thought, how hard can it be? So I found a recipe online for crust and pie and made it. It came out so good I'm going to have to make a strawberry one.....Friday we all went to Rentown (the Amish store) up by Nappanee to find some pickled beets (and other goodies) for us to bring up to Marve & Beth's on Saturday. We were supposed to go visit them a couple weeks ago but she postponed it because she was having a procedure and didn't want to risk prior exposure to covid. Anyway, we all (except Nat) went up to their house in Kalamazoo on Saturday, swam in their pool (even though it was a bit chilly at first), had dinner together (grilled chicken) and played a lot of Farkle. We headed home in the evening. 

The new dryer was delivered and installed this week. They hauled the old one away, and the new one smells a whole lot better than the old one did. Beth has been having crushing guilt this week over Ruby, but she does know we couldn't let her cause any more damage. Iris has been acting more and more friendly again too.....I finally tried this week to start dealing with the boxes of things I still have from Mom/Grandma, by listing one of the antique postcards (postmarked 1908!) on eBay. As of tonight, with only hours left in the auction, it had 7 views and no bids on an opening of $2.20. If it doesn't sell, I'm just going to start getting rid of stuff by trashing, donating, or whatever.....Nat went to the doctor again this week, for feeling awful all the time. She either has mono (again) or strep throat, I hope it's strep but mono would explain a lot.....We all went up to Michigan Sunday to clean up Becky's grave, since today was her birthday (she would have been 20. Hard to believe). Looks like nobody's been there in a while. We cleaned up the weeds and did some edging around Beth's dad's grave, and put new flowers in the vase for Becky. We were going to go pick blueberries after we were done, but only a couple u-pick places were open on Sundays, and the nearest one looked deserted when we got there except for a man out mowing the yard, who told us that they closed the u-pick down a couple weeks ago, early this year, because the crop had been so bad. The berries got all "punky" and shriveled, probably because it's been so hot and dry this year. So, no berries, and we just went to Plainwell Ice Cream instead. Then, with nothing else to do up there, we called Stephanie to see of they were home and dropped in on the Pinksters instead. We visited with them a couple hours before heading home.

Alex and Missy started school again this week. Alex is a senior. I need to start figuring out what exactly we need to do about getting him into college. I wish I knew more about that but I have very little memory of what I did myself back then. I have no idea how I figured out what colleges I was interested in without being able to Google them or look at YouTube videos. Anyway, first things first: let's get them through the year. Only 3 days into the school year, it was announced that there had been a positive case in a student who had been in the school. By the time we knew about it, the kid's family and the families of all students who had been in close contact with him had already been notified, and they are all going to be out of school for a while. The rumor mill at the school is already saying that school is going to be cancelled and go to online only next week, but I don't believe that.....I donated blood last week, my company was having a blood drive one of the times I ran in for a bit, so I donated while I was there. The Red Cross does coronavirus testing on all donated blood, and mine came back negative, so I've avoided exposure up to now.....Friday night Alex had a birthday party/sleepover, so the rest of us with nothing to do went out to dinner in Fort Wayne (we wanted Red Robin!).....We are once again short one cat. Ruby has been peeing on the carpet again, including once right in front of me, and a new thing last weekend: in the dryer. There was a dry load in the dryer, someone left the door open, and she jumped in and peed in the clothes pile. That was a last straw. We tried all week but couldn't get the smell out of the dryer. Ruby went to the vet to get checked out if she had a UTI or something, and there was no medical reason why she was doing it. So unfortunately she is no longer with us. I hated doing this again but I can't have it.....on a related topic, Beth and I went shopping for a new dryer this weekend. We bought a new one from Smith Appliance in town, bye bye $909.50.....

This coming week Alex and Missy go back to school, in person. They're a bit nervous about it, and I wish I felt better about it myself, but Beth and I are pretty sure that it's the best thing. They're required to wear masks in the hallways, and classrooms have been socially distanced as much as possible, and we still have only have around 900 confirmed cases of the virus in the county, so it's not really a hot spot around here, but we've all seen the pictures of schools with big crowds and no precautions. I just hope all the teachers will be ok, too....I've been sewing more masks from the fabric we picked up last week, and tinkering around with the pattern and the elastic to make them better. I've had a few experimental models that worked pretty well, and some that didn't. It seemed to work best when I made a paper pattern from a store-bought one and made a few alterations.....We all spent the day Saturday at Judy & Neill's (and Ted's) cottage on the lake in Michigan.We took a cooler of food and drinks and spent the day on the lake, and grilled some hot dogs and had a big picnic dinner on the patio. They also showed us their new toy - they sold the Airstream and got a used motor coach. It's the biggest thing I have ever seen. The rest of the day we chilled at the lake, went out on kayaks and the pontoon boat or went swimming (the lake bottom is slimy there)...since we didn't find a good desk for my home office at Ikea, I moved a few things around the living room and put up the folding table that usually goes in the camper. It's not perfect but it's better than the dining room table.....

School has officially begun, sort of. Natalie is still doing online school (as she was even before the pandemic) and her testing began this week. As of now, Beth and I are still not exactly sure what her schedule is; I think they may adjust it based on the testing, or something. But we've already had a lot of confusion with the school about how it all works because it's hard to tell from the website, and twice last week she was apparently supposed to be in class of some sort even though as recently as 11:00 the previous night there was nothing listed on her school schedule. So we'll see how it goes, I suppose......Alex and Missy are both a little nervous about going back to school at the high school, so am I. That starts a week from tomorrow, I believe this week there is a chance to go walk through the building to walk your schedule.....It's been announced at work that I can expect to be working from home until at least the end of the year. I need to upgrade my work space. I'm still just clearing a space on the dining room table every morning, and setting it all aside every evening, and sitting on a hard wooden chair. To that end, Beth and the girls and I all went to Ikea near Indy this Saturday, looking for a good desk. However, there were not a lot of goof options, and very few were actually in stock. Most desks they had on display had little tickets saying 'temporarily unavailable' on them. So just a trip out of town, nothing to show for it. Not that I actually have anywhere to put a desk in this house anyway.....the dryer that we just had fixed is making an awful racket when we first turn it on, pretty much every time now. It has been going away after a while but we just had it fixed.....On the same topic, the van is making clunking noises under the front end again, we just had that fixed as well. Only the noises sound different this time.....since it looks like the pandemic isn't going anywhere soon, I thought we should make some more masks since I still only have the two I made in the spring. We all went shopping at Lowery's and Wal-Mart looking for some fun fabric and we picked out a few yards each. I made a couple masks already, lots more to go. I'm going to try improvising some elastic ear loops instead of ties this time, as well.....

Missy finished up her road driving part of her driver's ed course this week, driving for around an hour out of 3 hours each of 3 days during the week. Now all we have to do is finish up her 50 hours of logged driving and she'll be good to go. I've added Alex to our auto insurance policy, which pretty much doubled the premium. At least with Missy, the premium won't go up quite as far.....Thursday I took a day off work and we went to the zoo in Fort Wayne (except Nat because she hates zoos). We picked up the Monsma kids on the way out of town and got there as soon as it opened since they're operating at reduced capacity. It wasn't that crowded though, which was what we were hoping since it's the middle of the week. I haven't been to the zoo since Missy went on a field trip in something like 4th grade. It's pretty much all still where I left it. The skyride is still fun but there's a lot more overgrowth since last I remember, so you can't see into the animal areas much. Anyway, we all did the zoo over a few hours, then Googled a good new place to get a fro-yo sundae and found a cool place at Jefferson Pointe.....Nat starts school next week, Alex and Missy a couple weeks later. I wish I felt better about them going back to in-person school.....

Now comes the part where we try to figure out what we can do with the rest of summer, since we've got less than a month left. Alex and Missy are still scheduled to go to in-person school, but Nat will be doing the online school again this year so she's all set. We'd all like to do things but we're not sure what we should. The virus seems to be on the rise all over, although around here doesn't seem as bad as other places. The county is now up to 764 cases.....Alex had his wisdom teeth out on Monday, the third and final kid to have oral surgery this summer. He only had 2 taken out though. It went pretty well, although similar to when he had his tonsils out in 2010 he wouldn't stop bleeding. Beth had to take him back in to get some resorbable stuff to put in the hole (or something) to stop it. And he seemed to have more pain than Missy did; hers came out super easy.....I got a service tech out here for the dryer early this week. They came right in, worked for a bit, and got the thing working again. It's not the first time that dryer has been fixed, I wonder how much longer it will last.....I also took the truck in to the Ford dealer to get a few things fixed. The power window has been acting up, getting stuck up or down and shorting out somewhere (so that pushing the switch makes the LED on the mirror defogger turn on). They found a broken wire in the door. I also had them fix teh windshield washers; they had to replace the washer pump. That all set me back around $250.....Alex also got his driver's license Friday! We had everything that the Road Skills guy said he would need to get it, but the ever-helpful BMV needed his certificate of completion for his classroom course, which we did not have. So he and Beth had been in line for 90 minutes for naught. Beth and I had to make a bunch of calls to the school and find someone who would return a phone call before we finally got someone to send him a copy of the certificate (which I still swear the BMV kept when we got his permit originally), so back to the BMV and this time he got it. So now my insurance is going to spike, by about double.....Missy has been doing the driving part of driver's ed at the school this week.....Saturday I was asked if I could help out installing a fence at the home of a family in our small group. They rented an auger, a cement mixer, and got all the supplies and just needed help putting it all together. There were 4 or 5 people there, any more would have just been in the way. I went over at around 9am and they were already into it, digging post holes. Even with the machine, it was hard work. In high heat. The ground is clay and rocks where their house is, and we had to keep pressing and pounding the auger down to break up the clay or pulling it out to dig out rocks with a hammer and pry bar. There were a couple of stubborn, softball sized rocks in every hole, it seemed. And there were around 20 holes to dig. We still had several to go by the time we broke for lunch (pizza, provided), and we didn't finish getting the holes dug until around 3:30. We cut an old landline phone line along the way, too, it seems. Placing the posts, mixing and pouring the cement, and leveling the posts was the easy part, relatively, and we were done by about 6:00. I don't think Drew intended the job to take all of us all day, but I'm glad he had help because it was not an easy job.....Sunday, desperate for something to do, we all went to Fort Wayne. Beth and I hung out at the Barnes & Noble, and we let the kids go shop by themselves. The mall wasn't as crowded as it had been last time we were there a few weeks ago, and there seemed to be more mask wearing and crowd control, but Beth and I stayed out anyway. Red Robin for dinner wasn't as crowded as it normally would be either.

My birthday! Fifty-one, whatever......We're back from camping, came back a day early, actually. We headed out last Saturday in both vehicles, me and Alex in the truck, all the girls in the van. It's about a 4-ish hour drive, which got us there around 3. The campground was packed full, but as we were to see later on, it did not stay that way. We got everything set up in the high heat, then the rain started around 6. The Boschains came out to see us that first night, and they brought stuff to make s'mores, but the campfire we made did not last very long. It rained harder and harder as it got later. We basically just hung out under the awning or in the camper (we found that the canopy we have is NOT waterproof!) until they left that night. It was supposed to rain (at least a good chance of showers/thunderstorms) most of Sunday as well, which was ok because that day we went to Louisville to see the Boschains at their place. We had lunch out at a BBQ restaurant and made dinner together at their house, and hung out there playing games and talking while the kids played video games. The exodus from the campground had started by the time we left, and by the time we got back, the campground was maybe about 20% full. It stayed that way until we left. Monday, since Nat still had to do summer school, Beth took her to a coffee shop in Madison in the morning for the wi-fi, and I took Alex and Missy on a hike of trail 4, to one of the waterfalls and to the railroad relics. After Nat was done with school, we all went out to town to go to that big antiques store in the old lumber mill. Our campsite was visited by a large bird of prey later that afternoon. I took Nat to town for school on Tuesday, and did a little geocaching in town while she schooled. We went to the nature center to see if we could positively identify the raptor we saw yesterday, and it turns out it was a red-tailed hawk. We hadn't thought so, but I guess we hadn't gotten a good look at the tail. I did some solo geocaching while the girls went to the old town for more shopping. Later on all the kids and I went on a hike to see the falls (they have visibly less water than they did when we were here last year). Nat hiked all the way back to the campsite herself, took until after dark. Wednesday, we went to Crystal Beach, a 1930-s era public pool in the old town, in the early afternoon to try to keep cool. We were concerned about social distancing but the crowd hadn't looked as big as we thought it might be, so we tried it. Again, it wasn't too crowded, and it was very clean and very nice. About the only time all week we were comfortably cool. Later on, the Boschains came back out again, and we all went on a hike through the tunnel (except Lily, who was afraid of bats, and Gary, who stayed with Lily). But the hike past Tunnel Falls was great, and Jake had a lot of fun crossing the tunnel. Since it was dry this time, the campfire for s'mores was very successful this time. Thursday, we went to Louisville again, at first trying to get together with Gary for lunch, but that wasn't working out, so we killed time at the malls until we could go to their place (Renee babysits). Gary was working late so we didn't see him at all that day. But, we all had a good time at the house playing games and hanging out. By Friday, Beth was asking if maybe we could go home a day early. The intense heat of the week was getting to everyone, even with the AC, and everyone was ready to be done. The kids and I had planned a creek-bed hike to the upper falls, but in the end all of them backed out so I went myself. The trail ends before you get to the falls, which is a bummer, but it was an awesome hike with amazing vistas. Including the one with the copperhead in it, but he didn't want to be around me any more than I wanted to be around him. I got a good hike in and did the tunnel again just for good measure, then got back to the campsite, finished packing up the camper (Beth and the kids had done as much as they could without me), cleaned myself up, and we went home.....We started laundry the day after we got home, and first thing was the dryer wasn't working. It was making a bang every time it turned around. So Beth and I spent an afternoon at a local laundromat, spending about $30 to get everything done.....

Tomorrow is vacation. We are going camping at Clifty Falls State Park for the week, and visiting the Boschains while we're down there. Most of the week has been spent getting ready. We've already got the A/C installed on the camper, which seems to work really well in tests I've done in the driveway, we've overshopped for groceries (even though we're going to buy most of the fresh stuff after we get down there), gotten haircuts, and we've made all the plans we can, I think. A lot of things are going to be unavailable to us, closed due to the pandemic. Such as, most importantly, the pool. The pool at the campground will be closed, and there is no lake. So we're not exactly sure what we're going to do to cool off, since it's supposed to be awfully hot.....I got the van in to Ab & Tom's again for service, this time for the clunking and creaking and groaning and snapping noises that it has been making for some time now, and seem to be getting worse. It went in on Wednesday, and they determined that the problem was the steering rack and tie rods. They got the parts Thursday, and finished the work at the last minute today. It drives much better now, which is good because we decided to take both vehicles on the road trip (since we'll be driving around quite a bit, it's much better in the van). So another $948.50 to get the van in shape (after the diagnosis, they recommended we do not drive it much longer without getting it fixed!).....While they were fixing the van Friday, I took Alex downtown to have his drivers' road test done at a driving school, instead of waiting for the BMV to schedule him in. We should have done it long ago (although I don't know if we could have). BMV told us that they would be doing make-up road tests the week we'll be gone on vacation (and only that week!), and since he'll miss it we would have to schedule one when they start doing them again. With no indication when. So, plan B for that was to do it at the driving school, much easier to schedule. They also told us to make sure that his permit wasn't expired, and a good thing they told us that, because it was. We had to get him in to BMV to have it renewed. And of course, nobody at BMV knew how to renew a permit. Eventually they decided he needed to re-take the test, which he didn't pass and so we had to go back the next day and try again. Success the second time, and a new permit. So Friday he took and passed the road test, only being dinged on parallel parking, stopping beyond a stop line, and stopping too close behind the car in front. Now we just have to get down to the BMV again to get his license, as soon as possible after we get home.....

Another mostly boring week of summer. South Haven is our go-to for 4th of July, but with the surge in coronavirus cases lately and the fact that the beaches are jam-packed, we thought it not a good idea. Indiana is doing better than the surrounding states though, but still we're not going to take a risk like that. The county is up to 550 cases now.....Beth had another mini-vacation for herself this week, she spent Wednesday and Thursday night in the new Holiday Inn Express in town (still not sure why Warsaw needed 3 new hotels this year). She thinks she was the first one to stay in the room she had, and the pool was very nice and deserted when she used it. There were fireworks going on in the housing addition right behind the hotel until late, but otherwise a very nice and relaxing stay, she said.....Since it was a holiday weekend, I had Friday off, and I took a half day on Thursday as well. I wished we had somewhere to go and do on the days off, but going out for ice cream or something is about the best we have.....Natalie found a new craft project in a magazine, to make a concrete birdbath with leaf patterns in it, that we tried to do a couple times this weekend but it didn't turn out. I got some concrete mix at Menard's and what I thought was a bag of sand, but turned out to be sand mix concrete so the form we made (supposed to be sand) hardened and stuck to the birdbath to the point that we couldn't get them separated without breaking it. On the second attempt we used a bag of dirt as the form and the sand mix as the concrete, but it cracked in many places while it was hardening. The leaves also embedded in the sand mix, which they weren't supposed to do. So, I'll have to get another bag of concrete at some point.....Sunday at church (still only around 20-30 people at the later service) I got invited to play frisbee golf with a group. Bob, Jack, Matthew, Kate & I went down to Akron to play 18 holes at a nice course they have there in a large park. I held my own, even though I had to borrow the frisbees and hadn't played in years. It was hot but a good time......Speaking of hot, we're going camping in about a week at Clifty Falls, where there is no lake and the pool is closed due to Covid-19. It's supposed to be hot and sunny the whole time except for the possibility of pop-up showers. I hope we don't melt.....

Believe it or not: Ruby is back! On Monday I went around the neighborhood and took down the posters Alex and I put up a few weeks ago and threw them out. Tuesday morning, she showed up on our front porch! She's lost some weight and feels a little bony around the middle, but she's not dirty and didn't have any fleas on her, and her fur isn't matted or anything, so we think she may have been living somewhere where she could be inside but couldn't get out. There is a couple moving out of the apartments next door so the door to the building is propped open; maybe she was with someone in there? But it doesn't seem like she's been being fed consistently either, so we don't know. Anyway, Iris is pissed. She had been getting back to her old self again, her pre-Ruby self. No growling and hissing all the time, jumping up into our laps and curling up, that sort of stuff. Now with Iris, it's like Ruby is brand new again. It's bad. I've had to feed her on the table or something to keep her away from Ruby. Ruby has been just fine though. She doesn't seem to have changed much.....We went and got the camper on Wednesday, complete with the new AC unit. I set the camper up in the driveway when we got home so we could test it out. On a hot sunny day, with the AC set to medium cooling, it kept the camper very comfortable inside. Impressively so. I'm nervous about water condensation getting into the roof, since there was a little pool of water trickling towards the back end of the camper, but hopefully it's sealed up nice and tight. It should make it much more pleasant for camping next month. It cost a thousand bucks but it's cheaper than a new camper.....Friday I decided that there must be another mole in the backyard because there were still tunnels in the ground, and I didn't think I'd missed that many in stomping them back down. So I reset the trap in the backyard, and by Saturday morning I had caught another mole. Another big one. The end must have come very quickly for him if you know what I mean. After that I set it back up again in the front yard. There must be a mole there too, unless it was all the same two.....Saturday we all went to the mall in Fort Wayne. I wonder if that was a really bad idea. The shops were pretty much all open, and the crowds were about as large as ever, and pretty much nobody was wearing a face mask. Very, very few people. Except for us. We were probably more exposed there than we have been any time since this all started. Anyway we hit the Barnes & Noble, and the kids did Think Geek and Hot Topic and Box Lunch and so on, and those stores were limiting the number of people coming in at a time, and they asked you not to touch things unless you were going to buy them, but it felt like a petri dish in there.....The county is now up to 468 cases, and it's blowing up all across the country, it seems.....

Our little girl turned 16 last Monday. We had a little family birthday on Monday, where we gave her her presents (some dragon books, phone case, hoodie, Pop figure, etc) and had angel food cake with fruit topping. The real party was Friday when she had a bunch of friends come over in the afternoon and have a pool party. There were about 6 or 7 girls here to play in the pool and have fun with bubbles and sidewalk chalk, hang out and have grilled hot dogs, and watch Jim Henson movies. The Muppet Movie to start, then Labyrinth, and finally the Dark Crystal. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and the pool was nice because it has been so hot lately. It was a sleepover party, but only a couple of the girls were able to stay overnight. In the morning I made pancakes and they hung out until the parents came.....389 cases of coronavirus countywide now; still going up fast but the rate is decreasing a bit.....Beth and I have decided to get an air conditioner put on the camper. We're treating it as our anniversary presents to each other. We're camping in about 3 weeks down south, where there is no pool or beach, so we need something to cool us down. We went around to a couple RV repair places near Warsaw but eventually took the camper to the same place in Goshen that we'd had it repaired at in years past. We took it up Friday, they said it shouldn't take too long to get it done.....I would have taken the camper to Goshen Wednesday but after a short time at work, I tried to leave and the truck would not start. No clicks, no whirrs, no nothing. So I had it towed to Ab & Tom's and sure enough, the starter was dead, so I had to get that fixed first.....Church was at the building again this week, still not a whole lot of people at the second service.....For the first time ever, I have caught a mole in the backyard! It's been killing all the new grass I've been trying to grow in front of the pool, so even though I never had any luck with them before, I went out and got a mole trap Saturday evening and set it in the back yard. By Sunday after church, it was sprung, and there was a dead mole, a big one, caught in it! It was much bigger than I thought it would be. I don't know if there are others in the yard, but from the size of it and the size of the dead patch of lawn, I'd guess it was the only one. Don't know. We'll see soon enough, I guess. I reset the trap in the front yard to try to catch one there, too......Still no sign of Ruby, she's been gone 3 weeks now. I don't think she's coming back.....

Another step towards normal this weekend; we had church at the building for the first time since early March. We're having 2 services to split things up, and we chose to go to the later one, which was much less attended. Beth and the kids and I were greeting, and only one person came in the entrance that Alex and I were covering (There are 3 separated by last name). There were maybe 30 people in the later service, but apparently there were more, maybe 70, in the earlier one. No Sunday School and no child care, of course. We're up to 316 cases in the county now, and the rate of increase is increasing.....Saturday I went on another bike trail ride in the morning, and replaced a cache back in the woods that has been missing (as has the cache owner) for some time. Also found a second one that we'd looked for and not found a couple times......Later on in the day we all went to Pottery Bayou for Missy's birthday and something to do, since it's open. Missy made a big dragon, Nat did a cup, Alex a turtle, Beth a camper birdhouse, and I a dragon head topper. Topper to what, I do not know, but I'll probably give it to Missy.....We went geocaching on Sunday out towards South Whitley. Found a few (including one out on a country road where we raised the ire of some grumpy middle aged man who was walking down the road from his house to find out what we were doing, and gave us a surly look as we drove past on our way out. A couple were in a park by the river and one was in a rail-to-trail path; both locations had a lot of skeeters......I made a key lime pie Friday night because I found out through conversation with the Rogers' at our house last week that Matthew loves it. Sunday evening we drove out to their house and "dropped off" the pie, meaning we stayed to visit and eat it with them. Matthew has an amazing baseball card collection.....Thursday I finally complained to the city about the moat in front of our driveway. It's been getting bigger and rougher for a long time now, and never really got fixed when the city redid the road years ago. Amazingly, within a few hours, two guys from the city roads department were at the house, doing some measurements and checking levels. I'm glad there was quite a bit of standing water still in the moat so they could see it. They told me that they were just there to check it out, and 'someone paid more than them' will decide what to do about it. So, it's on their radar, and maybe we'll get it fixed sometime soon!....Ruby is still missing....Missy had her wisdom teeth out on Friday. It went much easier than Natalie's; they just cut her gums open and they came right out. There was pretty much no swelling at all, and she didn't have a lot of pain.....

A little more normal all the time, but still not quite. This weekend we had actual company at the house for the first time in a while. Our small group, which has been meeting only virtually for a while, and for some reason sparsely attended at that, met at our house today for a cookout. Only two other families came but that's about what we've been getting for attendance on Zoom too. Beth and I provided and grilled the burgers and hot dogs, everyone else brought a side and drinks, and we played bean bag toss and frisbee cricket and just visited with actual human contact for the first time in a while. Good times.....I put up the pool this week. The kids and I got it hauled into the backyard and I spent a couple days getting it filled up. Saturday was awfully hot so it was looking like a good call to get it up, but it had cooled off a lot by today so the pool was still barely higher than freezing. With another several months of storage for the pool under the belt, it also has another many leaks. Just little ones for the most part, tiny trickles really, but still should be fixed. I used the last of my Flex Tape to patch most of them, but the tap was old so I don't think it was sticking very well and most of them are still leaking a tiny bit. I also tried sealing up the inflatable ring with some Gorilla silicone sealant, we'll see how successful that turns out to be. Missy hopes to use the pool for her birthday in a couple weeks.....Ruby is still missing. She disappeared a week ago, and hasn't been seen since. I hate not knowing what happened to her! It doesn't make any sense, any of it. She never leaves the yard. She never jumps the fence. She's scared of everything and never stays outside more than a couple hours. Did someone take her? Why would they? There are maybe 8 cats that roam the neighborhood, why would someone snatch Ruby? We never heard a cat fight. Ruby just went outside and basically vanished. Alex and I put up some posters around the neighborhood, and Beth and Missy checked with the shelter, but so far it just seems like she is gone. Iris however is much more friendly now, so we wonder if she was behind it.....We all went to the beach at Waubee Lake on Saturday for something to do and because it was so hot. The water was cool but not cold, but there were too many people there for Nat, so we didn't stay too long. Some people there gave us a couple of inflatables because they didn't want them any more, so that was nice.....The new grass in the yard still seems to be growing all right.....

In some respects, the pandemic seems all but over. Maybe 20% of people are wearing masks anywhere you go out, except Menard's which still requires them. But restaurants are opening up again (we went to BWW on Friday and sat in the dining room with their half capacity), stores are opening up again, the roads are busy, the Greenway is busy, and some travel is happening again (some friends of ours are in Florida now). We made some plans to go camping at Clifty Falls in July; the campgrounds are opening up but things like the pools and playgrounds and drinking fountains remain closed. We're still trying to figure out what we're going to do all summer, since a lot of activities are still no-go. Our church services are starting up again on the June 14th, we'll see how it goes. The county is up to 135 confirmed cases now.....I placed a new geocache on Saturday. It's a puzzle cache of sorts, themed on the old Winona Interurban Railway. You have to read a story and check the train schedule, and deduce numbers from clues in the story to find the coordinates. I have no idea if it's too hard or too easy or too cerebral too scattered or what; I guess I'll have to see what reviews it gets. Nobody found it on the first day it was active, anyway. It's a small capsule hidden in a fake rock in the ballast of the rail segment in a park in town. Hope the first find is soon.....Ruby has disappeared. She went outside this morning and has not been seen since. Unusual for her, she always stays close to home, has never been known to jump a fence, and is usually wanting to come back in within minutes. Still no trace of her by the end of the day; I hope she finds her way back in the morning.....Beth and I got Missy hooked on "Lost" this week.....Missy also went to a birthday party this weekend, at a friend's house! So some normal is coming back.....

Memorial Day weekend was hot this year. It would have been one of those years that we can go swimming if we were camping at Potato Creek or somewhere, but not this year. The campgrounds are opening up again, as are a lot of other things, but I don't know that I would feel comfortable camping at a state park just yet. 86 coronavirus cases in the county now, so it's speeding up. We did make some reservations to go to Clifty Falls this July. If it's as hot as Memorial Day, it'll be awfully hot.....Saturday Trey and I went biking on the Winona Lake Trails. First time for me doing any serious coverage of the trails; we did the whole thing. It's about a 7-mile loop with some extra built in on the more challenging trails (like the one I scraped up my elbow on a little over a week ago). It was certainly a good day for it, and for as rainy as it was the previous week, the trails were in really good shape. I only fell off the bike a couple times (once going downhill, once going over a platform over a log) but neither time got really messed up. Overall we rode for about 13 miles including to and from there. He also rode from and to his house in Clunette.....Alex was working all day Saturday so after I got back from biking, Beth and the girls and I went geocaching down near Roann/Wabash. We were seeking the actual caches to the puzzle caches I've been working on for the past month. We found 4 of the 6 we were looking for, 2 I think we found the right spot but it wasn't there. The ones we did find were not in good shape. They have all been out there for 10 years, so surprising that they are there at all, but the containers were all cracked and broken and everything was wet. But we can claim the smilie on them all the same. I ought to keep a spare supply of cache containers ready to replace ones like that.....Beth and I had a date night at Oak & Alley that evening.....Sunday I went to Menard's and rented a power washer. Finally. I had to return it right away because it didn't work, but they gave me another one and I spent pretty much all afternoon washing the outdoor furniture, patio, concrete slab, steps to the laundry room, retaining wall, and the back of the house. It cost 30 bucks to rent it for a full day, not bad.....Monday the kids and I made a couple trips out to the storage unit and emptied it out. Basically, it's just the camper, camp chairs, and pool, now in the garage instead so we can save some money.....

Things are starting to really shows signs of creeping back to normalcy. At least one of the churches in town had their regular Sunday service at the church (but asked everyone to wear masks) this week (we didn't; the staff and elders are trying to figure out the best thing to do for everyone); my company has been seeing good comeback in surgeries going on; and of course nationwide people are holding rallies against the government "tyranny" of stay at home orders SMH. We're up to 58 cases in the county now, so it was a big week.....Natalie got 3 wisdom teeth extracted this week. She didn't have the 4th. So she spent the rest of the week hurting, icing, and eating very soft foods (tapioca is her favorite). At least they came out fairly easily, so hopefully she'll be over it soon. She has been doing better but it seems a slow process.....I decided to try biking the Winona Lake trails this week, so I headed out and just picked which way to go as I went along. ONe of the trails however seemed to be a more advanced one and I didn't see the obstacle in the trail (some sort of wooden box implanted in the ground on a downward slope so the far side made a drop-off) until it was too late to go around it, so I went over it unprepared and couldn't recover. Went down pretty hard, wound up with a nasty skinned elbow, a not so bad skinned knee, a bruise on my big toe, and another big bruise on my chest from hitting the handlebar. I was able to pedal home under my own power before I was too stiff to do so.....Beth got all her flowers and everything planted in the front garden this week, and we got her herbs planted in her new raised herb garden. I also took a bunch of older potting soil and spread it around in the middle of the back yard in a new attempt to grow some decent grass. It was about a wheelbarrow full of good dirt, and I figured I could attempt to get some grass growing next to where the pool will go as far over as the hickory tree, and that would be a good swath of lawn if it takes. For once, there was rain just after I planted the grass seed.....

The debate rages over whether lockdown should end. Honestly I haven't felt too locked down for a while except there's not much of anywhere to go. The roads are full of people going somewhere, few people are wearing masks at the grocery store (which is always crowded), and you hear the stories about people getting assaulted or shot because they told someone to wear a mask. But still no theaters, malls, non-essential shops, etc. We're only up to 41 cases in the county after 2 months so everyone is convinced this is all just a big media fraud.....school is wrapping up for Alex and Missy after this coming week. They've announced that grades are basically pass/fail, or rather A/F. They still have the AP exams though. I've heard that many other kids have done nothing for e-learning for the whole duration.....I got the replacement transaxle cooling fan for the lawn tractor (see April 26) and was able to borrow an impact driver from Bob so I could replace it myself. So the tractor is back up and running. I'm pretty proud of myself for figuring this all out and fixing it.....Nat went back to the dentist this week to have some fillings taken care of and expanded, and she's having 3 wisdom teeth extracted in a few days.....We did some Mother's Day shopping this weekend for Beth; as usual she wanted flowers to plant in the garden along the front of the house. We bought a bunch at Menard's and Owen's. For Mother's Day itself we got take-out sushi.....I've been working on a series of 13 puzzle geocaches for the past couple weeks. Solving the puzzles, anyway, we haven't gone looking for the cache. In 2 weeks I've figured out 5 of them.....

Yet another week of lockdown/quarantine whatever you call it. It's feeling like normal almost. I've been working from home for the past 7 weeks or so, and even though things are starting to show signs of reopening, it looks like I'm not going to be going back in to work for a while. The governor announced a 5-phase plan to reopen the state last week, but I'm afraid that there's going to be a big wave as soon as we do. There are still only something like 37 cases in the county, so basically it has never gotten started here but people are sick of lockdown and starting to protest. Menard's now requires all shoppers to wear a mask so I hear people saying 'I'll never go there again' blah blah blah.....Speaking of re-opening, the kids all had dental appointments last week. They had been scheduled for dental appointments a few weeks ago but they were postponed due to the virus. Anyway, they all had x-rays, and they all need to have their wisdom teeth extracted. Natalie only has 3, though. She had a couple of fillings needing fixing, too. Not sure how much all that's going to cost, but apparently it's going to happen in the next few weeks. Maybe just after school is finished.....The living room TV died on Friday. In the morning it just wouldn't show any picture. And I'd thought lately that the picture seemed to be so much dimmer than on the one downstairs. This took us by surprise, but when we went to Wal-Mart to get a new one, we found that they were sold out of TVs, except the biggest and most expensive ones. Same deal at Meijer. So Saturday we did a road trip to Rocket Science and did some TV shopping in Goshen on the way. Their Wal-Mart was also sold out, but we found the last one of a size we wanted at Meijer. I didn't expect TVs to be sold out, but I guess that's what everyone is doing all day nowadays since there's nowhere to go, and maybe the factories in China still can't operate at capacity. Don't know.....

Nothing much has changed. I'm struggling to remember anything that happened during the week, in fact.....I'm seeing fewer and fewer people wearing masks around town, and we're still only up to 29 cases (still only 472 tested). Working from home enters week 7 now, I think.....it was generally a cold, rainy, windy week, so not a lot going on outside either....the whole family did get out for a geocaching road trip today, we drove through the county roads around Plymouth and Bremen, finding 5 without a lot of searching. Mostly we just walked right to them. Ice cream afterwards.....Got some yard work done over the weekend when it warmed up. I got the backyard mowed and swept just before the lawn tractor quit. Dang, that's too familiar. The engine seems fine, it just won't move. And I found a plastic fan impeller on the ground underneath it when I pushed the tractor back to the garage. Not sure what it does or even for sure that it came off the tractor, but it looked worn. Hope it's not expensive to fix.....The battery in the truck also died this weekend. I hadn't driven it much, and on Friday I had to push it out of the garage to get the tractor out. It wouldn't even cycle the power locks. I couldn't jump it from the van. Dead dead dead. So, about $150 for a new one.....

Another boring week. But I have a feeling something is going to change. I get a general sense that people are tired of this and won't put up with it much longer, i.e., We've been doing the quarantine thing for over a month now and nobody's sick! We did all this for nothing! at which point they quit following the rules and the next wave happens. The county is up to something like 22 cases (although only about 300 tests have been run), and we've noticed that mask usage is way down lately. Missy and I went to Menard's to get some things for her room this weekend, and the place was packed like I've never seen, and almost nobody had a mask on. Same at the grocery store.....We finished up painting Missy's room this weekend, and got everything back up on the walls. The colors are so very close to the colors Beth and I had for the room when it was a nursery (but they're arranged differently). Missy's very happy with it.....We all went out to the Winona Lake trails today for something to do. Beth and Alex walked though the village and by the lake, Missy and I went for a hike in the woods. Missy and I got a little bit of geocaching done, but one cache was not there any more and one was a very easy find.....I signed us up for a free month of CBS:All Access this week so Beth and I could watch Star Trek Picard. We liked it a lot, but we probably won't keep the service after the free month is up.....We got official notification this week that Missy's EF Tours trip to Italy and Greece has been postponed, for 2 years. So we're hoping that everything will still be all right for her to go just after she graduates high school.....

Well, spring break is over, and it never really began. We continue to shelter in place. Which is getting really boring. Alex and Missy were on spring break this past week; we went nowhere, except out for ice cream a couple times and to the trails a couple times. It was nice in the middle of the week but it got lousy outside for the weekend, just to be nasty....I finished up a set of 2 cloth masks for everyone early last week from that pattern we found online. I also made one for each of the neighbor ladies, and ones for Judy and Neill. And since we usually have a spring break vacation, we all put our masks on and took a family selfie on the lawn in front of the house (our "vacation house").....Since that project is done, we've turned to painting Missy's bedroom. We've been telling her we're going to do it for a while now, so it seemed a good time. She picked out the colors, a pale yellow and an almost Carolina blue. It actually looks a lot like the nursery colors Beth and I did the room in when the kids were born, but we're not telling her that. Instead of blue on the lower half of the room and yellow on the upper, Missy picked a yellow accent wall (the wall with the window) and the rest of the walls all blue. It does look less little-girly than the pink and green that it was. Unfortunately the yellow does not cover the green very well so at this moment there are 3 coats and green still shows through a bit.....Beth and I have been doing a lot of cross-stitching this past week.....Virus-wise, things still aren't horrible here (I think we're up to 18 cases and 1 death in the county now) but still no sign that things will be back to normal any time soon. In fact, my company is trying hard to make sure nobody permanently loses their job due to this, but we're all being asked to take a 20% pay cut effective immediately, and the plant is going to do a 2-week shutdown starting Monday. The grocery stores seem to be getting back to normal-er, although I've been very surprised at how few people are wearing masks when they go out to the stores.

Another week of social distancing down. Who knows how many to go. We still can go to the grocery store or drive through for food or to Menard's or things like that, but the hours are curtailed and the virus has reached the county now, so going out is more uneasy. I'm still working from home so it's not like I have nothing to do all day, like a lot of people likely do. But it's getting very tedious, and everything is centered on the busy-work kind of stuff like training and change management. Aside from work, We continue to have church online, and we're meeting with our small group online as well. Alex and Missy have e-learning 3 times a week and they announced late this week that they will not be returning to school for the rest of this year - I'm glad Alex isn't a senior this year - and Missy's school trip to Greece/Italy is in serious doubt, verging on certainty that the trip will be cancelled. They're on spring break this week, no vacation this year. Natalie was on spring break last week. Beth and I weren't sure exactly what we were going to do for spring break since the kids have different break weeks, but that decision was made for us before we made any plans.....Trey set up a version of game lunch for the group on Friday, since we haven't been able to play in a few weeks; we played Jackbox together while we were all on a video conference call and he was sharing his computer screen. It worked well, and we had fun....for a weekend project, and since the CDC is now going back and saying maybe face masks would be a good idea after all, I found a good and simple pattern for a pleated face mask on the Joann Fabrics website and Beth and I spent the weekend sewing some up. They tie in the back of the head, and the pleats make it easy to cover your whole face, and they're washable! I made a couple for the ladies across the street as well and some for all of us.....we took a family walk together on the Beyer Farm trail Sunday since it finally warmed up some then..... otherwise, we were pretty much all home all the time. This next week is supposed to be a bad one.

Another week under lockdown. Well maybe not quite lockdown but certainly close to it. Everyone certainly spent most of the time at home all week. Alex had work a couple times, since Culver's is still open for drive-thru and take-out, and we all went a few places like to Owen's (which by the end of the week seems to be pretty well stocked again, except the toilet paper supply is pretty light) or Menard's, but the kids all had only e-learning (normal for Natalie), I worked from home all week, and we had only virtual church again. Matthew set up a video conference call for our small group this week, which was nice for us to at least get together online, because we are all going a bit stir crazy. A few times we all went out for ice cream or a drink just to have something to do. Beth and I started working on a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and we've been watching a lot of movies..... Natalie has spring break this coming week, Alex and Missy have it the week after. Beth and weren't sure what to do about spring break because of that, but as it turned out the decision was made for us. Good thing we never made any plans..... Sunday afternoon Beth made a bunch of soups with leftover ingredients from the soup season, and we drove around dropping them off to several friends around town. It was nice to see everyone but seemed a bit wrong when we didn't stay. Almost like a ding dong dash.....

For the past week, I have been working from home, and things continue to be weird. I did run in to work a couple times, briefly, last week, but otherwise I was just at the kitchen table with my laptop remoted in to work. It was nice(r) on Friday so I got a run in while I was at work, but then it got cold for the weekend. Alex still had work, even though the dining room is closed at Culver's and it's takeout and drive through only. No church service (online streaming only), no kids klub, no small group, no movies, no YMCA, no toilet paper in the stores (otherwise, I'm not seeing any real shortages of anything. Cereal, canned vegetables, pasta, bread - those are really picked over though). We spent a lot of time on the computers and trying to find something to do this weekend. Beth and I have been playing Aggravation a lot.....Saturday while Alex was at work the girls and I went out driving through the country to get Missy some driving time and do some geocaching while we were out. We got 6 caches from Silver Lake to Beaver Dam....there was supposed to be a coaches meeting for church softball this week, but it was cancelled with everything else.....

Things are definitely starting to get really weird. And a little freaky. This coronavirus is just getting started though, as of today only like 9 cases in the state. But the idea is to take action before everyone is sick, and actions are being taken. Starting with work. On Wednesday it was announced that everyone who was able to work from home should do so until the end of this month (although I have a feeling that the end of this month is going to be just when it's getting really bad around here), so I was sent home as of the end of the day. Everyone was a bit taken aback: did I really just get told to stay home for 3 weeks? In short, yes. I took my laptop and an extra monitor home and spent the last couple days of the week virtually at work at the kitchen table at home. We still had FCC Kids on Wednesday, but I bet that's the last time for the rest of the year....I had yet another urology follow-up on Monday for the prostate thing, but the doctors didn't find any bacteria in my sample from last time, so I got yet another, um, rigorous prostate exam that seemed to confirm that it's been due to levator muscle spasms, and he suggested relaxation techniques. But anyway, it seems to be nothing to worry about too much.....Alex also took his driver's ed road test on Wednesday (10 am...he got out of school for it). He didn't pass (pulled out in front of a motorcycle, didn't check a blind spot one time) so he can take it again in 2 weeks.....Thursday was Alex's birthday - 17 years old - and he wanted to go out to FlatTop Grill again so we took the chance that it was still open and headed to FW. It was open. But not very busy. Maybe about half capacity, or so. Jefferson Pointe was looking pretty, well, not deserted, but sparse for sure.....Saturday morning Alex had the SAT. I dropped him off at the school at 8 am and he was in the test until around 12:30, during which time Beth and the girls and I went to the US30 antiques mall for something to do. Things were starting to be called off by late last week, including school until at least after spring break, so I had wondered if the SAT would be postponed but they must have just got it in under the wire. I'm glad it's over for him, but he said parts of it were insultingly easy, especially the math. The theater was still open (again, very sparse) so we all went out to see a matinee of "Onward" which I give an 8/10. Beth and I grabbed a date night at Yamato afterwards, then did some grocery shopping to get us through the next couple weeks. Strange to see the store empty of milk, bread, and toilet paper..... On-site church services were cancelled for Sunday - online live streaming only until further notice - but Beth was in the praise team so she went in anyway, but the rest of us watched the service online. The kids were all supposed to go with the youth group to the Komets game on Sunday, but by Saturday the rest of the ECHL season had been cancelled (and the NCAA tournament, when the Spartans were going to win it this year). We were looking for something to do Sunday afternoon, so we all went to the mall in FW to go to B&N. The mall was not deserted, but sparse for sure. Some of the stores were closed, and the entire mall closed at 6:00. This upcoming week, and for several weeks, the kids will be doing e-learning exclusively for a while. I'll be working at home until further notice. Things are going to shut down, so there'll be little to do. Not sure what's coming next.

The new van went in for service Thursday this week. I got a recall notification so I brought it in, and asked them to fix the rear wiper as well. Well, they found a few other things that should be done, maintenance mostly, but I figured I should do it since the van is already over 120k miles. Then, they couldn’t get the rear wiper fixed because they can’t get the rear spoiler off. Overall, it set us back $1139.41…..while that was going on, Beth and Nat went on a road trip back to Elkhart to get her new social security card, which this time they had all the documents for, so it’s going through….. Friday I stopped by World Compassion Network’s HQ and dropped off a check for $1650 to cover expenses for me to go on the mission trip to Honduras! Beth and I have talked and prayed about it and we are ready to say yes, even with everything else we have going on. Not sure what we’ll be doing exactly but it’ll be the first week of August…..Alex had his annual birthday sleepover/video game fest this week. Again, the girls got a hotel room in town and the boys were up late being loud. I got pizza on the way home, but they were almost disinterested, even in cake later on. I just hung out in the kitchen on the computer and let them do their thing until I decided to go to bed....Saturday was hockey night in Fort Wayne! It was Warsaw night again so we had some cheap tickets. They were playing the K-Wings, which I always like to see. The K’s fell behind early in the game 2-0, but woke up after the first period was over and by the end (including a goal with 5 seconds left) we all got to count to 7 for the first time! The Komets won 7-4, including a hat trick by Brady Shaw. There were a few points where the goals were coming like lightning. Much more fun game than the teddy bear toss a few months ago. We wondered if there would be a light crowd for the game with all the virus worry going on, but the crowd was pretty good. Maybe everyone is trying to get in a last game before you can’t any more…..Sunday was our small group night. Matthew had brought up Chicago dogs in the sermon earlier, so Beth and I changed plans and made a pot of hot dogs and all the fixins to make them. Unfortunately we and the Rogers’ and the Burgess’ were the only ones that could make it, so we made way too many…..

Nat had ISTEP testing this week, and since she is doing the online high school, Beth had to take her to Elkhart to do it.  Monday and Tuesday, they had to get up early and take a road trip. Beth had to wait around until it was over, so she tried to get something done and get Nat’s new social security card (since the office is in Elkhart) but of course they needed more documents than we had. I need to get a copy of the adoption decree with a raised seal, and medical records to prove identity and residency. So, another trip when we have those…..I finally got Beth onto Red Pocket this week, after months of procrastinating, and remembered why I’d been procrastinating as Beth’s service was off for a few days. There are some weird rules about moving a number from Verizon to a Verizon MVNO, so first we had to switch her to a Sprint MVNO network for a day, then switch her again to the Verizon MVNO. It’s a pain, and she couldn’t make or receive any calls until the porting process was finished. It took a few days, and no information came from the new network about when it would be done. Anyway, it’s done now, so we should save about $50 a month on phone service…..Saturday was leap day! We were all ready to get out of the house and do something, but there weren’t a whole lot of ideas, but we thought Rocket Science would be fun, so we went to Nappanee first for some ice cream. Coppes Commons was open, which it usually isn’t when we’re there, so we spent some time looking around (there is a really cool cue-ball clock in one hallway!). There are a lot of places to get a snack, and a lot of places to get country craft things there. And there is a cabinetry museum upstairs from the golden years of Nappanee furniture. I thought that was interesting but nobody else did. After that, we went to Hobby Lobby at Concord Mall. Alex and I were done with it long before the girls, so we went out to explore the mall, which is almost as dead as a mall can get, it seems. Walking in to the mall entrance from Hobby Lobby, I felt like I was walking back in time to West Main Mall in Kalamazoo in the 70s. The décor has not been updated since the place was built, I’d imagine, and is amazingly dated. Nearly every store front was empty, except a few, and there was a poster in the directory display that dated from 2005. After we were all done there we had dinner at Chili’s and went home…..

I've spent most of today working on getting my new backup camera installed on the truck. I've wanted one for a long time, but always assumed they were really expensive until I actually looked for one. It cost around $30. But I also read that the wired ones were better and more reliable than the wireless ones so that's where I went with it. However, running the wires is no easy task, either. It took 3 rolls of wire conduit and a bit of electrical tape and several zip-ties, but everything's working. I tapped into the reverse light on one side of the rear of the truck for power so the camera only comes on when I put it in reverse, which is also what I wanted, and crawled under the truck a lot to figure out how/where to run the wires; the hardest part was figuring out how/where to get the wire from the outside to the inside. But I was able to find a grommet and cut a little hole in it to pass the wire through, and tuck it in other wire clusters most of the way to the camera mount. It works!.....Yesterday we went out to FW again to pick up the now-framed Charleston cross-stitching. It looks great! And you can hardly see the stain on the fabric, maybe only I can see it.....Nat went to a baby shower for her sister Cara Saturday. We dropped her off before going to FW. She couldn't stay though, as it turned out there was too much noise and commotion and crowding so she got a ride to a friend's house before too long......Beth went to Medstat Friday evening because her back has been hurting from sciatica so much lately. She got some muscle relaxants, hope they help.....

A bit more adulting this week, male over-50 adulting in particular. I went to FW for a referral appointment with a urologist to check out what's going on with the pain & discomfort down there. Got my 3rd prostate check in the last couple months along with it; they didn't see anything really significant but suspect that I wasn't on the antibiotics long enough (usually it takes 30 days). To figure out which antibiotic I should be on, they did the check to 'activate' the prostate and get some bacteria into a specimen. 'Agitate' is more like it, it was an arduous check.....Finally got around to replacing the headlights in the van this week. One has been burned out for quite a while and I keep saying 'I need to replace that really soon' but then forgetting.....We all went to Fort Wayne on Saturday, most particularly to go to a cross-stitch framing store. I've been wanting to get the Charleston stitching I did a long time ago (I started it in 2000, and finished it in 2007) framed, so we found the stitching store online and headed there. Got the mat and frame picked out, should look really good. After getting lost on the way back (it's a part of FW we don;t usually go to!) we hit the mall and Barnes & Noble. Blaze Pizza for dinner.....Missy had an art award presentation this week, that was supposed to be today in FW, but she didn't want to go. Not sure why. She was nominated for the award by a teacher, and I think it's quite an honor for a sophomore to be so nominated, but we never could get anything out of Missy as to what it was for, what kind of award it was, etc. She told us she didn't want to go to the presentation but also couldn't tell us why not. I think she was too nervous about maybe having to get up in front of people but that's only a guess. Anyway, I'm so proud of her for winning an art award! I just wish I knew what it was and what it was for.

Bad news this week, my company had a reorganization and there were several layoffs. Not me thankfully, but I do know several people who were let go. My boss's wife was also let go, wonder what'll happen with them now......Can't think of anything else this week

Super Bowl weekend! The game was pretty good but I was bummed that the 49ers lost. I always had the feeling the Chiefs were going to come back but I was hoping. I think Beth wanted to be a hostess again even though nobody was coming over, because she made a big spread of food for it. Just like Thanksgiving. There was spinach dip, and a veggie tray, and guacamole, and corn crack dip, chicken wings (made in the instant pot, although it didn't seem to make them easier), and lots of chips and crackers and things.....The library changed their minds about Nat's book! I came in to just pay for the book instead of dealing with getting another replacement, and they decided that they would just keep the book and charge me $30 to repair it, since it was 10 years old they decided it wasn't really fair to make me replace it with brand new. Which I appreciated......I got the settlement for Mom's IRA this week. I had to open a Schwab account for them to roll the inheritance into, it came to $109,000. We're planning to pay off some debts, then save the rest for college expenses.....

A few events during the week. Monday Alex saw a psychiatrist for the first time. His anxiety (sounds familiar) is not near as bad as Beth's but it's been interfering with him sleeping lately so he's going to start on a little bit of medication for it. I think it'll be good for him. He was pretty upset after the appointment though, and kind of scared about what it means for him. But Beth thinks it's going to make a big difference for him. I hope it does.....Tuesday was Beth's birthday. We did low-key. I got flowers for her and picked up pizza for the kids on the way home from work, and took Beth out for a drive and sushi, then another drive and ice cream. Just around town; I thought about trying out another restaurant outside of town that we had never been to but she was feeling like she couldn't handle it. A calm and simple evening was all she felt comfortable with.....I had lunch with Matthew (our new minister) on Wednesday at El Arrierro. He'd wanted to get together since Mom died, to see how we're doing and all, but there never was a good time during break. We had a nice visit and chat, I like him and his family a lot. We talked more about everything else going on lately than about Mom, which was fine. There's been a lot with Beth and Nat and Alex to talk about lately, and I kind of unloaded. But he's a pastor, probably used to it.....Thursday there was a meeting at the high school about the trip to Europe that Missy is going on. Just Missy now, we broke the news to Natalie this week that we are not going to send her. We'd decided it was not a good idea quite a while ago, back when we pulled her out of school in November, but we hadn't told her yet just in case we changed our minds. I'd been dreading the moment that she found out she's not going but it went much better than we were expecting: she started tearing up and shaking but then just told us that she really wanted to argue with us but she couldn't. Basically, one episode like the kind she has (still, but much less often) and they will put her on a plane home. We won't get all of the money we've paid into it back, but we will get most of it. I agreed to buy her a new phone with some of the refund money, too, that probably softened the blow.....Nat left a library book in her backpack with a leaky bottle of some smoothie or something, and the book got ruined, so I had to replace it. I got a replacement for it on Amazon, but didn't notice I was buying a softcover book, although it was used (like new). Which the library said was ok. But not being a softcover. They wouldn't take it, and then said it had to be brand new. So it's going to be $80 instead of the $40 for the Amazon book, which I've returned.....