Visitors And A Change Of Design

For years I’ve followed a blog, The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales  written by Sue but we’ve never met.  That changed on Friday when Sue and her partner Mo stopped by our place on their way over to Florida.  It was such a delight to meet them finally!  They arrived about 2pm, settled in and for dinner we were joined by our friends Dan and Linda.  I outdid myself if I do say so–the brisket I cooked slow and low for six plus hours was the best!  Served with roasted vegetables and a salad it was a spectacular meal!  And the lemon cheesecake was also delicious.

Mo and Sue are on a mission to get to Florida so they can put those kayaks in some water and pulled out Saturday morning.  Mo served in the Army Reserves for 25 years and has access to military campgrounds so they are hitting those as they travel across the country.  Thanks for stopping by, it was a delight to meet you both!

Our plans included an outdoor covered patio on the west side of the house–we used two very small rooms, probably bedrooms and removed the wall between the two making a larger space.  The Cowboy kept dropping hints such as–“wouldn’t that space be more usable with windows?” or “wouldn’t it be a more secure space if we had windows?”  So, I gave up the idea of an open patio and we installed large, opening windows and a screen security door.

The two large windows on the right are in the living room and the last two on the left are the patio.

Our stucco guy didn’t come on Friday, February 1 and we were not surprised.  When he said he would come on February 1, we are thinking he didn’t realize it was a Friday.  Why start a big job on Friday?

I have a great friend–Jane who married Paul last spring.  Jane and her deceased husband Rich after losing their son in an automobile accident in 2002 would travel to Ecuador each year with a medical mission group helping to preform surgeries on children with cleft palates and lips.  It gave them both purpose and helped their grief to settle. Jane and Rich did several of these missions before Rich’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death.  Jane and Paul are returning from one of those mission trips Saturday night.  It’s been a hard week for the surgical team–they operate 12 hours per day without breaks, making as many children as they can whole again.  I so admire my special friend Jane and now Paul for doing these missions–they have big hearts.

I cropped out the little guy in this photo, you can see his little feet.  There’s my Jane who I trained as an operating room nurse.  Even when coming to work in the middle of the night to help with emergency surgery, Jane was always wearing her makeup. 🙂

We took a flying trip to Tucson on Saturday to get one of those windows you see in the photo above.  I made myself a promise:  never, ever again go to Costco in Tucson on a Saturday.  We’ve occasionally gone to Costco in Billings on a Saturday but we could always find a parking spot and you didn’t need a battering ram to get through the aisles. We could not find a parking place and the store was packed with people blocking the aisles to snack on the samples.  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough!

Sunday was warm but dreary spitting rain all day.  We spent the day relaxing.  I’ve started a new wool project and the Cowboy examined the backs of his eyelids several times.  The Super Bowl is on but no one is paying much attention, not even Emmi.