Windows and Thanksgiving

Yesterday we signed on the dotted line after making a few revisions. Now we wait for a few weeks and hopefully some still nice weather.
It is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA, a holiday that I love. We've celebrated in an assortment of ways over the years, mainly with extended family, but today we opted to stay home, just the four of us. Juliet and Elisabeth are celebrating together with friends. I feel greatly blessed in my life and grateful to those who paved the way for the freedoms we enjoy.

Moving along

We are making progress with our quotes. We had an energy audit done yesterday. All the quotes are in for the windows and the foundation work. All very different in what needs doing and prices. Now we have to make some decisions.

Changes are afoot.

We've decided to do some more renovations to the house.

We are going to get an energy assessment done by TVA to the house and are looking at replacing most of our windows.

We have foundation people coming to check the sunroom, front porch and a couple other areas. (Nothing major, just a precaution).

We are pricing out remodeling both bathrooms and looking into creating a new access area to the attic. Most of that we can do ourselves.

Maybe we should get a quote for the roof while we are in research mode :0

We are also contemplating getting the yard landscaped properly. We've been talking about terracing our slope on and of since we moved in.

So we have a number of appointments set up for the next couple of weeks. Good thing we don't party much :)

This and that

John called me a few nights ago on his way home from work and said "Go look at the sky and take a photo." So I did :) A lot of it was partially hidden by trees from my vantage point but it still looked pretty.
We received the proof copies of edition 2 of John's book. Looks good. Now we have to find something else for him to do to keep him out of mischief. I saw an interesting magazine about wood carving which I may plonk down on his lap :)
I am now officially the treasurer for the high school PTSO and I made sure we did not leave our school meeting without the rest of the officers in place.
Juliet and Elisabeth are settled into school. Juliet now has an internship which she is pleased about. She had to add another class to her workload which puts her up to 17 hours. Elisabeth is still trying to find a job. Her scholarship issues were resolved thank goodness.
Kris and Nik are enjoying high school and their progress reports are looking good thus far. Nik is now learning bowling with the school group. We still have to find out about a club for Kris. They have to participate in at least one every year. It's the high school's 50th birthday this year so plans are underway far a black tie gala in April.

An interesting encounter or two

The weather is starting to cool down so our mornings are getting damp and brisk. The afternoons are still warm which is almost tempting me to take up the gentle art of sunbathing :) The evenings have been cloudy. It has been nice watching the moon play hide and seek with the ever moving clouds.

We had a fabulous storm roll through early Thursday morning. The lightning lit up the sky and I had to take care not to drive off the road as I marveled at the spectacle and power.

John is busy at work and while at home is creating programs in MAC for some of his designs.

I am on the planning committee for a genealogy conference that is scheduled for November. We had our first meeting this week and it's going to be great.

Kris and Nik both had a good week at school. They seem to be settling in well. Much Spanish vocabulary being done.

Kris had to create a blog for her photography class. She is so excited about that. They are doing wide and narrow fields of focus as their current project.

Nik had an interesting encounter on Thursday afternoon.

He came up the back steps wanting to show me something. He opened up his hands and inside was ......... a Praying Mantis. Fabulous. Fairly young and oh so green. Very handsome to boot.

Then the fun began.

Mantis sensed freedom and took a giant leap. Landing on the back of Nik's neck it sent him into a leaping frenzy as he felt the insect start to crawl down his neck and under his shirt.

Kris and I tried not to laugh at the antics but to no avail.

Fortunately the Mantis took another leap and landed on Nik's back. At this point he was trying to pull his shirt off so I stepped in and told him everything was fine. Mantis disappeared before I had a chance to grab my camera. Darn.

Did you know that in some cultures it is extremely good luck to have a Praying Mantis in your garden? They started appearing in our garden a few years ago and I always love seeing them.

We now have a long weekend ahead of us with Monday being Labor Day. Today we decide if we want to stay home, visit family, visit friends or just head off somewhere. We have Mammoth Caves and the Natchez Trace on our list of options.

To-ing and Fro-ing

Can a week be quiet but also busy? Maybe.

We've been house/dog sitting for some friends this week so we have been trotting back and forth between here and there. They get back tomorrow night and I think their darling doggie will be thrilled to see them :) Nik and I have been sleeping over which means hauling our bodies the short distance home early so he can go to seminary. Since Nik has to go on a canoe trip with scouts tomorrow Kris is going to sleep over tonight and I am turning off the alarm :)

We've also had a number of unexpected visitors during the early part of the week. I may have to change folding laundry to a different room :) Every time there was stacks of some kind in the front living room !!!!!

Kris and Nik are settling into school. Kris has had 4 schedule changes since school started, the most recent being yesterday, just in time for Open House. She is getting somewhat concerned about all the rearranging of classes but is happy with her newest schedule. Now we have to get her locker assignment relocated.

Nik was contemplating changing his art history class but decided to stay with it.

If everything stays set Kris is now taking Biology I, Ceramics, English II, Geometry, Lifetime Wellness, Linguistics II, Photography, and Spanish I. Nik is taking Algebra I Honors, Art Survey, English I Honors, Freshman Seminar, P.E., Physical Science, Spanish I, and World History Honors.

I think the school Open House went well last night. John went with Kris and I went wih Nik and we met almost all of their teachers. I think we will have a productive year. I ran into a number of parents I had not seen for a while which was nice.

I'm getting back into the swing of things with my textiles and genealogy. I may also be on the school PTSO board.

Juliet has been "mooching around" at her apartment due to her computer being in for repairs and job interviews going slower than anticipated. However the pace should pick up somewhat next week with school starting back up.

Got to go. Dinner is almost ready. It's early but we decided to eat properly rather than snack :)

Temple Prophets

Just because it's our Sabbath and I love this picture.

It depicts all the prophets/presidents of our church from Joseph Smith jr. through to Thomas S. Monson.

The weed pile is getting larger :)

John, Juliet and Elisabeth left early this morning to fly out to Utah. The plan is to get Juliet settled into her apartment i.e. getting all her things out of our friend's house by Monday. Elisabeth is going to Idaho with some friends and won't be moving into her apartment till next week-end.

With the weather settling down a bit and getting a wee bit cooler Kris, Nik and I tackled the back garden. We now have a fairly large pile of weeds and trimmed plants etc. most of it from one area of the yard. I did a major cut back because almost everything is getting covered in black spots of something that does not look too attractive.

The Marigolds are loving the area that Kris and I planted them in and the mini watermelons are growing through them. Our tomatoes are almost done with except for some mini ones. The Brussel Sprouts are being eaten by rabbits but at least it's keeping them from other edibles :) We have a few small squash starting to look ready to pick.

We are contemplating putting our veggies somewhere else next year and turning the current bed over to flowers.

We went to the Humane Society this morning for a while. We would like to start volunteering there. The kittens adored Nik and had a good time climbing all over him :) They have a really nice work out area for the dogs which goes up a hill and round a shaded track area at the top.

Happy birthday to my mother. Hope you had a fabulous day. Hugs from all of us.

After the storms

We've had a couple of powerful storms blow through since last night so my plans to continue weeding the "vacation weeds" from our flower beds had to be abandoned.

I love seeing the water droplets on plants after rain has passed. The white lily is a new addition to our yard this year. The Althea is a small tree/shrub that is about 3 years old.

Kris and Nik are now back at school and it looks like they will be in for a busy year. Tennessee has changed the way high school students will graduate effective this school year but those that were already on the old path will continue with it. This means Kris still does the Gateway tests and Nik does not.

Juliet and Elisabeth are packing and leave on Saturday morning. Laundry and piles of clothing abound :)

While we were away on vacation there was some more lay-offs at work. John is still there but it looks like his work load will increase again.

Our vacation in Britain - week 3

For the last week of our vacation we rented a cottage in Hockwold-cum-Wilton, East Anglia which is near RAF Mildenhall and did a lot of day trips.

Events were going on at some of the places we visited and we had a few surprises along the way.

We calculated that we travelled about 3,000 miles on our journey round Britain.Most of that was on windy roads.

Fountains Abbey - 2nd August

Fountains Abbey and grounds in North Yorkshire take a while to get around but it is worth the effort.

This is the largest monastic ruin in the UK. It was founded in 1132 and there is an interesting display in one of the smaller buildings about it's history and that of the Cistercian monks.

The walk from the abbey to the Georgian gardens is pleasant. We watched dogs roaming and swimming. It's quite a contrast between the two sections of the estate and is quite cleverly laid out.

There was an interesting Medieval re-enactment going on in the abbey grounds which added quite considerably to our time there. We watched a shooting display using bows and arrows and early guns. There was much to see in the tents and it was fun seeing the children from the re-enactment running around the ruins.

Within the buildings themselves was a group of actors doing a comedy of some kind.

We had to walk down into the abbey grounds which means ...... hiking back up at the end :)

Sudbury Hall/Museum of Childhood - 3rd August

The interior of Sudbury Hall is featured in "Pride and Prejudice" and unfortunately was not open to the public on the day we visited. However we walked round some of the exterior and Nik attempted to commune with the swans, yet again. Seems to be his vacation goal to get up close and personal with one of them and he has come close to succeeding on a number of occasions :)

We did not leave enough time to do the Museum of Childhood justice but we enjoyed it none the less. One of the ceilings has a full scale room attached to it. We loved that. We also liked the dragon carpet.

Tucked away in one of the corners of the garden is a rather unusual exhibit. A model scene made of plasticine !!!! It's called the Paradise in Plasticine Garden and features a bust of William Harbutt. From what I overheard it meets with somewhat mixed reactions but we liked it.