Home Improvement

There is an ice cream social for the Women in the Church at my house next Tuesday.  And there is a gi-normous dumpster in my driveway.  If that doesn't illustrate the first principal of hospitality, you-can't-wait-until-your-house-is-perfect-to-have-people-over, I'm not sure what does.  So when you come over, don't look at that dumpster.  Just sit in the unfurnished but air-conditioned living room and enjoy some ice cream!

And if you have a large item to dispose of, give me a call.  The dumpster is too big for our needs and probably has room for some of your junk, too!

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.  Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.  As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another...(I Peter 4:8-10)

Summertime...

I've been largely absent from the computer lately, and I must say it is nice.  If summer is anything here in Minnesota, it is short.  But it has been lovely so far and we have been soaking up every moment.

We enjoyed a lively visit from my sister, her husband, and five out of six of her kids.  (We'll not mention their drive up here through tornados and that quality time in the gas station bathroom!)  It was like a vacation for all of us, since we did all the fun things we could cram into three days - Como Zoo, Minnehaha Falls, a Twins' game, and the Mall of America.  There was also a lot of play time around here and a lot of eating!

That visit was followed by the annual Music in Plymouth concert with the Minnesota Orchestra and plenty of really good fireworks.  And that was followed closely by two days at the pool, lots of work around the house, a day of rest, and a church picnic.  There was also a plumbing thing; it seems we may be back on the leak-a-week plan.  We have a large plumbing project ahead of us, but the rain in the unfinished part of the basement has stopped for now.  Whew!  I declared we had to stay home this morning to do important things, like laundry, that never seem to do themselves.  Then we're back to the pool, I hope!

The home improvement before and after shots will be coming soon.  The front door will get redone tomorrow and we can declare the exterior done.  The trouble with it would most-likely not show in a photo, but that is still my excuse!

I hope all of you are enjoying summer as much as I am!  If you have any local, Minnesota must-do's for summer, I'd love to hear them!

Summer Reading

I just finished reading The Old Man and the Sea, for the first time as far as I remember. I could say I’m not sure how I missed that one, but I think I have figured it out already. I didn’t read much in school, and I read almost nothing that wasn’t assigned. Actually, I did not really read that much of what was assigned, except in a skimming or Cliff Notes sort of way. What I remember about literature in school was that we never could just read anything; we had to pick it apart, write about it, and discuss it, ad nauseam. I know comprehension is important, and writing is very important. Don’t worry - my children are required to do these things in school, too. It’s just that I feel like if we do that to every assigned book they will turn out like I did and not enjoy reading. And there would not be time for them to read the quantity of good literature out there that I hope they can cram in before college. So yes, I’ll admit it, most of the assigned reading for my kids’ school is just that, reading. Throw in a dinner table discussion and check it off the list.

Gigantor Lives!

Let me state up front that this is a long and rambling story. Sorry about that! A better writer would condense this somehow, but I am a talker, not a writer, so listen if you have time…

My Sunday morning started with an orange juice shower. No, it actually started with me making a (very large) pot of chili at 7:00 am. I have a bad habit of putting off the fellowship lunch preparation until Sunday morning. It’s a combination of being too lazy or too busy on Saturdays, but either way, it results in the family waking to strange smells. Then I headed to the shower, a real one. It was shortly after that the orange juice shower occurred. I wasn’t there to see the scope of it, and by the time I arrived on the scene it had been cleaned up, or so it appeared. Thankfully there were no church clothes involved, since a few of the kids are so short of nice clothes it would have resulted in a serious wardrobe malfunction. So I moved on to getting ready to leave.

Fast forward 20 minutes. I came back down to the kitchen, all ready to go except for my shoes. That’s when my feet stuck to the floor, and I discovered the scope and reach of the orange juice shower as well as the deficiencies of the clean-up effort. Now I have no choice but to mop the floor before church. Ok, I do now realize there were some other choices, but this was my feeling at the moment, which I know some of you can understand completely! I grabbed the two nearest boys who were fully dressed and they began to move the seven chairs and four stools out of the kitchen. One of them began to scrub o.j. off the chairs, too. I grabbed the bag of trash someone had pulled out but not really dealt with and sat it on the garage step (still not dealing with it). Then there was a flurry of super-fast aerobic sweeping and mopping. I ended up quite hot, asked another boy to get me some water, and dashed up the stairs for my shoes. We were still going to be to church on time!

Ticket to Ride

On Sunday afternoon we found ourselves with some extra time due to schedule changes at church. We had planned a trip to Duluth for Saturday and Sunday, but upon discovering that we could not spend the night on Saturday, we decided we couldn’t face six hours of car time on Sunday! Not enough recovery time from the last trip! So we had lunch on the sunny patio of Smash Burger (calorie loading) and headed over to Wayzata for a bike ride on the Dakota Rail Trail.

The Dakota Rail Trail starts in Wayzata near Lake Minnetonka and ends in St. Bonifacius. It is mostly level, crosses very few roads, and has several really scenic bridges over the lake. (If you are from the south, you’ll appreciate knowing that the new bridges smell exactly like Six Flags! Good memories!) There are shady portions that felt like heaven on that sunny but probably not much warmer than 70 day. There are also a couple of good eating spots right on the trail, including the Minnetonka Drive-In.