Another Beautiful Summer Day

It looks like a beautiful morning! A little after 9 am, and it's sunny, but cool, 51 degrees. The pool people are here working and I'm really trying to be patient, but I just can't WAIT until we can get in the water and swim. I love that feeling of total exhaustion that you get after swimming hard. Hopefully, it will be all ready to go by the beginning of next week. Our electrician, John, was here last night and said that he'd be surprised if it was finished in less than a week and a half. Thanks for the positive thoughts John.

I could play this "housewife" role forever...not working outside the home, staying up late if I want, sleeping in if I want, catching a mid afternoon nap if I want to, coming and going when I want, cooking dinner almost every night, knowing that if I don't get my things done today, I can work on them tomorrow. Of course, I'll be ready to go back to work by mid August, which works out great since we start back on August 20.

My parents are wonderful...yes, my mom can get on my nerves at times, but she means well. When Joey wanted to buy a car before his senior year in high school, my parents gave him money toward his car because he had worked hard on his grades AND he'd been saving all his money. That was so generous of them! Now Alex is going to be taking his drivers' test in about a month or so, and my folks are going to GIVE him their old car. They have a VERY nice car that they keep in the garage and only drive about once every few months and on the annual trip to Myrtle Beach, SC. They bought it in May of 2001 (that makes it 6 years old) and it has about 14,000 miles on it. They have another car that they use on a daily basis and they are ready to replace it. In fact, last night I was talking to my mom on the phone and leading her through several websites, looking at cars. My mom and dad have a tendancy to talk about things for a L O N G time before actually doing anything about them, so I'm really surprised that they're moving on this car thing so quick. They are looking at a Mazda3, Honda Civic, Nissan Sentra, and Ford Focus. They test drove two yesterday and will probably test drive the other two today. When they get this new car, they are giving their old Mazda Protege to Alex. Hopefully he'll be able to take his drivers' test with this car because it's so much smaller than our Trailblazer or Dakota. My folks want to treat the boys fairly, and said that they checked it out and discovered that the value of their Protege is just about the same as the amount of money they gave Joey, so they feel that it's fair. Joey has commented that he doesn't want our house to look like a used car lot...so Ted has said that he will park his Dakota over at the farm (his brother's place that is right behind our property...this is a topic for another time!). We have a three car garage that will comfortable hold two vehicles, so two others sit out. When we first decided to build, I mentioned a four car garage and both Ted and Mario (our builder) disagreed. I was flexible, so I dropped the suggestion. Now they both realize that I was RIGHT, imagine that. Anyway, thanks to my parents' generosity, Alex will have a car to drive to work for the rest of the summer and to school in the fall.

I only hope that Ted and I are in a position to be as generous to our grandchildren as my parents are to our kids.