Puppies and more puppies! And a bike ride and hot dog roast, too

Sabbath afternoon bike ride on the River Walk - ideal weather!

The beautiful pot of mums Mom got for Ruthie n Milton

Caleb and Mom enjoying our hot dog roast at Ruthie's Sabbath evening

Neighbors at the end of the street just added this little German Shepherd puppy to their family that already has two dogs, including one Germ. Shep. that's a year old, and this is her new little brother.

We biked around SAU tonight - this fall weather is amazing this week.  Actually the daytime felt like summer, in the mid 80's, but it cooled down a little by 6:30.

Bringing his new puppy home today - oh the sweet contentment all over his face!

Knight's new 8-week old miniature Schnauzer, Bogie!

How exciting for all the kids to meet him after school.

 

Visit with the Heilman Family in Plymouth

Would ya' look at those old spark plugs from the motor home!  My my (we can't part with anything you know)!

Ollie has a new hair style, to Omah's dismay. . .

Hugs for Grandpa

Zachariah was handing out the hugs around and around the room!

Perpetual motion - it's hard to get a sharp picture of him!

 

50-year Class Reunion at Last!

The 50-year honor classes and their spouses walked in at the start of church Sabbath. The class behind us of 1971 only had nine in attendance.  

  

The dorm I lived in four years now stands empty and is up for sale again.

A couple more classmates came Sabbath afternoon (Ken Phillips and Buzz Hammond) who weren't in the class picture, so 26 total attended out of our 83 graduates.  Nine are deceased.  The guy in the motorcycle garb in the back row stopped in on his ride across the country (lives in AZ)!  This group was committed to getting together, in spite of the Pandemic, and came from as far away as California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.  Other states we came from were VA, MD, PA, ID, TN, OH, MI, and NC!

The Hill Church that we walked to every weekend on Fri. night and Sabbath morning and evening.  Good exercise getting up all those steps from the campus. The thought never occurred to me to see if I could still manage them!  Thankful for a car to get up there. I'm thankful the church is still in operation and we could have part of our weekend services there.

Tom Lemon from the Class of '71 preached an excellent sermon.  He's a VP in the General Conference.  He was so quiet it seemed to me in academy, but he was his senior class pastor.

In memory of our nine deceased class members - Bill Brokaw (on the screen) just passed away in Jan. of 2020.  

The cafeteria where we enjoyed Sabbath haystacks dinner provided by the Alumni and Sabbath's pizza supper for those who ordered it with Eileen/Donado's. We're so fortunate that an alumnus (Isaac White) bought it and lets us use it on Alumni weekend.

Jan Delong Agler (from my home church in Lima) was only there for church and lunch and then left so I didn't get to visit with her.  She ate with these folks who I didn't know, except Linda from the class of 71.

I loved seeing Petra and visiting with her, from the Class of '71.

Haystacks ready and waiting for us after church - for a donation.

Demarees and Blantons with us before we headed up to the church for our Zoom session at 3:00 where nine more of our classmates checked in from around the country and shared what's going on in their lives.

Sharon made this tasty cake for our class reunion using our class colors - burgundy and gold.

Breakfast Sun. morning at Holiday Inn Express with Candy and Brian, Eileen, Sharon and Dave.

Sun. morning good-byes.  It was a long haul planning this gathering, since this was the FIFTH date we planned for!  Eileen and Sharon are quite the event planners, and provided the food for our Fri. night Meet and Greet (salads and sandwiches, and the class donated cookies/desserts) and ordered the pizza for Sat night.  And then Eileen also lined up the platform participants for church and they made the name tags with our senior pictures on them that I mailed to them.  How pathetic that Ed and Cathi Demaree live here in Ooltewah and I have to go to Mt. Vernon, OH to see them!

I got a laugh out of this poster I saw on FB awhile back!

In a library book I was reading today a couple sentences struck a chord in me:  "How we all like to linger on the stage of memories!  Memories romanticized by hindsight and comforting because of it."  I was comforted last weekend by so many wonderful memories made with friends during our academy years and enjoyed reminiscing and catching up on what's happening in their lives now.  It was fun sharing the 36 e-mailed updates with the classmates who I have e-mail addresses for and many said how great it was reading them. 

A classmate (Mike Smith in the picture above) who wrote up what the weekend meant to him and shared it with the class via email, said this in part:  "This weekend meant so much to me.  People say you can't go back in time; the hell you can't - we did!  The memories of this weekend will live forever and please never forget your friends. . . . I wanted everyone to know how special you are and what this weekend meant for all of us.  Again, I'm sorry for the ones that couldn't make it but may we all meet again when the Roll is called up Yonder."

More Carport/Driveway Progress

Randy spent 13 hours on this rented "toy" tractor from Home Depot trying to dig down 12 inches where we decided to put in gravel in the carport where we park the motor home and out in front of it where the asphalt was all broken up from the MH.  It was a new experience for him.

It was a long long HOT day, with not nearly as much progress as he had hoped for.  We are replacing a lot of the yard with gravel too out in front of the carport to use when backing in the motorhome. So he decided to hire a company on the recommendation of a neighbor friend (owned by Scott Robertson and Matt Spears, two former students of ours in Ryan's class) to come with their "big guns" and get 'er done!

They actually started digging in the carport that very afternoon that they came to look at the job and the next day started pouring in the gravel once it was leveled out.

They moved the gravel from the road to down below so fast the next day!

They ordered four loads (96 tons!) of a variety of gravel from their source the next day that were delivered as they were ready for it.

This is in the carport after they'd put down four loads and smoothed it out.

It extends right over to the house.  The pipe you see on the ground at the bottom of the picture is new and what Randy had to replace underground from the downspout that got torn up when he was digging.

So they dug the ditch for the new pipe, put in gravel under the pipe that Randy then laid in, and they covered it with gravel and then smoothed back over the soil.  That just left re-seeding for us which we did the next day.  It's been so rewarding to see how fast the new grass has come up.  

They worked from 7 a.m. till 2 p.m. and had it done!  Randy bought 7 bales of straw that we put down over the grass seed.  Now we wait for the paving company to come to put down 2.5 inches of asphalt on the rest of the driveway.  They'd told us they'd be here sometime during the first two weeks of September.  But then they emailed a few days ago and said they'd had some equipment failure so may not get here by then. . .