Aug 10th - Back in MO

I drove back to MO last Saturday. The trip was uneventful. No accidents directly in front of me this time. Also, no any lengthy construction delays as there were on my way down. My $1,100 worth of new truck tires just hummed along. I brought back a trailer load of firewood. My trailer would have hauled more but I ran out of gas, me not the chain saw, when I was cutting it. It is all wood I cut down when opening up the "lane" behind the cabin, trying to get us a view of the high ridge (mountain to us flatlanders) some miles south of our property. There are still at least 2 more felled trees, well down the slope from the cabin. I think I can get to them with Tom's tractor, and a long chain, so that I can drag them up nearer to the cabin the next time I'm in TN. I probably won't get back until late September.

We went to church Sunday and then to a BBQ supper our Sunday School had. Between times at church I mowed our lawn for the first time in almost 3 weeks. It wasn't nearly as tall as I would have thought. I mowed it high and will probably mow again tomorrow.

Kathy watched Nolan Monday and Tuesday and Lydia was here today. Lydia isn't feeling great so she came to Grammy's today, rather than going to pre-school. She was also here for a "sleepover" Monday night. After an relatively active early morning with Grammy she took a 4 hour nap. Kelsey is working four 12 hour shifts and one 8 hour shift this week.

While in TN I had some problems with the portable gas grill we bought to take camping with us. I hooked it up here Monday and it works fine. PTL! Yesterday I unpacked the propane fueled 3250 watt generator we bought to take camping. I hooked it up and ran it for nearly an hour, with the trailer AC hooked to it, and everything seemed to work fine.

There was a hard (4") rain here while I was gone. Run off did some damage to our driveway. I had tired to order a load of rock before I left, and while I was gone, but could not get the guy I previously bought rock from to call me back. I got the name of another guy Sunday, from a guy at church, and they brought be out a tandem axle dump truck load of rock yesterday. They tail gated some of it for me and then I did some work with my Kubota, I do like that tractor.

Since I've been back the temperatures haven't been to miserable here, until today. Highs in the 80's and heat indexes in the 90's. Today the temperatures were in the 90's and the heat index was over 100. We are supposed to have more of the same tomorrow and then highs are to drop back down to mid 80's and even in to the high 70's for the weekend.

This morning was our Men's Fellowship breakfast. We typically have 6-8 guys. 6 of us are retired, one is a fireman who comes whenever his schedule allows (he knows he can't be there next week and asked us if someone would take notes, or tape, our discussions, so that he wouldn't miss out totally). The other guy is a paramedic who works a LOT of hours. He also comes whenever he is not working. We are working our way through a study on the book of James. We typically spend the first hour getting (our local restaurant is SLOW getting food out) and then eating breakfast. Lots of good discussion on what happening during this time. We then spend another hour, at least, discussing the lesson for the week. We take turns "leading". It is a good time that we all enjoy. Sometimes, like this morning, the discussion get quite spirited, but that is good. We are all Christians who recognize that we are still sinners, even though we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord. We may not all agree on all the fine points but we love one another and respect each others views. We all agree that none of us is smart enough to understand everything God has for us in the Bible. Hearing the views of others and having to explain/defend your own views is a great way for us to be sure we know why we believe as we do.

I had told Kathy that I wasn't going to do anything today or tomorrow, because of the heat. I ended up unloading most of the wood on the trailer before I got to hot. The remaining 10-15 pieces can wait until tomorrow or Friday.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.