| Artie and Heidi and the cats are still here. The apartment they rented isn't available until Aug 20th. Artie took some vacation time and they will be staying with us until then. The cats will continue to visit until after the furniture is delivered. Heidi called the Army yesterday to try to get it scheduled but only got a message machine. They're hoping to have it delivered on Friday the 21st. Quite some time ago I had requested Thursday 9/3 off thinking that was about the right time for them to be settled and that John & I would drive them over and could also see the new place. Seems like this timing will work out great. Their apartment is about 3 blocks form Artie's recruiting office. After he arrives at work, if he has to go out he will take a government car. I'm really glad he will be so close to work. Hopefully Heidi can find work close by also. For our Anniversary we had dinner at home with the kids and Allen came over. Bought a cake even and had ice cream and strawberries. We scheduled an overnight trip for this Wednesday Thursday down by the Washington Oregon border near the Columbia river. There is a full size replica of Stonehenge as it would have looked thousand of years ago and some winery wine tasting places we wanted to check out. Also, this is at the peak of the Persied meteor shower and there is an Observatory there we were going to go to. However, now I'm not sure if we'll go. This week since it cooled off even the other side of the mountain has rain so we wouldn't be able to see any thing with the cloud cover. Monday we'll make that decision and may cancel our hotel reservation. If we don't go, I'll still take the time off and we'll take Artie & Heidi site seeing around Seattle. Artie is a nice guy, very attentive to Heidi. They have both been good house guests and have helped out around the house. Artie even dug out weeds while John cut the grass. Especially glad to have thier help since they will be here a while. Artie went to work with John for a couple of hours today. While they were out doing that, Heidi and I went shopping. She had only brought clothes for hot weather and needed some warmer clothes. Afterwards we picked up Artie and while in Kirkland we stopped by the Olive Garden for dinner. We then went back down to Bellevue for Heidi to see how much it has changed in the last couple of years. We also drove by the apartment where we lived when we first moved to the Seattle area and went next door to the Botanical Gardens and took a few pictures. The dahlias were in bloom. I sure enjoyed that. Heidi had asked about stopping by a winery in Woodinville but they close at 5PM so we'll do that on Sunday. Not a lot of firm plans but am trying to keep busy with inexpensive things to do. They are very short on money with Heidi not working for awhile and the move. The Army will pay them back for the move part but that takes a couple of months after they get settled. Around the house, the rose garden is bloosoming well. The 'blue' rose is actually more lavender, but still very nice and fragrant. We've had beans, cucumbers, bell peppers and plenty of tomatoes out of the garden so far. While we had the very hot weather recently, the growing season was still short with the late spring and now with the cooler weather it looks like and early fall. We trimmed three large lower branches from the purple Catalpa tree in our back yard. We probably will do three more branches next year. The limbs are just too close to the ground. Click here to see the pictures. |