This month's calendar                                                    Archives                             

July 8, 2005

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

All's quiet around the Bell household, all the company has left.

Before my nephew and his wife left on Friday for the holiday weekend, we tried to get all the kids together for a picture. Lara and Greg didn't get there by picture time, so we just got this one of the six that were here. One group left and the other group arrived and we had another houseful for the weekend with lots of grandchildren to enjoy. We had perfect weather and it was fun having everyone here.

On Friday, Leslie and Jason cleaned the gutters on the house. We were so appreciative as Dave and I had attempted to do it last fall and about killed ourselves going up and down the ladder. The house is on a hill so the closer we get to the front of the house, the further we have to fall. Leslie climbed up on the roof and scooped stuff out of the gutters while Jason emptied the bucket for her and hosed out the gutters.

When Lara and Greg arrived, Greg helped take the eight garbage cans full of yard debris to the dump and then we built a fire and burned the larger branches that I had trimmed from the trees. While the guys were working, I was checking out Jaysa's beautiful smile! She'll be two months old next week, and we're going in to her christening and baptism this weekend.

I had taken all of Grandma Bell's stuff that we didn't want and laid it out on tables for the kids to go through. After everyone got what they wanted I will have a garage sale in a couple of weeks to see if I can get rid of more stuff. The remainder will go to Goodwill.

On Saturday, we all were invited down to the Kahrs' dock for a barbarque to celebrate both Greg's and my birthday. We had gotten a birthday cake with both our names on it.

Sunday, I had plans for a big breakfast, but the first thing I did was burn the muffins and I lost interest in the project after that. One look at me and another look at the burnt muffins, and Dave suggested we load everyone up and find a restaurant. Hey, I may just burn the muffins more often! After breakfast, everyone just relaxed. Leslie and Jason ended up going crabbing, but they didn't catch anything that they could keep. Lara and Greg took their girls to the beach. Dave and I readied the steamboat for the 4th of July parade. While I was working on the boat, I managed to lose my balance and fell backward, landing on my butt and getting a terrible bruise on my elbow. I was lucky that I didn't break anything!

On the 4th of July, our good friends, Stan and Terrie and their daughter and granddaughters from Florida came by and joined the rest of our family and rode on the steamboat in the parade. There were 13 of us (including kids) in that boat! We had so much fun waving at people and tossing candy. We went through 4 huge bags of candy! The crowd just loved it when Dave blew the whistle! After the parade, we came back to our place and had a picnic lunch of chicken, potato salad and corn on the cob. That night, we stayed up to see the fireworks across the bay at Manzanita from the comfort of our deck. The show lasted about 20 minutes.

Leslie and Jason had to leave right after the parade as he was on "cop" duty that evening. Besides, they wanted to beat the traffic home. Lara and Greg stayed one more night and left on Tuesday evening. Our nephew and his wife came back later that night and they left yesterday. So now the house is quiet once again.

It was a great week and everyone seemed to have a good time.