Coming Along

Our craft room/office is coming along nicely. Today Kevin ran the final wires for our wireless internet and printer servers and we hooked up all the electronics. I emptied two more tubs of "stuff" and went through it, trying to organize it and find its new home. Josh got his "office" desk area situated pretty much. It still looks like a tornado came through, but I'm seeing glimmers of what the finished product will look like now. It's SO amazing to just walk straight out now instead of having to step down. This area was once our garage and we always had to step down into it. Now it's the same level as the house. I feel like I got a whole new house with just a room!! Kevin has put a lot of the things we needed to put up in the attic. We've taken more loads to the storage building for the yard sale. Because of our delays in picking up Ellie, we are going to postpone the yard sale until August 15-16. School will be back in and we'll have more traffic then I think. My mom's (which is where we have it) is about two blocks from the schools and she has LOTS of traffic from that. It will give us time to collect more things as well.

Josh is feeling MUCH better. He got out his Slip 'n Slide today and had fun sliding down the hill with that. I made sure he wasn't over exerting himself. He says he wants to go back to church tomorrow so we are all going to be in church tomorrow. I'm glad; I need to be there, to be refreshed and revived.

I need to make his follow-up appointment for next week to see how he's coming along and when we'll be off any restrictions. He's eating really well again and talking better, although he still has this weird lisp that he didn't have before. Odd, I know, but I keep thinking it will go away. He didn't have it before the surgery.

We signed him up for football today. It will be his third year. He took off his seven-year-old year to play soccer. Football practices start July 21 so really soon we'll have that to throw into the mix.

We are really trying hard to get things organized and re-arranged like we want it before Ellie comes -- we are nesting, aren't we? Hopefully, this extra few weeks we'll have will allow us to get a little more done. I'm trying to enjoy things like reading a book occasionally, too, because I don't think there will be time for that for a while. I miss her a lot. I look at her photos every day and wonder if she's ok. She's a beautiful little one. I'm so amazed that God chose her for our family. We are so lucky to be a part of her life. I guess I know how short that time really is, which is why I don't want to miss any of it.

And, finally, I have finished his team's baseball book. For those of you who are curious and would like a preview, you can visit a few pages of it HERE. While I was uploading the book, I did a quick search of Kyrgyzstan on the site and there are some books that people have put together on the country. There is one I might like to buy that has black and white photos of the country and the people. It's much like what I would have LOVED to do for Ellie.

While Josh was slipping and sliding, I took some pictures of some sort of butterfly or moth thing that was sucking nectar from my purple flowers out front. They have some terribly large eyes, don't they? I enjoyed watching them do their work. They were very intent.

And speaking of outdoorsy, wildlife stuff (which we sort of were, right?), when Josh and I worked on Thursday, I saw a deer standing in some one's back yard. She didn't run off for a long time and I took a few photos of her.

These were in Old Hickory (for those of you who read from around here) and so it wasn't a remote place, but right in the city subdivision). I guess she was hungry. Some of the folks had a few garden plants out in their backyards.