Another Week In Review

(Monday, November 6, 2019 – Just noticed we forgot to publish this on Saturday.)

Saturday, November 2, 2019

Today was a beautiful Alabama fall day. It has been just plain cold this week. The past two days the lows have been 28 and 30. Tonight the low is predicted to be 35 and we will warm up the rest of the coming week. We had lots of rain early in the week and our drought is officially broken. That’s a good thing, but it was a little too much rain too fast and then it was abnormally cold. The coming week should return to a more normal Alabama fall.

Last Sunday afternoon, Max’s sister Marsha arrived as we prepared to spend a week working on LOL stuff. Later in the day Max’s brother Randy and sister-in-law Debra arrived. It was great to visit with family again. Monday morning we began our week’s work. The first task was to empty Aunt Jean’s storage unit. There was just no reason to continue to pay rent since she is not going to ever return to assisted living. Jean’s only other relative, a niece, Lois, meet us in Trussville to start the monumental task. There were lots of memories, laughing, and a few tears shed throughout the day as we decided what each person wanted to have as a remembrance. Doing this task before her death in some ways was a little easier. We shared fun stories of our times with Jean as we decided what we wanted to donate to our local charity and what items we just couldn’t part with. By mid afternoon we were on the way to Hope House with donations and Lois was on the way home with her items. Max and Randy had to return Tuesday morning to pick up the final few items and officially close our account with the storage facility.

The reminder of the week was spent on the mountain emptying Aunt Helen’s and our basement of Max’s mom’s items. Thursday, Anne went to Tuscaloosa to close on the sale of her mom’s house. Another bitter sweet day. Otherwise, the five of us spent an exhausting but good week visiting and sharing more memories while emptying the two basements. There were several more trips to Hope House with goodies we hope their clients can use and when they headed home today, Randy and Marsha had their vehicles loaded with precious treasures.

The dumpster being delivered four days late

We were thankful that Max’s brother and sister took some of the precious family items home with them.

To take a break from making decisions about Max’s mother things we cleaned some of Aunt Helen’s collectibles. These are some of the dozens of chickens we washed and returned to their perch.