Author: rvingwithapurpose

Saturday, April 14, 2018

The forecasters were on target regarding the rain today. It rained and rained and is still raining. We did go under a tornado warning in Tuscaloosa, but by then we were in Blount County. Early this morning we turtled up FRED (brought in all the slides and awnings) and said goodbye to him, leaving him in Tuscaloosa. We headed for higher ground (Pine Mountain). FRED is courageous and braved the storms where he was. Hopefully he has weathered the storms unscathed. Actually, the tornado warning was brief because about the time it was issued the storms started falling apart and rather than the severe storms we have just gotten all the rain that was predicted.

We spent most of the day watching the weather (in “weather mode” as Anne says); on the road, on Pine Mountain and at the rehab center in Oneonta visiting with Aunt Helen and Aunt Jean. Aunt Helen seems to be doing well although the dementia is definitely advancing. Aunt Jean did not appear to have made much progress in regaining strength this week. We will need to talk to the therapists next week. So now we are back at the sticks and bricks for the night and are looking forward to worshiping with our friends at Lester Memorial UMC tomorrow. Please keep us in your prayers as we try to provide the best care for our LOLs.

Friday, April 13, 2018

It’s five days in a row of very nice weather. Tomorrow is suppose to be totally different but we enjoyed today. We got our walking in, a little over 3 miles, and sat outside just enjoying the evening for a while tonight.

We didn’t do anything very exciting today. We watched the Blue Angels again. We just love to see all they can make those planes do. Some people complain about the noise, but we just say it’s the sound of freedom. Love it!

Also worked some more in Mama Ruby’s house cleaning out some of her things. Still can only do that for relatively short periods of time then need to work on something else. Since we got the tax id number for the estate this week Anne and her brother Sonny went to the bank to open an estate checking account. We thought that would be a quick and painless process, but not so. It took over an hour to open a simple account and we didn’t even bother to count the number of pages of paper they handed us when we left with all the bank rules and regulations. Yep, more government requirements. Makes us glad we own pine trees. Use more paper. We will grow more trees. Rant over. Yes, we know part of the aggravation was probably related to grief.

Otherwise, we continued to work on accounting for all the LOLs and some of our own.  Also seems we have lots of filing to do right now. Too much paperwork! We continue to enjoy the irises we brought from the sticks and bricks. They have held up well and continue to bloom out. We are planning to go back to Blount County some time this weekend, so we can go to our church on Sunday. If they don’t get too damaged by the approaching storms we might bring some more back to FRED when we return. Hope you all have a great weekend. Stay safe and remember to be in prayer for Sunday services. Your pastors need your prayers.

In case you are interested in what is happening on the NOMADS Disaster Rebuild project in Baton Rouge, our friends who are now leading the project posted an update on the NOMADS website. Click here to read it.

Thursday, April 12, 2018

If you want to know how nice the weather is just look at every other day this week. Another awesome day. We are enjoying sitting outside in the afternoons after our walks.

We started the day with a nice walk. Then we continued to work down the to do list. We made good progress today. Unfortunately, other things were added to the list. Still we are pleased that the list is a little shorter this evening than it was this morning. Another LOL tax return was completed, more bills paid, reports submitted, orders placed. We have a new toy on the way. More about that later. We heard jets at 10:00 and remembered the air show is this weekend. We stepped outside and as expected we saw the Blue Angels arriving for the air show. They were flying in formation as they approached the airport. A few hours later they returned to the sky practicing for the show. We saw their homecoming show in 2014 when we were in Pensacola working the Gulf Breeze disaster rebuild. The Angels have done several shows here in Tuscaloosa and they usually make some runs right over Mom’s house. They flew over a number of times but none as low as they have done in the past. Wonder if they have new restrictions in place now. It will be interesting to see what they do tomorrow and then the days of the shows. Mom’s house really isn’t that close to the airport but we still got a nice show today.

 

While we were out taking photos of the Angels our next door neighbor on the other side came out with her twin boys. We had a nice visit. We took another nice walk on the greenway this evening and then enjoyed sitting outside reading. We just saw on the blog statistics that we have one viewer from China today. Wonder who that might be. Interesting. Thank you, God, for another good day to spend together.

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

How many times can I say it. It was another beautiful day in Alabama. We know it is going to come to an end but the weather is just about perfect. Forties at night, low to mid seventies daytime with sun and a few clouds. Nice.

Maybe it’s the wet spring but the flowers are still so pretty. We are still parked in Mom’s driveway and the azaleas in the front flower beds are about as pretty as I have seen them. The ones in the back are way past their peak and look pretty pitiful. Our flowers we brought from Remlap are looking good too. We really didn’t know if they would continue to bloom out once we brought them in. We don’t usually cut the irises, but rather just enjoy them in the yard. Since we weren’t going to be at the house we decided to give it a try. We are enjoying.

We just kept plugging away at our to do list today. Filed one of the LOL’s tax returns and getting close on another. Still have lots of paperwork to handle. Canceled Juno’s insurance and paid some more doctor bills. Starting to go through a few things at Mom’s house. Also made a Publix run today. We haven’t been in Publix territory in a while so it was a nice treat. Too bad they didn’t have many BOGO’s that we needed. We did pick up what we needed to prepare a new to us recipe in the Instant Pot.  Instant Pot Chicken and Rice Burrito Bowl. Quite tasty. It’s a keeper. Visited with the next door neighbor for a while this afternoon, then got our afternoon walk. It was a good day.