A Warm Welcome!

Hello again! It's been a couple of weeks since my last entry, and lest you think I've been idle (or simply sitting in my chair knitting sock after sock after sock...:), please know that it's been a hectic fortnight, for sure. We've had visitors from far and near, along with a few projects reaching the finish line. The photo at the left is a big TA-DA, especially for Thomas. We got a new front door and sidelight installed a few months ago, but hadn't been able to brave the excessive heat to finish the project with paint...until now! In addition to painting the door, sidelight, and its exterior trim, Thomas also painted our faded [wrong-color-green] shutters a beautiful, high gloss black. [He also painted the interior side white to match the other trimwork inside.] As Maredith said when she saw the new door and matching painted shutters, "it changes the whole front of your house!" Oh yes, we're pleased with it. Check that one off the To Do List for 2007!


I've used this photo of the front door to represent how busy and blessed our August has been. We've welcomed brother Terry from KY; friends from New Jersey, formerly ATL (photo, right); cousin Ann & Roy from AZ (photo below, left); and, for only the second time this year, daughter Maredith with Charley Dog. And the trend is continuing into September...as brother Jack from TN arrives on Friday, followed by friend Amelia from NC on Sunday!


I'm always happy to have visitors, most especially the ones who stay long enough to do some tourist-y stuff, like A&R did. They've actually been here before, doing the usual sites, so we decided to go a little further afield for some of our sightseeing, and checked out the Abraham Lincoln museum in Springfield, IL. Mom had been before, so she became the designated dog sitter for the day. What a fabulous place! Having come lately to respecting Lincoln (that was not a given for a school child of the early 60's in West Tennessee, whose great-great grandfather was a cavalry officer with Nathan Bedford Forrest and named his son after Robert E. Lee), I was quite impressed with how well his life is presented in this special place; check out the photo, below, of the Lincoln family as we saw them in the plaza of the musuem. If you ever get near enough to Springfield for a day, do not hesitate to put this stop on your itinerary! A word of warning though...you cannot do it justice in less than a day. I would probably still be there, reading and absorbing the exhibits...and we still didn't make it to the Lincoln house (photo, above/right) in time for a tour (last one starts at 4:30). Oh well, just means I get to go back, right?


Ann, Mom, and I also had a fun time at Dierberg's Cooking School's "Let's Do Lunch!" We got to enjoy Spring Rolls with a spicy Thai-influenced Shrimp Stir Fry. Yum!!


Never fear, I haven't completely turned part-time tourist and sometime B&B host. I've been making progress on several projects, and I'll blog about that next time. Stay tuned!