Kelly, with massive help from Mama Lore, moved out of her apartment today. They have a really cool moving service in Seattle where you can have a couple of guys pick up your stuff from your apartment and store it for a month for under $100. That seems to be a really good price, especially for Seattle. Lorena is really glad to be moving out of a house of a bunch of girls to an apartment closer to her work and closer to downtown with one roommate. I am sure she will be sad she was not there to see the hunky guys pick up her stuff–Lorena handled that because Kelly was at work.
Now, Kelly is headed off to Mexico to see family and friends for a week or two with her friend Eliza. Of course we are all envious and would love to be in Monterrey eating tamales and mangoes with her über-hip uncles, but someone has to stay home and work.
I have written extensively about our homeschool art classes (see 
The painting started early in the week, but has proceeded in small steps. The windows were sanded, primer coat was applied, there was more sanding, etc., etc. Hopefully this phase will be complete by the end of the weekend. We have not, as yet, seen the actually color that was selected except for the ceilings which are, unsurprisingly, “ceiling white.” Actually, this was a much bigger process than we thought it would be. The preparation and attention to detail is pretty amazing. We are very happy that it is Duane and Josiah doing the work. Duane in particular is a perfectionist.
After the funeral of Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah in January, Aunt Julia took the initiative for them to be interred in the Willamette National Cemetery near Portland. We had the privilege to put their remains there because of Grandpa Milo’s service during the Korean conflict where, among other things, he worked as a cook on the hydrogen bomb project in the South Pacific (Eniwetok). They gave him military honors, shot the guns, folded the flag and gave it to Julia, thanking her on behalf of the President, the US Army and a grateful nation. It is a beautiful ceremony taken very seriously and we were grateful. We had a short prayer, Aunt Jean read us Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright followed by a second poem read by Charlie. Finally, we drove over to the interment wall and we all watched while Jean placed the box and the cover was put in place. The photo in this post, from left to right are Uncle Doug, Aunt Julia, Aunt Jean and Dad (me). Amy Louise, the remaining sibling, preceded Grandpa Milo and Grandma Sarah in death at age six months, the result of SIDS.
Several months ago an 
Lorena found some stain, tried it, did not like it, bought some more stain, decided to do the dining room table top, too, and here we are. She saw the desk at Goodwill a couple of weeks back, texted me a picture of it and said she did not want to buy that piece of junk because it had some pretty deep scratches in it. I told her to buy it and we can use it in the garage because it only cos $8.99. NOW, however, it was a brilliant idea she had to buy the thing because she could sand out those scratches with her brand new Walmart sander.
. It was due for another pass. I must say, it is looking great. I view this as a very positive turn of events. I am going to have and excuse now to just say, “Why don’t you pick up something at Goodwill and refinish it? We really do not need something from Ethan Allen.” We have everything we need for the guest bedroom upstairs. When she finishes this, she wants to paint and put in an LVT “hardwood-look” floor.
The painter is coming to start work this afternoon. Maybe that is what got Lorena inspired to start sanding stuff with her new 
Things are spinning back up again. Today, Mark put glass in the cabinets that needed them and add drawer pulls to the already installed cabinet door pulls. He also plans to have the stove hood up and working (with a little more work required for some flashing and other things when he comes back. Wednesday, the paint guy will start his work on the kitchen and living room. We can hardly wait to have this all finished.
The weekend was an interesting one. Lorena, Kelly and I attended a church convention this weekend. I had not been to this particular one for over forty years. Even so, I made connection with old friends from Oregon, Washington, California, Virginia, and Arizona. Lorena so the sister of some dear friends of hers from Mexico City. It was a great weekend. While we were there, it rained enough to knock down sufficient smoke from the British Columbia forest fires that we could make out the outline of Mount Rainier out our back window.
Work inches forward on the remodel. We found some pretty serious defects in the floor, so the floor guy came back, fixed the defects, did something called “refill” and then put a coat of semi-gloss finish. Lorena was ecstatic with the finish. She liked the previous matte, but likes this much better. Next week we hope to have the stove hood in place, glass in the kitchen cabinets, and the painting mostly complete. The hood was planned for this week, so things have stretched out a little.
It seems like Christian makes a big effort to look a little scruffy whenever he comes to visit us. I used to think it was because he did not have time or just did not think about it, but now I like to think it because he likes his mom to make a fuss about it. She takes him down to one of the local haircut places, then he comes home, takes a shower and trims his beard.
I did something yesterday I have not done in a long, long time: I turned off my telephone and just spent the day with the family. We tried to figure out when was the last time we had all been together as a family in our own home–not in apartment, not at a funeral or other event, but at home. The reality is that we have been very distributed for a long time. With Lorena and I in North Carolina or in an apartment in Texas, or Oregon, Kelly in Seattle and Christian in Tempe, it has taken some effort to get together. We have only been able to manage it a handful of times since we left our home in North Carolina, so it was very, very nice to be together again even for such a short time.
Kelly came down for the weekend to bake blueberry muffins and spend some time with her baby brother. It is truly nice to be in a house (as opposed to the apartments we inhabited for the two previous years in Texas and Oregon) and the family is all together. This is the first time for that in over three years. We know it is fleeting, but it is a very good feeling that we hope to make happen more frequently now that we have a home base.
This is Christian’s new habitat now that he does not have Mom’s kitchen island anymore. It has been fun to have him here and it is so nice to see him sitting down in the kitchen, thinking, playing his guitar, working on his computer, and studying while Lorena works in the kitchen. We miss that. We have been to Jimmy John’s twice, and out to breakfast three times since he has been here. Lorena has him all cleaned up with a new haircut. Lorena and Christian have been down to Anytime Fitness a couple of times with the obligatory stop at Starbucks for some coffee. Christian spends a lot of study time there. It is a way to keep going on his studies while avoiding being stuck in his apartment or the lab for ours on end. It is kind of amazing to us that he actually sits and just thinks a lot. It is part of the territory with his area of Information Theory. Most of all, though, we are trying to get him to forget all that for a few days and just relax. Maybe he will come back again before too long.
Christian came to visit us after finishing up in his research work in Boston. He will be here for a week. It is especially poignant as today would have been Grandpa Milo’s 88th birthday. We went to Jimmy John’s, our favorite sandwich place (he being a college student) as soon as he got into Centralia. We were all excited for him to be here, but were a little bit disappointed because the smoke blowing down from the forest fires in Canada prevent us from seeing much past the river let alone all the way to Mt. Rainier.
