Scattered Thoughts . . .

After our cruise on the Spirit of Ethan Allen on Lake Champlain, we headed to a restaurant for a nice meal.  We usually head up the hill from the waterfront to a restaurant on or near Church Street.  I can't remember why we didn't do that this time but we instead went to The Longhorn in Williston.  We all enjoy the food and service at The Longhorn so that is always a place to play it safe for a good meal.  When Sheila was going through cancer treatment, we stopped here on most days to eat lunch since it is so close to the hospital.  We were very much regular customers at this restaurant but then we stopped going to all restaurants for three years during the pandemic.  A couple of the same waitstaff are still working there so we continue to be recognized and treated very well.   Ace really likes this restaurant because of all the cows in paintings and art throughout the restaurant.  Every now and then he will notice another herd of cows and will excitedly point and scream out &q

W e always have our first barbeque of the season on the weekend that falls around July 1st which happens to be my birthday.  This year, we had this barbeque on July 1st.  If anyone is wondering, I turned 61 years old this year.  Unfortunately, most days, I feel like I'm 81 and I have difficulty and a lot of pain trying to get around and I even look the part due to being hunched over and having difficulty standing.  Contrary to how I feel on these days, my birth certificate claims I am 61 years old this year.   We had a very dry spring to the point where everything in the yard was dying and turning brown but the past two weeks were filled with day after day of solid rain until the day before our scheduled barbeque.  The rain stopped just in time for me to mow the lawn, do some much needed landscaping and set up the backyard for our barbeque.  It was sunny, hot and humid with a bit of smoke from Canadian wildfires hanging in the air.  My health didn't fare so well and I ended up

E arlier this past week, we went out to dinner for Lukey and Kenzie's birthday.  Gee wanted to treat them to a dinner on their birthday so we headed to Sarducci's.  The kids had chosen a different restaurant but that restaurant was closed.  Gee and Papa preferred to go to Sarducci's anyway so we treated everyone to a nice meal at one of our favorite restaurants. Due to the ongoing pandemic, it was a bit on a quiet side at Sarducci's which was fine by us.  Going out into public is something Gee and I have been avoiding at all cost for the past two years but we all very recently had the virus so, at the moment, our immunity is likely on the high end which allowed us to feel a bit more comfortable visiting a restaurant during an ongoing pandemic.  If we all hadn't just gotten over the virus, Gee and I probably would not have gone out into the infected world.   As always, I had a couple of cameras with me.  This time around, I even had a Fuji Instant photo printer with

We had a very nice and peaceful Thanksgiving yesterday...  well, the best any Thanksgiving Day can be anyway...  truthfully, Thanksgiving has always been my least favorite holiday and, actually, perhaps in the Top Three of my least favorite days of the year...  regardless, we had a nice, peaceful and relaxing Thanksgiving during this pandemic. We were able to video chat with the family...  Adam and Joi, in California while Adam is in Air Force Leadership School...  Whitney and Ellie, at home, with Ellie being the physical comedy comedian she is...  and, of course, some video time with Liza, Kenzie and Lukey.  Video chatting is an everyday occurrence here anyway but it was nice to see all the grandkids yesterday.  Somehow we missed video chatting with Will and Sue so we'll need to attempt that sometime this afternoon. Dinner was nice for a turkey dinner.  The weakest dish of the dinner, by far, was the turkey breast and Sheila agreed.  I'd definitely prefer a nice grilled steak

Every evening, Kenzie (usually Lukey too) will call Gee on our Alexa devices.  During last night's conversation, she was a bit more animated than usual so I quickly picked up my camera and shot a few photos of her...   I have to say that these Echo Show Amazon devices were a good idea.  These devices make it easy to stay close even though we may not see each other in person for a week or so.  Of course, we also have all sorts of other uses for this Show...  our calendar, recipes, music, news, timers, alarms, notifications, even asking Alexa to add something to our shopping list.   Uncle Adam has an Echo Show also so we keep in contact with him in California as well.  Actually, we had Nan and Pop over for dinner this past weekend and while we were all at the table, we simply looked over at the Echo Show and said, "Alexa, call Adam" , and we had a little virtual visit with him while Nan and Pop were here.   Anyway, it is nice hearing from Lukey and Kenzie and actua

We were happy to have Kenzie visit with us again over the weekend.  This gave her a chance to play with her dollhouse with Gee. The dollhouse that I had built for Kenzie a few years ago has been buried in one of the bedrooms that Adam resided in when he last visited a few months ago. As a result, this dollhouse hasn't gotten much use in the past six months or so because it was sitting behind a bunch of new kitchen supplies for our new kitchen in this bedroom.   Our kitchen renovation was put on hold the moment Sheila was diagnosed with cancer again almost a year and a half ago so all the supplies we had already bought for this project were piled up against a wall in the spare bedroom.  That project is now on indefinite hold due to the costs of cancer treatments and a few other reasons and Kenzie's townhouse dollhouse was residing somewhere behind all of these kitchen supplies...  until Sunday. Gee dug out the dollhouse and brought it out to the living room.  While Gee