First thank you so much for your prayers for traveling mercies, the weather was gorgeous, and the trip went smoothly! 

  We left here at 8:30am yesterday morning and except for being rerouted for a parade route, we made pretty good time.  We got there just before noon.  I had the entire day with the girls.  That is what it is all about now, right grandparents    I love those girls and never get the chance to spend much time with them.    I know it was our decision to move to Syracuse but we prayed about it and felt that was what He was leading us to do. 

   Will helped Josh with the chicken coop he was building.   Did I mention that they got 20 meat chickens?  Next they will get laying chickens.

   I walked in the woods with the girls, not too far as I was concerned with my back and Will was afraid I would trip  It was really nice except for the mosquitoes.  Even with the bug spray, they were eating us alive.

   We will be going up again in a few weeks for Lael's birthday.  I think we are going up either the 7th or 8th of June.  Her birthday is June 14th.  So is her mother's.  Mine is June 15th.

  I have some pictures of the girls but Xanga is not letting me put them up so maybe tomorrow! 

   Mother's day was cold and damp here.  We did have an impromptu bbq with Susan and her little family.  I got a gift card from Susan for Red Lobster and a watch from Matt.  Susan said he had her buy it months ago because it had a teal band and teal is my favorite color    I didn't get to see my sons but I did hear from both of them.  Jon skyped me when Susan was still here so I got to see the Max too.   I love skype but it doesn't make up for not actually seeing the grands.  I do miss the girls and the southern grands.  

   I took some pictures of Mother's day but when I went to find them after I downloaded them I couldn't.  I know that sounds strange.  I even searched for them but they never showed up and the worse part is when I downloaded them, I deleted them from the camera.   Must be somewhere out in cyber space.  I made Susan the cupcake bouquet that you made with a styrofoam ball and a planter.  (pinterest)

   I had a day off today.  Will told me to meet him for lunch.  What a great break in the day for me.  I can not tell you how much I am blessed by this man.  When I got up on Sun. morning, he had a bouquet of lilacs on the table that he had picked for me.  We used to have lilacs when we lived up north and I miss them.  Our neighbor down here used to give me some every spring but when he died the new neighbors ripped out the lilac bush. 

   Weather should warm up again the rest of the week and I am thankful for that.  Will and Tom went to my bil's house he is getting ready to sell and picked up a love seat that Uncle had in his office when he lived with Jim. It looks brand new and the good part is it has a twin mattress in it so that is a plus.  It is not exactly what I would have picked myself but the color matches perfectly with the LR.  Our old love seat is on the front porch waiting to go to the dump.  (I know, you may be a redneck if.........)

   Between the pain patches and the new mattress I think I am seeing some relief from the arthritis pain.  The problem now is that I am beginning to get a rash where the patches are.     If it is not one thing it is another!

   Neko keeps me in stitches while she is here everyday.  I love the way she looks at things.  She makes my day.  Most days it is only for half a day and that seems to work well with my stamina    I told Will the other day that I thought that this was supposed to be the best time in our lives.  He said it is a myth.......either you are too sick to enjoy this time or you don't have the money to enjoy it like you would like to   Sad but true.

   Well, we had a great weekend.  The sun was shining and weather warm and I got a lot accomplished.   Today, however is another story.  It is gray and raining and you know the rain bothers my arthritis.    Oh, well, it is Monday and that means wash day.  Uncle Roy has his own schedule and we are supposed to adapt to it I guess.  Will told me last week to only do one load of laundry a day but I managed to do 4 loads, like always on Mon. and my back is regretting my decision.  I made stuffed peppers for dinner (I don't like them, so I had crab w/garlic butter over rice ;I made extra when I fixed the peppers)

   I had Neko till noon.  She was so cute.  I found some alphabet beads and we made a necklace with her name in it!  We were still working on the necklace when she said "gramma, I want to make a racoon".  We found a beanie baby racoon that Susan had given her and she has been so excited with it ever since.  Yes, we finished the necklace but then we made a racoon.  I used her handprints to make the mask around the racoon's eyes and her foot print to make it's tail.  She showed it to her father when he came to pick her up and he said "are these your handprints"?  She said "yes", then he asked if "this was her foot".  She laughed and said, "no Daddy, that is the racoon's tail"!     Then he asked if she was ready to go and she asked "Daddy, will you take me out to lunch"? (he did on Fri)  He said "not today, baby girl"; she said  "NO, then I am not ready to go"! 

  They say that every minute you spend on Pinterest is actually 15 minutes in real time!!!!  Yikes, lately I have spent hours on Pinterest!  I won't tell you whether it is real time or not    I had forgotten how much I loved to recycle old furniture into something new.  I saw some great ideas on Pinterest and I was reminded of things I had recovered on clean up days and then refurbished and refinished them into something I loved.  Once we moved here, I put a lot of that stuff in the basement as this house is so much smaller than any we have ever lived in before.  I went down and saw an old dry sink, recovered from the trash years ago, crying out to me to paint it white and bring it up to use in the living room.  When we lived up north, we completely redid two houses.  One had old storm doors on both the front and the back door.  We replaced the doors but I kept the inserts to both doors and replaced the glass panes with mirrors.  I am still using them in here and I love them.   I am sure you all remember that I said I went back to school  to get my certificate for interior decorating.  When I redid rooms for clients, more often than not, I ended up with some of the old stuff that I had replaced(to dispose of) with new.  Some of the things I remade into something different.  Like a wall cabinet in a kitchen that I painted and reused as a hutch top for my desk.  When my parents died, I took a corner cupboard that my father had bought unfinished and had stained it very dark.  I sanded it all down and took out the glass doors and replaced them with flashing that I had punched.  The tin punched doors looked great, so good that when we redid a friends kitchen, we put tin punched doors in 4 of her cabinets.   (Will made the doors; he actually made new cabinet doors for  a lot of the kitchens I redid.  Anyway, looking at pinetrest has really got my creative juices flowing again.  My mind is racing with possibilities!  Now to just find the time to do the work