One thing you can say about retirement is that you can go visit family and almost stay forever. Sarah, Joe, and the girls sold their house in Columbia, SC and bought a house in Mountville which is a little over an hour out of Columbia. This property comes with a house and 6 acres of fairly flat undeveloped land.
Going through the pictures I find that I did not take any pictures of the front of the house. But here is the side view.
The house is huge and comes with a room just for Grandma (okay and whoever else will visit!) The room also belongs to Stormy the cat who has the run of the house. Stormy and I came to the understanding that he did not get to sleep with Grandma!
While there I helped paint both girls' bedrooms with their favorite colors, planted Sarah's irises that she had dug from the sold house, helped Joe pull holly bushes out, helped with the fencing for the new dogs, got poison ivy, spent a day burning with Sarah, and just plain relaxed with a good book now and then. Was it a nice visit, you bet it was.
This is what the 6 acres look like. This road goes to the back of the house and this is what Joe has to back the boat up to park it. This is also part of the snake story later.
This is what Joe has to work with! We did go looking at tractors as the weeds, brush, etc. grow so fast in this climate. Notice the boots - we all wore them while working outside. Needless to say I did wear flip flops while outside and not working. This eventually would have proved to be very unwise as the day I left the kids found a copperhead snake on the road behind the house.
The new country look is shorts and rubber rain boots. The girls usually had on long pants also. If you live in the country then you need to have country dogs. After 3 hours of trying out different dogs at Pets, Inc. the girls (more like mom) found two dogs with wonderful temperments for each girl.
Kenzie with Bacon. Bacon will walk forever, chase balls, and just be happy whereever he is. He is a sweet dog. On occasion Kenzie calls him Bacon Bits. They kept the names that came with the dogs at the shelter. Bacon has a lot of energy.
And this is Kayla with BamBam. This dog either runs or lays down and Kayla has been known to drag the laying down dog behind her! He also has a sweet temp but is more mellow and will not chase balls. But Kayla loves him anyway.
The time spent was not all work. Sarah arranged for a Mother/Daughter weekend out and had booked a room at a lodging in Jonesborough TN for us.
Jonesburough is a quaint little town with art galleries, theater, and a free concert on the square. I had a wonderful time with my two daughters. It is also known for its Story Telling Center. We attended an afternoon story telling performance and spent an hour laughing ourselves silly.
That evening we took in a show at the local repertory theater which was an enactment of a 1941 USO radio show. Also very good and entertaining!
Monica and Sarah enjoying a few minutes of sitting down and enjoying the free concert. All the locals bring their lawn chairs and Main Street is closed to traffic. Now is this small town or what. The town also closes the street on Saturday nights and does a free movie.
And we all shopped, and then went shopping some more.
Saturday morning was the Farmers Market where they close off the street again!
Saturday was the busy shopping day. Across from the Visitor's Center was the Tenneseequilts.com that was so much fun to shop that we spent two hours there after the morning market. For those of you who quilt they have a very comprehensive webpage and a wonderful fabric selection.
There is a clown in every family and this is Dr. Sarah Sweitzer, PhD thumbing her nose at her mother!!! The good daughter, Monica, wisely just smiled for the camera. Monica also has the only picture of all of us together. Girls - thank you for a wonderful couple of days (even if you laughed and made fun of the meals you had to eat growing up!!!)
I don't know where the time went to but I am back in OR again and am missing my family time.
Family time is at the top of my list, so is watching the fire flies in the evening, listening to the thunder and lightening storms, and learning what true humidity is.
Happy Family Time!
