Happy Birthday to you to Roge!!

Meant to say something about Dad's on his birthday...Obviously I need a few (maybe a hundred or so) or those roundtoits too, Bob!!! Get this into production and soon!!! But didn't.....so this am...saw that today was the 29th and oh my gosh...here it is Roger's birthday already.... So anyway, Happy Birthday to you....hope it was a good one.....

Cigars All Around!!

We have a new little girl, Sophia Grace, who arrived on the scene last week. I'm not sure which day. She lives with Amanda and Justin, along with the other three. I now have seven grandchildren, six of whom are girls. Girls.

Cindy flew there yesterday morning for two weeks. Amanda needs the help. She developed a hernia during her pregnancy and is not allowed to lift anything until it heals.

They are expecting to drive to Lebanon one day to see Cindy's mother and may stop in to see Beth and Helen. Anticipate a phone call. It might happen.

Cindy will be getting lots of pictures while she is there. I will post some of them for you.

Important Question

Are you all leading dull, boring lives?

Construction Photos Continued

First--looking down into the great room from the loft. Second--the kitchen full of scaffolding and Shadow, the supervisor. Third--looking up toward the loft. Fourth--the fireplace. And last--view of the front windows--all in but the one that was the wrong size.

Construction Photos

Was feeling extremely weary the last couple of days so today I took a half day off from work--the afternoon--and took Shadow out to the new house and spent the afternoon watching Wade work. Well.........I did a little bit. Shadow and I walked to the end of the property and took some progress photos so I'm uploading them for you to see. The first one is from the inside of the balcony. Second is the front and carport side--carport is not yet done. Third is front and balcony side. Fourth is back side and fifth is backside from the end of our property.

Cindy's cousin, Jeff, is with us for a week. He lives in Lancaster County. We're going to Cocoa Beach, which is south of Cape Canaveral, for the weekend. We got two nights at a Best Western for $30. That's right, $30, and 90 minutes at a time share pitch. Of course, the answer is no, not interested, but I can sit through it for 90 minutes.

I need the break. I feel like the Energizer bunny. In addition to my regular job, I'm trying to put Millennium Tile together. We're picking up some jobs, usually piggy-backing off Patterson, but hey, work is work. The situation at Patterson is starting to look a little grim. Construction is way off and we're starting to feel it, so maybe a new startup business is a good thing. We'll see what happens.

Planning our trip

Planning our annual "honeymoon" or anniversary trip... Two years ago went to New England, last year down in West Virginia.. This year we are going to Ohio, Michigan and possibly Wisconsin, Indiana and then back home...Lots of travel time, road miles ....but just to see the country and stop at a few things to see and look at...LOVE IT!! Wish we had more time but....we don't so...this works for now...Planning on leaving Thursday am (the 8th) and gonna be back home on Monday the 12th... Guess we'll have to start flying to a place and then driving back or touring out there--not many places we can drive to...anymore.... If you have any suggestions (you travelers) please let us know asap.... looking forward to just getting away....

Hi everyone.... I enjoyed seeing the reunion pictures (despite the multiple attempts to get them posted!!) Sorry I couldn't join you. Where is 2010? Glad to hear all are well. My arm is healing faster than expected according to the surgeon--God's blessing no doubt. Unfortunately He said I will probably have a nagging ache whenever the weather changes or is damp etc.. just like my patients! Now I really feel old!
Nice picture of the retirement house momma-- BUT.... I must say I am shocked by your vulgarity. Last time I checked PUTZ was not a word I would ever expect you to say or print. Boy you sure do find ways to surprise me and make me laugh.
Chat soon

Techno Putz Strikes Again

Last weekend I took my camera to our new house and took quite a few pictures to add to the blog for you guys to see but when I got home there was only ONE on the camera. Not sure how that happened!!! So I decided that I would take more pictures the next day but I forgot the camera! So you only get to see pictures from one side due to my incompetence. The construction is moving along quite quickly and fairly smoothly which is always a good thing.

Where is everybody??

Hey!!What's happening to our blog??? Why doesn't everyone try to post something about how their week is going at least once a week... We NEED to stay connected and know what going on in each others lives....Help...please... Post your blog, today!!! (I'm trying out for a salesman position,,,,just joking...) Love ya all.

Lil' Cutie, Lovebirds, Three Stooges

now I've got the hang of it.....more pictures

Okay..not that I've tried to save these 3 different times........

Okay...I'm not the smartest knife in the Mitchell drawer......

Reunion 2009

Ok...Here's the pictures from this weekend...Had a great time...enjoyed it..Hope you all did too..

This is our guard dog, Lukie. Originally, he was with Joey, but couldn't stay at his apartment, so we inherited him. At first, he gravitated to Cindy, but lately I've become his person.

I'm teaching him to say "Please" by sitting down and holding up one paw. I want him to go to the door and do this when he needs to go out. Whether it will happen or not is debatable.

He gets quite excited when I pay Cindy any attention. I think he's a little bit jealous. He's never been anything more than a nuisance, but the other day he got a tad more aggressive. She was sitting on the sofa and when I leaned over to kiss her, he bit me. In the ass. No lasting damage, though, and the only scars left are psychological.

Look at him! Doesn't he look vicious?

Seems like it's been forever.

I've been working with two other men, both Albanians, to set up and run a tile installation business--Millennium Tile. History is that I was at Starbucks one day about a 1-1/2 yrs. ago and noticed them sitting at another table. Since I was wearing my official Patterson shirt, they approached me and asked for work. We had a few little jobs, so I gave them a chance. After a few months, they came to me with the proposal that I act as CEO for their business, which at that time was disappearing due to lack of work. Since then we have been slowly building to the point of bidding commercial projects, the last of which was over $61,000.00 just for the tile work. Unfortunately, we haven't landed any commercial contracts, but there is some residential work to fill in.

Needless to say, I haven't had a lot of spare time lately. These commercial jobs have bid deadlines which usually fall within two to three weeks from the time I find out about them, so we have to scramble. Not quite sure where all this is going to lead, but hopefully I can parlay this into some "moving money" and, with communications the way they are today, still be able to work the business from Montana. (By the way, Genti and Columbo are expert tile mechanics, so I won't have to lay any unless I want to.)

We're still on for Montana. Cindy has made it clear that she's ready to leave Florida and, as long as she is working and holding her own, I might actually reach the goal of $10,000.00 to move with. It's feasible, but I will have to work a lot of Saturdays to make it.

Any road, I am counting down the days until next Friday morning when I fly out of Jax and head to Rochester. Looking forward to seeing everyone there. I can almost smell the steaks grillin'.

P.S. The staples came out of the head recently. Looks like everything is healing fine. Time will tell if it knocked any sense into me.

Back to School

Well, Katherine went off to school on Sat, Aug 22 and started classes last Wednesday. I started class today. Yes, I'm going back to school. I'm going to go to Lancaster Bible College and do their degree completion program and then continue on and will end up with my Masters in Marriage & Family Counseling. It should take me total of about 4 years to finish. Ultimately I want to work as a Family Counselor (not so much the marriage but work more with Teenagers, parenting, etc.) and I also hope to serve in disaster relief. It's going to be a busy next several years but there is no time like the present so off I go to school. Actually, I think I will be able to do all of my undergrad classes online if I choose so I'm really happy about the flexibility. I'm really pretty excited about it all.

Love ya,
Beth

Lighting strike

We had lighting strike our house not once but twice last week...On Wednesday night, during a bad storm it blew out our living room TV. Was on, then went off and then can't come back on...On Thursday night when I got home, Gary said...well two more TV's ....and counting. Here it took our little TV (that I had put on top of our broken living room one--real redneck style)!! and also Brad's TV downstairs...also Brad's Xbox, Gary's old playstation, Brad VCR/DVD player, our telephone device (our phone is on Vonage--through our internet), computer modem, and something in my computer. So we didn't have a phone til yesterday...that was long..and no internet on my computer til today...that was long...Brad's watching tv on his computer...Gary's tv still works or we would all be crazy!!!....But we are getting by...turned it into homeowners but that also takes awhile and is a process...it's amazing how much you count on those "electronic" things and don't really think you do til you don't have them...

Other than that...not much is new...Looking forward to the reunion...

Swimming with the sharks, or Hammerhead

Had a small accident yesterday at work. Nothing serious, just a trip to the local acute care clinic for 1-1/2 hours and eight staples.

We were tearing down a chimney. One of the men had placed his hammer on a wall, which I didn't know about. I walked underneath it to move a stepladder, and...Voila! You see the results. Needless to say, it spoiled a good bit of the rest of my day. I'm OK. It caused Cindy more trouble than it did me. Have to go back in a week to pull the staples.

You'd think a person would learn after all these years.