Lauren

Mark’s here! He’s doing some visits for his work, and stayed the night. We ate an overly-salty dinner (not my fault – honestly!) and then had a very pleasant evening visiting. Beth stopped by for a different reason, and stayed for some lovely conversation.

It’s awfully nice to connect with family, and I feel blessed to have had lots of that in-person over the past year. (We are scattered all over the country.) I’m also grateful for Zoom and a video-messaging app that my family has been using, thanks to my brilliant sister-in-law Rachel (she introduced us to it). It makes it possible to connect with some visuals, along with email and actual phone calls. We really do live in an amazing time.

Sorry that I don’t have any pictures for this. I was either super-busy or lazy. Sunday I went to church, then over to work for a couple of hours. I’m not very efficient at getting things done, but my mantra is, “Everything I’m doing needs to be done.” That way I’m not berating myself for not doing anything – just encouraging Inner Lauren that at least I’m making forward motion. In the afternoon I had a very nice Zoom with my family, then a little nap.

Monday was similar. I went to work for a couple of hours until I felt ok enough to start the week, then home for some t.v. and rest. Our weather has been SO WINDY, and I drove around a little before I came home and was astonished at how many people had branches down. It’s weird. I put a couple of plants in my ‘garden’ and worked on chopping down parts of an evergreen tree that is too close to the house. See? I should have taken pictures.

Alright. It’s the first day of the summer program and apparently I have some children with a bit of the dickens in them. Wish me luck!

Tuesday is the start of the summer program, and next Sunday is the first day of Concordia’s early childhood conference.(Monday is the second day.) I spent 10 hours at work on Friday and am decidedly not ready for either event. I’ve got some pockets of time today and tomorrow to work on things, so by June 6th, I should be ready to have some mental peace.

Anyway, the big Saturday news is that we actually bought a new washing machine. Lloyd’s been the one starting every load, and he agreed with me that it’s making weird, new sounds. He thought he left his pocketknife in his pants, but no – it’s just the thunking of a 24-year-old machine.

He did a lot of research before we went to Lincoln, and found that LG was one of the most reliable brands. I just let him make this decision, because I just wanted 1) something efficient, 2) something with a timer function and 3) something that really wrings out the water on the spin cycle.

We spent a loooooooooooooong time at an appliance store. I wandered while Lloyd pondered. There was a young couple there that lives a very different lifestyle than I do. They were discussing the new house they were building and how the kitchen would be based entirely around the very expensive gas/electric stove they selected. “….and the refrigerator, too. We’re picky about our refrigerators.” It was fun to eavesdrop a little, then I made my way to scratch-n-dent, the place of my people.

Anyway, the washer will be delivered later this week and they will take the old one away. Sam, if you’re reading this, I need to know if you’re serious about having the tub from the old washer.

I told you about Sunday, and on Monday we had some nice visiting. In the afternoon, we decided to go for a drive on Grand Mesa. It’s funny that this glorious place is literally in my Dad’s backyard. (He actually lives on the side of the Mesa.) Lloyd had fun driving – he likes the winding roads, and that gave Dad and me some time to enjoy the views.

We drove all the way to the top. It’s funny, but since it’s a tabletop mountain, once you’re all the way up – it just looks like fields and alpine meadows. I don’t have a good photo of that, but we did get one on the way back of Lloyd by the snowpack.

My Dad gave me a pair of binoculars, so of course we needed to pull over so I could use them. Here’s Island Lake, a place that is legendary in my brother’s adventures after a night of having someone stuck on the island in a rainstorm. (I forget the details…..)

(Dad, when we drove by on Thursday, most of this ice was already gone.)

Every time we went somewhere during this trip, we traveled on back roads that I didn’t know. That was super-fun, and Lloyd really liked it. I would highly recommend ditching a regular route once in a while. (Just make sure you have a cell phone along.)

Back at the house, we tried to make ourselves useful when we could. Our outside work was moving a little bit of fence around some trees, and raising some steps that have settled over time. The step to the deck had sunk a couple of inches, but Dad’s neighbor just happened to have a big ol’ pile of gravel.

Lloyd and I, with minimal arguing and name-calling, put down several loads of gravel and got it all leveled and nice. It’s good thing Dad suggested using gravel to do this job. I was going to hack apart one of his deck benches to make a new step. His house does not need me to ‘Lauren’ it up. 🙂

The next step is by a sweet little gardening room – my mom’s own playhouse (with running water!). See, the love of tiny places runs deep in my genes. The step had also sunk, and I thought that some concrete blocks (that Dad already had) would make for a wider/deeper step. Lloyd agreed, and proved that he would have made a fine Egyptian – he got those blocks so close together, they could have been part of a pyramid.

One of our excursions was to drive by a place outside Delta that builds…. wait for it……. tiny houses! I just wanted to drive by, but the owner was actually there and let us go inside! It is killing me that we don’t have any photos of our wandering, but such is life. He had three in production, and it was pretty cool. If you know anyone in the Western Colorado area – or any states near there – that is interested, steer them toward WesternColoradoTinyHouse.com, ok?

Dad, when I was trying to explain an EnviHeater, there was one in the tiny house!

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. The very best part was that last week my Dad had some scans done to see what was going on with his hip/leg, and they also found a small mass on his kidney. I was able to go along on a couple of doctor appointments, and the mass is a benign cyst. THANK YOU, JESUS!!! It was a huge relief to hear that he was not going to have to deal with a new issue. If you would still pray for his leg to continue to heal, I would be very grateful.

We had a great visit with my Dad. We ate, hung out and even helped with some jobs. The photos are on Lloyd’s phone, though, so I’ll show those tomorrow.

We did a lot of ‘road less traveled’ drives, and coming home was no exception. We drove over Grand Mesa to get to the interstate, and even took a little diversion from that. We went over the DeBeque cutoff, y’know – where the cows walk around.

We made it to Colorado. We left early on Saturday and tore across the state at a high rate of speed. We got to Denver and could see the snow in the mountains, so I drove us to Idaho Springs (just west of Denver) and let Lloyd take over. My worries we’re unfounded. The people traveling on Friday had a bad time of it – we saw lots of cars in the ditches.

Thankfully, the roads were just wet during our travel, and the snow was pretty, though I felt bad for those trees. They were all leafy and looked like they were about to snap.

The weather changed at Vail – one of the points on the Continental Divide. These photos were taken within minutes of each other. Here’s the east side:

Here’s the west side:

Wow!

Sunday was great. We went to church, then up to the cemetery to show the stone to Lloyd.

The back side is just as nice as the front. Here you can see the witness of faith – “I AM the Resurrection and the Life”. It’s just lovely! (You can also see the tree where I hang iPads and iPhones for timed photos.)

We walked around to see other headstones. There were a remarkable number of hand…… scratched stones. Lloyd told me that I should make his.

Back home, we had a nice day of meals, naps, and some calling of siblings. Ahhhhh……