Installment #2..Anybody Miss Me (I'm Baaaack!)

We'll make this installment a family update.

Hank...is just winding up his first year of retirement. Our yard has never looked better. We have a beautiful little vegetable garden. He has several improvements underway at the farm. God bless his kind and caring heart, he has visited our mothers and Ned every week...I don't believe he missed three weeks the entire year. Recently, he was elected to the Aldersgate Special Needs Ministry Board of Directors, the organization that built the house Ned lives in and another one other for disabled women up in Columbia. He will be a blessing to the group.

Legare...is wrapping up his second year at his law firm. He's traveled quite a bit...mostly Houston, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia, Manchester, NH and DC.  Good thing he doesn't live awfully far from the Charlotte airport. Two big things...he got a dog. Bingley is an English Springer Spaniel and he is absolutely adorable...and this coming from a person who doesn't really like animals..at all. We kept him for a weekend recently and he and Precious did not get along. Since she will hardly let Hank out of her sight, he slept in Legare's old room with her and Bingley slept with me. Yes...at the foot of the bed...the same one I was sleeping in. People who know me well think I'm telling a fib. Second big news...Legare is buying a house. He closes on July 1...photos to come.

Lorelai...completed her second year of grad school. Next year this time, she will have an Education Specialist (Ed.S.) degree in School Counseling and be more credentialed than her dear old mama. I stopped after my Masters, but then again I was 36 when I was done. She'll only be not quite 24. Lorelai's boyfriend, Whit, lives in Columbia so they're about 2 hours apart. Lor and her kitty cat Sophie still coexist with her friend Candace and Candace's big old sweet pie of a dog Remi. Candace is getting married on New Year's Eve so Lor will be moving into a nearby apartment to wrap up her last semester of school in Spring 2014...unless she decides to stay for her Ph.D....I think, though, that she is ready to get out into the workforce for awhile.

Ned is fabulous. Hank's mother is up and down. My mother is on a slow but steady decline. She can no longer recognize the children in any photographs and thinks I am Dorothy...her older sister who passed away in 1981. We have to chuckle...

Here are a few photos... 1. The day Legare got Bingley  2. Bingley on the boat...it looks like he just told Legare a funny joke  3. Lorelai with us at church on Mother's Day  4.  A much bigger Bingley trying to see what's cooking.