Another Kid in Double Digits

There isn't but one word for our weather right now, HOT. This summer has been very hot and I'll be glad when it's over. I've hardly even needed to mow the yard in the last several weeks.

THURSDAY'S BABY IS TEN! I find it hard to believe my little boy who starred in the Thursday's Baby commercial for Baptist Hospital is now ten years old. His real birthday celebration comes this weekend, but we did go over to Aunt Mar's for peach cobbler. He wanted this instead of a cake so we stuck a candle in the crust and sang to him.

One thing Ben is really proud of is his new bike. While in Georgia Ben got Zachary's old bike since Zachary had outgrown it, and it's the perfect size for Ben. He was so happy to have it he made me take a ride with him Friday as soon as I got home from work.

SCHOOL DAYS. Speaking of summer being over, school has officially started. The kids had a half day of school yesterday and classes start Monday. Where did the time go?

Jenna is starting seventh grade this year. She will get her schedule on Monday. Ben is in Reneé Hooper's fourth grade homeroom, and Nate has Kim Knight for second grade this year. Vicki and Kim used to teach together at Bransford Elementary before Jenna was born. We got to see everyone's classrooms Tuesday evening at open house for both schools.

TREE DOWN. Last time I wrote I mentioned we would be attending the Hancock reunion. Jenna went with Mom and Aunt Mar for a dinner at the Catfish House Friday night. The rest of us opted out. We all went to the dinner in Orlinda Saturday evening. We had a smaller crowd this year, but everyone had fun.

Saturday was nice in that we got about two inches of rain. Part of that rain came in a storm that blew through while we were at the reunion. In Orlinda we watched as lightning flashed all around. Little did we know that we were getting hail and strong wind back home. When we got home we discovered the top of the tree by our mailbox had been broken out by the wind and fallen across our driveway, taking down our mailbox in the process. Fortunately, we have a second driveway connection from the road. This was the same tree that lost a major limb due to ice and fell across the highway in January 2009. Brad Keith, who has recently started a tree trimming business, came and got the top of the tree up for us. He also cut the rest of the tree down so our front yard looks really bald now.

Speaking of Brad trimming trees, I had noticed a few dead trees in Aunt Mar's yard and Brad has been working over there the last two weeks. Turns out he needed to cut down about ten trees. You can hardly tell they're gone. She still has over one hundred trees in the yard.

NEW NEIGHBORS. In cleaning out Pauline's house we've been working toward getting it ready to rent. We didn't get anything accomplished last month because we were so busy, but the goal was to get back to this project this month. Well, our timetable has been accelerated because a family in our community had been on vacation and came home to find their house had completely burned down. They needed a place to stay and we needed tenants so we've got new neighbors now.

OVERHEATED. Vicki called me at work today and told me they'd lost power at the house. In our conversation it comes out that the kids had heard an explosion and seen a flash of light.

When I heard this I told Vicki to go outside and look at the transformer atop the power pole. Sure enough the top was blown off and the sides were black. Between the heat and our house pulling a load to run the A/C and do laundry the transformer overheated and blew up. CEMC had us back up and running quickly.