The Summer Routine

The school year is over. We're back from vacation. Now we're settling into the summer routine. So what is everyone doing?

For those of you who don't know or have forgotten, I am a 12 month employee at DA, so while I have more flexibility with my hours without classes and a lighter schedule, I'm still going in to work. Vicki, of course, is going in to work too. Vicki and I did celebrate our 27th anniversary with a lunch date at the new 6th & Main Restaurant in Springfield just a few doors down from her office and visited an art exhibit. We also enjoyed a nice Father's Day with one of my favorites, chicken lasagna. And for dessert Jenna made my favorite chocolate cake.

Jenna is continuing to work at Historic Perk both as a barista and coffee roaster. Even though she has graduated she is still studying to prepare to the NCLEX exam which she has signed up to take on July 15 in Evansville, Indiana. I know she would appreciate your prayers as she prepares for that exam. She will start her new job with NorthCrest the next day. She is also moving through her wedding planning checklist when she isn't working or studying.

Nolan has started his job as an HVAC tech with Wheeler Mechanical since his graduation. Right now he is riding along with another tech for on-the-job training but hopes to be in his own company vehicle making service calls in a few months. He has certainly begun collecting some interesting stories from his job, mostly about dogs.  We had hoped he would get to go with us for the Gatlinburg leg of our trip but being new to the job and having the trip to Colorado just before he didn't feel like he could miss work, so he wound up house sitting for us while we were away.

Ben went back to work briefly at Marysville Marine where he worked last summer to fill in a short gap of time before beginning a summer stint as a camp counselor at Lighthouse Christian Camp in Smithville (https://lighthousechristiancamp.com). He reported for orientation the week before our vacation and has returned while the camp runs through most of July. This camp serves underprivileged children from Nashville to Cookeville free of charge.

When Ben was here he and Mei Lin tried to squeeze in as much time together as they could. Now she has returned to Birmingham for a summer job while Ben is in Smithville. I think they have plans to be home on a few weekends. They did have one mishap here at the house one night when they were sitting on the porch swing and one of the screw eyes holding up the swing failed, pulling a couple of ceiling boards down with it. Fortunately they were not hurt but it was an impressive sounding crash.

Nate has also started his summer job; also at Marysville Marine. Ben trained him. Now all his fun trips are behind him and he'll be working 40 hours a week until it is time to head off to Tech.

The only other member of the family to discuss is Fluffy. She is a mostly outdoor cat (she will spend the night upstairs when it is really cold outside) and in the summertime she will disappear to who-knows-where for two or three days doing who-knows-what. She has been spayed so her disappearances are not romantic interludes. She gave us a scare because she was nowhere to be found after we had gotten home from our trip. Nolan had seen her every day that we were away except for the last two days and he had continued to replenish her food dish when he didn't see her. We were getting concerned when she had been absent for six days and were very glad when she showed up on the back porch the other day. I have often thought it would be interesting to put a GPS tracker on her to see where all she goes but I've never been interested enough to actually spend the money to buy one.

So, that's the news from our house. I feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel when I'm writing about the extended absence of our cat, but that's about all I have to offer right now.

Joe