Finally some sun!

It's Saturday, May 31st and we had a seminar here at the Centre which meant serving tea/coffee, lunch and more tea.
It turned out to be a fairly nice day. We've had so much rain, cool and cloudy weather that it is really nice to get a day with some sun. Ed took to the back garden while we were waiting to serve tea at the end of the seminar and he shot these pictures. This first one is of a Jay.
Here I am putting my feet up enjoying a cup of coffee and the beautiful garden blooms.
The rhododendrons are mostly done blooming except for the purple/pink ones.

These were so hard to grow in Kansas but here they grow like weeds!

Back in the swing of things

We are now both back in London. Ed came back a week before me as I wanted to go back to Harper and visit some more with my mother. I was able also to visit more with my sisters, Linda and Rosemary. Us three along with my cousins Martha Ediger, Delaine Moncado, and Rhonda Gonzales went to see "The church Basement Ladies" at the Crown Uptown in Wichita. Good food and good fellowship! Another good thing about being away is that when you go home for a visit you tend to be more intentional about visiting with family and friends knowing that you have only a limit amount of time to see people.

We had a great visit here in London from our friends Dennis and Leslie Roberts who live in Harper. We had fun seeing some sights, the play "Chicago", and some great eating! I meant to download some of their pictures to put on the blog but forgot! They just left this morning in a cold rain. There has been a lot of rain lately and it's very green but a little cooler than I'd like. It was really nice to have so much sunshine and blue skies while visiting in Kansas and Colorado.

We are looking forward to this summer when we will get visits from three of Ed's siblings and their families. I hope everyone knows they are welcome to come visit if you can swing it. Let us know in advance and we will try to save a guest room for you. Otherwise you can sleep in our living room.

A hike in the Rockies

I see it has been nearly three weeks since I added to the blog. While we were in the States, I pretty much dropped everything and focused on being with Emily, Jay, Hilary, and friends while in Colorado and then my mom, friends, and other family while in Harper, KS. Thank you to those who hosted us while we were home. We have some wonderful friends and family!

Here are a few more pictures of our time at our home in Colorado. Ed helped me to place these trough type planters on our deck which came with straw like liners to hold the soil and plants. I didn't plant anything in them right away as you can see because of the snow. The next morning we found a stellar blue jay stealing some of the lining for her nesting material. We also put up a hummingbird feeder which was fun to watch.

We took a hike behind our house and these next pictures are of what we came across. This is "lichen"(sp) growing on the rocks. The camera didn't quite catch the true green color of it.
I haven't taken the time to look up what this flower is.
This is the path we took on our hike.

And this is the view of Pikes Peak at the top of our hike. It would have been great to build the house here for the view, but it's not our land and the accessibility is not so good.

Day one of our Vacation in the States

This is our first day in the States in this picture. We woke up to a marvelous day.....all blue skies and warm weather. We had coffee on our deck which was the first thing Ed said he wanted to do.
The next day however, we got snow! Nothing that piled up but it was rather nice.
Since then we have had a mix of cool and warm, sunny and cloudy. When we were in Kansas, we had some nice warm weather along with dusty wind while trying to drive on I70 from Colorado to Kansas.


Here is a picture of our finished house. Emily and I want to plant some flowers in pots on the deck but it's still a little too chilly at night to do that.

Take me out to the Ball Game!!

One of the trauma surgeons that Emily works with at Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs gave her four of his season tickets to the Rockies game on Thursday. So Ed, me, Hilary and Emily went. JJ had to work. It turned out to be a beautiful day and the Rockies beat the Cardinals 9-3.
We were sitting in row 17 of the first section and about 30 feet back from third base. It was a great view.

This was the pitcher and the "Player of the Game".

Hilary Graduates from Hesston College

Congrats to Hilary! Graduated from Hesston College on Sunday, May 4th.

After the ceremony we loaded all her stuff into two cars and headed for Harper. Our plans were to travel on to Colorado on Monday, but discovered that one of the wheel bearings on Hilary's car was worn badly and very noisy. Ed is staying in Kansas now until Wednesday when he can get the wheel bearing replaced. He also had more time with friends and even had a chance to play golf on Tuesday. Hilary, Emily and Phyllis headed back to Colorado as planned and encountered a massive hail storm which put dents in the car and cracked the windshield. Yikes! In addition, Emily got sick from something she ate on the way.