Waiting for vacation . . .

The end of the month will soon be here and I'll be on my way to Estes Park, Colorado for some rest and relaxation! At least I hope it's R&R. I've been waiting to hear from the State of Iowa regarding an unemployment matter at work and finally got the word yesterday that the hearing will be on June 27th. That means we can leave for Colorado on June 30th! I'm excited!!

I had a productive weekend. Did the usual -- pushed some dust around, did some vacuuming and laundry. I decided it was time to put some organization to some of my scrapbooking albums -- bad idea! I had pictures all over the place. I'm on my way to getting the books completed for my children (birth - 5 years of age) but it's been a trial!! I have a lot of pages in each of their books but they aren't all birth - 5. A lot of Christmas from whenever, other holidays, graduations . . . anyway you get the picture. I took Barb's book apart for starters. I have birth (including her announcements from the local papers) to about 1year of age. I went digging into my vast boxes of pictures and came up with a whole bunch that have never even been scanned. I spent some time scanning pictures, putting them in order and actually did get a couple of pages completed. I'm now working on the year (or partial year) we lived in Arizona. I'm finding that I'm doing a lot of journaling on each page. I don't even know if Barbie knows the whole story of why we did some of the things we did. I have a lot of pictures of this little tyke so there will be plenty of pictures in her book. We took a lot as we were away from home and wanted our families to see the changes in our daughter at that time too. We only lived in Sierra Vista for 6 months, but she changed a lot during that time. We did get to do some traveling when we lived there so have pictures of that too. I am learning that scenery pictures are great, but without people in them they lose something! I must remember that on my trip west this summer! Put people in front of those big mountains!!

I had a very nice surprise Saturday afternoon when my friend Marilyn called and said she was in town. We spent the afternoon and early evening together. Did a lot of talking. We have some catching up to do. We went out for supper at one of my favorite places -- Olive Garden. I enjoyed the meal and company very much. We'll definitely have to do that again!

My daughter was in Estes Park this past week and called on Sunday to give me all the updates. Old Fall River Road is still not open to the public to get to the top of the mountain but she said it sounded like it should be by July 4th. Still snow in some of the turns, etc. That's an interesting trip up the mountain! Beautiful scenery. She told me about a couple of new places we should check out so wrote them down and will probably take her advice and stop in! I'm afraid we're going to run out of time and money before we run out of places we want to go to!! Well there's always next year!!!

I'm going to a reception at the Greyhound Park this afternoon. All the award winners are invited to an informal presentation and reception. The food is great! Lots of people to talk to. I wrote our grant and received $9,043 that I requested for needed Head Start materials. We actually requested a little over $11,000 but I was happy with the $9,000 we received. We're already talking about what we will request for next year. I'm going to go with a couple of the guys from the D.A.L.H. group as they also received an award. Should be a nice evening.

Sounds like a warm weekend coming up. I need to do a little shopping to prepare for the trip but other than that my plans are to finish what I started last weekend and get some of my pictures where they belong. This should be interesting!!!

I don't have a father to honor on Father's Day. I think about mine a lot. Especially when Father's Day arrives. I miss him. He was one of my best friends! What a great dad.

You all have a good weekend. Until next time . . . .