A blessed good Monday morning to you. Are you ready to start a new week? I think Ms. Kate and I are, --- although the only thing on the agenda that I know of is to go to Mr. Bob's house and raid his refrigerator of squash. He has squash coming out the wazoo! We picked up a few last week from him and he showed me his squash plants. He only planted two plants but they are huge. I'd guess that they  would easily fill an 8X10 foot space. I've not seen squash that looked that healthy and had that many squash coming on. We saw him and Brenda (his daughter) at church yesterday and Brenda said she was about "squashed out"! But, Ms. Kate says that maybe we could pick up some and put it in the freezer to put in vegetable soup at some later date. While we are out, I'd like to find a place to get some corn on the cob too. And maybe even some larger tomatoes. I love BLT sandwiches but I want the tomato to be a big slab. What we raise are only about two inches in diameter and while they are good --- I want a slab to cover the whole sandwich. Yeh, I know --- picky, picky. 

We had a good weekend. I did the sermon at church yesterday and it went well and was received. People said all the usual nice things that are said to the plaster as they leave. But, the comments sounded sincere and several said I am welcome to fill in any time. I loved being able to do that; although, as hard as I worked on that sermon, it reminded me why I retired from the pulpit. 

I mentioned to you Saturday, I think, that maybe Ms. Kate and I should look at a September vacation. Well, I found an advertisement about the annual fall round-up of the buffalo in Custer National park. It is going to be held on September 29th starting at 0600 hours. They will be rounding up approximately 1300 - 1600 buffalo. It will be a sight to see, smell, and experience. I told Ms. Kate that I would really like to finally get to do that; so we spent most of Saturday planning a vacation around that event. All told, I think we will be gone about two weeks in and around Custer, Yellowstone, and the Grand Tetons. We will have all the time in the world to just ramble around out there and see everything we want to see. I'm excited about the trip and my chance to "Cowboy-up"! This has been a "bucket list" item for many years. We still need to look at our travel on the front end and the back end of the trip but that won't take a lot of planning, That is just a matter of route and finding hotels. One of the places we intend to stop on the way home is Laramie, WY so we can go to our favorite restaurant, "The Cavalryman" We discovered this place by accident many years ago and now we arrange our travel so that we don't miss it when we travel in that direction. It's expensive but it is such a treat. 

I need to go out and fill bird feeders and maybe even pull some weeds in the garden before it gets altogether too hot again today. I hope your start to a new week of challenges and blessings goes extremely well. Never forget for one second that no matter where you are or what you are doing, God is there beside you and the love of Jesus Christ will wrap itself around you. What more could you ask for? Shalom.