Happy fifth of July! I hope your 4th of July was happy and safe, and full of joy and laughter and loved ones. Julie came over on Friday night and is staying until Wednesday. Today is her birthday and she always takes her birthday week off for a vacation. It’s a slow time for her at work so she can afford to tak the time. The fall rush will come soon enough. And she will be starting back to school herself. She has only four more classes to complete her Bachelors’ Degree. I’m so proud of her.To finally be completing her degree at 54 years of age is just so indicative of her perseverance. LOL, and she still doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. That’s our sweetheart. 

Jim came over on Saturday and helped me get somethings done around here that I needed help to do. We widened the circle around the the new tulip poplar thatI had planted out front a few years ago. I wanted it easier to mow around and had bought some more mulch/potting soil around it. It looks a look better now. We basically just dug up the layer of sod around the tree. Dan from across the street was glad o get the sod to put in an area he needed it. Jim also got up on the sunporch roof and cleaned all of the leaves and twigs that had accumulated on there. I knew it had been collecting up there but wow —- there was a lot of stuff up there. Jim went on home Saturday evening because he was scheduled to bowl in a tournament on Sunday morning. Unfortunately for him, his partner didn’t show up and he didn’t get to bowl. 

Yesterday, I did my morning worship service. Ms. Kate and Julie stayed home. Jules wasn’t feeling that good so Ms. Kate stayed home with her. The service went very well and we had a full church which really surprised me. I thought that it might be a slim congregation what with it being a holiday where folks generally take off. But the church was full, and I can think of probably 15 or twenty people that weren’t there. Who do normally come. It was a blessing. 

We didn’t do anything at all yesterday except laze around here at home. We finally called Olive Garden and did a curbside pick up, brought it home and had supper. We watched the local city fireworks on television and that was a really good show. I was glad that they showed it on television because while it was a good performance, I would not have wanted to put up with the traffic of crowds. There is always several hundred thousand people that show up for it. 

Today is going to be another hot one and humid. I’m going to do some vegetables and smoked sausage on my our-door griddle today for either lunch or for supper. It depends on what the ladies want me to do. I guess I will also try to do some writing for my July 18th sermon and put that service together. Other than that we will just laze around and celebrate Julie’s birthday in peace and quiet. 

So here we are in the second week of July already and time marches on. I hope your July has started well and continues that way. Peace my friends.