Updating, finally!

Blogging hasn't been top on our list of things to get done lately, as you may have noticed. Lots of things have happened since October when I last posted, and I am going to put on a medley of pictures following this entry.

Dave (with my occasional help) worked hard at getting the basement of the mission property ready for a new cement floor. This consisted of breaking up the old cement with a jack hammer, loading the cement chunks into the wheelbarrow, and throwing them out the basement window into the tractor loader bucket. Then he lowered the floor level about 14 inches - digging out the dirt and also shoveling it out the window into the tractor loader bucket. This was a huge undertaking - but we felt it would be worth it to enable the rooms there to have higher ceilings and regular-height doors. A contractor poured the cement floor just before Christmas. I will put on a picture of the building as it looked last fall after we got some of the rock on the front. (I should clarify that we are remodeling it into a duplex apartment - we refer to it as "the mission" as our pet name for the project - since it used to be an old church building, and has a "Spanish Mission" look to it.)

Just before Thanksgiving I decided to buy out a quilt store that was closing in Wheatland and open a store in Lusk in the store building we had purchased on Main Street. Dave (with my occasional help) has been working on getting that building remodeled and ready for the store. Bruce, Chantry and Amy are here for a few weeks helping with the project. It is hard to say at this point when the store will be ready to open - we are thinking maybe around the first part of March.

All our kids and their families were home at Christmas time - made it in just before a blizzard closed all the roads around here for several days. We had a wonderful time together - I'll post just a sampling of pictures from our time together.

January 7, 2010, Loretta Soderberg, Dave's sister, passed away at Hospice in Casper. Paul (her husband) cared for her at home (which is near Lusk )with help from the home health nurse until 1 or 2 days before she died. We are still trying to grasp the fact that she is gone - glad she is no longer suffering but missing her and her cheerful, steadfast kindness. Some of the following pictures are of Dave's siblings and families that came and stayed with us from out of town at the time of the funeral.