Going and Coming

Scott left for home on Wednesday morning.  We loved having him here and I feel that we got much closer to him than we have before.  As my sister told me recently, one on one time is one of the blessings of living away from family.

My cholesterol is elevated these days.  So says my doctor.  Knowing my aversion to drugs, she recommended that I take niacin.  Sometime during our busy summer months I began to feel lethargic and tired.  I thought it was all the extra activity that we experienced.  When the doctor asked me to take three times as much niacin, I really felt the effects.  Not only did I feel tired but also nauseated.  I finally considered that it might be the niacin and stopped taking it. Sure enough, in just a day without it I began to feel better.  I told all of this to my pharmacy friend, John Amini, who is an expert in supplements and such.  He said my reaction was not unusual and that 1500 milligrams was too much to take.  He suggested 500 milligrams at night, along with two doses of fish oil instead.  I've been doing that for several weeks now.  I'm not sure what that will do to my cholesterol, but I feel great again.

This coming week we are going to replace our living and dining room carpet with hard wood.  I'm so excited about it.  Once it is in, we can use our dining room with abandon; no more worries about white carpet.  The kids helped us empty out all things on hard wood as the installers are going to install new flooring, then refinish both old and new to match.  We have to be gone while they do it, so on Tuesday, after Audrey and kids leave, we will head to Seattle to visit Chris and Jess.  We will come home on Friday to new floors.  I feel so blessed!

Our empty living and dining rooms.

We talked to Gerald on face time and took this picture of him and Angelica.

We have two mature fruit trees in our yard that didn't produce much last summer.  But this summer is different.  We discovered to our surprise that we have a plum tree that produces delicious, sweet little plums.  The tree is full of them.  Right next to it is an apple tree that was empty of any fruit last year. This year it is loaded.  Not knowing what it would do, Layne didn't spray it for worms, so every beautiful apple has a worm.  Still, once the worms are cut out, the apples are very good.

Our apple tree is on the right and behind it the plum, both loaded with fruit.

Audrey, Isaiah and Allegra with some of the fruit of our labors on Saturday.

Audrey, Allegra and Isaiah arrived here for the weekend on Friday.  I presented them with the fruit tree challenge and they were excited to help me pick and bottle the fruit.  So on Saturday Isaiah led the way making applesauce.  Allegra and I made plum jam.  Audrey helped too.  We picked over the garden and, by Saturday night, we had bottles of fruit and a dinner out of the garden.  It was all such fun.  So much so, that they have agreed to work on the fruit some more tomorrow.  We'll see how that goes.