Updates and Some Good Friends

Billings, MT  High  93  Low 61

We are having record heat here in Montana. Normal this time of year is in the 70’s and we are having temps in the 90’s. Kind of like most of the rest of the country. And with all the heat comes the afternoon and evening storms. Eastern Montana has been hit really hard this year with hail and wind damage. And yesterday, a tornado touched down in Baker, MT (which is on the eastern border) and destroyed several homes. Be safe out there.

A couple of updates:

Retired Rod – we haven’t heard much of anything on how he’s doing. I do know the family is waiting for the radiology report. Other than that I just don’t have any information to pass on to you. As soon as the family wants to share some news with me, I’ll do an update post for him.

Scooter – our mighty hunter is hanging in there. She had another seizure last night and the cough from her congestive heart failure is worse. But her good days still far outnumber the bad days so we are treasuring every minute we have with her.

The house – don’t even ask. Our biggest issue has been finding somebody to do the dry wall for us. Our contractor has not been able to find anyone because the competent ones are all so busy with other jobs. So we have been trying to find someone on our own. I think we have somebody to do the job and we’ll find out for sure the first part of this week. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

We did get the new floor put down in the kitchen and laundry room which is definitely progress.

I took a break and met up with some of my high school classmates. That was a lot of fun. I actually remembered to take a couple of pictures but the one I took of Karen was horrible so Karen – I am not posting it. We will have more get-togethers this summer and I am looking forward to those.

Lynn

Nancy and Renee

Saturday morning Jim and I decided to go to the Strawberry Festival in downtown Billings. We were really looking forward to trying out a bunch of strawberry foods. They block off several streets near Skypoint (an art sculpture).

We found a good parking spot and as Jim stepped up onto the sidewalk, he caught his foot on a brick and fell down hard. Scared me because I thought he might have broken something. But he got right up and only had one spot on his arm that was bleeding. He was ready to go. However, today he is extremely sore and not moving very fast.

The Strawberry Festival was a waste of time (IMO). Not a strawberry to be found. The Lion’s club was offering a pancake and sausage breakfast and the strawberry syrup was as close as we got to strawberry anything.

Lots of vendors selling clothes, jewelry, art, crafts and other things. I am not a shopper and I certainly don’t want to buy anything. We don’t have room for anything. All in all – very disappointing for us. Other folks really seemed to be enjoying the shopping experience.

One fun thing happened at the festival. We were wandering around trying to find strawberries when we passed a booth with beautiful hair clips. Our wonderful friend Dana was manning the booth with one of her sons. Dana and Vaughn are full timers and travel with their 9 children in a toy hauler that Vaughn has modified to fit their needs. It made our whole trip downtown worthwhile to catch up with her. We hope to see them again this summer.