Table Rock Lake, June 25-28, 2009

Leslie & I drove down to Table Rock Lake for a long weekend of doing nothing, relaxing, swimming, & sunning. And did I mention doing nothing? That was the best part. We stayed at Vacation Lane Resort, in #2, which is the middle story in the first photo. All of the deck was ours, just as #1 right above was in the summer of 2007. This was a 1-bedroom apartment with a kitchen, bathroom, dining area, sofa bed, TV, and Jacuzzi. The deck faces the lake, so in the mornings & evenings we would take our meals out there. We didn't eat at a restaurant but once the whole time. The rest of the time we ate what we brought.

We used the pool the first afternoon we were there, and I got enough sun to turn me red for the rest of the trip. On Friday we went down to the boat dock on the lake and swam and sat and read. On Saturday we went down in the late morning and floated on our new floaties for a couple of hours. It was great!

Leslie's oldest friend Richie Poe and his family live in Harrison, Arkansas. We had contacted Richie before leaving, saying we would like to visit with them while we were so close to Harrison. Richie responded by reserving a table for us at Big Cedar Lodge at the Devil's Pool restaurant, for 7:00 Saturday night. We spent 3 hours eating and visiting with them. The two photos you see of them were taken out on the porch just outside the Registration building.

Big Cedar reminds us a lot of Tan-Tar-A, except more upscale than even Tan-Tar-A. No wonder people want to go there. Anyway, back to Richie and Becky. They have two daughters, 21 and 19, who are students at Harding. Richie is a dentist and has been in practice for years in Harrison. Though Becky has a nursing license and a real estate license, her passion is staying at home to raise their daughters, and she also volunteers at their church, creating curriculum.

Richie has been an elder in his church for going on a couple of years now, so we shared war stories about church leadership.

It was good to see Richie & Becky, and we look forward to more visits with them in the future.

We will be going back down to Vacation Lane Resort in the middle of August. Hannah will join us this time, and hopefully Kelly can come down, too.

Now we are back home and have to get back into the routine. But we had time to recharge our batteries, and we should be better able to go back to the mundane things of life for another month.

A Rage for Order

Dale here. The past four days I have been out in the new garage, trying to put finishing touches on a reorganization that will have all I need out in the garage, for yardwork and for woodworking. I bought a very good industrial-strength workbench from Sam's and pegboard from a local lumber store. I have also ordered a 50-piece set of pegboard hooks from Amazon.com, which will come in Tuesday of next week. I moved the radial arm saw out of the basement workshop and reassembled it in the garage. Today I also bought a shop-vac that hangs on the wall. Eventually all my power tools will be out here, as well as hand tools. Once I clear out the workshop downstairs, which is going to take several days, I will need to decide what to do with the empty space.

The tall black pole on the right side of the garage in the corner is a bike rack. When winter comes I will suspend the bikes off the floor on the rack.

In case you were wondering, there is still plenty of room to park the truck.

We'll see how long it takes to turn this order into chaos again.

Sweet potato cuties

I was checking in a new art magazine today and was struck by the similarity between the Holy Infant and our own precious babe. Noel may not have a halo, but he does have his holy sweet potatoes.