Mom & Dad and our busy life

My faithful readers might be wondering when a new post will appear.  Since we came home everything we do revolves around our home base.  So I will tell you a bit about the things that happened and what we are doing right now.

First off, tomorrow, Monday April 3^rd is my parents’ 69^th Wedding Anniversary. They live in Germany! I wish them happiness and many more returns.  Sadly though, my Dad, who is 92 years old, suffered a stroke last week and he is still hospitalized so the celebration will be somewhat brief when my Mom, who is 89 years of age, and is suffering from several ailments that hinder her mobility, goes to visit him.  On the brighter side, my sister has flown to Germany to help out. She is a Registered Dietician who knows a lot more about these things than I do. But most importantly Benno’s brother Harald and sister-in-law Jutta, were visiting my parents when it happened. Jutta had been a RN during her professional life and due to her quick reaction to get him immediately via ambulance to the hospital, my Dad’s recovery is good.  I mention this, because I will be flying out to Germany for a few weeks to assist my parents after my sister’s return to Canada. 

I took the below picture of my parents in 2008 when they were celebrating their 60^th wedding anniversary.  Benno and I had flown to Germany from Panama for the occasion meanwhile leaving our boat in the Shelter Bay Marina waiting for our return and to resume our travel around South America.

Since coming home Benno had been immersing himself into a few projects that involved the use of his new lathe so I didn’t get to see much of him for several days.  I could tell he had fun creating these items and I’m totally amazed at the transformation from a chunk of metal to a gleaming new article. Next time he makes something we will remember to take pictures of before and after! 

Our oldest granddaughter, 7-year-old Heidi had a school project that could use our help.  The class had been studying People and Environments and Global Communities. A story they read involved a Flat Stanley. In the story, Stanley is flattened by a falling bulletin board. He doesn’t seem to mind and neither do his parents. The incident proves to be convenient, economical and fun. In the story, Stanley is mailed on vacations, rolled up like wallpaper, and flown like a kite.  In class, the students made their own version of Flat Stanley and we received a Flat Heidi in the mail.  Our chore now involved taking Flat Heidi to interesting sites around our area, telling her about the community and answering many questions before sending her on her way back to her school.

I have included a couple of pictures of our assignment, which, by the way, took us to several nice outings.  That was a great way to get us out of the house.

In the fall last year we had purchased a piece of property from our neighbors. We have a chain-link fence dividing these properties and this fence will have to be taken down.  However, there is no rush to it, but we would like to put up another shed on the new property and this project will take some time.  Over the last few days we have had a lot of rain with standing water all over the place so the ground is pretty soggy.  Benno decided to get the project started today by removing part of the fence so we have direct access to the property instead of going there from the street.  This whole new job of making the foundation and building the shed and new fence I’ll probably document right here for any of our readers that might be interested to follow along. So keep reading.

While Benno did the digging, I decided today was a good day to make some German type Cabbage Rolls.  You know you can’t just make a couple, at least it wouldn’t be practical, so here we are, just two people and 14 cabbage rolls!

Please keep checking my blog.  Hopefully there will be better news next time and I thank everyone for your patience so far.