Jeannie's Here!

Jeannie’s Here!

After finishing end-of-school tasks, middle daughter Jeannie and her daughter Cecelie just arrived from the long drive down from Freeport. We have had our late but brief mother-daughter catch-up chat, and they have gone to bed. I hadn’t turned off the computer yet, so decided I should come down here and blog on schedule.

Elijah could not come because he is in Kentucky with his youth group. Every year the youth go down and conduct a Vacation Bible School there, and they grow very close to the kids in that community. This is Elijah’s second year. Leslie did this for four years, I think. She will be arriving this weekend from her summer job at Belmont to visit her mother and sister here.

Gerald said Mary Ellen phoned and she and Brianna were spending the night in a motel since their Lake Saint Louis home is no longer their own. However, on Facebook, she said the moving van would not be arriving at their new home in rural Waggoner until Monday. After they close on the house on Friday, she and Brian will be doing some painting and lawn landscaping this weekend getting ready for the furniture’s arrival.

There is so much transition in our family right now that my head is spinning trying to keep up with everyone. Geri Ann will be playing softball this weekend in the Lake Saint Louis area, I think, but Mary Ellen and Bri will have gone to the Springfield area by then. No, maybe it is Geri Ann’s older sister Tara who will have a team playing in that area this weekend. (In the past when teams played at those area parks, everyone got to hang out at the Taylors, so we are going to miss that Lake Saint Louis connection!) But I do think I will finally get to see the new Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Springfield now.

Granddaughter Erin has moved to Kississmee, Florida, for the summer to play professional softball with the United States Specialty Softball Association (USSSA) Pride which partners with the National Pro Fastpitch League. I was so excited to learn that Kristin Schnake, just graduated from University of Georgia, has also signed to play with them this summer. Erin and Kristin’s enthusiastic personalities remind me of each other, so those two will have fun playing on the same team this summer. (Actually both Erin and Kristin will have fun wherever they are.)

USSSA Pride flew to Chicago yesterday and opened their season tonight against the Chicago Bandits. So far I have not managed to find out from Twitter if they won. Earlier results were not posted, and now it is storming outside—yes again—so I can’t get on.

Pride has a five-night run with the Bandits, and then a week from tonight, they play at Rockford (near Jeannie in Freeport) for five nights.

My sister and husband, Rosemary and Phil, were married 60 years yesterday. They do not want big parties in their honor, so their children surprised them with a family party on Memorial Day. They loved that. Family is what they are all about. I got to hear about it while we were in Amarillo.

Jeannie came to Woodsong with plans to help us find the owner of the stray dog. It really is a puzzlement why a dog with a collar would suddenly show up and stay around here for two weeks. When we arrived back from vacation, she was limping. But Brian said the previous weekend when she first showed up, she was not. So we do not know what happened to her. Cecelie is eager to meet her, and of course wants us to keep her, but that is not an option, so it is a problematic puzzlement.