Yardwork...

My family knows a dark secret about me... I hate doing yard work. I am ok once I am started but getting there is a real chore. I love things that grow and look beautiful but I hate maintaining them. When I was 14, my dad suggested that I contract with the apartment building dwellers on our Army post in Germany to maintain their yards. For 10 - 12 dollars a month I mowed, weeded, and trimmed around several 6 and 8 family apartment buildings. It was a year round job so I shoveled and salted in the winter too - sometimes 2 and 3 times a day. Although I enjoyed having the pocket money it provided, it made for some long days, particularly in the wintertime. By the time we moved back to the states in 1971, I owned two power lawn mowers and an assortment of gardening tools that would fill Juan and Paco's pick-em-up truck. Don't know what ever happened to those... I think my distaste for the green-thumb stuff dates back to my first horticultural experience. I was 9, I think. We lived in Chambersburg, PA. My dad took me out one day to an overgrown lawn, pointed to the push mower, and said "This is your job." I strained and pushed for hours on that mower and made little progress. I was convinced that the push mower was developed during the Inquisition by Jesuit torturers to extract confessions. Anyway, I worked at that for over a week, I think, and never finished. The worst part about it is that now I have no children around to share this wonderful experience with... when we come to visit, don't ask.

More recent events...

I'll sort of fill you in on some things that have happened recently and try to be better at updating...

Brittany and Gabe welcomed Sydney, our fourth grandchild, to their home in March. She is a doll and we are glad to have someone close by to play with. Kiel and Melissa welcomed Bruce, our fifth grandchild and the first Christensen grandchild and great-grandchild, to their home. He sleeps in buckets, boxes, and sometimes on a scale (see their blog for more info on those).

We had two foreign exchange students from Germany stay with us in April. It was almost providential the way that it came about. Steffi and Julia live in small towns near Stuttgart and we were the last-minute fill as their host family. It couldn't have worked out better for us. They are great girls and were alot of fun to have with us. The volcano erupting in Iceland finally let them go home only 10 days late.