It's Friday!

These pictures are of a Liquid Amber Tree in our front side yard. First sign that Fall may show up after all. We have another one of these trees in our back yard and it's leaves are a combination of green and yellow. Our birch tree is starting to lose it's leaves. All three trees will be naked in a few weeks.

It's been awhile since I've posted. So much is going on around here that I just don't seem to have time to settle in at the computer for as long as it takes to write and to read my friends' journals.

This has been a pretty good week. Dennis saw his surgeon on Monday. The resident physician who assisted with the surgery removed the staples from the 5 little incisions. What a relief that was! When he saw his surgeon, Dr. told him he had recovered faster than just about any other patient who had such a big surgery. He released Dennis to go to work and to start walking again ~ he wasn't surprised when Dennis told him he had already been doing both. After we finished that appointment, we went to made an appointment for Den to see the Dr. who performed the scope for follow up on the Barrett's syndrome.

Yesterday was our 37th Wedding Anniversary. We went to dinner and had a really nice time talking about the old days and what we see ahead of us. Yesterday was also our grandson, Andrew's FOURTH birthday. We are celebrating with him on Saturday. I bought him a 41" long Tonka truck with a car hauling trailer. He saw it at Toys R Us a few weeks ago and told his mom, "I want it today. I don't want to wait until my birthday." Too bad, buddy. All good things are worth waiting for. Before we went to dinner, Dennis and I called him and sang Happy Birthday to him. He told us about his new scooter and Speed Racer movie. He's excited about his party on Saturday.

Our son is 1/2 way through his training at the Sheriff's academy. He's doing great. He passed his mid-term with a 96.6%. Right now, they are having fire arms training and scenarios to teach them to handle different situations. They are also learning driving tricks and they are practicing traffic stops with their classmates as both the officer and the guy getting pulled over. This week they are learning about domestic violence calls. These calls are the most dangerous calls he'll get. Highly emotional and heated!!! If you watch COPS you've seen what the officers go through. It's nuts. Next week, their class is going to the Los Angeles County morgue. They have a lot more and a bigger variety of cases than our county.

It's not for sure, of course, but it's highly likely he will go straight to patrol instead of working at one of the jails or in the court system. We are praying for two placements ~ both in safer communities. I don't know what he's praying for but as his MOM, I don't want to see him go to one of the more dangerous communities. I'm the insecure one.

I have so much anxiety about him being a law enforcement officer. This is NOT the job I would chose for him. I am truly proud of him and I know the job needs men of character out there serving their communities but when I think of him coming into such dangerous situations, it makes me cringe. I am praying for God's peace.

I'm sure most of you heard about the terrible fires in So. California over the weekend. We live about 12 miles, as the crow flies, from the Corona/Yorba Linda fire. We have friends who were very close to being evacuated from the Chino Hills fire. Dennis has designed remodeling and custom homes on 12 of the streets in Yorba Linda and Anahiem hills where there was loss and/or damage. It's so sad to see the stories on the news of such a tragedy. One young family lost their home and everything they own the day after their first baby was born. Over 500 mobile homes in Los Angeles county were lost and most of those owners are elderly people on fixed incomes. As of this morning, all of the fires were 100% contained. Now if the winds don't come up again, the firest aren't likely to ignite again. We are so lucky that our air quality has not been effected by smoke and ash. The wind has been blowing to the west which keeps the air here pretty clean.

More soon!