Getting back to her old self, Aubrey's on the mend!
 Derek sent a few pictures last night for today's blog along with the family's gratitude for everyone's support.

February 21, 2017 - Tuesday

40 degrees/clear skies/breezy

Pentoga Road

Our gratitude for all your prayers and well wishes for Aubrey and her family. They are working!

Isn't it amazing how resilient young children are? Aubrey's truly one of God's miracles, but then, aren't they all from the day each is conceived?

Aubrey is, indeed, on the road to recovery, well, if she survives the weight of all those stuffed animals. Hopefully, the little peanut who sings, dances, and makes us all laugh, will be home before we know it.

Revised an hour later...

We just got word. Aubrey's coming home today!!!

Again, thank you, thank you, thank you. 

It feels like springtime in these here parts, but we've been fooled before. Temperatures are to reach the mid fifties in the next two days before dropping like a rock with a potential major winter storm roaring in on Thursday night.

Just our luck, we've planned to spend this coming weekend with Sargie's sisters and husbands at a resort/hotel on the shores of Lake Michigan. I hope we make it. Once we're there, a mere seventy miles away, it can snow and blow all it wants. We'll be sitting in the jacuzzi watching the weather unfold on the other side of the glass. 

After Monday's walk, I spent the rest of the day in the shop painting another child's puzzle, cutting a number puzzle out for Grady, working on a big person's puzzle, and doing some turning on the lathe.

This one will be heading to northern Maine. Let's see how good your abstract mind is. What is it?

I'll be peeling away the pattern paper and painting this dinosaur in the next day or two. 



I had just started this farm puzzle when a blade broke. A European country pattern, it not only involves some fairly precise cutting, but also quite a bit of painting. I've numbered all the pieces and have a duplicate "road map," so I can put the thing back together once I'm finished.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the lathe.

The most difficult challenge for me is hollowing out the very bottom of a deep vessel. At Mississippi Brother Garry's suggestion, I finally screwed up my courage and stuck one end of the chisel rest inside so I might reach further. It worked.

Still making pencil holders, I experimented with a different exterior design, a double bottom lip.

The bottom was darkened by holding a piece of hickory against it while rapidly turning on the lathe, resulting in charring the trim.

I'll turn another holder then begin to cut the monogrammed letters that personalizes each. My biggest challenge is that no two be alike.

Sargie arrived home last evening after a busy day in the Vision Center. I fixed large vegetable salads covered with slices of sizzling pork steak. No one here went hungry.

My favorite optician closes tonight. Another long day for Sargie.

I made arrangements to leave the Blazer at the garage in town to have the front differential seals replaced. Fluid is suddenly pooling under the SUV if it sits for any length of time. Yooper Brother Mark has offered to bring me home. 

Other than that, there's laundry to do and projects in the shop to work on, but then there's that old plastic lawn chair sitting in front of the barn. That's the chair on which the afternoon sun shines, causing me to occasionally lean back against the warm wall of the barn and close my eyes. Seems the older I get, the easier it is to do.

Daily toils can be difficult on Pentoga Road, but then, that's the way we roll around here.

After all, a man's work is never done.

So are the tales from Pentoga Road...

Ivy is enjoying one of life's little pleasures, eating snow.