The kids were enjoying their last week of summer vacation before heading back to school. Allison mostly spent her time doing laundry and packing after returning from Virginia Beach. Classes started for both kids on Monday Aug 29th.   She headed back to Salisbury the weekend before classes started. She wanted to miss the Freshman move in day by heading back on Thursday, but they bumped the date due to the grand opening of their new campus library. The building is huge and also houses study and research areas and takes up a big portion of the campus. Fortunately since Allison lives off campus, she was not terribly affected. She enjoyed meeting up with her friends over the weekend before heading back to class with a trip to Ocean City. Unfortunately, on the way back, their car was involved in an accident. Fortunately everyone is ok, even though the car was considered total. Tom and I were just glad no one was hurt. It gets a bit crazy down near the beach.

Speaking of car accidents at the beach, Tom dropped my van off over the weekend to make repairs to the taillight and to repaint the rear door hatch which was damaged when we were in Virginia beach. Also, the van had some bubbling paint from a poor touch up they did at the dealership when we bought it, so Tom decided to go ahead and have it repaired. We have tried to get the dealership to make the repairs on their ticket, and we have always been told it is past the warranty or just not their problem.  So I was without a van for a week.

We spent the weekend around the house. I was busy doing my mom's laundry and dropped it off on Sunday afternoon. I brought mom over to our house in the evening for a rib dinner. On Saturday, Tom, Scott and I were busy doing yardwork. We finally had a break in the hot weather and were able to get out to trim some large limbs off the trees in our yard. After Tom cut the grass and edged the walkways and curbs, Scott and I were on clean up duty. We also tackled some large tree limbs that have been overgrowing in our yard and blocking sunlight to the lawn and keeping other trees from growing. Most of the trees are the maples that the county planted along the street, but I have only seen them trim the trees once in the 20 years we have lived here. They could still use some trimming, but the branches are so big we spent most of the day cutting them up into more manageable piles for curbside pick up. Turns out the neighbor next door wants to hire a company to top one of the trees in our backyard as it is blocking his satellite reception. Wonder what that will look like. Another bonus of working outside all day is the chance to get caught up with our neighbors. Unfortunately, we discovered that our good friends, Dan and Gloria had to miss their vacation to Niagra Falls to travel to Ohio as Gloria's mom had a stroke. We also found out that our next door neighbor's little Chihuahua Jasmine passed away at 17, and their son Daryl(our age) is getting divorced from his 3rd wife. Not a good weekend for our neighbors. I have been trying to convince our elderly neighbors who just lost their dog to move to South Carolina to be closer to their daughter and downsize to a condo. Paul had a stroke last year that left him blind in his left eye. And he still drives(just a few minor accidents). Oh boy. His wife Phyllis was just diagnosed with thyroid cancer and underwent successful surgery to have the tumor removed. Now their divorced son wants to move into their house. You never know what you will discover when you spend time outdoors in your neighborhood! On Friday night we enjoyed an outdoor picnic/BBQ with the Boy Scout parents and leaders. It is nice to get together with just the adults and chat about anything and everything. Including an upcoming Star Trek convention that Tom heard about from our Scoutmaster's wife! But really it is mostly a disguise to get parents to sign up as coordinators for upcoming scouting events. It works every time. I signed up for next summer's trip to Six Flags. I put Tom in charge of the cooking for the adults. That will probably be Scott's last scout trip as he will turn 18 next year!

Before heading back to school, Scott enjoyed the annual water gun fight with his Boy Scout troop. He wrapped his cast in a waterproof sleeve and off he went. Prior to that, I am happy to report that he finished his last required Eagle badge, Personal Management!  Now he can just focus on his Eagle project. Besides doing yardwork, he and Tom got out on Sunday to build a second planter. He will build one more portable planter and has scheduled a date to deliver them to my work place and spend the morning with fellow scouts doing fall planting with some of the residents. He is getting closer!
And he was very excited to return to the doctor to have his cast removed! Even though the doctor recommended he wear a brace for the next 3 weeks, Scott is too happy to have his arm back! We dropped into Staples to pick up a few school supplies for him over the weekend along with most of the rest of the county! The lines were long. But it also gave Scott some time to practice driving while we ran errands. He has really missed quite a bit of driving practice with the cast in the way.

I also had a very busy week at work. It was my OT student's last week. I was busy writing up her evaluation. I have also been busy preparing a presentation to my coworkers on Cognition and Standardized testing. In conjunction with my discussion, my OT student was busy preparing examples of activities that can be done with patients with various levels of dementia to implement into our Activity Department's schedule at the facility. I bought several plastic bins and she and I filled them with lots of fun activities, along with a notebook that she prepared with instructions and examples of crafts, games and activities for the staff. Then she did several presentations to the nurses and Activity aids at work. Of course you cannot have a presentation without food! Our rehab department had a pot luck on Thursday during my presentation(I cooked pizza for everyone), and we brought in lots of desserts to bribe the staff at my student's presentation. I worked that Friday on her last day so we could get everything done. What a whirlwind week! Now it is back to reality for me as I pick up my patient treatments again(solo).

Sending out a Get Better Soon to Stacey ! She recently had surgery on her foot.

Also a Big Happy Birthday to Sarah Seitz! Sounds like you did a great job celebrating!