Happy Fall Y'all!

Happy Fall Y'all! It will officially be fall at 4:18 but I will probably be getting ready for Bible study then, thus the early greeting. I won this beautiful fall plaque at Bunko the other night. When I got home from playing, I put it on my front door and have been wishing Happy Fall to all my neighbors along our hallway since.

I have some pictures from the weekend. I had thought about doing some before and after pictures but decided just to post after pictures, such as they are. Something that so saddened me while doing all this cleaning is the fact even in death my mother in law didn't have a voice. Her pictures from high school and early married life shows a woman with very few smiles. As we cleaned out drawer after drawer of ministry magazines and her notes from sermons and classes, she never made a personal note on anything. Sometimes I hear something and as I am writing it down, I will add wow or at least write something down how this point is effecting me. No such notes in her Bibles. Just copious note taking. She seemed to like teachings and sermons that had action or steps to them. We were surprised that as close as Jack and Rosemary were that their cards to one another didn't reflect that in their own words. They chose the card to do the talking, they didn't add their voice to them. Mostly all cards were signed Love, Rosemary or Love, Jack. I happened upon her workbook from the Bible study Breaking Free. Since that is such a powerful Bible study, we hesitated to open the workbook but Roy wanted to see if he would gain anymore insight into his mom. She only answered the questions directly related to a verse. Not one time did she answer or use a code answer for the application and personal reflection questions. I did find it interesting that I found some little booklet type things that one might see at the check out in the grocery store in her bathroom. One was how to change your personality and the other was helpful hints for dealing with clutter. She also has several landscaping books and we found 6 or 7 catalogues complete with business cards from Pennsylvania House and Ethan Allen. Throughout the house are tapes and books all dealing with nutrition, health, self help and the like. There were a couple of miracle prayer cloths from several well know TV evangelists.

Nothing really is there that says who she is, but we saw who she wanted to become. I do know that Rosemary didn't get played. She was careful with money and investments. She knew things about her sons and their families. She may not have said it much out loud, but if given the time, she did have a voice and opinions of family, the world and God. Rosemary and I got along, there really wasn't too many conversations between us. She and Roy had great conversations in person and on their Sunday night phone calls. I don't ever remember her laughing or smiling too much and of course my personality is the exact opposite of hers. So if I responded with a funny, she would look at me and say, What? I'd respond, oh I am just being funny. Sometimes she would respond back to me, why?

Roy's father was always on the move, wanting to learn new things and taking up all kinds of hobbies and interests. Almost all the collectible stuff in the home is from him and his passing interests. You hear a lot of his voice in the things he left behind. Maybe that is why Rosemary couldn't bear to part with anyone thing that had to do with Jack.

This pic is of Roy eating ice cream after our fabulous dinner at Outback. We were upgraded to a suite at the Holiday Inn Express. Who knew that HIE had suites?!? Of course staying at a Holiday Inn Express is supposed to make you smarter. I think I got dumber. Saturday morning I told Roy that there wasn't very much hot water. Then I waxed poetic and all spiritual that this time last year we didn't have electricity or hot water because of Ike. When I found out that Roy had tons of hot water and there hadn't been any problem with the plumbing at all, but the problem was with me and my inability to read instructions. Let's just say, all that poetic and spiritual stuff went out the door soon after that.
Here is the kitchen with a bunch of dishes and the like on the counters. There is still a bunch of dishes in the cupboards.

This bookcase looked like it had vomited its contents all over the floor before I began organizing around it. When Roy saw the living room for the first time on Friday night, he looked so overwhelmed and sad. Peggy thought he might just cry and so did I. On Saturday I began arranging stuff in some semblance of order. All that work at the church trained me to organize with a big picture and end in mind.

This bookcase also is more organized than when we found it. I decided all the books needed to be in one place. This is only the beginning of the books. There were a lot more before we finished.

Peggy will vouch that this is totally a 100% better than what she saw on Friday night. Of course I did not add the office picture or any of the bedrooms. The realtor is having an estate sale person contact us soon with info and dates.