Shaping up!

The cleaning frenzy is almost complete:
floors mopped, walls scrubbed, windows washed, surfaces dusted, cobwebs vanquished, shelves built in the basement to house the books that started this whole thing, and the dog has even been bathed!
O.K. Paul! You can come home now! ;-)



Speaking of shaping up. It appears my running is also beginning to shape up! This was my 4th consecutive week of high 40s or low to mid-50 miles/week; 4th consecutive week of solid hill repeat workouts (this week was the most I've ever done: 6 each of 90-second hills alternating between a steep and a friggin' steep hill); and 4th consecutive week with a long run over two hours - with two of those runs over 2.5 hours. I'm starting to feel the hints of fitness again. Weeehawww! I've been asked (often) what I'm getting ready for. Bottom line is, I'd like to be able to run as long as I want, whenever I want, wherever I might find myself to be. I do love perambulating tourism. When I was doing my hill repeats this past week I ran into Mark Plaatjes' training group which was also repeating on the "friggin' steep" hill. He commented on my run to Michigan and I said it was the best way to sight-see ever. He allowed as how one could get a pretty darned good view from an airplane. But I must say, I do prefer an up close and personal view!

Summer catch up post - 3 of 3

TV room - with no more bookshelves

After the whirlwind of travel and festivities, it was time to buckle down to business. We've got this domino effect going on in our house that falls something like this:

• Kendall buys a high def TV for the family for Christmas.
• To make room for the new TV, all the bookshelves come down in the TV room; the books are boxed up; the boxes are piled into the guest room.
• We paint the TV room, put up the TV and it all looks so darned good with the newly painted walls that we decide not to put bookshelves back up. (Ah hah! says the astute reader, the guest room is now the boxed up book room.)
• Son Devon returns home to live while he goes for another round of college studies (this time in Communication/radio broadcast at Metro State College of Denver) and he needs that guest room. The books must find a new home.
  
• The only room in the house that can possibly house that many shelves is...the basement. The basement is so full of 34 years of accumulated Paula/Kendall/boys' stuff that it has been reduced down to winding paths through the piles...no floor space, no wall space...pretty much no space at all. The basement must be cleaned out! [Note: this was the first agenda item on my Retirement List...but it somehow got preempted by 1) preparing for that wee run to Michigan and 2) too much nice weather to spend days in the basement and 3) pretty much anything else that came along that wasn't cleaning out the basement.]
  

With the pressure on to get Devon into his own room (he and his stuff is crammed into Paul's room at the moment and Paul is due home for a visit in two weeks), the neighborhood offers up a great incentive: a neighborhood garage sale! So, for the last week, we've been industriously - nay, ruthlessly - going through our piles.

Two mongo garbage barrels of trash, two mongo recycle barrels plus a giant box of recyclables, and a back porch of yard sale stuff, we now have a pretty darned tidy basement ...at least on the scale of VaughanMiller tidiness - which comes nowhere near the Good Housekeeping Martha Stewart scale of tidiness - but we're rather proud of ourselves!

(Porch-full of yard sale stuff -on the left above- makes for rediscovered basement walls & floor -on the right!)

So, if anyone is in the vicinity of the Martin Acres neighborhood of the city of Boulder on August 15th or 16th, do check out the yard sales and make us an offer; we're willing to go very very low!

Summer catch up post - 2 of 3

Millers et al - brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles... the gang's all here!

Following the big dose of Vaughan festivities in early-mid July, we turned around for a Miller extravaganza in honor of Kendall's brother Steve's 60th birthday.
(In the picture to the right, Steve's daughter Amber presents the cake - which is decorated with "1949 Don't Ask" - while Steve's granddaughters Audrey and Kira look on.)




All the siblings were present, most of the kids of the siblings and many of the cousins. Middle brother, Andy, did most of the organizing in hopes that this celebration would take care of all the "60" parties for the brothers. Ha! He and two of his cousins celebrate birthdays within days of eachother (they were known as the triplets when they were little); I see another grand gathering in two years' time!

Brothers/cousins: Andy, Earl, Kendall, Steve, John
(Andy, Earl & John are the "triplets" - and all have the solar foreheads!)

The partying started in Fraser/Winter Park and continued on in the Denver area with a somewhat smaller - yet still boisterous crew. Those Millers sure do know how to have fun!

The next generation - yes, they do know how to have fun!
(Tony, Audrey, Cullen, Kira, Juniper & Sage)

Summer catch up post - 1 of 3

How time flies when summer is swinging! Here's catch-up post #1 (and that's "catch up", not "ketchup" ...I'm a mustard kindo' gal myself... which reminds me of one of my 'quotes of the week' on our family whiteboard: "You can't put a mayonnaise personality into a mustard suit" ...from Unwrapped on the Food Network).

So! Summer since my last post!

That would include our road trip to Michigan by way of Knox College where we visited our son, Paul, who is spending his summer doing one of his very most favorite things: mathematics....specifically, research in cryptography. The boy looks good - and happy. And mom here is going to be even happier when he arrives back in Boulder at the end of the month for a two-week visit before his fall term starts up!

me & frisky mom

After the visit with Paul, we headed up to Petoskey for some quality time with mom, family, friends, and the lake. 'Twas an unusual visit for us in that friends we typically spend lots of time with were way busy (work in the summer...what's that about?!) thus our visiting time was good but short, friends we often don't get to see were actually in town while we were there so we had bonus visits, we were able to catch up with relatives we hadn't seen for a couple of years, and the weather was really quite lovely - lots of sunshine yet not too hot or muggy - but the water, at 50 degrees, was way too cold to swim in. Best of all, my mom's health has significantly improved over the past year so we were able to take her out for quite a few excursions. Northern Michigan is a most excellent get-out-and-about kind of place and we did just that!

Murphey & Vaughan cousins

Yi Lu, me, mom, Aunt Helen,
Dan, Kathleen, Dave

too cold to swim -
but great for hunting Petoskey stones