long time - no post

We now have our own Internet (YEA). After being promised that it would be ready in mid January, we finally have DSL. (I'm using that as my excuse for not keeping my blog up to date).

We have been living down here now since Sept and have been in the house since January, and we love it here. Although we don't have waterfront property we are greatly blessed by our friends who do. They take us, and our guests out for numerous boat rides and even allow us to borrow their new boat for the day so we can show visitors around the lake.

Shelley has been living with us since January and we have really enjoyed her company. Soon she will be finding an apartment in Lynchburg where she is to begin working for AREVA, as a Components Engineer within their Nuclear Power Division. It will seem very quiet here when she moves out. Lynchburg is only 45-50 mins away so we hope to see her fairly often.

Roy has been enjoying playing with his new toy - (there is too much grass to cut with the push mower).

Roy and Shelley have been spending some time trying to turn themselves into southern rednecks. So far they have spent a day at the ESPN Bass Masters Tournament held here at SML a couple of months ago and have visited the Nascar Speedway at Martinsville. They described the latter experience as sitting with your head stuffed inside a Bee Hive all day, but I think they enjoyed the day on the whole. The tickets were free as a random giveaway from Kroger's.

Weigh -in at the Bass Tournament

We have had a very wet Spring this year and everything is still very green. Often by this time of year the grass is brown and everything needs watering to survive. We have begun to do some landscaping and Roy has almost finished the area around the front of the house. I think he's done a great job.
As Roy will be officially retired as from next month we felt the need to put a couple of rocking chairs on the front porch - it's a great place to sit and eat breakfast or to watch the many thunderstorms over the mountains. The side of the house is also finished with planting. We're putting 20 year weed barrier everywhere to keep things as low maintenance as possible
We have as much wildlife down here as we did in NY. The deer of course eat anything they chose. This is the result of their bedtime snack the other night - our Pink Dogwood tree.
Nothing much has changed inside except that I have been busy making window treatments.


The guest bedroom is empty far too often. Hope some more of our friends and family will visit soon.