Things are going well on Halsell Hill. Lou finished her report on the manuscript she was reading and is now eager to write more on her memoir. We received the itinerary on granddaughter Vanessa's mission trip to India. She flies from Lubbock Sunday morning to DFW then to JFK and from there to Mumbai, India a fifteen hour flight. She is going with a church group from Lubbock to work with women in India. So keep her in your prayers until her safe return home August 13.

We are looking forward to our granddaughter Ashley's wedding August 4. We will look forward to being with all the relatives for the affair. We will miss Vanessa who had scheduled her mission trip before the wedding was scheduled.

I have been doing a lot better physically. I have been hoeing grass burrs from the yard and still walk 2 miles each day. I got the ladder and harvested peaches from both trees. We have been eating some everyday. Lou is not improving as rapidly as we had hoped. It is a struggle for her to walk to the front gate each day. Tuesday night we went to the Cross Plains Library fund raiser where Carol Walt told about her romance book DREAMING IN ITALIAN. We enjoyed her presentation, but it lasted a little long and Lou's back was hurting. It took the next day to recover.

The wildlife are doing well. Momma Fox has weaned her four kits and they still run around like pups. A rabid fox bit a woman in Abilene but ours seem to be healthy. We haven't seen any fawns this year. The deer seem to come in at night although we see a doe occasionally at the feeders.

On a literary note Lou just finished Stephen Carter's NEW ENGLAND WHITE and handed it to me. She has been telling me quotes for a week. It is a thick book but she couldn't quit until she finished it. It is a murder mystery with a black university president married to a wife who had dated the murdered economics professor. They have four children and a weird mother of his wife. I have just read a few pages.

Lou is having a ball reading her files about HER WORK while she works on her memoir. She is finding old letters and reviews that bring back a lot of memories. She is also reading a manuscript for TT Press. Every morning she reads the Bible and has worked her way thru the NT to Revelation. She isn't sure about that book. She also reads a chapter of AMAZING GRACE. Of course during the day she reads the Abilene Reporter-News and Wall Street Journal and comments on the editorials. This is in addition to magazines like Poets and Writers, Newsweek, etc. There was a cartoon with the cut line "I am a voracious amasser of reading material". She clipped that cartoon because she relates.

She is still having a lot of pains that come and go. My pains have decreased but not gone. Yesterday I emptied the burn barrel and today I had to saw off two broken peach tree limbs. A storm blew thru yesterday for a few minutes and two lower limbs on the Alberta peach tree were on the ground. I had picked peaches from both trees the day before using a ladder. We haven't waited until they are completely ripe because the animals will get them. We have several pounds of peaches in paper bags ripening. And my arms are still working.

I can't believe my last post was July 4. Since then the rain has stopped, Lou is working on her memoir book, and we had a rare weekend with both of our children and their spouses visiting with no grand or great-grand children.

Kathy and Keith came Friday night with Mark and Mary Kathryn coming Saturday. Keith sharpened the blades on the tractor mower and used both the tractor and the riding mower to mow all around the Halsell House and our house. Mark and Mary Kathryn brought hand picked blueberries from up near Gainesville plus peaches from the Parker County Peach Festival. We had blueberry pancakes for breakfast Sunday after eating fresh hand frozen peach ice cream Saturday afternoon. Sue and Ike came out to enjoy that treat.

All of them came to Church Sunday to hear our new pastor, Rev. Margaret Friend, preach. They approved. Kathy cooked a specially flavored pork roast with potatoes and a tasty gravy for Sunday lunch. We had Lou's brownies to go with the overnight frozen peach ice cream. Lou and I were the fortunate recipients of enough peach ice cream to last all week.

Lou is really busy. She is cleaning out and throwing away stuff. She has a manuscript to read for TT Press and has been researching her files for information on her memoir chapter on HER WORK. She has a lot of photos, letters and files on all of the authors as well as the many letters from Bill Shearer encouraging her on that book. Should be a good chapter.

We are back walking. Lou is walking to the front gate and sometimes down the highway a little ways. I am doing the 2 mile trip. Saturday morning Keith walked with me while we watched my slim daughter jog all around us. She has lost a lot of weight and is looking more like her high school days as a drill team captain.

We had all wanted to attend the Cisco Dinner Theater production of THE SANTA CLAUS BANK ROBBERY, but it was sold out for every performance including an added day. We can remember the original production.

Dotty, Mark's dog, enjoyed running and playing but the fox family didn't appreciate her intrusion on their territory. She didn't bother them and they didn't come out while she was here.

We defied the odds and made a safe trip to San Angelo to celebrate the Kelton's 60th anniversary. More traffic deaths occur on July 4 and secondly on July 3 than any other days of the year. You would think drinking on New Years Eve would be the deadliest day.

We didn't fully participate. We got the the Cactus Hotel early and found that it is the parking lot for the United Methodist Church. We didn't know it, but the Kelton's were renewing their vows in the Methodist Church at 5 p.m. At 5:30 they came into the large downstairs foyer of the Cactus for a program. Lou most enjoyed the entertainers singing Edelweiss requested by Austrian, Ann Kelton. They said Elmer's favorite was Streets of Laredo, but opted instead to sing a love song that was more appropriate to the occasion.

We had hoped to see a lot for Folklore members, but we were fortunate to run into Elaine and Blaine Williams from the Writer's Audio Workshop in Austin. They had picked a table overlooking the foyer area. I spotted my LIVESTOCK WEEKLY editorial boss, Steve Kelton and went down to meet him and get introduced to his new wife. She was on crutches from an accident in their new swimming pool. We hoped to see Fran Vick and Judy Alter, who told Lou they were coming but if they were there we missed them. The crowd seemed largely to be Elmer and Ann's friends all about our age. Didn't see Preston and Harriet Lewis. We did see Ross McSwain and his wife who are from San Angelo. Ross has been active in the Folklore Society for years and a writer for the Times.

The dinner was a special chef preparation. For Elmer there were fajitas and for Ann apple strudel. The dinner wore us out so we opted out of the huge open air celebration by the San Angelo Symphony orchestra playing patriotic tunes with a finely timed fly-over by a B-1A from Dyess Air Base plus cannons at the appropriate time all followed by a huge fireworks show. It looked like there would be rain, but the paper said there was a small shower about 30 minutes before the concert that cooled things off and was appreciated. The program was dedicated to Ann and Elmer and the servicemen. We read about it in the San Angelo Times the next morning. We drove back under clouds but only ran the windshield wipers a few miles with no heavy rain. Our creek is still flowing.