October 20, 2015

Another interesting day, and one that ended with a very nice visit from some friends of ours. It started out, very much like many other days and progressed upward from there. The girls were at school on time, and Linda was taking care of the house. George was at work and Jason was playing one of his favorite video games and bouncing around on Face Book. This is how many of our days begin, and I guess we can expect to see many more of them.

An early arrival at the house was the two guys who were to finish working on the entry gate to Jason's property. The gates are looking very good and both the fence and the gates compliment each other. The two installers were here for the better part of today, and when they left the gate was working. It wasn't doing everything they had basically promised, but it was close, and like I said, the gate is now functional. The big issue missing is the connection to our phone system. It is supposed to be that when someone comes up, that doesn't know Jason's code, they can simply call in from the intercom box, by the gate, and we can open the gate from the phone. Because we're stuck with DSL the communications is a little more tricky so we have to have our communications guys here also, so that they can work together. I really do wish we had something better than DSL. They will come back once I have both parties coordinated to show up, here, at about the same time.

We also had a visit from TJ, of MLA (the contractor who built the house) and Kurt, the project coordinator/manager from Carrington, who was helping to insure the project was on time. Anyway, they came over to let us know that Home Depot had awarded a grant (the Gary Sinise Foundation had applied for the grant) for some outdoor items and we need to pick out what we would like. The only challenge is that what we can order has to be done quickly, so that it can be here by November 10, and we hadn't even had a chance to look at the choices, at that point. Fortunately, they came prior to the girls coming, so both Linda and I could focus on the discussion, and there was plenty of that. Working with Jason, Linda and I were able to come up with some suggestions, and it looks like we're going to be receiving a few more things for the house. If I understand it correctly, it looks like the  Home Depot grant is available for only a few of the houses, and we feel fortunate to be one of the recipients.

Finally, this evening we had two more visitors, Stephanie Lanier and Mike Shlitz (a Wounded Warrior) whom we got to meet some time back, and they wanted to come by and visit with Jason. Stephanie works for the Gary Sinise Foundation, and does a lot of the event coordination and planning. Mike tours the country, speaking as a motivational speaker, and is also a GSF Ambassador, and helps the foundation out where he can. It was really great to have them come by and spend some time with Jason, and they were able to even stay for dinner. We all sat around the main table with Jason sitting at the head of the table. Seeing as how today is Tuesday, that means we know already what dinner is going to be ... It's Taco Tuesday! Stephanie and Mike were able to stay for a few hours and we felt blessed to have them visit. As it was, Stephanie was our first guest to drive through the new gates. Thank you, for all the continued support and prayers. Take care and stay positive.