Greetings from Dulles Airport.. Gabe and I are most of the way home from our trip to the USASAfinals in Copper Co. It was an interesting experience. I loved hanging out with Gabe and his friends.. though the whole ski area scene is just not for me.  . I’m so proud of Gabe getting to this level in the sport.. he’s come along way this past year with his MMSC coaches.  It’ll be fun to keep watching him progress.
    Despite the vacation.. a looming work deadline has me putting

in long hours.. and will for the next two weeks. THe same work thing

has been keeping me form sleeping. I’ just beat ..

Right now.. all I can think of is getting home..   I havent seen Diane in about 20 days !!!!  I can’t wait to see pictures and get stories from her trip. Gabe and I have had a good time .  on our own.. At the same time  I can’t believe how much I’v missed her .. Ah.. one thing I can post here is the birthday pres that Gabe, Max and I made for Diane.. I couldn’t talk about it last week because I Diane might have seen us doing it.
   The boys and I decided to start making Diane a word garden like the one our good friend Chris C. has made. He’s a stone guy.. and can sandblast words into anything .. In fact .. he made our first SamStones..     Gabe, Max and I picked soem words.. then Gabe and I went out and collected rocks from the rivershore and from along the Huntington

We took them to Chris’s.. he had a ton more rocks..

He and Kim cut our words out of vinyl stencil material and then glued them on to the rocks

Gabe and I went over to help him once..

Here’s gabe working on ‘family’

Chris also let us pick some preworded rocks out of his wonderful poetry garden.

We took the home and left them on the table for Diane when she came back on Sunday.. It made me happy to have that waiting for her.. becaus we wern’t there to be see her !