Katelyn's Final Week in Sadieville...Part 1

There is an old saying..."All good things must come to an end." While I don't like to look at all things that way, it definitely applies to the 'Summer With Katelyn'. We were on the downhill run of this summer. It was Sunday morning and Katelyn would leave the next Sunday morning.

When I feel overwhelmed with the enormity of something or I just need to feel a bit more organized, I make a grid. I knew Katelyn had all these things she wanted to accomplish before she left and we had not done them all. I knew Claude and I had things we wanted to do with her before she left and we had not finished our lists either. That means a 'grid' is definitely the way to get all three of us on one track.

My grid this time had 3 columns. The first was the date, the 2nd was the things we had all calendared to accomplish on that day (work, appointments, etc.) and the 3rd column was a list of things we wanted to accomplish. I eMailed the grid to Claude and Katelyn so they could tweek as they saw fit. Then we had a final product we all agreed on. The thing about this grid was the ability to say, "I have time here and can accomplish this item on the to-do list."  It just gave us the ability to do the things we committed to and accomplish the 'I want to do this" things that we could in our last week together.

Sunday, August 16th was Church. In the afternoon Katelyn and I read more in the Book of Mormon. We had a restful final Sabbath together.

Monday, August 17th we were off and running:

• Claude and Katelyn cut Nancy's grass
• Katelyn worked in the afternoon at City Hall
• In the evening Katelyn and I accompanied Claude to the Lexington 1st Branch Family Home Evening (with dinner at Max & Erma's prior to and ice cream at Dairy Queen after). Claude taught a great lesson about 'time management'.
• Sandi started on the 'apple project'. The first dehydrator was filled with apple slices and some apples were frozen in slices for pies and diced for apple muffins.

Tuesday, August 18th we kept on trudging along:

• Katelyn worked in the morning
• Claude had a City Meeting
• Sandi woke up feeling very under the weather. After trying to function a bit, I took some cold capsules with antihistamine in them and fell asleep for a nice LONG nap. I remained groggy the rest of the day and only accomplished rest and some computer time.
• Katelyn and Claude did manage to get one more movie in they wanted to see in the evening.

Wednesday, August 19th found us booking along (as we used to say in high school in 'my day'):

• Vernon Morris & Cindy Foster planned a surprise luncheon for Miss Katelyn at Ruby Tuesday's. We got Katelyn there and she was totally surprised. Vernon gave her a little ring that said 'FAITH'. It was really sweet and she was a very happy girl.
• Sandi sang at the nursing home in the afternoon with Papa.
• Claude and Katelyn went to the Church in the evening to teach the Young Women how to do indexing. Claude had already taught Katelyn and she was able to use her computer to share her knowledge with the girls. Claude said he watched her and marveled again at her ability to work with others in a cheerful, pleasing way.

Thursday, August 20th the house was full of apple scents and we were movin' forward:

• I managed to get more apples through the dehydrater and in the freezer. Katelyn took some to Cindy with my apple muffin recipe.
• Claude had several meetings through out the morning and early afternoon.
• Katelyn worked in the morning (her final day at City Hall).
• I did my Bridge Call with LDS Family Services from Noon until just before 1pm.
• I picked up Katelyn at 1pm and we headed to Georgetown for lunch at Arby's.
• Then we met Claude at the Church and Katelyn had her baptism interview.
• My evening was spent in Lexington. I sat under the pavilion at the Stake Center and worked on my talk for Katelyn's baptism. Then I had a Stake Council meeting the rest of the evening.
• Claude and Katelyn enjoyed one more night of 'guy food' while I was gone. They had steaks and watched some TV.
• I brought them a chocolate frosty when I returned from Lexington.

During all of this we didn't get the purse made and a ton of other things but we had fun filling our final week together. 

Our apple picking yielded 3 quart bags of dried apples, a lot of 1 cup bags of diced frozen apples for apple muffins, 4 gallon bags of sliced frozen apples for apple pies, 2 attempts at apple jelly ("It must be syrup 'cause jelly don't pour like that!!"  I've never had jelly not set before. I gave it two valiant attempts and they both didn't set. I shall call it apple syrup and feel a little success...just a tiny, 'y'ittle, bit.), and 6 pints of apple butter. I still have one more batch of apples to put in the dehydrater. They had to take a back row seat for one dehydrater full of tomato slices to dry.

Friday would be the arrival of family...