The dog days of summer are definitely still here and I am ready for it to be fall. It has been a very hot summer with little rain and I am ready for the first cool night of fall. You know... the night when you open up the house windows, crawl into bed an bundle under the covers and breathe that fresh air. It can't come soon enough.

Despite the hot and dry weather that we have had recently, Reid's grass is still doing well. We are still making one or two trips to the cemetery each week to water his lawn (in addition to the trips the Hamer family makes). We probably don't need to go as much as the sod is pretty well established and I have laid down some fertilizer, weed control and grub killer this past week. While the grass is not 'perfect', he probably has one of the nicest lawns in the whole darned place.

Summer is over for Kristen. Thursday was her first full day back up on campus with meetings and next week, fall semester starts. She has finished up her huge paper for work and is making only small adjustments here and there. Multiple people have read and re-read the document and have told her that it is pretty much ready to go. I believe she has two more weeks for fine-tuning before she has to turn it in and I cannot wait for it to be here as the "Hey Chad, what do you think of this sentence?" comments have grown old. The paper is awesome and she is just trying to be a perfectionist now. :)

My project at work was postponed until my client's next fiscal year, so my team has been working on ramping down and closing up loose ends. For me, there hasn't been a whole lot of work and it has afforded for a very stress-free "summer break". My last day on the project is Friday (the 20th) and at that time, I will be on the "bench". At work, the time between projects is still paid, but my sole focus will be one of two things: finding a new project and taking some training (either online or in a classroom). In my five-plus years at Accenture, I have never had the opportunity of being on the bench as I have always had another project lined up before the previous one ended. Knock on wood; this will be a welcomed change and maybe I can get some "free" time off.

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on a "garden" in the back yard. This garden is in Reid's honor and I have tried to bring in some plants that were in the garden at Egleston. It was the only place in the almost ten months that we were in the hospital where we were allowed to be alone as a family. We all enjoyed it so much, that I wanted to have a piece of it in the backyard. While this garden is nowhere close to what Egleston had, I did plant about twenty five plants: hydrangeas, ferns, hosta, coleus, etc. I edged the garden in stone and ended up laying down about forty pieces of sod in the yard where the grass got chewed up while I was working in it. I plan on putting a birdhouse in the garden as the one at Egleston had quite a few from Lazy Hill Farm Designs. The one that I have my eye on is the Carousel Bird House with the green copper roof, but I am struggling with the thought of dropping nearly six hundred dollars on it. I may wait until Spring to put it in as summer is coming to an end. I am also looking for a small to medium sized garden figure - something of the child or angelic sorts.

Last Saturday, we had Barbara (Reid's primary nurse at Egleston) over for dinner. We drank some wine, had steak and lobster and enjoyed each other's company. It was the first time that we had seen her since Reid's funeral and it was really nice to see her.

As of late, I have been complaining about the fact that we never go to movies. It had probably been over a year since we last stepped foot into a theater... we made up for it this week. On Monday, we went to see 'Inception'. On Wednesday, we went to see 'Salt'. And last night, we went to see 'Eat, Pray, Love'. Inception was a great movie that left you scratching your head. Salt left you wondering if it was possible to get a refund on the twenty dollars that we wasted on admission. And 'Eat, Pray, Love' was just plain OK. Not sure if there are any other movies that we are interested in seeing right now, but from the previews, it looks like there may be a few coming around later this year, like "Little Fockers" and "The Company Men".

Anyway, I am going to wrap up this entry for today. Kristen and I haven't really done anything all day other than our walk around the neighborhood this morning and I am starting to get cabin fever. Not sure what it is that we are going to do... but I have to get out of here. :) Hope everyone has a good weekend.