Miss Hollywood

Today was a beautiful day in the U.P. The perfect day really, seventy-five degrees, sunny all day and no humidity. Our addition started the second half of August and today we got all the walls up. Grandma says our addition is the size of the first house she and Grandpa built in Albion. It's 20 X 24 and will consist of a dining room, master bedroom, and bath. We have been so blessed to be able to proceed with this at all. We had tried to sell our little house- 960 square feet and two bedrooms for three months and after much prayer and consideration, decided to stay out here in Ford River and hope to put up an addition. We have two acres here for the kids to run to their hearts content and enough privacy to not be able to hear the neighbors flush their commodes! Yes, the yoopers do have indoor plumbing these days! We have the greatest neighbors too- Ormal and his brother Delor who are about eighty years old and so willing to help out. They probably sound like the Oival and Toival of many jokes made about our Finnish ancestors. They were here when our house was originally built too back in the forties. Anyway, my dad and Paul have worked nonstop since Friday night on it.
Oh, the title of this was Miss Hollywood. Well, she and I were talking about my uncle's birthday party that we're going to tomorrow at the park. It's my Uncle Red's birthday and we were talking about what to get him. I explained as well as I could to Katia that we couldn't get him a certain mug on it that had the constitution and flag on it because he can't read. She said, "well why can't he read mom?" I told her that when he had been born, he had some trouble breathing and that he was just never able to learn to read because of it. So she says, " Well I could teach him mom, I know a quite a few words now." That just touched my heart and I had to share it. So many people judge him by his beligerance and never get to know him like I do and my own daughter sees the same sweetness in him. I guess I must be doing something right!