July 19th

For the past few evenings we have been saying goodbyes to friends. This is the hard part of leaving an area in which we have lived for nearly 30 years. Our hope is that many will decide that visiting New Mexico will now be a priority. Santa Fe has a lot to offer -- from a world class opera to a kind of wild rodeo (at least I think the rodeo is still being held). Last week was a huge Folk Arts Festival. In August the Plaza will host Indian Week and something else -- we've actually never been there for these events. Maybe we could all go together. There are also a ton of museums including the Georgia O'Keefe.

Continuing with my effort to show some photos of the house progress I've added another shot. This is from March and shows the crane lifting one of the beams that support the roof. Later I will add an interior shot from a couple of weeks ago that shows the finished look of the beams. They are pretty cool.

We are now about 10 days from departure and definitely are jumping from feelings of nostalgia to frantic efforts to get everything ready to exhaustion to excitement to fear to wonder. And I keep thinking I should be getting ready for next September's classes. Go figure!