A busy month for Oma!!

It has been a really busy month, and I am way behind on my blogging. Melanie had a birthday on August 8! She was a great age . . . 22! My baby is a lovely young woman. Greg and I went to Columbus to see everyone and to take Melanie out to dinner for her birthday. I forgot my camera! It was unbelievable. So you will just have to imagine the wonderful dinner we had with Melanie and Drew and Brian and Emily and Katy and Greg and me at the Cap City Diner. There is no such thing as a bad meal there; and we got a GIANT piece of chocolate cake with a candle. We sang Happy Birthday and shared the cake and then went home to sit on the porch.

All summer long I have been working on a benefit for Sojourner House along with my co-chair, Michelle Reese, and a small committee of dedicated team members. We held our event at Pittsburgh's finest restaurant, LeMont, on Mount Washington overlooking the city on Thursday, August 16. It was called Jazz Explosion at LeMont because we had jazz musicians to provide music and entertainment and there were fireworks at the Pirates baseball game at PNC Park that evening. The picture here is of me with our new executive director, Joann Cyganovich, at Lemont last week. The evening was beautiful, and we raised over $30,000 for the families at Sojourner House. So I was very pleased.

On the physical activity side, Greg's boss gave us a membership to the Oxford Athletic Club in Wexford near the church! Greg and I have been going there and getting fitness assessments and starting to work out with the weight equipment. That is a lot of fun and makes some of the aches and pains go away! It also helps my golf game because it gives me some upper body strength. I signed up for a women's golf clinic on Saturday afternoons for 4 weeks. The second one is tomorrow on chipping and putting. Last week was on driving, and I ended up ordering a new driver from the Internet as a result of the clinic. I don't think I can afford to buy a new club after every session, but hopefully I will learn to use the ones I have a little better.

I have a couple of sewing projects in the wings. I made a skirt last weekend and started on a pants suit that I cut out last spring and never finished. But my biggest project is a winter coat for later in the season. I got some lovely wool/cashmere coat fabric from Sawyer Brook in a lovely geranium pink. It is very soft, and I can't wait to begin this project. But I need to finish the pants suit first.

Finally, we have been having dinner with friends and hanging out with our home group. My friend, Dori, moved to Seattle and gave me a number of her plants when she moved. So I have been enjoying my new adopted flower children. The rain over the last week or so has brought out a number of blooms for the late summer perennials. And one more week until Labor Day! Where has summer gone?