A Beautiful Day

What'd I say yesterday? And sure enough, here I am... :)

I had plans for today but they fell through at the last minute, so I ended up with the entire day ahead of me with absolutely nothing to do. The good news? It's a beautiful 70 degree day out today and I got to spend a good bit of the afternoon outdoors.

I explored the neighborhood. I've driven all through it a couple of times, but somehow you never truly know a place until you've walked it. Now I feel like I know my way around all the little side streets and such in the subdivision.

I walked to the pool and got a feeling of what it will be like this summer. It's an easy walk, about the equivalent of two blocks, I'd say.

I found an old friend's home. My best friend in elementary school lived in this subdivision, several streets away from mine, and I remember the fun we had biking to the pool, but I also clearly recalled walking to a park, and in my driving tours I've not been able to find this park. So today I walked out to her old house, thinking maybe I'd find the park nearby since we walked there instead of biked, and I found her house with a sign in the yard with their last name on it, so her parents obviously still live there. And I found the park tucked back away behind some houses, barely visible from the road, even walking. Not much of a park, though, a couple of basketball hoops is about all that's left of it, from what I could tell. The gates were closed for winter, so perhaps there was more to it out of sight -- when I was little, there was a big playground there, but it may be long gone as that was a good 25 years ago.

I walked over to the other side of the subdivision where I had seen an old cemetery on my driving tour. I wanted to take a closer look at it because I'd seen my grandmother's surname on one of the stones.

Interestingly enough, I spent Monday at the courthouse looking up land records, and had been looking for this particular surname. I recognized nearly all of the names in the land records as being various members of the family. But one name stuck out as being unfamiliar, and it turned up time and time again as these people apparently bought and sold property with some frequency!! My grandmother's brother was named Paul, and there were several transactions for Paul and Gertrude, his wife -- but then there were also transactions for Paul and Sarah, and I have no idea who Paul and Sarah were.

But guess what? When I went to the stone in the cemetery to see who with our family name was buried there, it was none other than Paul and Sarah! What a coincidence.

Now I'll be on a quest to find out who these people were and if they are any distant relation to us. :)

After exploring the neighborhood, I spent some time in the back yard, cleaning up leaves and such and getting to know my land a little better! After all, since the weather has been so horrible ever since I moved in, I've really not gotten to take a good look out there except from the window. With the warm sunshine making it feel like spring, it was a perfect day to look around the back yard and start deciding what I'm going to do with it in terms of trees and flowers and landscaping. And eventually a playground. :)

Unfortunately, our beautiful weather is supposed to last for today only, so it's back to winter tomorrow. But since I wasn't able to go to Florida or California for a break from winter, wasn't it nice of God to send its weather here before finishing our winter?

I am so ready for spring!