Ooowweeee! You're amazing. Sheila, I must tell you, I value your cd you sent me so much I am saving it. I never save anything. If I love it, I use it and enjoy it to the greatest extent. The tide pictures are so so so very special to me I am saving them for the icing on the cake. The house is nearing its finish and I cannot wait to get them printed out big as day (that's Southern for humongous!) and put them up in my grey blue bedroom, sea mist color. Envisioning those walls which look like the water moving (its texture and color) and those prints, I see peace and accomplishment. Right now it's just half finished room that has blue walls. One must be tasteful when choosinng items adorning walls when selling. Your prints and Mama's paintings will be it. You are gonna sell my house if I have to sell it.

The letter was written around Christmastime, and I can tell you that those pictures weren't taken in December on the Maumee, a river I know well. Hard to tell if the pics have any correlation to the letter. They are enchanting, for sure. Camping by the river used to be a very common thing here, and people were doing it even when I was a kid. The banks were for all practical purposes used by the public, with no regard to landowners and as long as you stayed close to the water, nobody said anything. Old newspapers here speak of groups and clubs taking off for picnics on river islands and my Uncle twice removed even donated a park to the city by the river for such use. Even until the 1930s, matrons wore clothes similar to some worn by the gals in the pics, but they are obviously older because even the young woman with the baby is dressed in Victorian garb. They look authentic the letter's age to me.

We live in a sever fire zone in the Southern Sierras I have a complete household inventory on zip drives. We update regularly and I do take pictures of every open drawer, cabinet nook and cranny in the house, garage and out buildings. Even with a high deductable I wouldn’t anticipate any problem getting the full value of our content insurance. According to our insurance agent pictures are a great tool along with any documentation. My DD has a copy as does my DGS plus the pictures are on my iPad. A few years ago I made some phone calls and found out I could get copies of purchase history from places like Costco and such, I can go back years on my ordered from Amazon, the same for eBay and I can get copies of back visa bills for I think 5 years. We put everything possible on the Visa card. I keep any important recipes in a safe we have in our grandson’s home out of state along with our personal papers and original trusts I keep copy’s here at home. We have been evacuated several times in the last 30 years we have been very lucky but we know people who last everything and the fireproof safes they had were mostly gone the ones that were intact only has ash inside. I know one person that her insurance company made her list everything with date purchased and cost. I spoke to our State Farm agent and he said some times they will do that and sometimes not. One time a water dropping helicopter came down so close to our house it shook it badly enough to break a water pipe. Our insurance paid for an 11 day stay at the Marriott while everything was fixed the only issue we had was the Marriott was 60 miles down the mountain. All we can do is keep everything cleared around the house, have an evacuation plan and make sure we have everything possible on our insurance policy to cover us. Make sure you have building code upgrades and demolition some policies don’t automatically include them. A safe deposit box in a vault at a bank is great if your bank is not in the fire zone plus anything you have in the box is not insured by the bank and may or may not be covered with your home owners insurance.

Well, we're not leaving the lamps--they're packed and in the garage waiting for the movers to come load the truck tomorrow! We have left the garage and basement shelves they requested (which cost at least $900 to replace). We did our pre-close signatures today--closing will probably be Wednesday or Thursday instead of the scheduled Tuesday (issues at their end, not ours). Our agent told us that he just got a call this week from the other buyers who were interested to ask if he thought it would close. They were going to offer about 5% less than we listed it for, and they asked him how much it went for. He told them "close to list" :-) The other houses in our subdivision are still on the market--but they all went way beyond what the comps could possibly support (which I understand because I know what they paid in 2006, but that's not really a factor in what someone will pay in 2017, unfortunately) Once we get settled and unpacked in our rental, we'll start the process of finalizing things for our build! (For those following that, the re-zoning and annexation went fine. The entire board was like "Welcome to <our town>!--and tell your friends!" We didn't expect any issues--taking a half acre plus lot that close in and building a single family residence is exactly what the neighbors would have hoped for. Only one neighbor came to the advertised hearings, where they would have been free to object--and that was just to say hello and introduce herself.)