Thanksgiving Day

Just a few pictures I took at Thanksgiving. Hazel really attached herself to David. I love the picture of Noah. Donna looks very happy entertaining for Thanksgiving and the boys at the table are really enjoying themselves.

Families are wonderful. I did enjoy myself very much.

Today I am in a strange mood. I have been trying not to cry all morning. It can't be menopause. I don't know whether it is the letdown from Thanksgiving or David going back to Alaska or whether I am feeling sad about Christmas. Christmas is hard.

I really do have nothing to feel sad about. All my children are alive and well. We make our own happiness. I also having been thinking this morning of the 4 police officers that were killed and what a hard time it will be for their families this Holiday season.

I just was in such a sad mood all morning that I thought if I sat down and wrote out some of my thoughts I would feel better and I think I do. I did get my laundry done and the kitchen cleaned up this morning so that helped a little. I don't know how the top of the stove gets so dirty and I cleaned the Microwave too. I am not complaining, I love working in the kitchen.

I am so glad that Debbie and Kent took me to the play Erik was in at the Green River Community College. It was a great play and Erik played his part so well.

Tomorrow I will try to be in a better mood and put some pictures of my sister on and tell you a story about my dad I didn't know.

Catching up with blogging

When we were driving through Port Townsend, I took this picture. There are so many beautiful homes in Port Townsend.

Beautiful sunrise from the Donna and laif's deck in Sequim. Steven and I were both out early taking pictures of the spectacular view. I notice I have not written anything on my blog since the 17th. I have been busy gadding around with David in my car. Debbie picked David up on the 20th after his meetings. Saturday, the 21st , my chaffeur, David,drove us to Graham to see Dan and Heidi. Sunday we went to Tacoma to see Darrell. Richard came to our house a couple of times after work to see David. Monday morning we took off for Sequim. We went to see a couple of David's friends that live in Port Townsend. We also got a chance to see Marge Otte on Wednesday. We just had a nice time driving around. I had my GPS in my car, which was very helpful finding places we wanted to go to. I just love riding around in the car. It is a lot more fun when someone else is driving.

I will put some more on my blog tomorrow.

Visitor from the North Country

Picture I took of David when I was in Ketchikan last May. My oldest son, David, came in from Ketchikan, Alaska last night. Debbie and I went to Sea-Tac Airport to pick him up. We went to the Southcenter Mall to eat. David had not seen southcenter (Westfield) since it was remodeled. We took him to the hotel he is staying at. He is on a business trip and has meetings Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We will pick him up Thursday evening and he will be staying with us until after Thanksgiving. We will be going to Donna and Laif's for Thanksgiving. It so nice that David can spend a few days with us.

The weather was absolutely horrible last night. Heavy rain, wind and terrible traffic. I did not worry. Debbie is a very good driver.

Avery's First Birthday

The Birthday Girl. Avery is so cute walking around. Avery opening presents with Tyler's help.

Everyone watching Avery with her cake.

Nice picture of Daryl and Grandma Diane holding Avery and the nice kitty watching everything.

Yesterday was Avery's First birthday and I was lucky to be invited. To start with it was an absolutely beautiful day with lots of sunshine. Diane picked me in the morning. We went shopping and had lunch. Then we went to Daryl and Rachel's house so Diane could help Daryl with the project he is working on. Rachel had made a cute little Chocolate cake for Avery. I am sure you will see pictures of that on their blog. Rachel took me to Federal Way so that she could buy cupcakes for the "grown-ups". She went to the Cold Stone Creamery to buy them. I had never had any of those Icecream cupcakes before. They were just so yummy. Diane brought me home about 7:30 pm. She came in for a few minutes because she hadn't been over to see Debbie's new kitchen yet. Debbie has been gone all week for her work.

Anyway, I had a great day. I have not had a chance to spend a day with Diane for a long time.

Veteran's Day

I happened to wake up early enough on Monday to take a picture of this Sunrise from the front porch. About an hour later it was pouring rain. Today we honor all the Veterans and Servicemen everywhere that do so much for us and have done so much for us to keep our country free so that we can enjoy this wonderful country we live in.

A couple more stories---One more story about electrical outlets. Donna reminded me of it. We were living in Buckley and I was having a Birthday party, probably for David. Donna wasn't getting to participate in a game they were playing. She remembers being bored and she had some scissors and stuck them in the outlet. The lights all went out. In that house we had fuses. A lot of things would be on one fuse and it wouldn't take much to overload and cause a power interruption even without sticking scissors in the outlet. Another child testing electricity.
Donna is lucky that she only got a shock.

The other story is a Richard story again. When we lived in Bonney Lake we had a large field next to us. There was a hill that the kids used to run up and down on. Your dad had made a rope line that you could swing down the hill on and then pull yourselves back up. Also he had this barrel that he filled with water to test his boat engines. He finally let you kids use this barrel to roll down the hill in. The rule was that you had to be completely inside so you wouldn't hit your head on anything. Richard being one that was never really good about following rules, went down the hill with his head sticking out. He remembers it and I am sure it really scared him. It was a miracle he didn't get a serious head injury. I cannot believe that your dad and I were a party to such a dangerous activity. Somewhere a guardian angel was working overtime to watch you kids.

Another story

Ketchikan, Alaska---land of mountains, water and boats. It was fun to walk on this street above the water.

Since Jennie wanted some stories about her Mom---Here is one. I didn't even know this one until Richard told me. With Debbie's input, we got the story straight. Richard and Debbie were in Ketchikan with their dad. Richard had a quarter and Debbie bet he couldn't throw it in her mouth. She opened her mouth wide and Richard did throw it in, but unfortunately Debbie swallowed the quarter. Debbie said Richard was really mad because that was his bus money.

Back to Buckley--Our house in Buckley had an oil heater in the front room to heat the whole house. About the only rooms that got warm were the front room and the kitchen. The heater was leaking oil. There were some live wires behind the heater that should have been capped off. I didn't know that until later. Debbie was quite small at the time. She crawled behind the heater and touched those two wires together. There was a big spark and the oil caught fire and started melting the plastic drapes on our window. Richard pulled Debbie away from the heater and I got the kids out of the house. Just Richard, Debbie and Darrell were home. I took the kids to the neighbor's and we called the fire department because I didn't know how bad it might be. The only damage was melted drapes. The fire department and the Buckley News reporter arrived about the same time. Debbie had a small burn on her arm. The news reporter smudged it around a little so it would look bigger in the picture and of course Richard was the hero who saved his baby sister. We had that news clipping for a long time. I don't know what happened to it.

Following the News

A street of beautiful Fall Colors.

I try to keep up with the news but some days it gets so depressing. Again today another shooting. Richard sent me an e-mail about the fire at the Middle school in Bellingham.

Richard says "I have been listening to the news all day about a middle school that burned in Bellingham. I wasn't really listening that close. Then tonight I heard them say that the school that burned was 106 years old. It is the school that I went to when we were in Bellingham. I wasn't thinking that it could be the same school in the first reports it didn't give it's age. I thought it was so funny that the new section was built the year that dad was born, 1917. The first part was built in 1903. When you went to the basement it was like going into a dungeon. It was all brick and the doorways were all arched. There were no windows down there. That is where we ate lunch. Some of the doors were made of steel bars. There were two floors and the basement. It was kind of a cool school. Everyone thought that Enumclaw Jr. High was old. This one was older. Dad was building on the Fairhome College in Bellingham."

I know that would be the school that Clayton went to because he grew up in Bellingham.

It certainly was a good thing that no one was hurt in the fire. All those fires in the Greenwood Area in Seattle were very bad for all those people too. Those were arson. My mind can't comprehend people who set fires.

As long as my mind is on sad things, I will finish the story about our nice pussy cat that we had in Buckley. The one Richard pushed out the window. We moved to Bonney Lake and took her with us. Your dad used to go to Westport every year with friends and catch Salmon. He always managed to bring Salmon home. I did all that hard work of canning Salmon but it did taste good in the winter. Now you are wondering what this has to do with the cat. Your dad always buried the leftover Salmon parts in the yard. Weeks later our cat who was pregnant again dug up the Salmon and ate some of it. She got poisoned on it and was very sick. I thought she was probably going to die, but she didn't. She lived and had her kittens and they were all deformed. Some only had eye sockets and no eyes. It was just so sad. Don't ask about the kittens. I just as well push on and finish the sad tale of our cat. I wanted to say, first, that she did get pregnant again. ( never saw a male cat but there must have been one somewhere). This time she had a healthy litter of kittens. So her life was going along fine but I guess she was born under the wrong star because fate was going to strike again. In our house we only had sub-flooring. There was this one loose board near the heater and there was quite a gap around it. We woke up one morning to find our nice kitty had been hung by the loose board. She would have been coming up from our dugout basement and got her neck caught in the opening by the floorboard. We cried a lot. We did have a nice funeral for her.

On to happier things. I am so thankful that I am in good health. I am thankful for all my wonderful family. I am thankful that I have a nice warm, comfortable place to be in. I had to call T-Mobile so we could get help for Richard to change his "Fives" on his phone. When I got through talking to the representative, she thanked me for being a loyal customer of T-Mobile. I joined T-Mobile in 1999 when it was called Voice-Stream. What a wonderful age with live in. Cell phones, computers, fancy TV's. All sorts of great things to make life easy and fun.

Pictures of Fall that I took on my walk today

Today was another beautiful Fall day. I hope you got out and enjoyed it. The air felt just like a mild Summer day. Debbie kept telling me to cross the street and walk on the streets by the Golf Course. It is really nice walking. It is so easy to keep walking that I have to watch that I don't go too far. I walked 50 minutes without sitting down once. I had also exercised today. I could really feel it in my legs when I got back. I did enjoy it so much I will walk there more often. I started to turn up the first street on the left but just a few feet up a man was cursing at his pickup and threw a tire in the street so I just kept walking straight. I did not want to embarass him. He didn't look like he was having a good day. I was able to get my walker up and down the stairs fairly easy by pulling it backward. I never walk outside without it. I don't need to fall.

Richard is starting to e-mail me about stories I should tell. Somehow more of the stories seem to involve Richard. We had one bedroom downstairs in Buckley and the other bedrooms were upstairs. I had bunk beds in the downstairs bedroom. There was a light fixture that hung over the bunk beds. I don't remember why there was no bulb in it. It may have burned out and we didn't get a new one in yet. Richard must have been about 4 or 5 because he remembers it. Richard stuck his finger in the socket and flopped on the bed crying. Diane was sitting on the bunk bed with him and she stuck her finger in the socket and she flopped on the bed crying. It is hard to believe that two apparently intelligent children would do that.

Richard reminded me about what he did to the cat. We had this real nice gray striped cat. Richard loved cats and was always picking the cat up and carrying her places. The cat was pregnant. Richard had her upstairs. It was Summertime and I had the bedroom window open. For some unknown reason, Richard decided to push the cat out the window. I was downstairs and I saw the cat sailing through the air and land in the flower bed. At the same time, I heard Richard upstairs screaming. The cat in her attempt not to go out the window had badly scratched his arm. The cat went on to have a healthy litter of kittens. The cat did have an unfortunate death after we moved to Bonney Lake. I will tell about that later.

The only story I can think about Debbie today is how she held everybody up when we wanted to go somewhere. She could never remember where she put her shoes and everyone had to run around and find them. She hated wearing shoes. Debbie would never look for her shoes herself she would just sit and cry and all of us had to do the hunting. Was that early training for her job of supervising others? Debbie still takes her shoes off a lot but at least now she knows where they are.

A trip to the Moon?

I love this picture of Erik, Debbie and Kent. They were all working on putting the exercise equipment together. Jennie has been enjoying my stories on my blog and she wants me to put some stories on about her her mom. I will have to put my thinking cap on for that. I did think of one story I can share.

I know some of you have heard this. We went to the World's Fair in Seattle in 1962. Debbie was 4 years old at that time. Part of the Science Exhibit was the Spacearium. The Spacearium held up to 750 people at a time for a simulated voyage first through the Solar System and then through the Milky Way Galaxy. The show felt so real. It was just like you were up there in the stars. Debbie saw the Moon and she started screaming "I don't want to go to the Moon". Her dad had to take her out because she was so upset. We should have thought about it at the time. It must have been so tramatic for a small child. I am sure she was probably not the only one that got upset. I may have to enlist help from her sisters and Richard for more stories.

We certainly had a beautiful Fall Day again today.

Thoughts about when I lived in Buckley

Another Sunset that I took a while back. Richard wants me to write everyday but I can't do it everyday, Richard. I did have a couple of thoughts today. Last week Debbie bought a carton of eggs and somehow managed to break two of them and it reminded me of a story about Richard while we lived in Buckley. He probably doesn't remember it because he could only have been about 2 or 3. I am sure you have seen refrigerators that have a place on the door for you to put eggs. At the top of the door were twelve little indentations that held your eggs. I had a whole dozen eggs in the refrigerator. I got up one morning and I could hear one of the kids in the kitchen. I got downstairs as soon as I could just to be sure no one was doing anything they shouldn't. It was Richard and he had opened the refrigerator and was standing on a chair and when I got to the kitchen, he was dropping one egg at a time on the floor. I think there was only 3 or 4 left. What a mess there was to clean up. I don't know really why he did that. Just curiosity, I guess. Richard was always in some kind of trouble. He was so bright and always wanted to see how things worked. He loved to take things apart and many times got in trouble with his dad because of it. I think now that all that curiosity and all that taking things apart have served him well. Richard is very good at fixing things. And, after all, how can you fix things unless you see how they work, right?

Richard was one of the worst for climbing on chairs and countertops. He might remember this story because he was close to 4. It is so hard to try to keep track of kids every single minute and I really did try. Anyway, one day he had gone in the bathroom and climbed up and opened the medicine cabinet. He saw the X-Lax which was just a bar wrapped in aluminum foil where you just broke off one piece at a time. I will always remember this. Only one little square had been used. Richard came out of the bathroom and said he ate the candy bar. I was sure we did not have any candy in the bathroom so I asked him to show me where he got it and then I saw the wrapper from the X-Lax. He had eaten all of it. It scared me so bad. It was on the weekend so I called Rack's Drug Store. He laughed and said it was not going to harm him but I better get him in diapers. Richard was insulted about having to wear diapers but he needed them for about three days. He learned a lesson the hard way and for a long time he always checked with us about any candy.
My kids were all so bright and active, they really kept me on my toes. Sometimes you think your children are a lot of work when they are small but believe me it is the best of times when your children are young. For you that have little ones, enjoy them for they grow up too fast.

Debbie had Halloween decorations on the porch and inside too. Even though the lights were on last night, no one came. This place is a little out of the way. This is a large magnifying mirror. I have never seen one so large. Dual 1x-8x Magnification.

This mirror was a complete surprise. After Church Debbie and Kent and Erik surprised me. I wasn't here on my birthday so they surprised me with this great mirror. I just absolutely love it. I can see every wrinkle and bump I need to cover. Erik got me a real "cool" grandmother card and Debbie and Kent got me a card too. Then, of course, I had a birthday at Donna and Laif's too. Donna had given some earrings and I got a card from Donna and Laif. I can see real well where the holes are in my ears to put my earrings on. The mirror is lighted and it advertises that it is natural daylight. Donna's neighbor, Marge, brought me a card and a really rich small cake which I shared with Donna. I really have wonderful children and son-in-laws and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The neat thing is that I am still able to pretty well take care of myself and I still enjoy life. So I guess 82 isn't so bad after all.

While I was at Donna's we were looking at the newspaper where someone had taken a picture of a Black bear. Earlier I had written on my blog about the Black bear that was out by the clothesline in Bonney Lake and Donna reminded me that after we discovered that it was a bear we all went into the house. I had forgetten until Donna mentioned it how afraid Debbie was. She was crying and telling us to close all the windows and lock the doors. Maybe I read "Little Red Riding Hood" to her too much.

In Church again today the Bishop was talking about the seriousness of possible flooding in the Valley from the Green River because the Howard Hanson Dam needs work and may not be able to control the flooding. It may not happen this winter but it could happen another winter. Being prepared is the best thing you can do.