Christmas Day!

Well, another Christmas Day is just about over. We really had a great day! Pam, Chris, Lauren, Allison, and their two pups, Mollie and Sadie came over around noon and spent the rest of the evening with us. We ate (of course) and then while Kurt snoozed we played electronic Monopoly. It's a really fun version of this game--the money is all handled with debit cards so you don't have to mess with all the money. Naturally Chris beat us. I came in last...oh well. I wanted to at least post a couple of these pictures. The only thing that would have made this day perfect was if Steve and Tom had been able to come home for Christmas. They'll be home maybe in January sometime. We're planning Christmas dinner then. Steve has his pictures of their Christmas posted on his blog. If you have time, drop over there and visit his blog.

You can find it here: http://www.acherokeephoenix.blogspot.com/

Lauren and Allison gave Kurt this sweatshirt. They think, in Allison's words "My Grandpa can fix anything in the world!" We are so proud of our granddaugters--they're just sweet as they are beautiful!

Pam gave these T-shirts to JoJo and Checker. On the back they say "Got Treats"--guess cause they're both a couple of little beggars! This little video clip shows them playing with Pam's dogs, Sadie and Mollie.

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These are pictures from Steve's blog that I have made pages for my scrapbook! I had to do at least a couple of pages before bedtime!

Hope everyone had a day as great as ours!

Shirley

From the Pups

JoJo and Checker wanted me to send their Christmas card out so you would have it before Christmas. They seem to be excited about the tree and trimmings, but amazingly neither ever bother the tree. They do have a stocking on the fireplace and can hardly wait to open it! They have been good!

Shirley

Update--my flower

I have been trying to fix these pages so you can click on them and make them bigger. I think it will work as long as I don't move the pages around. So we'll give this a try. Let me know if it doesn't work.

I just had to show off my flower again. I had made a page of the Clematis flower on our fence at the end of the drive. That pictures was taken on December 6th after having been blooming for about a month. Then we had the ice storm. Kurt took the camera and took a shot with it covered with ice. I had to update the page. As of today's date, it has finally begun to lose some of the petals. This little flower has been something to watch!

We have been so busy cleaning up after the ice storm. We have finally gotten all of the limbs mostly picked up in the front and back yard. We have them stacked at the edge of the street curb. The city is going to start picking them up beginning next Monday. We will start working on the very back portion of our property next. We certainly won't have to buy any wood for quite some time.

I've managed to do a few new pages. This is a photo of my parents taken in the early 60's.

These were pictures of Allison and Lauren and their horseshoe game were taken at our home in the country. Allison was a character then! (still is) :)

Shirley

Ice Storm

We have survived a terrific ice storm in our area. At one point in the Joplin viewing area there were over 60,000 homes without power. Alas, we were one of them. We are so grateful we made it just fine and turned it in to a real "camping" experience for the kids. We roasted weenies over the fireplace, heated our chili on the coals, and boiled water for coffee there too. Thankfully, our power was only off for 31 hours. We're now "back on the air!"

We have suffered significant damage to our trees, but guess the good Lord knew which ones to prune and which ones to leave. We do have 3 holes in our roof from the Sycamore trees that are at the west end of the house plus our guttering is gone on that end also.

Here are some of the pictures:

This was a beautiful white dogwood right in our front door. It's just about a total loss.

It's hard to really see the damage from these pictures, but there was over an inch of ice on these trees.

The following was taken in the back yard.

This picture just a couple of limbs that went thru the roof.

This shows one of the other limbs that came thru--this would be right over our bedroom.

We have filed a claim with the insurance and they told us if we could do anything to stop further damage to do it...well, Kurt decided he'd try to get the limbs out. He almost scared me to death. Here's the video I took of it. Pam promissed to whip him if he ever tried to do anything like that again. It was raining when he did this, and you must remember he will be 80 in just a few months! I am so thankful all the damage he did was to his lip!

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Here Comes the Ice

At this writing, Joplin and the surrounding area is covered in ice. All of the schools are closed and looks as if it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. The weather reports are saying this could last through Tuesday! Thankfully we still have power even though there are several parts of town that are without power. Several area shelters have opened for people to find a place to get warm. Pam and Chris are without power so they will be spending the night with us. We just pray everyone remains safe.

I am going to repost a layout that I had posted earlier. I'm trying to get my pictures so they can be enlarged if you click on them. I was able to do it one time, but that was all. Guess I wasn't holding my mouth right. Well, I'll just try again!

A Lesson Learned

I just had to post this page I did today. I'm not sure you can read the journalling on it or not because it may show up too small. I have never seen a Clematis bloom at this time of year. I have several of these vines in our yard and all the rest have gone dormant for the year except for this lone little flower. It is a real lesson in preservance. It is growing on the northside of our privacy fence and has nothing to shield it from the direct wind, yet it still stands there, so pretty day after day! One of these mornings I'll go outside and it will be gone, but this little flower has been such a blessing to me!

Shirley

More pages . . .

I've really been working hard to get all of my digital scrapbooking supply files organized. Downloading these supplies from the internet has almost become an addiction and since 99% of them are free, I just feel I need them all. I have a 500 Gig external harddrive I'm storing them on. I guess when I get that filled up I'll stop.

Ron and Sue Dean came up from Muskogee yesterday afternoon and spent the night with us. They went to church with us at Park Plaza Christian Church. It turns out that Sue had attended the same school with the pastor in Carl Junction. It is a small world!

I have my Christmas cards ready to start working on--all I'm waiting for is for my envelopes to come in. I really have almost all the Christmas shopping done, wrapped and under the tree or in a box (gifts I'm mailing to Steve and Tom). They're not coming for Christmas, but promised to come after the middle of January. It's a good feeling to have all of it almost done.

Here about four pages that I've done lately. I recently counted the pages I've done since I started digital scrapbooking last April. I have right at 200 pages that I've completed and printed. I feel as if I'm finally going to get caught up. That's a good feeling too!

I did this page today of Allison's first birthday party. We were living in the last house we built. There were several "adult" friends at her party, the Dawsons, Hamshers, Kirkpatricks, and of course all of our family. She seemed a bit overwhelmed.



I suppose Kurt was showing Chris how good he was at playing Solitaire on the computer. He really mastered this game.



I don't remember really who was teaching who. Lauren learned to play games also. This picture was much earlier than the one above. We were still living in Indian Springs here.

Finally here is a page of pictures from Steve's Senior Concert at MSSU. It's hard to believe how much the girls have grown. Allison is now is 7th Grade and Lauren is a Sophomore at MSSU!



Till next time . . .

Shirley

MEMORIES . . .

I've managed to get back to scanning some old pictures for my albums. I ran across the picture in the page below. This was really an old one for me. We didn't know what it was to have a color picture. Mother had taken this with her little cheap box camera. I can remember having a happy childhood except for the times when my sister, Betty, would chase me with some seed pod on the end of a broom making me thinking it was some huge bug. Then there was the time I dug holes on the top of the storm cellar where Daddy had told us not to. For this she blackmailed me and threatened to tell on me if I didn't wait on her hand and foot! That worked for a little while until Mother caught on to what she was doing--and that got Betty in trouble! I'm sure I was a real pest to her and probably deserved most of what I got.

The following page was of our trip to Branson and Silver Dollar City. This is an annual trip Pam and I take with Lauren and Allison and some other lady friends. Allison didn't get to go this year, so Terri stayed with us in our room. Terri's Mom and sisters were in the room next to ours. We had a great time at the City.

I have rambled enough for tonight. Have a great week!

Shirley

Goodbye Thanksgiving--Hello Christmas!

Thanksgiving day just went by in a flash. Pam and her family went to Jefferson City to have dinner with Chris' family so Kurt and I were alone except for our dogs, JoJo and Checker. We were going to eat out, but finally decided I would just fix a small dinner for us. I bought a turkey breast and just fixed small amounts of the trimmings. We watched a couple of football games on TV and then just piddled around the rest of the day. Kurt working on his bolos, etc., and I working on my albums. We ran over to Pam's about 1:30 pm after lunch and brought their two little dogs over so they wouldn't be cooped up all day. They and along with our two pups had a time playing together. I kept them until about 5:30 and then took them home.

Pam, Allison and I got up early Friday morning to go shopping. I picked them up at 5:30 AM and we were off bargain-hunting. We were successful in getting the items we were wanting. We went first to Best Buy and we were very impressed at how organized they were. We had to stand in line for about 45 minutes to pay for our items, but all in all it was a fun experience. This was Allison's first time for Black Friday shopping. She was constantly surprised at the long lines everywhere!

We were so surprised to wake up this morning to a light snow on the ground. I didn't have a clue snow was even in the forecast. It didn't remain on the ground for long though.

Well, here are some more pages I've recently done.

This is Allison's school picture for this year:

This was from Halloween 2005:

These next two pages were taken this year at Frederickson's Farm in Carl Junction. This is where we go every year for the girls to pick out their pumpkin:

We've digressed a little back to the 4th of July!

Kurt, my crazy husband, who will be 80 next year still dresses for Halloween and has fun with the kids!

Until later . . .

Shirley

Ahh. . . November!

I so love this time of year--we are having a beautiful fall here in the Ozarks. The leaves (which we thought would never turn) finally have. We had our first fire of the season in the fireplace tonight. There's nothing like relaxing in front of a nice warm fire. I even put the dogs' sweaters on tonight--they seemed thankful for their warmth.

Pam and I went to Kansas City yesterday, spent the night and drove back this morning. She is off all week so we had to do some running around. There was actually frost on the car when we went to get in it.

I wanted to get more of pages posted to share. So here goes. I did the two following pages as a two page spread. They are some of a very few pictures we have of my mother's family. They were a hard-working lot.

This is a picture of my Dad's parents. My grandmother was such a tiny thing! She wasn't even 5 feet tall and Grandpa was at least 6' or so. Too bad she didn't pass some of that on down to me!

This was a picture I had made when I was 13 years old. Sooooooo long ago!

This picture of Kurt out gathering thistle for his darts for his blow guns. He has quite a collection of this stuff by now.

Shirley

Saturday

This has been a busy day! Pam, Terri, Allison and I went to a Missouri Southern football game this afternoon (their last home game). It was a beautiful day and the weather was just perfect. Southern won something like 55 to 24.

I came home and fixed a lasanga for lunch tomorrow. The kids will be over and Chris is going to install a new wireless router for me. He's such a good guy!!!

Here are some more pages I've done. This first one is from 2004 Halloween.

Then we jump back to Easter in 1998.

This page is of the girls school pictures from 2001:

The following page is Kurt and I celebrating one of our birthdays:

This page is of Kurt doing his "paperwork."

There is no explanation for this next page!

That's all for now!

Shirley

Ready for the little goblins . . .

We are almost ready for the little kiddos in the neighborhood for treat or treat! I have bought candy for Halloween two times already--and Kurt and I have eaten it up already. I told him we'd wait until Wednesday afternoon and buy candy again! You'd think we could control ourselves better!

We went to Silver Dollar City this past Thursday with our friends, Ron and Sue Dean. The crowd was pretty thin and it was sooooo cold! We saw a couple of shows, visited with a few friends and then called it a day.

The following page was done with pictures we took in Jack's "store" there in the city. Ron and Kurt were really carrying the ladies who work there pretty high! Ron promised to have their wages doubled along with other benefits. Kurt called Jack to let him know of the new changes at his store!

We also met Buck Taylor and had our picture made with him. He seems like a really all right kind of guy. I found the picture of the Gunsmoke cast so others would know who he was. Here is that page:
We are now minus one of our dogs--Cricket. We didn't have any plans to give her away, but after a chance meeting with one of our friends, I learned that her little dog had died that day. She asked me to keep my eyes open in case someone had a dog to give away, etc. Her daughter who is in 6th grade, had at that time not been told about the dog's death. After I got home I related this to Kurt--we both at the same time, felt that we should offer Cricket to them. When I told my friend, that same afternoon after she picked her daughter up from school, they came to see Cricket. I think it was love at first sight. I feel we made them happy and I know Cricket will be happy. We miss her but know she's in good hands!
Here is a page I did of the photo Steve and Pam had made for me for Mother's day in 1996:

This next page is of Allison in her car when she was about 3 years old. She was such a ham!

These pictures were made a couple of years ago--it's just Kurt and Chris goofing around with a wig that Chris uses for Halloween!

Well, enough for tonight. Have a great week!

Shirley

Our Bible Class Cookout - October 20, 2007

This is a short clip of some photos we took at our class cookout on Saturday evening. After the cookout we all moved in to the basement for a sing-along.

Make your own slide shows and scrapbooks

Shirley