The day before Thanksgiving

This is a picture of our sun room the day before Thanksgiving. With all my stuff and grandpa's stuff it made me wonder if he would have it ready for Thanksgiving.

Well Trudy sent over her boys and Stevie to help grandpa clear up and pack up. With Baxter, Zane, Noah and Stevie's help, putting things in big black trash bags and hauling them under the house so that the day after they can be brought back up for grandpa's business they got things done. They even found the stud in the wall so they could hang my quilt up out of the way. Stevie started burning boxes for Grandpa and then Zane and Noah took over and then had to shower because of the good ole burning smell. They all did a great job.

Inside I was baking lemon meringue and cherry pies, making a salad and getting the sweet potatoes ready. It is nicer now with the family raised and they bring their share of the meal and I don't have to do it all. Tina and Trudy are such good cooks and Ceci and Stevie love to help. I don't know if anyone helped Tina or not. I know she was at the ER with McKay most of the day.

On Thanksgiving morning I got up and made Oreo truffles and Pretzel Turtles. I did the m & m's for the kids, but the adults liked them better than the ones with pecans also. Grandpa talked me into the M & M's, he is so smart about those things.

I just had a time out so I could go get me two small pieces of pie while I finish this blog. Trudy left some pumpkin and cream pie, I didn't have much pie yesterday because I was to full of everything else.
Then I put in the turkey and finished up the little details. Then we waited for 1 o'clock for the feast to begin.

While we were waiting Stevie came over with Ceci and showed me Ceci had put ringlets in Stevie's hair.

Isn't Stevie cute and Ceci did such a great job!!!!!!

Christmas Cactus

Two Christmas ago Trudy and I were shopping at Lowe's and we both saw these beautiful Christmas Cacti blooming. So we each bought one and brought them home. Immediately they dropped their blossoms. What a disappointment. I remember when I was a child my dad, a school teacher, always had Christmas cacti blooming in his classroom. When he retired and brought them home they never bloomed again.
Well I kept mine alive and last Christmas nothing. Nothing at all bloomed. So I thought I will try it one more year. I stuck it out in the sun porch and kinda forgot about it. About once a month I watered it. Then when I had a party here I decided to put it in the master bathroom where it was sorta dark but got the humidity from our showers.
When I went to put it in the front room the leaves were starting to turn a funny color. I almost threw it away. Then two days later I noticed these small buds on the end of the pedal. Ah Ha.
You could almost see it growing. Now I'm not going to bore you with all the pictures I took but here are some of them.

This plant just seemed to jump at night. We would get up in the morning and more buds on the ends and then the buds just started to bloom.

I just had to take pictures of the blossoms. They are so delicate and beautiful.

There are even more blossoms today than yesterday when I took the pictures.

This is how I imagine Dad smiling at my blooming Cactus. He did love the Christmas Cacti.

Our Thanksgiving baby that was born 39 years ago George HAPPY BIRTHDAY

The little people

These pictures were taken Feb 12th of this year. We must of had a sleep over and the boys were just having loads of fun as you can tell. McKay, Zane and Noah.

And that is the long and short of it.

Thursday with Stevie

This last Thursday Stevie stayed home because she didn't feel very good. So Grandpa had her helping him. Here she is stacking the gaskets after he washed them in the washer. They had powder all over them that needed to be washed off and the washer did a great job.

After the gaskets are washed they stick together really well.

Here are grandpa's dishes!!!!! I know I took a better picture but my camera is starting to do funny things and I don't know where it went. But anyway here are the plates that were washed in the dishwasher. They came out beautiful.

Here Grandpa is showing Stevie how to put the Sid Cell together.

Stevie didn't like the big blue gloves but she did quite well. In helping Grandpa she earned 4 dollars and then she helped me put on a quilt and earned another dollar. So all in all she earned 5 dollars for staying home sick from school.

Grandpa and I love having Stevie home with us. When we ate lunch it was like old home week. She didn't get her usual chicken but we had pork roast with baked potato. Friday we were back to being alone. The week before we had Ceci and Noah home with sore throats so it does get lonely when they go back to school.

Peanuts

Remember the peanuts that Grandpa dug a month ago. He and I went out the shed today and took them down and harvested them into this bowl. I wanted to see how we did (since my failure this year with the sweet potatoes) so I went to the Internet. I found that we had raised 3 lbs or 5662.80 lbs per acre, that figures about 2 1/2 ton per acre. On today's market that figured out to be $4,190.47 per acre, taking 50% off for expenses that is $2,000 and on our farm in Abraham (200 acres) hmmmmm that is $400,000. Why didn't we raise peanuts??????
We have Stevie home today from school because she didn't feel very good. I baked some peanuts in the oven and I think she just about ate all of them. Don't worry there is plenty for Thanksgiving. I'll bake them and we all can have hot peanuts. YUMMY

These are the peanuts before I cleaned them up. I put them into a pillowcase and took them out on the deck and manhandled them until they had all the dirt off.

The moon plant

Our home teacher brought us this moon plant. I have never seen it bloom but he says the plant loves the shade and blooms from about 5 pm until morning. He brought two plants and one had one pod on it and the other had two. I am saving the seeds to plant this next spring. I think it will be interesting to see the flower.

Annette's house this halloween 2008

This is Annette's house this last Halloween. Her decorations were stolen but she went out and bought another tree plus the spiders and so forth. I think it turned out pretty well. You can see Sev sitting up on the porch behind the lights.

This is such a cute picture of Annette holding Sadie. Sadie is growing soooo fast and is such a cutie.

Annette sitting on the porch, probably keeping an eye out for thieves.

Ykes a MOUSE

yep another mouse in the house. I thought I had a mouse but couldn't trap him.
Well Friday I went into our bathroom, there the mouse was, stretched out on our bathroom mat dead. I guess we killed him with kindness. The peanut butter trap didn't look as good as a soft cotton bathroom mat. Trudy hadn't put out any poison so I guess the big fat looking mouse died of old age. HE HE ):

full service

A couple of weeks ago Dad and I were at a Joann's store looking at material. As always when we see puzzles we stop and look them over. Dad saw this "full service" puzzle and couldn't resist. It brought back memories of our era. With our coupon we got 40% off.

As you can see Dad (Grandpa) started putting it together. It was a 1000 piece puzzle and since we lent Steve our white board, we had to go to Walmart to buy another one. Every morning we put the puzzle on our bed so Stevie could practice the piano before she went to school.

Here is the finished product. Dad put 90% of the puzzle together. I helped a little bit. It gives both of our minds a workout. Love it.