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Monday, January 26, 2009

The countdown is on!

It has been a busy few weeks since Christmas! I addressed the invitations and then got them mailed at the Bridal Veil post office, of course, to get that 'bridal veil' postmark. I have my dress sewn and then a last minute decision to have a flower girl prompted me to make a little flower girl dress. Mom and I have been hunting down the supplies we will need to do the flowers, but don't know if we can find once we get there. Who would have thought that it would take 3 days and uncountable stops at craft and florist shops to inquire, in order to find 1 inch wide floral ribbon in baby pink, kelly and mint green!Last week I pulled out the suitcases to start tossing in the things we have to bring for the wedding decorations along with the clothes. It looks like I will have my two largest bags full of just wedding supplies. Bazzel has made his bed on top of one. This is where I find him sleeping every day. I wonder if he thinks we won't notice when we pack and that we will take him along.
Mom and I made it in to have a pedicure so that we will have pretty pink toenails in our wedding shoes. On top of it all, I have jury duty this week! What timing, right? I hope they don't put me on a jury...I still have a veil to make! Do you think the judge will notice if I bring along my sewing machine?

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Lunches out...

When my kids started school, I started meeting other moms whose kids were in the same classes, moms who were on PTA or were room mothers. We built the fitness trail at the grade school, put on fundraising dinners, ran the carnivals, started the art print program, weighed and measured the kids, went to board meetings and made cupcakes and cookies for school parties. A few of us really hit it off and little by little we started getting together for lunch or something when it did not have to do with school business. We had a book read for a while, one of us picked the book and we all read it...then another picked a book and we read that...it lasted through a couple of books. Next we tried to lose weight. We all weighed in every week. For every pound we gained we had to put money in a jar. It was supposed to be incentive to lose, but instead we had quite a savings going and that started our first overnight get away. We took the money and all went overnight to the beach. We had enough in there to pay for our room and a really nice dinner! (OK, so it was not a very successful weight loss program!) From there on, we took a few trips together. We have been to the Oregon coast, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Palm Springs and one year they went to New York (I missed it that year) We've been together through funerals, our kids graduations and weddings, surgeries, became Grandmas, had way too many birthdays and many ups and downs in our families lives. We don't go on the trips anymore, it just got to be too hard to schedule that much time away that we could all go. But, even after all these years we still get together as much as we can. Last week 4 of us managed to schedule in a lunch. Above is a picture of Mary, Joan and Sandie after lunch. Marvel and Carol and Sheri could not make it. Here is the whole gang (except Sandie) at Sandie's daughter's wedding.













A couple of weeks ago, I met my Mom and Dad and Cyndi for lunch. Lindy had to work or she would have been there too. Cyndi thought it was funny that Dad and I wore the same color and had to take a picture of us. She made some comment about us not letting them know that we were supposed to wear brown. Then Dad looked at her and Mom and said, "Well, YOU guys didn't tell us that we were supposed to wear purple!" and then we all just laughed because Mom and Cyndi were perfectly matching in their purple. So we had to have a picture of them too. We are easily entertained.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Obama's Presidential Inauguration. This is as close as I got.

Monday, January 19, 2009

January is BIRTHDAY month!
It is almost like a long drawnout Christimas around here during the month of January. Beginning on the 1st all the way until the 29, one week even has three birthdays! Elizabeth, John (son), John (husband), Bobby, my Dad, Emily, Ariel, David, Alan, Joan. A month long celebtation and by the end of the month...I've had my fill of birthday cake. (and still have not gotten rid of that extra 5 pounds!) We had Emily's last week...after the party we went to the pet store and brought home two new gerbils.

Sunday, January 11, 2009


I have been having a good time learning to use my new camera.


Last week, on my walk, I took a picture of the most beautiful sky over Mt. Hood. It was so pretty how the clouds were just below the mountain and the sky color was gorgeous! I was so excited to get home to see on my computer how it turned out . I was so disappointed to see that there were two spots of dust on the finished picture. The camera has a dust removal system, so I took care of that problem, but it didn't help with the ruined picture. Yesterday the sky was pretty again, so I tried to recapture it. It is nice, but not as pretty as the first day. (p.s. I was able to remove the spots in my photoshop.)Here are a few other shots that I took. It is still cold, you can see the ice coming out of the ground and on the puddles and there is a pile of snow left over beside the road. The apples are still there, the birds like that. Down the road, I noticed some signs on a driveway...I guess they don't want us to enter, huh? A tree fell on a fence and was all the way across the road. The pond at the end was overflowing a couple of days ago, but has come down a bit. NOBODY is out there on the fitness trail, what happened to all those New Year's resolutions? And just HOW did a golf ball get in the field by my house?I'm having fun taking the camera on my walks, but it is not helping much with the 5 pounds I need to lose. Pretty hard to get your heart rate up when you keep stopping to take pictures.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

The snow is gone, Jessi made it back to the Dominican Republic, John and Rachel and the kids are safe in Salem, the decorations are all put away and the only remainder left over from all of it is the 5 pounds I gained! Time to work on getting rid of that and get ready for Jessi's wedding on Valentine's Day in the DR.
December 29
Jessi and I were able to get to Salem and see John and Rachel and Emily and Joshua. We had lunch at their place, John's special recipe of tacos.
December 28
We drove into visit John's parents. While we were there, his sister Sandy and her husband Jack stopped in.
December 25

It was STILL snowing! Since we could not drive out of the driveway yet, plans were made for Lindy to come and get us in her truck. We loaded up our gifts into bags and headed down the hill to be picked up. She and Dad left at 1:00 to pick us up...normally it would take about 10 minutes...not this time, it took them 1 1/2 hours to get over to our place! Good thing we waited inside and warm for a call that they were getting close. Then she got stuck at the bottom of the hill! John and Dad helped maneuver the truck around and we headed out...arriving back at their place at 4:00...THREE HOURS round trip! John and Rachel happened to meet us in Sandy on their way back from her parents' place and Lindy blazed the trail to get us all there.


Check out the last photo...hard to remember it being hot enough to swim in that pool!
December 24

Jessi and Joshua made a snowman and a snow angel and then us girls decided to try to shovel out the driveway so that maybe we could get a car in or out if one of us was lucky and brave enough to try to make the hill. It took us almost all afternoon, but we didn't get it all done before it got dark. It was hard work with snow piled up on top of a sheet of ice.


We quit and came inside and made chicken and home made noodle soup for our Christmas Eve dinner
December 23
After 3 days of being housebound, Jessi and I struck out on foot to Gresham. Our neighbor came by just as we were leaving the driveway and drove us in. He dropped us off on Powell and from there we went to pick up a few things from WINCO for Christmas dinner and then over to Fred Meyer for some last minute things and of course we had to have lunch while we were in town. It was a fun day. The walk home (almost 2 hours) took us about twice as long as it normally would with stops to take pictures and adjust the backpack Jessi was carrying. (no, Jessi...we still have not used the 10 pounds of potatoes I thought we had to have)

John and Rachel decided to take advantage of the break in weather on Tuesday afternoon and drive on up a day early. The snow on the Interstate had piled up and made tracks so deep that the cars were high centering. The highway had to be closed on one side at a time to de-ice and had backed traffic up from Portland all the way to Salem. Instead of having dinner with us, they pulled over in Woodburn and ate and put on chains and then took Hwy 99 on up instead. Their drive ended up taking them 6 hours instead of the usual 1 hour!!! They could not make it up our hill into our drive so we walked to the bottom and helped them carry their things up.