Brave little chickadee

This brave little chickadee paid a visit to the bird feeder yesterday. If you double click on the picture, you should be able to see him. He has a yellow breast.

Looking for Ice Skates

We have two bird baths and they both look like this. Poor little birds need ice skates!

Icicles on the Bird Feeder

If you look real carefully on the top right side of the bird feeder you can see little icicles. They are longer today.

Snow in Palestine, TX

The white stuff on the roof of the house across the street is snow! This picture was taken yesterday morning, and it is still there! It hasn't gotten above 32 degrees in two days. They tell me we need a freeze like this to kill the bugs in the spring. Anything that kills bugs makes me happy!!!!

Riding the Chopper

Once they got it running, they all had to take a ride, even in the drizzling rain!

A new motorcycle

How many people do you know have bought a motorcycle on e-bay? Joel Scott saw this 1968 "chopper" on e-bay in November. Since the bike was actually in Tyler, TX which is an hour north of Palestine he asked us to go check it out. We did, he bid on it and he won the bid. The fellow in Tyler trailered the bike down here to us and we stored it in our garage until Joel Scott could come and get it. He brought his uncle Doug and his friend, Fred. The left Flagstaff at 7 p.m. on Tuesday night and arrived at our house at 12:30 Wednesday afternoon. Played with the motorcycle all afternoon. We had a fun family dinner and they all went to sleep. Up early on Thursday morning, they loaded the bike on the truck, left here at 7 a.m. and arrived home in Flagstaff at 11:30 p.m. Approximately 2200 miles in 52 hours. They thought it was a great adventure. You can read more about it and see more pictures on Doug's blog.

We had a very relaxing visit with Doug and Marni. Went to see the new house they are building in Strawberry (you can check it out at www.deserthawgs.blogspot.com ) and we played a rousing game of dominos that lasted for several hours on Friday afternoon. It was a fun trip. Much colder than we are used to. It was fun to visit with everyone. Now we're hoping they will come see us and check out east Texas.

Doug, Carolyn and Jack

Our last stop was in Pine where we visited my brother and sister-in-law, Doug and Marni and their dog, Jack. You can see I was in shirt sleeves here - this was the warmest day we had on the trip. Doug built this deck last summer and it looked great.

Firefighter Joel Scott

Joel Scott is a firefighter at the Flagstaff Airport. His mother-in-law told me he looked handsome in his uniform, so I made sure I got a picture, because I had to agree with her. He took us out to the fire station (which is new) and gave us a tour - what a wonderful facility. When he was a kid he loved Tonka trucks. Inside the station there are four huge, bright yellow pieces of equipment for plowing snow and two very large light green fire trucks, all of which he now operates.

Joel Scott and Kathy

Our next stop in AZ was Flagstaff where we got to spend almost five days with Joel Scott and Kathy. We celebrated Kathy's folks 51st wedding anniversary with a dinner one night, had a fun evening with their friends Fred and Linda, went out for Mexican food another night and celebrated an early Christmas together. It was a great visit!

Prescott Friends

I lived in Prescott for nine years and have some good friends there. Jenni graciously offered to have us gather at her house so we could all spend time together. So here we are: Jenni, me, Sera, Mary, Caleb (Jenni's son) and Pam. It was great to play with Caleb and spend time catching up on each other's lives.

Claudia, Chris and their Grandchildren

It's hard to get five little ones to smile all at once. Kayla, Josh, Skylar, Grace and Ella were getting tired of trying to get the "perfect shot".

Todd, Annette and Jackson

Jackson has a great smile, however, I didn't seem to capture it.

Carolyn and Grace

When Sara and Anna were babies, I'd hold them and they would fall asleep. My brother said I earned the "boring aunt" award. Well, Doug, I've still got it. I bored Grace to sleep, too!

The Parade

Ella, Josh and Skylar are ready to watch the parade. Josh is my only great-nephew. They had a great time sitting on the street, catching candy the folks in the parade threw to them.

Skylar and Carolyn

Skylar is the oldest of my great nieces. I lived in Prescott until she turned four so we had a lot of time to get to know each other. Here she told me how happy she was to see me and I couldn't resist giving her a big hug!!

Anna and Jackson

Anna has her turn to hold Jackson. Grace and Jackson were very popular - we all wanted to hold them.

Sara and Grace

We were so happy that Sara could come from San Diego to join us. Here she is meeting her newest cousin, Grace Catherine who was just one month old!

Carolyn and Jackson

Carolyn finally gets to meet Jackson! Jackson is the son of my second cousin, Laura and her husband, Tony. Jackson was born in May, 2006 and this was my first chance to meet him. I think he was a little overwhelmed by all the people.

Joel and Humbug

We spent the first weekend in Prescott for the annual Christmas Tree Lighting weekend at the courthouse square. For a number of years my extended family has been gathering the first weekend in December in Prescott for this fun start to the Christmas holiday season. When we lived there, they all came to our house for dinner before we went to the tree lighting. Now we start the weekend on Saturday morning with breakfast at Todd and Annette's house (my nephew). Their cat Humbug decided Joel's tummy was just the place he wanted to be! Joel's not a big a cat lover, so you can believe he didn't coax the cat up there

A mess in the median

We think this mess in the median is what caused the shut down of I-40 the night before. We saw one car off on the right side of the highway with rear-end damage. The rest of the damaged vehicles were trucks. We were warm, dry, and suffered no damage to us or the car, so we decided to chalk it up as another adventure!!

More Snow

The first picture just shows the snow. The next picture made us laugh. It was a Dairy Queen sign that said "Blizzard Ahead". Actually, by this time the blizzard was behind us, on it's way to Chicago and points east!

Trip to Arizona

We left Palestine at 6:30 a.m. on November 29th - the temperature was in the 60s, a little humid, a little breezy, it actually felt balmy! Headed north through the outskirts of Fort Worth, through Witchita Falls, on to Amarillo. It was cold in Amarillo, but the sun was shining. We headed west for New Mexico. Stopped for gas in Tumcumcari, NM, the wind was horrible and it was freezing, but no precipitation. Continued west for about 30 miles and I said to Joel, "this is great, we'll be in Santa Rosa, in the motel by 6 p.m." Ha, Ha!! Right after I said that, it started to snow. We finally got to the room at 1:10 a.m. Texas time. We crawled and sat on Interstate 40 for almost 8 hours. Fortunately, we had a full tank of gas so we were able to stay nice and warm in the car. It is a weird feeling to sit on the freeway surrounded by cars, pickups and 18 wheelers. Met an old man wearing shorts, from Chicago on his way to Sun City, AZ - he was afraid he was going to run out of gas, so wanted to know if we were out there too long if he and his wife could get in our car to stay warm. Met a trucker from Michigan who didn't seem bothered by the cold or the wind as he stood by my window and visited for about 15 minutes. These pictures were taken the next morning - you can see how much ice and slush was on the highway. Fed-Ex had a bad night - this was the first of 5 trucks we saw that were in the median - some with the contents spilling out. A day or two later one of their planes slid off the runway in Chicago when the storm hit there.

Thanksgivig 2006

For the last 11 years or so we have had Thanksgiving at our house and we were joined by our Arizona and Nevada relatives. Well, this year we are in East Texas so it was time to try something new. We gathered at Kristin and Johnny's house - there were six hearing people and 8 deaf young people from age 14 to early 20s. While the "girls" fixed dinner, the "boys" played a game of Jenga! We all had a good time and a great dinner.

Christmas in Crockett

If you scroll down about 15 pictures you'll see one labeled "Davy Crockett Drugs" that I took on Labor Day weekend. These two pictures were taken standing on the same corner on November 18th at the "Christmas in Crockett" Arts and Crafts show. There were over 250 booths with all kinds of arts and crafts and, of course, food! I hope to have a booth in November, 2007 selling honey!! I don't know what kind of art or craft the Texas Longhorn was, but he was interesting to look at up close.

Fall in East Texas

This dahlia was in full bloom in October. The leaves were just starting to turn when this picture was taken. It took a while because we had a warm fall.

Honorable Mention

I entered the quilt I made for Johnny's 45th birthday. I pieced the quilt and my sister, Janet in Las Vegas, and I quilted it on her long-arm quilting machine. The pattern is Jacob's Ladder. The wide yellow outer border has honeybees on it, in honor of Johnny being a beekeeper.

Anderson County Quilt Show

Palestine is in Anderson County. In October the Palestine Chamber of Commerce had their annual Fall Festival which included a quilt show. This Texas quilt won best of show.

Y'All Come Back

Kristin and I were at the park selling honey all day. When Johnny arrived, we took a break with our friend Sharolynn and her grandchildren Amber and Adam and toured the park. Couldn't resist taking their picture by this sign.

Beautiful Mums

All over our area before and after Halloween, were these beautiful mums. They plant three small plants in one pot and heavily fertilize them and they make these gorgeous pots of mums. They were selling these for $12 each.

The South Might Rise Again

These "Confederate Soldiers" had a booth set up in the park.

Jim Hogg City Park in Rusk, TX

It's been a while since I've added any pictures to my blog. So I'm going to try to catch up. A few pictures back we were at the Fall Festival at the Rusk City Park selling honey. This home was in the middle of that park - many years ago this was home to Jim Hogg and his family. Jim Hogg (1851-1906) was the first native born governor of Texas. You can read more about him at www.famoustexans.com/jimhogg.htm