Update on Dad.

Oh my, things sure have changed on Blogger since February!  I can hardly find my way around so will have to do some studying on this new system.  I was shocked to see so many comments as I haven't looked at my blog for quite some time.  Thank you for all of your prayers and good thoughts for my Dad.  He is doing quite well, not 100% yet but getting there.  He is back to work mowing all his lawns, I think he has about 15 or so that he does, and we try to go and help him on the long days.  He can drive, was cleared for that quite some time ago, finished all of his physical therapy, and has had his bleeds checked out and they are all gone. He still has some dizziness when he gets up from laying back but that seems to go within a few seconds now. They told him that it might take up to a year for that to go away completely.  We are very thankful that he came through this,  God is good!  Life around here is a bit different but we are managing.  We don't like to leave my Mom alone much but we work it out.


I am sorry to say that we had to have Lil' Bud put down about a month ago.  We had been dealing with a couple of abscessed teeth that had to be removed, lots of antibiotics, x-rays, meds etc and it turned out to be cancer of the facial bones and jaw.  It was a very fast moving cancer, within a three week span it changed immensely so the decision had to be made to have him put down the next morning.  My vet said he had about a week and not to wait even that long.  It's funny because he never missed a meal, never acted sick other then when the teeth needed to be pulled, never lost any weight, looked fabulous and was so loving right to the end.  Funsize rode him up to our horse cemetery bareback and he did fine, would have cantered if she had wanted him to, just a week or ten days before we were trail riding and he took right off at a nice canter without her even asking him. He was a gentle soul and we miss him terribly but couldn't let him suffer in any way, he was 24.  Again life is different but we have such wonderful memories.  Funsize was 11 when we bought him for her and she is now 29 so really they grew up together.  :o)   We still have Scooter, Nick and Kipper.  I filled Lil Bud's big box stall with extra bales of hay and shavings, I couldn't stand to see it empty.  I am riding Scoot about every day and he is doing really well changing from his job as a team penning horse to a nice western pleasure horse.  Miss T is riding Kip and buzzing around like mad and Funsize has taken over Nick.


Not sure when I will get back to blogging regularly, maybe not till fall.  We are enjoying the lake this summer so much and I have had lots of projects around the yard putting in pretty plants replacing the ones that winter killed last winter due to no snow.  I am spending as much time as possible with my grand kids, we have done lots of fun things.  They are growing so fast and before you know it they won't think it's cool to hang out with Grammie.  They are at the lake this week with Mom and Dad and we are headed down tomorrow for the 4th.  


Again thank you for all your kind words and prayers, it DOES make a difference!


PS I am still Home On the Range but I couldn't get that on the picture so it says my title is YAY.  I will try to get that fixed.  :0)

Saying goodbye for a while

I must take some time off from blogging.  My father was hurt very seriously last week, he fell off a ten foot ladder and got bleeding in the brain.  Yes, why is an 88 year old man up a ladder you may ask??????  He was fixing the American flag.

We flew down to Florida immediately and went right to the hospital.  He looked like he had been in a fight and lost, a big shiner on one eye and stitches in his head where he hit the ground.  He was in the hospital five days and then we got the clearance to fly him home to Maine.  He did very well on the trip home as did my Mom and Buffy the cat.  :o)

He is getting around with a walker some and gaining a little ground each day.  Not sure how long the recuperation will be.  So in the meantime I am going to concentrate on taking care of things here and will try to check in with you all as much as I can. I will miss hearing from you so if you think of it just stop by and say howdy! :o)

xoxoxoxoxo

Snow Day

 

There was no school today due to rain, snow and sleet.  There was a chorus of cheering from the kids in the neighborhood, they forget that they have to make up snow days in the spring if they have too many.  I remember the excitement of waiting to hear if school was cancelled when I was a kid.  We couldn’t wait to get on our snow clothes and get outside to play.  In high school we didn’t get snow days as it was boarding school and classes were held right there.  Our one perk was that we got to wear slacks under our skirts as we had to walk outside to get to the classroom building, otherwise we could only wear slacks in the dorm.

We always dressed for dinner.  Sport coats and ties for the guys and dresses for the girls.  For church we always wore hats, gloves and hosiery and again the guys wore sport coats and ties. We thought it was extreme at the time and grumbled a bit but I think things have gone way to far the other way these days.  When I see the get ups some kids wear now days it makes me cringe.

Why do some young men wear their jeans down around their knees?  Can someone please explain that to me?  Why do they think we want to see what color boxers they are wearing and how in the world do they keep their pants from falling off?!  Good grief, if I tried that I wouldn’t be able to walk!

And ladies, please, we really don’t want to see your th*ongs when you bend over for something or sit in the bleachers at a ball game! Gag!  I know I am an old fogey but some things just aren’t meant to be seen by the world. Speaking of, please cover up your boobage while you are at it.  I was in a store recently and the gal at the counter was sitting down leaning forward and everything was hanging out all over.  Don’t they have dress codes any more in the work place or does that violate someone's freedom of speech or some other loophole?

So, for all the griping and grumbling I probably did in boarding school I’m glad it was the way it was and we learned how to dress properly.  Okay, enough ranting.

I love snow days because I stay home and usually a grandchild or two will come over.  Today was no exception and Miss T and her friend K came over this morning and are going to stay until tomorrow morning.  They have played outside, come in and dried their snow clothes in the dryer, gone back out again and started all over again.

We also like to cook as you all know.  Now Cliff M. cover your eyes as this involves more pictures of food!

This recipe was given to me by Needled Mom my buddy out in California that I will be seeing next weekend! YAY!  It’s braided bread and it was lots of fun to make and even more fun to eat hot right out of the oven!  I think maybe I could’ve let it rise a bit more so that I could get the egg wash on more evenly but regardless it was to die for!  Thank you Mary, see you soon!!!

I also got some quilting started.  I got everything cut out and will start putting it together tomorrow.  It’s going to be a beautiful poinsettia Christmas quilt.  The fabrics are really nice and the pattern is soooooooo pretty!   It was on the cover of Keepsake Quilting catalog a couple months ago.  I will keep progression pictures in future posts.

So, I must get dinner on the table as the Hubs will be home soon.  Have a wonderful weekend!

This is not about football.

One way to lose readers of your blog is to talk about football.  I have found this to be the case. This post is about football but in a very round about way, stay with me here.  :o)
Saturday morning we left to fly to Boston to be in town for the Pats game this weekend.  There was work involved but also time for some fun things too.  Flying out of here can be challenging at best so we often are on small planes that I refer to as puddle hoppers.  I’m used to it now but at first I felt like I was on a kite.
We took off without a problem and we all were doing our crossword puzzles, using Ipads, dozing, you know, all the things you do on a flight.  About 45 minutes in the air one of the pilots came back and said there were weather issues in Boston so we would have to land in Providence Rhode Island.  Okay, that’s not too bad, about an hours drive back to Boston.
A few minutes later he came back again and said we were going to have to land in Portsmouth New Hampshire as there was a possible problem with the landing gear freezing up.  Immediately my overly active imagination was showing the runway being foamed by airport personnel so that we could glide in like a sled!
We landed without a hitch and went into the small terminal to wait for another plane to be readied for the rest of the trip.
You can see that the visibility was not good in this picture.
Well we waited and waited and finally one of the pilots came out and said that there was just one guy on to deal with this stuff and that it would be a while.  The plows were out cleaning the runway and hopefully putting some sand down.
Waiting is not one of Hubs and Sons strong points so they decided they would rent a car and we would drive the rest of the way to Boston which in good weather would be a couple of hours.
Adding one more thing to the mix was that Miss T and I were going to fly back home the next morning as she had a travel team basketball game that she really didn’t want to miss and the rest were going to stay for the game and meet with some clients.
Well we hashed that over for a while and decided that if the weather was still good in Bangor we would head back home in case we couldn’t get home in time the next day.  The pilots assured us things were still fine in Bangor and they were headed back there so we hopped on and went with them.  The terminal people looked at us rather strangely as we came in as we had just left that morning!
The next day we went to her game and they won by four points which was nice as they had only won one other game all season.


We came home and did some baking and made homemade ice cream. Peanut butter ice cream with mini peanut butter cups in it.  Oh my aching hips!
The Pats won and there was a lot of celebrating down on the field with my family right in the middle of it.  Next thing I know I get an e-mail from Son with a picture of Mr. D in it! You’ve got to love technology.  A friend of ours in Atlanta was watching the game, saw D in the midst of that huge crowd (he was sitting on Son’s shoulders to keep from being trampled) had his DVR on so stopped it and took a picture of the tv screen with his Blackberry, sent it to Sons Blackberry in Foxboro who in turn sent it to me in Maine!  Is that cool or what?!





Everyone got home safely that night, the weather had cleared so all was well! :o)


Hey Dickiebo I can't get onto your site!

Can I help with the homework?

 

Here is Miss T with her kitty Penelope.  They are like two peas in a pod even when it comes to homework time.  She sits there patiently waiting for T to get finished.  She even came to spend the night here last weekend when Miss T spend the night.  Noodles liked the company but Munchkin was in a snit and hid the whole time.

Miss T loves all cats.  In fact she loves all animals and has a tender heart towards them.  She was playing with my Ipad the other night and Noodles was a good subject to shoot.

 

She also took pictures of her Miss Matched socks.  I guess they are all the rage now with the younger set, mismatched socks on purpose, they even come this way.  We got these at the Miss Matched store at Universal in the fall.

I’ve been continuing to take down my Christmas decorations.  It looks awfully bare without the lights and greenery on the shelf in the sunroom.  I may put up some strands of little white lights all along the shelf if I can do it without them being seen.

 

We made little apple tarts and Miss T made her own crust from scratch.  I’m going to put together a little binder with all the different recipes she has made for her.  That girl loves to cook!

 

These rolls came out much better then my hockey puck debacle of Christmas Day!

It’s a few days later and I still haven’t gotten this posted yet.  I just came home from having a nice lunch with two horsey friends over town.  It was nice, we sat there for three hours!  When we came out one friend had a ticket on her car………she was not happy.  Then as I was driving home she called and said that it was a courtesy ticket.  I had never heard of that, I thought a ticket was a ticket but guess not.  Maybe it’s like a warning. She was happy!

 

Ever have those days when you just can’t think of anything interesting to write? I’m having one of those days.  The End.