Apparently I haven't posted on Xanga in 5 years! Most of you are following me on Facebook. but for those who aren't, let's see. I still live in the same house with the same husband and the same son. My daughter and her family have moved a few times, she's now divorced and engaged to another young man. That's going well. She and I still have our moments, but not as many as what we had. She's 27, so that's a big part of the improvement. My grandsons are 8 and 6, 3rd grade and 1st grade. My son is now working as a CNA, looking for a more lucrative career. I think I shall do more explorations and see who is hanging out at Xanga these days.

What else can I say?  I guess I can't really maintain two social networks, although I will check here now and then. 

Let's see.  In the past six months, since returning from Wisconsin, I have installed a totally new kitchen in my house (not me personally, but you know what I mean) have been to Europe for a River Cruise on the Danube with my husband, Fought many fires on the family front and have leaned on Jesus a lot!   But really, things are fine here now.  Mom and dad are living 20 mintues down the road until January 1.  They got here just in time for Thanksgiving after dad's 3 month drama with his gall bladder.  Read my mom's blog for those details!  Can I post my Christmas letter here?  That would summarize the hightlights!

Christmas 2009

Dave and I just finished performing in three productions of “A Baby Changes Everything”, an imaginative account of people who might have been at that inn 2000+ years ago when the savior of the world arrived as a baby. That got me to thinking about how that baby has changed our world and my life. I pray that God would use me and my family to further his kingdom and to make this world a better place to live in.

This year was fairly typical. No major birthdays or births. Skyler had his first birthday, celebrated with style and chocolate cake, on July 7. Kaden turned 3 on May 16 and is now in preschool. Both boys think that the world revolves around their babop (Dave, aka grandpa, although not often). So when Dave’s around I cease to exist. It’s OK though. I get them to myself during the week!

No changes in Dave’s work. He’s continuing his research at the Radiation Laboratory at Notre Dame. I no longer substitute, due to a lot of things, not the least of which is the need for me to be available to those aforementioned wonderful grandsons! Ken continues at Toys R Us and is actively looking for something more lucrative since he now has a serious girlfriend. We call her the motivator, although not to her face.

Michelle has worked almost a full year at Bed, Bath and Beyond and enjoys that. Sam continues his employment as a brick mason. So life continues.

Dave and I enjoyed the trip of a lifetime when we cruised the Danube River in early September. Now that’s the way to travel, unpack once and forget about it. Have all your gourmet meals prepared and waiting, eating with a different group of interesting people each meal and having English speaking tour guides at each port. We began in Passau, Germany and visited Salzburg, Linz, Vienna, Bratislava, ending in Budapest. Wonderful!

I hope each of you enjoys a peace-filled wonder-filled Christmas with those you hold most dear!

I'm back!

Just returned from my annual girl-friend week in Wisconsin.  I left last Tuesday night and got back home around 5 this afternoon.  Whew!  I'm beat.

Good thing I drove up Tuesday because by Wednesday morning I was one sick puppy.  Found out later that Ken was also sick so we decided we had food poisoning.  So Sue drove my van up north and I just slept.

First stop, mimiwi's house.  You can check out her blog for a full description and pictures.  I slept and didn't eat.

I went to bed as soon as we got to the cottage. 

On Wednesday I was OK enough to shop with the girls.

We had a mid-afternoon biscotti break at our favorite coffee shop in Marinette, Wisconsin.

Followed by dinner at the Serving Spoon, across the bridge in Menononee, Michigan, in the UP. 

Sue and Dawn herded cows.  This was actually a reinactment of an incident that occured the day before while we were still at Sues.  I was at her house, too sick to leave, and they did a Walmart run.  On the way back a bunch of cows broke through their fence and almost got into the road.  They helped another passerby to herd the herd back into their pasture.

AFter dinner we heard this band play at the town bandshell.  They were a country rock-n-roll band and very good.

Friday we went to a fish fry.  Yum!

Saturday I had a problem speaking.  I used a lot of wrong words that day.  We had lunch here, where I had a very tasty crunchy salad.  I said, "These walmarts are so good!" and we all laughed.  So walmart was code-name for walnuts the rest of the week.

We also saw this one-legged "frog" Val-speak for fox.  I was really bad that day!

Sunday we attended the catholic mass and the Presbyterian service.  They were both good.  Then we hiked a to a few waterfalls.  They were beautiful!

Anybody know the name of this blue berry?

Monday night we went to a very nice restaurant, right on the bay.

We scrapbooked all week - got a lot of pages done too!

Tuesday morning we had to pack up and leave the cottage.  Boo hoo.

We drove to Sues and today I dropped Dawn off at Midway airport, then headed home.  Such fun times!  A week is still too short!

Here comes Thomas!

Kaden is so excited he doesn't even look at the camera!

There were other trains to ride

And trains to play with hands on.

And people to meet, like Mr. Topem Hat.

And, finally, a passenger car to ride in, pulled by Thomas of course!

Next I'll post pictures of Skyler's first birthday, which was on Tuesday.

We get to see and ride Thomas this Saturday.  He's coming to Connorsville, IN so we're making a mini-vacation out of it, staying Friday night at a hotel, then Saturday at the train museum where he'll be.

http://www.whitewatervalleyrr.org/

Should be fun.  Kaden is looking forward to it!

We went back to the zoo the Sunday before last with the guys.  This time I took pics of the animals. 

Also, as you can see, I completed the 50 books in a year challenge.  Not that it was much of a challenge.

So, zoo pics part 2.

The big cats were all awake and very photoghenic.

Wanna scratch my belly?

The peacock was strutting his stuff.

Back view.

Skyler was very interested.

I love the prarie dogs.

This time the boys got to take a train ride.

A pose on the turtle.

The boys parents!

Kaden spent the night on Thursday so Friday I decided to take him to the local zoo.  Ken came with.  Michelle was working so Skyler was at the baby sitters.

The first animal we came to was the tiger.

Both boys thought feeding the fish (and the geese) was a blast.

Nice goat.

This one was funny.  Ken knelt down to tie his shoe, so Kaden had to do it too.  Even though he was wearing sandels.

Hey!  Look at me!

We had to double back to see the lions.  I love the lions.

I got a pass, so we'll be back lots of times this summer.

I just got this from Coolmom_56.  Apparently the BBC thinks most people have only read 6 of these books.  Hah!
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

If I tagged you, it means I want to see your list.

How many have you read?

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x+
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkienx+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x+
6 The Bible x+
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily BronteX
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George OrwellX
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x+
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardyx
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (except King John)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x +
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger x - (this means I have no idea why it's on the list!)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy x
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh *
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky +
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x

34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x - this one wasn't even well-written, just controversial
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins x
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x
52 Dune - Frank Herbert x
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x+
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens x
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac x
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy x
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker x
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath x
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray I've tried, honestly!
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x++
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom x
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

It was easier to count those I haven't read - 25, which means I'm 3/4 through it.  I will try a few of them, but some I will never read.  A strange list, imho.

Big birthday yesterday - Kaden turned 3!  So we had a small family party here - Dave's mom came down from Muskegon, my aunt and uncle came, as did Sam's mom and little sister and Ken's friend, Rena.

Michelle and I conspired to make a train cake since the theme was Thomas the tank engine.

When the kids arrived there were balloons waiting for them.

All three kids were after the balloons.  Sam finally tied the stacking rings to each balloon so we didn't have to keep fishing them from the high ceiling in the sun room.

Tasty!

Dinner was hamburgers with lots of sides.

Siblings.  Gotta love Michelle's look.  Ken can still annoy his sister!

Kaden thought that he and his dad ought to poss like that too.

The highpoint - a new Thomas bike!

Tulips!

Just a ray of sunshine while I go out and plant my posies.