Happy New Year 2012

December 31st - Cloudy and very mild

At the risk of hurting any ones feelings, I want to share some of our Christmas remembrances with everyone. It has been a very hectic month of December, as it seems everyone as experienced the same thing. Perhaps, it is the fact that we still have not had snow here, so Christmas crept up on us here in Pennsylvania.

We celebrated a lovely Christmas Eve at Shawn and Maegan's home which was decorated to the hilt as it always is. We tried something different this year, everyone brought food that could be eaten on our laps and we had a wonderful variety of foods, so we all got a chance to chat with everyone and to enjoy the kids, then after dessert we opened our gifts. Maegan always comes up with the neatest gifts for Lou and me and I enjoy opening our gift bag. This year among the treasures she had a wine cork with pretty gems on the top with a "R" and a spreader with an engraved "R". A travel journal that has a place for pictures and a short narrative and a travel folder to keep receipts, credit cards, maps, etc. These were all things that we can put in the RV and use on our travels, these were just a few of the things, but the interesting thing was the wine cork matched a set of melted blue bottles that are intended to be used for cheese and cracker dishes that Lou's daughter, Sandra gave to us, and her daughter gave us another dish that matched that, so all of those go into the RV. Perfect!!

Tonight is our square dance celebrating the New Year and I just have to use the dishes there, so after that they will get packed up and put into the RV.

Krista, knowing that I just can't get enough of Frank Sinatra got me a collection of his CD's and they are all of his old albums with the original album covers. I was delighted. They certainly will go in the RV and will offer many hours of entertainment on the road.

Janet, Lou's youngest daughter, did a really neat thing. She took an old 33 1/3 record and softened it in the oven to make it into a bowl, and then filled it with neat items from Bath and Body Works for me. It was the perfect gift for me, as this is the first year that I have not ordered from them, so I didn't have any new products to take south with me. The bowl will make a great conversation piece to include in the RV. Like Lou tells me I have the RV overloaded now anyhow!!

I had not gotten my granddaughter anything for Christmas other than a book that she has requested, but wanted to get her a business suit for her trip to Harvard, so on the 27th we set off to the mall and while at the mall, we found a sign maker, hence, I finally was able to order a sign to put outside of our RV when we are traveling. We have wanted one forever and now we just have to get it waterproofed and we are ready to travel.

Preston hand threw a new dish that has two pieces so the bottom one will hold ice or hot water to enable the top serving dish to be multipurpose. He also made coffee mugs to all of his cousins. Each and everyone is unique, a lot of talent in those hands.

We also received many gift cards that we will use while traveling. One is just for books and that is always a delight and that one we usually save until we return home and make a day trip with that one. Last year I purchased The Help as one of my books and was that a delight, but was disappointed with the movie, so much was left out.

My brother and his wife gave us bird houses that we will delight in putting out when we return and a solar light that we will take with us and display with our new sign.

Next project will be getting the house cleaned up and the motor home packed up and ready to leave mid January.

December Already

December 2nd - Saturday

I can not believe the whole month of November has passed and I have not made a post to our blog. Believe it or not, I have spent the entire month trying to get my fall housecleaning done.

Growing up my mother had a rule, our work had to be done before we could play, and you know to this day it is very hard for me to deter from that rule. I started with the master bathroom, took everything out of every drawer, and moved from one room to the next. I finally finished on Thursday!! It has never taken me this long, but I can tell you our house is clean as is the RV.

We had many things side track us as the house cleaning was trying to be accomplished. The RV had to go two different places and one night when we were trying to get it back into the barn after dark, I heard a lot of creaking in the barn floor only to find that several boards had split, which later revealed that the large beams in the barn had dry rotted and need to be replaced. We are not trying to decide if perhaps we need to built a pole barn with wider doors.

The picture of the beautiful African Violet is one that my sister gave me last year when we were in Florida, it was a small one and we transported it all the way across Florida and back home and transplanted it and it has bloomed and rebloomed. It was supposed to be white, but you can see it has some purple in it also.

You will also see from the pictures how much Matthew has grown. Steve is working a lot of evening shifts, so Krista and Matthew spend at least one evening with us which Lou and I enjoy. He certainly enjoys his Grandpa and at church, he will crawl over me to get to Lou.

Lou and Preston have been hunting several days this week and Preston comes to our house for dinner each evening which we enjoy. That way I get to hear the deer stories again. While they were hunting one day this week, Krista and I did the wreaths for the cemetery and got them delivered. We have been so fortunate to have such a warm fall, it had made the outside projects so much easier to accomplish.

Lou and I filled a shoe box for The Shoe-Box Ministry at church. Our Parish sent 97 shoe boxes, which I thought was extremely good for a small country parish.

I have not done any outside Christmas decorating and may not, as we are planning on leaving for Florida by the 15th of January and we do have a lot to do before our departure. We plan on having time to enjoy our families and the holidays.