Winter Planting

Over the last few years Jim has been buying trees from the NRD and planting them in nursery rows so we could transplant them when they were larger to various places on our property.  

He rented a tree spade and moved 6 nice pine trees into the north front lawn to finish out the row of pines already there.

Thanksgiving 2015

Many years, we celebrate Thanksgiving at our house.  As the years go by, more people gather around our dining table. 

Grandchildren add a happy and noisy tribute to our day.

Any time we get together with my folks, we roll out the puzzles.  Often Mom buys a new one every year for us.  This year we tried a new one called a mosaic puzzle with all the pieces having square corners, like a grid.  It was an easy puzzle except for trying to keep it straight on the table. 

The boys are interested, but not quite big enough for a 1000 piece puzzle.  They may be the cause of the missing piece from the brand new puzzle, or it may have been dragged from the table by an adult sleeve, which certainly happens often enough.

Jim tried something new with our turkey this year.  Other years we have used our Big George to rotisserie the turkey, but this year we tried it using the gas grill.  We have discovered in our meat adventures on the grill this year is the importance of soaked meat in brine so he did that. 

A turkey on the grill rotisserie cooks a lot faster than in the oven so it was ready in plenty of time. 

Ready to carve! It was a delicious moist turkey.

The large picture window at the front of our house and the patio door in the back make it extremely difficult to get good photos.  Even with the drapes shut, the back light gets in the way.  And, when you have a family that would much rather eat that waste time on a picture..., 

well you take what you get. 

 Anyway, we were all here, and all fed. 

With three exuberant boys coming we thought maybe a great big play room in the garage might be the thing.  It was for a little while, but they do like to be with the rest of us as well. 

Winter is Coming

In this beautiful state where I live it doesn't rain very often.  It certainly very seldom rains all day long. At least it hasn't in the last decade, we've been in a drought more often than not.

So, it was very pleasant to sit in the house with a fire and watch the gentle rain come down.

It was not very pleasant to dash into the library for knitting group, but I was prepared with a hooded coat.  

We hadn't taken our rain gauge in for the season yet so we could tell how much rain we got.  

2 1/2 "!! 

That's a lot for around here.

  

The best was yet to come. The tail end of that storm dropped enough snow to whiten the landscape.  The clouds rolled away to the east at sunrise.  

Of course, no week is complete without a visit from the grandkids.  These two little blondies can always find something to do together. This day it was Othello.  Barry wanted to put the black sides up and have Christian use the white sides so they could tell who wins.  Christian likes to do whatever Barry does so we had a one color board.  I love the way they can play together without fussing most of the time. Once in a while strife breaks out and often they can resolve their differences without intervention. 

On another note, my left ear (not the most recent surgified ear) was draining again.  The canal was filling up with goopy stuff just like it had a few weeks ago and it turned out to be a fungal infection.  

So, we whipped up to Omaha yesterday to get the infection suctioned out and to get some more powder that gets puffed into the ear to heal it and keep it dry.  

I don't have any ear photos, but I do have a photo of my puffer with the yellow powder. 

Barry

A Day With Papa

When I was raising up my children I mostly saw them through the lens of a camera.  I wanted to make sure I would remember what they looked like and what they did as they grew up.

I seem to have a peculiar affliction that prevents me from remembering faces.  When I think of people, unless I've known them well, I remember not themselves, but a photograph.  

There are places I've been as a teenager and I don't remember them because there are no photographs of the incident to remind me.  

I wonder if my brain would have compensated if there were no photos at all, 

but I didn't want to risk it.  

I have way too many albums from when my kids were little and I love them all.  

I don't take nearly as many photos these days.  I like to enjoy these children in my life and not spend my life behind a camera.

Sometimes, I wish I could have recorded the second two boys early years in the way I did Zane's, but I couldn't.  Zane was right here in the house, and I had cancer when Barry was one.  

I don't really need hundreds of photos to have a record of what those boys looked like while they are growing up.  Some things are more valuable because of their rarity.

That being said, it's Zane's turn for the spotlight today.  He spent part of weekend with us a week ago when November was still harking back to October.* Zane is a busy boy at nearly 7 and it is a good thing for him to have productive activities to occupy his time.  

Jim is cleaning up some trees on the edge of our property and he thought Zane could help him load twigs and small branches.  While Zane did help with that, he had a lot more fun using the Sawzall cutting off smaller branches.

It's never too soon to learn about steering. And what could be more fun than Papa's John Deere.

 You can't really see it, but Zane has his hand on some lever or other as they get ready to back out of there.  

We want to remember these days.

*Anne of some place or other

You Just Never Know

I don't read horoscopes.  

I don't even think about them from one year to the next.

However, when we were in Omaha for my post-op ear check, I was killing time by reading the funnies.

My eyes strayed over to the horoscopes and this was mine for the day.  

HA!

It's Tuesday Again...

...which means I have two weeks post surgery behind me and one week ahead of me before I go to the doctor again.

With post-surgery packing unpacked my hearing should be augmented with some help from my right ear.  

Until then, I'm using--

THIS

--in large groups.

We had been thinking of a personal amplifier, perhaps not as seriously as we should have, partly because we kept thinking improvements were right around the corner and instead it is taking longer than we thought.  

Also, we are not the kind of people that just jump out there and do things.

Procrastinators I think they call them.  

hee hee

We were kindly given the loan of this and I tried it out Sunday.  

WOW!!

I could hear again.  I could adjust the volume to the volume of the speaker.

Of course, there are the difficulties that come with any amplifier.  It amplifies the toddler's complaint  as well as pages turning.  

It, however, is a vast improvement on a room full of mumbling friends.

I'm slightly tempted to wear it all the time, but it is a bit of a pain. I don't want to draw attention to myself and it does interfere a bit with my glasses.  The pressure behind my ear gets old after awhile.

I did have a few twinges of injured pride the first time I wore it, but

I swallowed it.

I don't know how things will be going from here, but they'll go somewhere.

There are options out there.