Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas from Mike and me and our family!  Wishing you a day of blessings and great memories!

Aaron's Gingerbread House

Aaron's school puts on a display of gingerbread houses.  If the

children want to, they can buy a gingerbread house kit, assemble

it, and bring it in.  It is solely voluntary.  This is Aaron's 2nd year

of making and displaying one.  He did most of this himself.  He 

needed a bit of help in lining various parts of the house with icing, 

but the rest was his doing.  He cut the green stuff to make the door

and the trees and put all the candy on. Aaron is 6 and is in 1st grade.

Sara wrote his name on it.

Thanksgiving in Texas

We spent Thanksgiving in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, with my daughter and her family. We arrived on the Tuesday before and left their house on Sat. morning to drive to Austin for four days.  We had a wonderful time!

 This is the cheese, crackers, etc,  and dessert table.

 This is a view of Thanksgiving dinner from one side of the island.

The menu was: turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrot souffle,

biscuits, creamed corn, tossed salad, deviled eggs, Brussels sprouts,  

stuffing, and a cranberry dish.  My daughter will tell me if I left 

anything out.  It was absolutely delicious!

This is a view from the other side. 

 This was the sweet potato and pecan cake---one of my

favorites! The other dessert was apple pie.

Sara and Abigail

We were goofing around -- this is my son-in-law's step-father, John.

He and wife Kim were there also.

Abigail, Sara, Jory, and Aaron

Mike and me with Abigail and Aaron.

All of us.

corner view:joy

 There has been much joy experienced by me throughout my 61 years.  Below is one experience at joy that at one point in my life couldn't happen. Then at age 43, I experienced the joy of graduating from Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio.  Mama had to go in a wheelchair but she wouldn't have missed it. With me are my wonderful parents and my brother David. For more corner views, go to Kellen's blog.

The deer are back.

The deer are back.  They've not stopped by the bird feeders all summer long.  Now, a doe and her fawn are gulping down the sunflower seeds (meant for the birds), so I've begun putting out corn for the deer. 

Last winter, we had 10 deer coming up to our house.  People would stop their cars to look at them.

Corner View: Reflections

This collage of photos is in my dining room. It was made by my Aunt Monie for my parents 50th.  wedding anniversary. I got it after my dad died and we cleaned out his place (Mom had been gone for about 9 years at this point).

These are close-ups of some of the pictures.  Dad and Mom early in their marriage, their wedding day, when dad graduated from college. He would have been in his early thirties (I'm guessing), and Mom and Dad at my first marriage ceremony.  She looked awesome in that dress!

Here is one of my favorite pictures of them.  She watched her weight and would have worried when I gained  so  much weight in the past two years. I have recently lost 20 lbs.-- she would have been so supportive and encouraging and proud.

I've been thinking about their courtship and wedding.  I have several pictures of it; I know the church and town where it occurred; and who all were in the wedding.  I know the story of when and how Dad first saw her and thought that he was going to like living next to her. (His parents moved a lot, and that got old, but this time and place he liked!)

But I don't know other details like:

    How old were they when they started dating?

    Where did they go on their first date?

    How old were they when they married?

   All the many details of the wedding like the flowers, the cake, the reception, honeymoon, and where they ended up living. 

I know about when Dad went to war and the details of mom leaving nursing school to marry Dad before he shipped overseas. (nurses were not permitted to be married---that policy changed as the war progressed and the need for nurses increased as the number decreased because of marrying before the men left to fight in WWII.)

I know and did a scrapbook on Dad's capture by the Germans, his POW experience, and his release. We have the three telegrams sent to Mom and her recollections of that time and getting the news of him missing in action, then a POW, and then his release.  I  know about the duplex Mom bought when Dad was in the war and where they lived after he came home.

We know the details about him becoming a Methodist minister.

But there are so many unasked questions, some things I would love to know.  But it's too late to ask.

Reflections of who they were and their early years together are what I wonder about now.  I would recommend you ask your parents about their life together so that you have that family history when they are no longer here on earth.

For more corner views, go to Kellen's

    

I'm back! My Corner of the World

I am loving retirement!  I've been very busy.  I've not started subbing at the local schools yet.  I'm just enjoying being free to do most anything I want.  

 Sara and Jory and the kids came up in August for an important meeting for the family business.  I picked them up at the airport, dropped them off at the meeting site and took the kids to lunch then to our home. The  next day was another meeting, so Mike and I  watched Aaron and Abigail.  We went to the library, to the park, and to see and sit on Grandpa's antique tractors. The kids are great at entertaining themselves since they don't watch TV.  However they could watch Frozen so they watched it twice.  They had first seen it at the movie theater.

Of course, the visit had to include goodies from a local bakery.  The big part of that was the decorated cake with Happy Visit on it.  The kids love cake and rarely have it, so it's a huge treat when they get to have some.
For the past 3 years I've taken pictures of Aaron savoring every bite.

An important note: School for teachers began on the day I had to pick them up, so if I was still teaching I would have been unable to do any part of their visit.

 These pictures aren't in order. The first two pictures were from August and these next two are the Pumpkin Festival's parade. Doug brought his kids and we all watched the parade from a friend's house.

 Last week we watched Doug's kids overnight and painting pumpkins was a highlight of the evening.

I have been doing a lot of planting and maintaining our flowers.  There was supposed to be a frost on this night, so I took a picture of my begonia in case it was ruined. However, it survived as did others, so there are still colorful plants surrounding the house.  I'll show more pictures of them later.

Dillon played biddy league football on Saturday mornings and we got to almost every one of the games. I would have been too exhausted from work to attend.  Dillon is the boy in the center of the photo with his head turned the other way.

Peyton played volleyball on the 7th grade team at her school. The games were on various weekdays at 5:00.  We made a lot of them.  One night we took everyone out to dinner and I realized as we were leaving that normally I'd have been getting things ready for school the  next day and then going to sleep.  Therefore, I couldn't have stayed so late and would have missed some quality time with them.

This was a picture of Abigail during their visit in August; she wore the princess shoes most of the time when we were indoors.

 



The next three photos are from our trip to the Wilds. It's a preservation for all kinds of animals and it's only about 45 minutes away. We took Colton, Dillon, and Addy (Doug's kids) there on a special tour where you sat in the specially designed back of a truck and got literally up close and personal with them.(Peyton had volleyball practice that was mandatory and school was starting soon, so if we didn't go then, we could not have gone).

Feeding the rhinoceros.

We also kept Doug's kids for two nights and days in  July.  We have not done that since Dillon was a baby.  I couldn't handle it because of the fibromyalgia fatigue.  But what made it feasible was that now I could rest the next two days which I couldn't have done if I were still teaching.

There is more, but I'll post it later.

I've been reading book after book and can even stay up and finish a book if the suspense is getting to me.
I did organize the biggest walk-in closet and also the room that is attached to the back of the kitchen. We have to go outside to get into it.  We have our bulk items, pop, cleaning supplies, and Tupperware, etc. there.

Well, that's all for now.

Corner View: Morning Light

I got these online through Google, but they resemble what the sky looks like early in the morning on my way to work (when I was working).
For more corner views on morning light, head on over to Francesca's.

Our resident chipmunks

We have at least two chipmunks who live in the ground near the bird feeders.  They are quite willing to climb the poles and hang on the feeders to fill their mouths with seed.  They will run off if I tap on the window, but I have stopped doing that; I've decided to let them feed too.

The grandkids were here Thursday and Friday.  I looked up at one point to see Addy with a salt shaker near the bird feeders and Dillon beside her.  I got up and went outside to see what in the world she was doing with a salt shaker.  Here, their grandpa had told them that if they sprinkled salt on the chipmunk's tail, they could catch it! And they believed him, not understanding that if they got that close, they could probably catch it anyway. However, they would not get that close!

Corner View: Path

For this week's topic of path, I chose some favorite photos of paths we took when visiting Ireland 11 years ago.

 Path along the Cliffs of Moor.

This path leads to the first church in Ireland (supposedly).  I used this as my heading when I first came up with the name for my blog.  It was for me, B or Beth, meandering down life's paths.

Narrow road or big path on a near-by island off the coast of Ireland.

Me walking up one of many elevations.

For more on paths, head on over to Francesca's.

Corner View: Monochrome

 I especially liked how this turned out.  It's a little barn all by itself in a field near where I get my hair done.

 The next few pictures were taken in a cemetery that overlooks part of our small town.  We had had a deep snow and I trudged up there to get some shots.

For more monochrome, go on over to Francesca's.