Shingles are gone! Thank God.
Now, I am taking a step back for awhile. I'll be checking back in from time to time, though.
 

Well, I certainly started off the New Year with a BANG! I've got shingles and they HURT!! OMG. What next? Getting older is really full of surprises. Seems like those things you caught as a child can come back to haunt you in later years...oh no!

We had a wonderful Christmas in Moses Lake this year. Plenty of food to eat which included Patricia's Christmas cabbage along with a pork loin roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, Waldorf salad, green bean casserole, baked yams with onions & olive oil, and dinner rolls. We watched David Foster's Hit Man Concert, what a treat that was! Hope everbody had a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas sure came fast this year! We are leaving early Christmas Eve morning for eastern Washington. We are going to spend Christmas with Ron's sister Patricia. Mom will be spending Christmas day with us at Pat's also. We are looking forward to seeing them both again.

We have no snow this year. But, we will have our white Christmas at Moses Lake. Right now Stevens Pass is bare and dry. Not good for skiers up there yet...but just fine for traveling over the mountains.

So, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas! And I'll see you when I get back.

Well, it's that time for a blog update again. It's after midnight here. I'm tired and going to go to bed now, but first I thought I had better do another blog entry. I haven't been on here much lately. I'm getting over a bad eye infection. Got to heal up good before the trip east of the mountains for Christmas.

No snow here yet! Just plenty of deep freeze weather. It did actually get up to 40 degrees today though. My daughter's pump froze up on them last week and they just got it repaired today. Sure took a chunck out of their Christmas $$$! Poor girl.

It was much too cold out this morning for the guys to go riding motorcycles, so Ron and I went to town and Christmas shopped instead. We had a real heavy frost on the ground and the decks this morning. The guys are smart not to ride when it freezes like that. You just never know where those patches of ice will be on the blacktop, when you're out on a motorcycle.

We needed to get more of our Christmas shopping done and today was the perfect day for it. It was cold , but it was sunny out. A far cry from the stormy wet days of November. I think we are drying out some here now. The colder air is moving down from British Columbia and bringing with it frosty mornings and colder nights. Just the kind of weather to get you in the Holiday mood. I was able to get the rest of my shopping done for my kids and grandkids. Now, I just have Ron to buy for. Oh, and his Mom, also. I will probably end up buying something online for Ron like I did last year. I really like to shop online for him, and so far I have succeeded in being able to please him that way.

I saw nothing in the stores we shopped in that I would consider getting him. So I have been looking online at what Zappos carries in fleece for men. Sure, I have to pay a little more for it , but they have free shipping and I love their fast deliveries. Order it one day before 2:00 PM and it is here the next day! Seriously! Last year I found him a gorgeous thick fleece black jacket. Almost, like a Berber, with a mock leather on the elbow. I loved it and he loved it too! It fit perfectly. He will have to get it out of the closet and start wearing it soon, because the jacket he wore to town today wasn't really warm enough for these temperatures we are having now. We plan on going east of the mountains to his sister's to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with her and his Mom this year. That is if we don't get snowed in like last December! I hope we don't get snowed in this Christmas.

I am looking forward to spending Christmas at Moses Lake this year.

I sure hope everyone in the states that's here had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was great...except for one thing - I have an eye infection in both eyes and I have to limit my time spent on the computer.
 

My daughter out did herself for my birthday dinner last Wednesday. She fixed TWO big rib roast's and baked me TWO Devil's Chocolate cakes with nutty frosting! Yummy!

All of my kids and all of my grandkids were there for dinner to celebrate my birthday and Thanksgiving all at once! I was very overwhelmed with their love and devotion.

We had a real fun day and I was able to take lots of pictures of them all. Those grandkids of mine are growing up so fast. All of them are teenagers now but two - Jayce & Christian. Christian has a birthday tomorrow and he will be eleven years old. He is my youngest grandchild. Then Jayce, his brother turns thirteen the day after Christmas! So that is when eight of them will all be teenagers! Gosh, it doesn't seem possible. Where did the years go?

The boys were playing rock band and foosball most of the afternoon. What noise!!!

I came home on Thursday to a quiet house again. I have to admit...it was nice to have peace and quiet after all the noise.







 

I'm leaving on the train out of Mount Vernon tomorrow morning. I am going down to Port Orchard to stay with my daughter for a few days. She is planning a celebration dinner for me to celebrate my upcoming 66 th. birthday and Thanksgiving all in oneday with my kids and grandkids!

I'm sure it will be fun and interesting to see what all the dinner has to offer!
Just as long as there is NO CAKE with 66 candles on it!!!







 

Yesterday was a dry day. Atleast most of the day was dry. I was able to get outside and sweep all the leaves off of our big front deck. I also used the dry time to dead head some of the late bloomers in the flower beds. I even trimmed back the rose bushes.
Ron was busy with one of the motorcycles. He ended up going to town for a new battery for the Honda VFR. The one it had was three years old. He likes to keep them both tuned up constantly.

Next week I am going down to Port Orchard to stay a few days with my daughter. I will be leaving on the train out of Mt. Vernon on Tuesday morning. Take the train to Edmonds and walk over to the ferry terminal to take the ferry to Kingston. She will pick me up there. She has two days off and her husband Justin will be in Las Vegas teaching classes for the Navy all next week.

I am looking forward to our visit then and so is she.






 

All the rain here has brought snow to the mountains.

This is our Sauk Mountain showing off her snow this afternoon here.





 

November is living up to her reputation here as the wettest month of the year. It has been just one rain and wind storm after another since the first of the month. today is no exception. Heavy rains are in the forecast and we are seeing plenty of it today. It's a good day to stay in and do whatever.

Yesterday Ron had to go have a root canal done early in the morning. He sat in the dentist's chair for two and a half hours! His dentist told him he had an extra canal that was crossing over another and it was being a bugger to remove. Not only that but he will have to go back in as removing it all damaged the crown on the tooth. Needless to say Ron was not at all to happy when he came home in the early afternoon. Poor baby! He did not suffer from much pain from it all though. Mostly a sore jaw from having to hold his mouth open that long!

He was able to eat a bowl of soup for dinner and then later I fixed some soft home made french fries for us. Today he is going to eat swiss steak that he fixed for our dinner. I fixed a coleslaw to go with it.

So, I have to go eat now because it is all ready.






 

We are leaving this afternoon to go to town to get our flu shots at long last! We were able to find them at Fred Meyer. Everyone else has run out of them. Not that I am looking forward to being poked with a needle in my arm, just glad to finally be able to get the protection needed with the vaccine.

I have been busy writing out my Mother's letters here in a book - blog and on Facebook for family members to view. It is receiving a good audience there, I might add. Of course most all who comment are family members!

I just wish it would get more feedback here. I so need it, so that I can figure out just where I am going with this. So far I have gotten only one review on it and it was a much treasured review from Nada . I can't thank her enough for such a kind and thoughtful review. Thank you again, dear Nada.

I realize that putting together something as personal as this is not going to find an expansive audience. However, I would like to have the input of critique to make it better and ready it for publication. I intend to redo photo's in it as some of those I have entered have not been put through a scanner(I am getting one of those), but are old photo's that I have layed out and taken pictures of with my digital camera.

If any of you have ever attempted doing anything like this and have ANY suggestions for me to make it more interesting...please tell me! I would be so grateful.




 

"Drenching rains, heavy mountain snow, thunderstorms, and flood warnings.

Oh October, how we've missed you...

As we drift deeper into autumn, the storms are getting a little more ornery as the Pacific Northwest struts its stuff." That is what was in my email awhile ago from KOMO weather4cast.

To me it sounds like someone was talking about November not October. I had been telling Ron before dinner that I dreaded November coming. Even though my birthday is in November, I still think of it as ...well just the worst month ever ...as far as WEATHER here in Concrete, Washington goes. One only has to look back on the last three Novembers here to get the drift of the downpours, heavy snowfalls, windstorms and flooding. October is finally acting out her reputation this last week before she leaves us. Even if the storms are on again off again every other day, as has been the case as of late.

We are grabbing an off day coming up Wednesday to go to town and meet up with my cousin Sue & her hubby Bill Schlink at Costco in Burlington. That is a day they will be able to boat to the mainland from Venovi Island where they live. This time of year the weather in the San Juan Islands plays a big part in any navigation to and from as the wind tends to whip through the channels up there.

I am so looking forward to seeing them both. I shall take her my latest Poetry Book. I think she will enjoy it.







 

We went to see the twins and Annalyn today. The twins are turning five years old on the 27th. So, we took them their
birthday gifts and a gift for Annalyn too. It had been awhile since we saw them last and we were quite surprised to see that baby Annalyn's black hair has turned blonde! Boy, is it ever curly too. It was sure fun watching the girls as they modeled their new jackets we bought them. We stopped at Safeway on the way down to Arlington and bought cupcakes & candles for our little celebration. Grandpa is not into the big birthday party scene anymore, so we went early before they had their big birthday bash party this weekend.

We were all able to enjoy eachother on a much more private and personal level. I took some pictures of all the girls and so did Grandpa. We were lucky enough to have gone during the peak of the fall colors. The leaves were showing off their grandor everywhere along the way.

These are some pretty spectacular shots I took of The Skagit River and Sauk Mountain in the background. The ones of just the bright colored trees were taken in Darrington on the way to Arlington. The bridge over the Stillaguamish River, before we entered Arlington. The small mountain with all the brilliant fall colors is in Mount Vernon.
I hope that you enjoy these.
 

I have been busy typing my fingers away. I created a Book on WDC called "Letters From My Mother." Check it out and let me know what you think of it. I had thought that I lost my Mom's letters when I moved out of my home in Port Orchard in 2001. I found them in the bottom of a box in my bedroom closet this past July. I always wanted to do something special with them, but never knew what that might be.

I could use some feedback on this -

ID: 1609356   (Rated: E) Title: Letters From My Mother  Description: Collection of letters from my mother. I need feedback! If you view...could you review? By: ShiShad

You have to start with the first entry. Give me your opinion please!