Home Again

We just spent four days "upcountry", mostly with Amanda, Justin, and the babies. Had a good time with them. The kids are growing up so fast. We have a lot of pictures and I will post a few for you.

We went to an indoor ice skating rink near their place one afternoon. The kids had never skated before and loved it. Even Emily (2-1/2 yrs.) got in on the act, although her version is to have someone push while she rides. Brianna and Gabriel did real well, both were starting to skate on their own at the end. Brianna didn't want to leave. She probably would be on the ice constantly if it were possible.

Cindy and I drove up to see Phyl and Wade Tuesday evening. We went to Lebanon the next morning to see Cindy's mother, before driving back to Philly for the trip home. That is exhausting! Tried to make a connection with Helen and Beth, but just couldn't do it. I think that, next time, we will go to one location and notify everyone where we are and how long we will be there. If anyone wants to see us, they can make the trip. That way we'll know how many people love us! Right? Of course, right.

Now it's back into the grind for a while. This trip killed my budget and I need to replenish before we go again.

Berty, I have a question. Who is Jess?

Love you all.

Our Day

Today, I cooked and cleaned. Didn't really seem like Christmas--seemed like a Saturday! We are celebrating Christmas with our family on the 29th, when Makayla can be with us. Michelle isn't coming home until the morning of the 29th (I think) and Joe, Shannon, Dave, and Jess all have to work, so we're having "Christmas" around 6:00 that night. Joe and Shannon will have Mattie and Lauren that night, so it all works out well. Not really sure what the kids thought about it--we just said "this is what we're doing" and they all said "ok", but it probably eliminated the rushing from one house to the other that you seem to do on Christmas day.

I wanted to do something special, so I made a nice dinner and John and Lynda came over. They always do their family Christmas on Christmas Eve and for years have went to Donna Plummer's on Christmas Day. Donna was getting elderly and moved from Knoxville to her son's in Nevada, so it worked out really nice for both of us. They brought us a gift--a picture Lynda had taken about 3 years ago of Morgan, Makayla, and their granddaughter, Terri, in a nice frame. The three little girls are all sitting in one "camp" chair and is an EXCELLENT picture of Morgan. Warms our hearts. Ed was pretty emotional today...cried several times...misses Morgan. I just kept busy (my strong suit, I think!). We're picking up Makayla on the 29th and will have her until the 3rd. Should be fun!

I did manage to get cards out, Phyl, but only because Ed addressed them all and signed them. I told him that I wasn't going to mail any because I didn't have time. He said that he would do a few if I wanted him to, so I gave him the cards and the rolodex and when I came home that night, he told me he had done 35 (or some such!). I guess it occupied him all day long. I was so proud of him. Well, it's been a long day, so I'm going to close.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas! Thanks for the cards--sorry I didn't get any out this year. Take care of yourselves. Hope you all can put difficult circumstances aside and enjoy the day. Love you.

One from Cindy

This is a picture that Cindy painted as a school assignment. She took the apple blossom photo I shot, cut out a small section, blew it up to fit the canvas, and got an "A" for her efforts. Looks good, doesn't it?

Numero Dos

Like I said. I can see a distinct improvement over the first one. Now all I have to do is decide who to give it to. Cindy says I should keep it, paint more, and do a show.

Enjoy

Hi all. Just to let you all know, I am doing OK. I still don't know whether Rose and I will get back together or not, but at this time I just keep telling myself that it is the choice that she has made, and I feel confident that I could not have changed the choices that she made regardless of whether or not I could go back in time knowing what I know now. I also feel that I did not treat her wrongly, so I do not beat myself up thinking that I should have done something differently. I am staying in contact with her, I either talk to her or text her almost every day. Some days I think that she will be back soon, other times I think that it is a lost cause. I have made up my mind and I have told her that I will give her some time to decide what she wants to do, but I will not put my entire life on hold while she tries to decide. She will have to make a decision whether she wants to be married to me and be a part of this family or whether she wants some other life, and she will have to make that decision fairly soon.
On another note, Nate and Amanda and their kids are home for Christmas until the 28th. Bambi & Kevin came over tonight, so all the kids were here for a while. Really enjoyed the time together. The kids are all getting so big & I really do enjoy them.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and get lots of time to spend with your families. I do love you all. Love, Bob

First of Many, or Getting Better All the Time

OK,don't laugh. Here it is. You can skim down a few posts to see the original. I'm quite pleased with it (for starters), but I can see every mistake I made. I'm going to have to create a learning curve for grass. (Looks like little, crawly worms, doesn't it?) But the perspective and the lines are quite close, so I think that I just need experience.

I think for now I'm going to focus on close up shots of beautiful flowers. I have a picture of apple blossoms that I took a few years back in PA and I know a place here that has a vine hanging over a fence with gorgeous purple flowers.

Here's to Numero Dos. Merry Chritiquing!

I have the painting done and framed. Still need to get a picture to upload. Looks pretty good, or at least I think so.

Starting to get ready for Christmas

We went to the tree farm last Sat. with Tara & Tom and got our Christmas tree--it's in the garage. And today I shopped for gifts for my volunteers. If I get to work tomorrow, I'll start wrapping them. We're supposed to have a storm so if it's really bad, I'll stay home and start baking cookies. I have scheduled cookie packages for all of our patients to be delivered next week so the volunteers will be bringing in their cookies on Mon & Tues. Then on Wed. afternoon, we'll package them up and spend Thurs & Fri delivering them. Plus I have to bake some for our house. We've already gone to one Christmas party and have two more on the schedule. Did a little bit of shopping last Sat evening and probably will do more this weekend. No decorating done yet in our house.

How's it going with you?