Happy New Year 2016!
We met Mark & Dena last night for a short visit at a truck stop south of Chowchilla.  Their new truck is beautiful, especially with the lighted wreath on the front to look festive for the Christmas season.  We had a nice visit and exchanged some gifts - for Christmas and Mark's birthday and my birthday coming up.  They seem very happy with their new adventure planning their own trips, and having their own truck.  They keep busy so were on their way back to Dallas with a load after being in San Francisco.
It's always good to see them even if for a short time!

Christmas is coming . . . soon. . . .
The best gift at Christmas was wrapped in swaddling clothes. . . .


I finished all the shopping for the Angel Tree gifts and bought the gift bags and tissue paper so tomorrow after church will be busy getting those all ready to deliver on Tuesday afternoon.  Eight families and 42 presents so will have a car full.  Angel Tree provides Christian booklets to be given to each child as well - age related.


Will help organize the shopping and sorting of food for five families to be delivered Wednesday afternoon.  LOVE INC. provides the names, I contacted all of them and two of them cried as I told them we would be delivering food for their families on Wednesday.  Our church school kids raised enough money to buy the perishables, turkey, ham, hamburger, bread, milk oranges, apples, spaghetti and spaghetti sauce plus canned fruit and vegetables, canned soup, potatoes and an apple pie.  They will all be blessed with Christian booklets & Bibles as well. The school kids are even going to help me shop and sort the food plus may even help deliver!  What a joy it is to see our church school teaming up for these community service projects.  The 4-H club that meets at church is helping too so will have many hands helping!


This is what makes Christmas special!  Plus I love the shopping for the volunteers who donate but don't like the shopping part.


Have some shopping to do for family members but thanks to Julie who is my personal shopper for her family - it makes it much easier. So I have very few to buy and look forward to doing that Monday.  Love the last minute hustle and bustle with chilly  weather and Christmas music everywhere.


Plus I scheduled a massage for Monday at 3 p.m. so will be all ready for the busy week delivering gifts and food. 

Put Larry to work stamping and sealing envelopes to get our Christmas letters out before the last mail pick up today - so hopefully everyone will receive our Christmas letter by Wednesday or so -


Have a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

On the mend - hope is in the air!!

Larry & I both went to the Dr. today and he gave us antibotics to get rid of the Bronchitis we have - since I've had since Sunday he also gave me Presdisone - so that should work quickly!  So much flu around and germs floating in the air - we hope and pray for rain coming in Monday night to clear the air!


Gary's on antibotics too so hopefully we'll all get well very soon!

January birthdays celebration with Pizza Villa & family - a great fun evening!

Spring is just around the corner!!

Here it is the 16th of January and the violets are blooming, the primrose, still a few rose blossoms and the pussy willows are about to burst out their fuzzies! 
I need to prune the roses but Larry is busy pruning bushes so he fills up our green barrel every week so hopefully by the end of the month I can prune the roses.
The fog has been hitting us the last few days and evenings so hopefully that will soon lift and we'll see the sun again!  It came out for a few minutes late this afternoon so that is a good sign.


Julie, Jim, Thomas, Emily and her friend Blake, Philip and Gary will all be here tomorrow evening to celebrate Julie and my birthdays!  We'll order Pizza Villa and have sodas and celebrate!!! Will be fun - love these family events!


We had a great week with our Bible Clubs - the new club at Chenoweth with third graders was wonderful!  It was a great beginning and I know it will probably double next Tuesday when the word gets out as to how much fun the kids had!
Middle schools are growing too - asked for more chairs so we could fit more in today so look for more next Friday.  Amazing how kids want to learn more about God and what it means to be a Christian! Very rewarding!

Spring is in the air!

While the evenings and mornings are chilly and usually foggy, the afternoons are sunny and warm, in the 60's.  My primroses that came back from years ago are blooming along with the wild violets that were given to me years ago. Most surprisingly is the iris that is blooming - I've never had them bloom this early before. I had separated them and Julie & I planted a bunch in Emily's backyard last fall so am curious to see if her plants are blooming as well.


Larry's busy with Habitat three mornings a week as they are getting the windows and doors in so will be pretty secure soon.  They are very fortunate that the volunteers who do the roof got it all done before our rains came.  We expect rain again next weekend so all is welcomed as everything was so very dry. 


Had a delicious dinner tonight- our neighbor went fishing in Alaska and gave us a nice big piece of halibut so fried it in butter with salt, pepper and lemon pepper - it was delicious.  Along with it we had baked sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli plus strawberry banana jello with fruit cocktail and bananas.  After trying something new last night I thought we deserved a good dinner tonight.  I bought some frozen French Onion soup and baked fresh biscuits to go with it - but it wasn't very tasty - have three more so will have to add something else to the meal to make it complete when I try it again.


After having the flu bug last week from Monday after I finished at Cruickshank school Bible Club until Wednesday - I'm ready for a complete week this week to catch up! We start a new Bible Club in another public elementary school on Tuesday with third graders - looking forward to it.  Our middle schools are so well received at lunch time - kids seem very appreciative to know God loves them and forgives them and it is a free gift - they only have to believe and ask Jesus into their hearts!  It is so rewarding to see the differences in these kids lives as they accept Christ.

A new year and new beginnings!

Another new year and new beginnings!


I love a new year - an opportunity to begin new things, learn new things, and do new things!


I hope to recruit more board members for our local Habitat to make our board very diversified to reflect the different cultures in our community. 


I hope to recruit more volunteers to do our Bible Clubs in our public schools - we start a new one next Tuesday - at Chenoweth - where all our kids went to school. It will be for third graders - there are 145 third graders do will probably have at least 40 attend for the first few weeks. They each take a letter home explaining that it is a Bible Club so some don't return but we usually keep a good majority of them all year.


I hope to be an active member of a call committee for anew Pastor as ours has returned to St. Louis to study for his PHD in hopes of returning to the Mission field where he visited with his whole family of five children on a year's sabactical two years ago and a return trip with his wife for a month a year ago.


I hope to do more deep cleaning and sorting - do some painting, and upgrading throughout the house - usually get a good start and then it stops.


I hope to stay healthy, keep exercising with walking Benji every morning and doing water aerobics at least two or three times a week.


I hope to further plans to visit Alaska in 2016 with all of our family, kids, in laws, grandkids, and whoever else wants to join us. . .it will be our 60th wedding anniversary!


I hope to help my oldest brother celebrate his 90th birthday in Seward Nebraska, and enjoy family celebrations.


I look forward to celebrating my 78th birthday soon and also daughter Julie's so we enjoy that special time together.


That's my hope for 2015 so far - I know the list will grow longer. . .