May All of your Christmases be Scary!

May Everyone Have a Scary Christmas....I mean, Merry Christmas....I always get that mixed up....

Anyhoo......Merry Christmas From the Haltermans

Who's Smilin' now?

This time of year I always get a little sentimental. So here are two of my all-time favorite pictures of my first two little ones. The year is 1974. We are at grandma and grandpa's house and Uncle Kent is there with the camera. Shelley, true to form, thought Darren wasn't smiling enough, so decided to help him out....Fast-forward to 1987 or there abouts, Now is was Darren's turn to get revenge....what a devilish smile he has while he is scrunching up big sis's face.
Ah, the memories.......

Red Hat Christmas party...2006

The Ramblin' Roses Red Hatter's met at The Village Garden for their evening meal and gift exchange and much silly goings on, as always. Here we are waiting for our orders and by the way, the food was yummy. Bonita and Linda co-hosted and did a lovely job and they made us all a little gift bag which was placed by each sitting, it contained: A hand-made knitted dish cloth,candy, a snowman spoon, a jingle bell red hat lady ornament, complete with fuzzy boa, and a bookmark with the poem, "When I am an Old Woman", it was all very festive and fun. Rhae, gave us all a calendar for a gift, thanks, Rhae. I may not know where I am, but at least I will know what day it is..
Our Queen Mother was presented with a tee shirt that said "I pee when I laugh", because, well, for those that attended the slumper party.....you will know why....
Here are some more of the lovely ladies in attendance.


Everyone who had a birthday between August and December were given a pair of deer antlers as a special party hat, they were covered with little jingle bells and everyone looked so "dear" in them. (Ok, just smack me now!)

When it was time to exchange gifts, we all took the gifts we bought and Bonita started reading the poem about "Mr. Wright", so when the word "right" was said, we passed ou r gifts to the right, then when "left" was said, we passed them to the left....This went on for quite sometime, and many of them didn't know which way was up and ended up with two gifts or no gift....in the end, all were happy with their presents and the game was a lot more fun than just drawing a number...



The Night finale was, of course, a group picture....don't miss Janet, she is on the floor, and I am sitting on her! Someone has to keep her in line!.....;-).

Your baby's uglier..no, your baby's uglier....

Rhiannon and Lydia came by to see me and Bill tonight. They are taking a parenting class at school, so they brought their creepy fake babies with them.

Do you think these two will make good moms? Here they were arguing over who's baby was uglier....
I asked them if the babies wet and such and they said "No our school is too cheap to buy the cool babies, ours just cry and we have to turn the key in the back". I really miss those crazy girls!

A week with Garret

Shelley and Cary went on a mini-vacation to visit Darren in St. Louis the week of Dec. 4th. I drove to Decatur to stay with Garret. The time went really fast and I had a great time with him. The pictures are from him opening his first Christmas present (from Grandma, me). He is such a cutie.......However, the same time period with the untrustworthy dog, the crazed cat that likes to slam himself against the wall all night and the psychotic parrot the plucks out his own feathers because he is upset, seemed like forever. The dog, Bandit, does not mind me at all and makes me nervous because he is part pitbull and very high strung. I locked him in the baby's room with food and water and a blanket and he whined for 6 hours and then started howling until the wee small hours. When I finally let him out, the baby's room was a mess and he had blue tape stuck to his butt. Spraying the cat with the water bottle seemed to work for a while and it was quite entertaining.....the parrot.....is just retarded.......... And, so this ends another episode of "The adventures at the zoo of crazed animals"...and one sweet baby boy.

New posted pix of Preston and family

Here are a few pix I stole from Preston and Amanda's blog. Below is Amanda's family taken at Old Man's Cave in Ohio on Vacation last July. To the right is the Phillips family,they all look like they are having a grand time. The last two picture are of Hannah's Birthday...Wow, they are all growing up so much. Hugs to all.....I thought I would put these happy pictures on here today, Preston is leaving for Iraq tomorrow......so I needed some happy thoughts.....

More pix of Blind Date

Bill, mom and I went to Slo Joe's again, last night, Wed. Nov.22nd. Bruce and band were playing again. We took mom, who had a great time watching her baby boy play that mean bass guitar, along with the other crazy, yet talented cohorts in crime.....my bro, Milo, Greg, Brent and Dana.

Do you Know these people?????

Blind Date Saturday night

Saturday night Bill and I went to Slo-Joe's Bar and Grill and danced the night away while BLIND DATE played their extensive library of rock songs, old and new. We ran into some friends and my brother, Milo (who is the bass player on the far left and below) and sister-in-law, Barb....it was great fun!

Red Hatters " Gobble" up Thanksgiving dinner

We met at Judy's house and had to first strike a pose for the camera, cause after all, we are all a family of sisters.

Judy made some delicious creme puffs filled with chocolate and strawberry filling. She also bake a wonderful pork tenderloin with garlic and rosemary and ham. The rest of us brought salads and desserts.

We just kept eating and talking, and telling tall tales. Here is Janet (and mom) who laid down on the bar when she was out with some "older" Red Hat sisters. She was in the same bar where Gretchen Wilson worked before she became a big country star a few years ago.

We had dessert and coffee and talked about our husbands getting lost and not admitting it. How mom and I were going to Decatur and were talking and ended up in Terre Haute, Indiana. How my husband was gawking while driving one night and about ran over a bunch of catholics crossing the street after leaving mass...the others wondered if he would have stopped so fast if they had been baptists?????....:-)....and it went on like that the rest of the night! Judy's husband didn't believe the sign that said "Don't drive any further up the mountain, snow ahead".....they had to back down the side of the mountain.....well, you get the picture....... We also discussed some fun places to go in the future.

Dead yard ornament

It is mating season for the deer population, so the bucks have only one thing on their mind (much like the males of the human species, only it's always "open season" for them). The bucks go completely berzerk and end up doing crazy things. The bucks, of course, fight for their territory and just have no sense at all. The news people displayed a picture of a deer yard ornament completely destroyed by a crazed buck.....it was laying on it's side with the head ripped off and smashed to smitherines.........I just laughed my ass off! Now there is something for the strange and weird catagory!!

Hey, I wrote this birthday poem for my brother.

And the title is UFO's:

A metalic glint darts across the sky......

A glowing globe fades into the night....

An elongated object sits motionless in the sky....

Who are WE to say from where they come.......or why.

Some believe they materialize from other dimensions.

From other worlds,

Or the depths of the sea,

Do they come from a world inside our world?.........

................................................YOU GOT ME!!

Ok, go ahead and groan......it's a birthday card....yuck it up a little!!

The Fog

It was a beatiful foggy day today. I took the dog for a morning walk, along with my camera, well, the camera wasn't walking, it was just me and the dog.....but I digress............
The morning misty air was exhilerating and the fog was very thick, maybe could see 50 feet.
I have a love of graveyards, as those of you who know me, are well aware. This one is close to my home and has a very old part where some stones are dated 150 years ago or more. I particularly love the old style, it somehow feels more "warm" to me than the industrial designed head stones of today....so I was happy standing here in the fog with my dog and camera.
I live near the tracks, and love this view of the tracks to nowhere, kept my ears open though, as this would be a really unfortunate place to be if the was timing was off.....and that's an understatement.
The last picture, I just tilted the camera while looking out my back door. So, once more life in my tiny town with my husband, chickens, dog and camera..

The Bobby Kennedy Project

Recently I was watching the Oprah Winfrey show, her theme was "Dreams that came true". One of the guests was Emelio Estavez. This is such a great story, so in case you missed it.............First of all, Emelio wrote the screenplay, directed, produced and stared in the story of the day Bobby Kennedy was shot. This is quite an undertaking, but he says is has been a labor of love. So here is the story he told:

He has been trying to write this screenplay for many years, he was so touched by the death of the Kennedy's, but especially Bobby. He was really young, maybe 9 or 10 at the time. So he kept trying to write it, but has had writer's block for the last 3 years. One day his dad, Martin Sheen, well, I guess you all know that....sent Charlie Sheen over to Emelio's house. Charley told him to leave, go get a room somewhere quiet.... and finish his dream project, already! Can't you just see Charley Sheen doing that? So, Emelio gets in his car and just starts aimlessly driving and ends up in a small town somewhere. He is in the dining room of his hotel that very evening, getting ready to start writing the next morning. A lady comes up to him, she is a big fan, asks him what he is doing in town. She is staying in the same hotel. He tells her he is working on the Bobby Kennedy project and that he has had writer's block, etc, etc.

She says, "OMG, I was there that day, the day Bobby was shot. I was standing right in front of him when he gave his speech." She left before the end, to avoid traffic and found out on the way home that Bobby had been shot. They had many conversations, the lady and Emelio and so this gave Emelio the shove he needed to finish the screenplay. He became good friends with this lady and uses her character in his screenplay. She actually married a friend so that he would not have to go to Vietnam, but would get sent to Germany instead because he was married. (due to the draft)....Is that a cool story or what? Anyway, he has lots of big actors playing the parts of regular people and what they were doing that day, like Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Robert Di Nero, there must be about 20 different stars in it and were all equally excited to be in this wonderful movie about a day that changed our world forever.

Maybe I should have started this post with "Once upon a time, there was an actor named Emelio Estevez....."

One Eyed monster

To venture away from my usual diary type entries, I am writing about something else today. The above is a picture taken by the Cassini, NASA's spacecraft. This is a picture of a hurricane-type storm located at the south pole of the planet Saturn. What is truly stange is that the earth scientists don't know what is causing it (since, it is believed there is no water on the surface of Saturn, that it is much like Jupiter, and is mostly gases), and it doesn't move. It is 5000 miles wide and is turning at a speed of 350 mph. Whoever said, truth is stranger than fiction, knew what they were talking about....if you are really interested and want to know the whole scoop, click on link below.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061109_monster_storm.html

Visit with Kim and Sylvia

On November 2, Kim and Sylvia flew in from San Jose to spend some time with the restof us that live here and Kent drove up from Kentucky. Here is a family picture of all of us.Sylvia and I did some fast talking and the guy who owns this business (must be Sam Phillips, according to the sign)..... let us in to take some pictures, because we told him that Sylvia was a writer for some fake historical publication. She really wanted pictures of the place because itis supposedly haunted. There was one picture with a strange light that was pretty impressive.
No one was paying attention, so that's why I like this picture, just us in our natural habitat with baby Garret.
Ok, this time we were paying attention, even Garret was hamming it up.
Great uncle Kim, Garret is trying to act like he doesn't know he is getting his picture taken, but we know he loves it.
Me and Shelley always have to do the mother-daughter thing
Aw, ain't they just the cutest?
Sleepy little man.
Hey, I'm holding my own bottle.
Saturday night we went to the Lone Star restaurant in Mt. Vernon, to celebrate mom's birthday.....the food was yummy and we had a great time.


Afterwards we all went back to mom's and watched "The Day the Earth Stood Still", a great old sci-fi classic, we had coffee and cakes and just visited. It was such a wonderful evening and the past 3 days with Kim and Sylvia were such fun. It has been 5 years since they have been home, so it is a time we will never forget!