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.