Last day with Preston and family

Caleb gave us the "thumbs up" when we said our final good-byes today.
Mom, me and Caleb.....three generations. Is he a ham or what?

Our adventures today: After a fun lunch at Arby's, we went to the "Rusty Nail", which is an antique/craft shop and has the coolest things for decorating your home. Amanda and Preston loved the place. We found out that Amanda is a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln! Caleb found a metal board with letters on it that he played with for a while there and they had a model train running all around the top of the inside of the building, he thought that was great! I got dizzy as I kept turning him around to see it go all along the upper wall! Mom and I had some chocolate mint coffee that they had samples of there too. They have an old rowboat in the middle of the store, and inside of the boat is full of water that bubbles and there are real fish in there too, it it surrounded by frogs of all types, not real frogs, but the kind you sit in your garden or in your house, it is so cute. Caleb kept wanting to put his hands in the water. So, he had a good time in the store too.

We did a little shopping at Walmart and then they had plans with Preston's best friend and a good bye dinner with his dad. They will be on their way back to Minnesota to pick up the other two kids in the morning.. Then they are going back home to NC and then next week are driving to Disney World where they will be staying for 8 days. Wow, all of that driving! They are used to it though, ah, to be young again!

Thanks for a wonderful visit, son! Maybe next time we will come back to your house for a visit.

The dimpled one and family come to Illinois

Preston, has just returned from his 4th tour in Iraq. This was our first day together since his return. It's a rare event for all of my babies to be home at the same time. We had spaghetti pie, home made sourdough garlic bread, cole slaw, brownies, and Pineapple cake. The little guys had a good time getting to know each other too.
Left to right: Top row, Darren, Preston, Shelley, Left front row: Amanda, Caleb, Garret and Me.
Caleb with mom and dad.

Buddies.....
Hey, Let's order pizza.......!!!!


Someone always has to be a comedian........

The Jim Cary of our family.....allrighty then.....
Star trek.................

Grandpa Bill got home from work just in time to give Garret a drink of soda...

A good time was had by all.

Prayers for my mom

Mom had a CAT scan and PET scan a few weeks ago, at the advice of Dr. Oza, her cancer doctor. There was a spot in her kidney and as a precaution she went to a urologist and then today had some exploratory surgery to see what the spot was. Both Dr. Oza and Dr. Dasai believe it is a cancerous growth, but it has been sent off to the pathology lab to be sure. The urologist removed as much as he could see. We are awaiting results from the lab and will go from there.

Please keep mom in your prayers, all of you that read my blog. I know prayer heals and helps us all.

Sheila

Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky..

ON JULY 20, 1969, AS COMMANDER OF THE APOLLO 11 LUNAR MODULE,
NEIL ARMSTRONG WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO SET FOOT ON THE MOON.

HIS FIRST WORDS AFTER STEPPING ON THE MOON, "THAT'S ONE SMALL
STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND," WERE TELEVISED TO EARTH AND
HEARD BY MILLIONS.

BUT JUST BEFORE HE REENTERED THE LANDER, HE MADE THE ENIGMATIC
REMARK "GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY."

MANY PEOPLE AT NASA THOUGH IT WAS A CASUAL REMARK CONCERNING
SOME RIVAL SOVIET COSMONAUT. HOWEVER, UPON CHECKING, THERE WAS NO GORSKY
IN EITHER THE RUSSIAN OR AMERICAN SPACE PROGRAMS.

OVER THE YEARS MANY PEOPLE QUESTIONED ARMSTRONG AS TO WHAT THE "GOOD LUCK, MR. GORSKY" STATEMENT MEANT, BUT ARMSTRONG ALWAYS JUST SMILED.

THEN ON JULY 5, 1995, IN TAMPA BAY, FLORIDA, WHILE ANSWERING
QUESTIONS FOLLOWING A SPEECH, A REPORTER BROUGHT UP THE 26-YEAR-OLD
QUESTION TO ARMSTRONG.

THIS TIME HE FINALLY RESPONDED. MR. GORSKY HAD DIED, SO NEIL
ARMSTRONG FELT HE COULD ANSWER THE QUESTION.

IN 1938, WHEN HE WAS A KID IN A SMALL MIDWEST TOWN, HE WAS
PLAYING BASEBALL WITH A FRIEND IN THE BACKYARD. HIS FRIEND HIT THE BALL,
WHICH LANDED IN HIS NEIGHBOR'S YARD BY THE BEDROOM WINDOWS. HIS
NEIGHBORS WERE MR. AND MRS. GORSKY.

AS HE LEANED DOWN TO PICK UP THE BALL, YOUNG ARMSTRONG HEARD MRS. GORSKY SHOUTING AT MR. GORSKY. "SEX! YOU WANT SEX?! YOU'LL GET SEX WHEN THE KID NEXT DOOR WALKS ON THE MOON!"

Of course, this is NOT true, but it makes a good story....yes?

Garret's 2nd Birthday Party

Garret has a fascination with helium balloons....can you tell? This is my favorite picture, well, wait, they are all my favorites, who can choose???? Here stands the mighty Garret, with his trusty broom....
Welcome to Elmoville!!!!!!!! (Giggle, giggle, giggle, laugh, laugh laugh, roll in belly, laugh, laugh)
Welcome to Elmoville
Family and friends.



Garret loves his grandpa Bill...
Time for presents.....let the ripping and tearing begin!


Here, grandma, hold my stuff!


I love my broom! Now, I can help mom and dad........NOT!
My and great grandma Knight..
Time for cake....and more Elmo...
Yeahhhh, I blew out my candle, by accident, I am applauding myself and so is mommy.

Think I'll just have me a bite....

My new table is cool...
The day ended with grandma and mom taking me for a ride in my new wagon..!

I was chatting with the dog walkers, not the dogs.

I just took my dog, Sally, for a walk, and everybody was out with their dogs, there was lots sniffing going on , while I chatted with a couple of them. There is a guy across the main road that is in a wheelchair, he has a beautiful black lab, that is so friendly. I stopped and talked to him for a while too, Sally really likes that dog, they just looked at each other and twitched their ears and the black dog gave her a kiss... , she put her ears down after that...guess she wasn't in to it...

Now, if you read the above, would you think I was sniffing and chatting with the dogs, or the neighbors walking their dogs? Yep, my brain works in mysterious ways. I sent this to a friend and she was confused....hee

The above fits into that catagory of "How to destroy english grammar in 4 seconds". Of course, I was only writing an email, so I guess good grammar and proper sentence construction doesn't really matter, but I thought it was funny, so her ya go....

Aftermath

This photo was taken this morning just as the sun was coming up. Soon after, all of this ice started melting off of the trees and buildings. There has been a loud rain of ice shards and melted water hitting the house all morning. Also, many large branches have fallen off of the tree with the weight of the ice. I can hear them cracking even from inside. It is 32 degrees and will get up to 40 today. As I look out of my window I see that that trees have very little ice left, but this morning they were still beautiful.

They just don't have them all locked up yet!!

Before I tell you some stories concerning events happening during this ice storm, just let me show you a few pictures I took. I like to call the first one "Alien grass", as it looks unearthly with the ice surrounding each blade of grass and the fall leaves embedded there too add a strange touch.
Cornfield in winter.
Icicles on a park bench.
Ice encrusted trees on the road leading out of town.
Grape vines in my yard. If you look at the upper left fourth of the picture you will see a branch with small stems and the grape buds at the end. The ice has formed a cluster of glass grapes.
Grape arbor in winter
Abstract clotheslines
Ice spiders
My new car...

So now for my stories.
The power went off here in Kinmundy about 12:30 or so in the downtown area. We decided to drive around and see what was going on. It was still sleeting a little, but we dug our way out and I grabbed my camera. We only drove a block and happened to see a tree on fire, a power line was hanging in it, as soon as we drove right under it, it exploded in three places and the power line hit the ground, the tree was still smoldering. This all took place before I could even get my camera out. Pretty scary, we high tailed it out of there. Little did we know, that was OUR power source too.

We drove to the downtown area, the grocery store was still doing business using a pencil and paper, they had no lights or power of any sort, the gas station could not pump gas , but was open changing windshield wipers and such. We drove a few more blocks, and a huge tree limb fell in the road right in front of our car, we backed on out of there pretty quickly too, I told Bill we should just go home because it wasn't very safe out there, but, of course, he ignored me and drove on. Soon we turned the corner and there was a young guy on top of his roof. A very large branch , about 1 foot in diameter had smashed into his roof and he was up there cutting it before it did any more damage. Yes, he was on an ice covered, steep roof, you could see him sliding around up there, and he had a chainsaw running full force. Hello???? ice, roof, chainsaw??? Thing's that make you go hummmmmm!

So, while we were watching him, and waiting for disaster to strike, a car drove by us and it was an old red convertible, with the cloth top. All of the windows were broken out, the cloth top was half gone on the back side of the car and his fishing pole was sticking out of the back, all covered with ice like the tree branches....I'm tellin' ya....I can't make this stuff up....and like I said, they just don't have them all locked up yet, they should start with that guy on the roof with the chain saw, and follow up with the windowless convertible guy.

When we got home, our power was out and it didn' t come on until 8:00 last night.