A Fun Week!

Last night was our Bible Study Christmas Party. It was at Fred and Jody's beautiful home.

Our hostess Jody

Garry and Jan

Kitty, Helen, Ann and Donna

Jim and Helen

Jim and Jan

Katiebeth ( I think I surprised her!) Oops !I think I surprised Mickey too!

Cheryl ---making a"point".

Bill and Andy--thrilled to have Bill out of the hospital and home again.

Tim, Jody, Jeannie and Jim

Kitty, Annetta, Melissa, Andy and our host, Fred

Gene and Mary

Bill, Jeannie, Annetta, Cheryl , Andy and Helen

Jim, Melissa, Katiebeth and Mickey

Kitty, Ann and Richard

Donna, Garry, Mary, Gene, Lyn and Marsha

Tim, Jan, Fred and Jody

Toby--in his "Reindeer in Training" costume.

Toby was an exceptional host too.


Opening presents

There were nearly riots (of laughter) over the Scarf-a-Roos

Donna and her pig (which she lost to Cheryl)

Great Party--Thanks Fred and Jody--oh and Toby!!

Moving on--

My cousin Paul from Seattle came down to visit. He is planning to move to Texas in the near future, with his wife Karin and 5 children.

Jan and Paul

Austin and Paul

My cousin Joyce and her husband David came down from Tulsa to visit too,

I was thrilled to get to see them as well!!

David, Joyce and Paul

To celebrate us all being together--for the first time in 40 years,

Jim took us all out to Cagles for dinner.

Dinner at Cagles


Carol of Lights
Paul arrived on Wednesday which just happened to be the night of Carol of Lights.

We went to the reception at the Frazier Pavillion before the Carol of Lights.

It was really lovely and the admission was one toy for Toys for Tots.

Skye came along too. She loved the crowds and activity.
Paul was amazed that Christian songs were sung at "Carol"

--a right they have lost in Washington state.When he saw the phtographers on the roof, he was afraid they were going to

start shooting or that riots would erupt. We are soo blessed in TEXAS!!

Paul and Jim at "Carol"

What a wonderful week of Cousins and Christmas Celebrations!

Snowy Day

We woke up to snow this morning. There is nothing like snow to get you in a Christmas mood. The Christmas lights look so magical against the snow.

Skye had never seen snow so--we let her out to see what she thought about it. The first picture I completely missed her--she loved it!!
She zipped and raced around the yard, only stopping to take a taste.

Her favorite "toy" is wrestling with the broom--even in th snow.

Finally she stopped to rest and just take it all in. We had a hard time getting her to come in.

I think she is a snow dog!!

Thanksgiving 2009

The holidays, which we have always anticipated and loved, have been a real struggle for the last few years. First our daughter married and moved away, then both of my parents died. We have have gone from being an big group of people to share them with to only the three of us. Austin suggested today that we need to start some new traditions to make up for the loss and absence of those we love. He even volunteered to cook some of the things that were Gran's specialites! One thing Jim and I have been doing is going up to the wildlife preserve in Muleshoe on Christmas Day. The preserve is where many thousands of sandhill and whooping cranes winter. This time we decided to go today, on Thanksgiving. It was fairly cool and the sun was out. We could see more and more sandhill cranes grazing in the fields as we got closer to Muleshoe.

This shot is for my cousin Paul--who didn't believe it was flat on the Texas plains--THIS Paul is a hill.

This is the platform at the lake--called Paul's Lake. It is about a mile across the lake where all the cranes gather. With binoculars you can see the cranes across the lake from the platform.
This is probably several hundred cranes. My camera will zoom x25 but it still was not close enough to get a good picture of the cranes. The noise they make is a cooing sound, but with so many together is it very loud.

Skye loved running in the high grass. She zigzagged through it like she was chasing a rabbit. Then she would turn around to make sure we were watching.For one second she was still enough for me to get this picture with the sun behind her.

On the way out I was going to get some pictures of prairie dogs. They had been sitting out everywhere when we drove in. However the sun had gone down just enough that the temps had started to drop. They were all tucked snuggly in their holes--so I just got a picture of the hole.

The cotton had been picked and put into the modules ready to go to the gin. These looked kind of odd, I don't know if some of the cotton was dirty or they got alot of trash when they harvested.Then it just wouldn't be West Texas without a pretty sunset. I always thought that Texas should have been called Big Sky country--because we don't have any mountains to obstruct the view of the sunsets.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!