Fourth of July Weekend

Our family was able to get together for the Fourth of July at our lake place. It's been a long time since all of our "boys" have been there at the same time. But there were some missing members too. Lt. J's wife and four daughters had to stay in VA to begin the moving process as they get ready to relocate to their new duty station in NC. And the only two grandsons were visiting their Dad and his family for the holiday and couldn't make it either. Wish you were here!
Here are the grandkids that celebrated with us......sure was a small number this time.
L-R are Dabby Do, GO and MoRo.
Dan, Son #3....
KiKi (wife of #1)
Jen, Wife of #3 and GO
Son #2, Lt. J.
Son #1, Mayo (his name for himself as a toddler)
Trainman, Son #4
Granny T. and GO
Two cooks getting breakfast ready.
GO had so many cute patriotic outfits to wear to celebrate the holiday.

Trainman, GO and Mayo enjoying the the water.


GO was not impressed with the life jacket she had to wear on the boat. The main problem is that she couldn't get her thumb into her mouth.....and she LOVES to suck her thumb. Several of her cousins also love their thumbs....as did an Uncle....and maybe even a Granny T. So, to save our sanity and hers....we did a little alteration and pulled her arms in. Peace!!
GO took to the lake like she was born to it. She enjoyed being in the water with her Daddy. She is our youngest granddaughter born in January of this year to our oldest son and his wife.

Summer Time Fun

Here is Tadpole using a stick to try to poke our Siberian Husky, Tug, who is laying on the porch just out of reach.
He's ready to throw a cup of water on me!
He had a great weekend.
I loved the fact that you can see our flag in this picture with Tadpole. Serve well, Jacob. We're all praying for your safety and counting the days till you come home. This little fellow especially.
Semper Fi!


I know....I'm way behind on blogging. But it's summertime and I've been having some fun. Thought I'd try to catch up a little.

Here are a few pictures of Tadpole. This was a weekend in May?? I think it was the weekend after Memorial Day so it was the last weekend in May.

His Daddy left for Afghanistan about 6 days earlier. He's living with his grandparents who are dear friends of ours. Please remember Tadpole and his family in the next few months as his Daddy serves our country.
(And no, we had not been beating him....he fell off the bed and ran into something. Being so fair skinned makes the marks look worse than they really are. Honest!!)

Granddaughter GO and Granny T.

Ok, she looks scared to death for her Granny T. to be holding her. But she warms up in a little while!

See what I mean! What a sweet smile!

I'll answer that question. Yes, I'm precious!!

Mommy with GO who looks like she's already doing Patty Cakes!

Daddy with GO.

See you later!!

This evening I got to visit with my oldest son and his family. I was introduced to two lizards and got to hold one named Joshua. I believe the other one named Moses likes to bite. Joshua is a most unusual looking thing...his tail looks exactly like his head which according to B-10 offers him some sort of protection should something try to grab him by the head...hopefully they will grab his tail by mistake and it will fall off and he'll escape.

I realized when I was looking at all of the pictures we made that the boys were showering and cleaning their room during the photo shoot and basically their baby sister was the main attraction. The baby always gets all the attention. I'll have to come back and get some pictures of B-10 with his lizard and CW too. Good excuse for another visit.

A Morning with a Granddaughter-Priceless!

This morning I was able to spend some time with MoRo, our 3rd granddaughter. She will be 5 in July and attends a Pre-K program at her Mom's school. The Pre-K kids met with their 4th grade buddies in the cafeteria to make their Bunny Baskets.

Because of the storms and rain today, the egg hunt couldn't be outside. The older kids hid the eggs in the gym and the Pre-K kids had a blast looking for them.

MoRo was so excited that at first she just ran around the gym. But it didn't take long until she figured out what to do.

She started getting her Bunny Basket full of eggs.And ended up with a full basket!

Here I am with the MoRo and some of her classmates during center time. Molly picked the Beauty Shop and I was the victim....I mean customer.

How do I look?? Be kind please!

Dreaming again!

Trainman might give up being an engineer to drive a tractor!

The sun finally gave us a chance to do some of what we'd planned to work on all week.

Dumping a load of logs from a dead tree they cut down.

Dabby Do spent the night with us (Sister was in school.) and came over to the property to explore with us. She made up her own fun...playing with the gallon jugs of water from the hometown spring. Her aim isn't great and she ended up pouring it down her shirt....but the day ended up warm so we hung it up to dry. She was a little shy at first to go without it!

Son #3, his daughter, Dabby Do and I did some exploring during the afternoon. We managed to find our way back to the old homesite we found on our last visit.

There is a pretty little stream running through part of the property. This part is next to the old homeplace we found. Their house was no more than 30 feet from the bank. There isn't much left of the house but some old bricks, a few bottles, old metal cans, rusted sections of fence, the well and another hole we suspect was where the outhouse was. This was our second visit and the daffodils which helped us find it the first time had quit blooming. I hope to be able to move some of them up to our house after we build.

Looking down into the hole that we think might have once been their outhouse. It was close to where the house stood and downhill from the well.

That round thing is the well at the homeplace. It stands about waist high. The brick square in the front must have been part of the chimney. The well is open. I wonder if it originally had a wooden cover over the top. There is water down in it...I can't imagine getting my drinking water or any water from it....check out the next picture.

Maybe the water looked better back then??? I'm SO thankful mine comes out the faucet!!

Dabby Do resting in the wagon after a busy day playing. Isn't she adorable??

And she's really faking! Her Daddy carried her all the way back to our cars but when we put her down she was wide awake again!

To end up the evening....we all ate together. Believe it or not, the complete bottom of Chucky's glass fell off when he picked it up.....and a whole glass of tea ended up in his lap and his plate of spaghetti! No, I had NOTHING to do with it.

Camping on our Property.....Big Mistake!

All the recent rain we've had made a mess of the front part of our driveway. Unfortunately, we couldn't tell before Buddy turned in with our heavy RV. Here are pictures of "the next morning". Trust me, they look great compared to what the coach looked like BEFORE the wrecker got there. I was afraid to go in to get my camera while it was tilted so far to the right. I borrowed this one from our friends next door who put us up for the night....even Tug! That is true friendship for you!

When Buddy got to our property on Friday evening about 9:30pm it was dark and I pulled into the drive in front of him. He made the turn as I watched him in the rear view mirror. I was so shocked to see him begin to tilt over....I thought any second that it would straighten up as he pulled on further up the drive. I finally realized that he wasn't moving anymore. There wasn't going to be any "straightening up". Then I began to be afraid that it was actually going to fall all the way over with Buddy, Trainman and Tug inside.

All of these pictures were made the next morning. I wish we could have gotten some pictures of it before the wrecker was able to pull it over and back onto the driveway. But, it was too dark when it happened that night and I didn't get a camera until after the wrecker had already started working.

You can see my truck which ended up being blocked by the RV. I drove on up to the clearing (where we had planned to camp) and turned around. But there was no getting out that night.

The wrecker here has the cables hooked to the hitch ball from our truck which Buddy put in the hitch receiver in the RV. They put the ball in upside down to help it hold better. Believe it or not, that tow bar was the only casulty of the whole thing....it bent from all the weight.


This is the tow truck that pulled us out. He used two tow lines that pulled 12,000 lbs. each to ease the weight off the back wheels and then slide the coach to the left and back onto the driveway.

Next with Buddy backing up the coach, he pulled him out!

And then we went to the RV park where we've stayed before!

The excitement never ends!