Here is the Charlie Brown tree I put up this year. This picture covers about 3/4 of it. LOL. There is a little gold angel at the top and I wired in everything else.

Feliz Navidad

I am still getting ready for Christmas. I put out a couple of snowmen and decorated the tree that is 4 ft tall and looks like its out of the Charlie Brown's Christmas story.
We are not very popular on the Christmas Card list this year either.... I hang all of our cards on the door frame that goes from the dining room to the kitchen. That's ok though because I didn't get any cards out this year. I do well for a couple years then have to skip one. Maybe I'll send out easter cards or something instead just to change things up.

What's been going on? Let's see the bug guy came and checked the house. He put some sticky traps in the basement to see if he gets anything. We have had a few baby mice get in our traps. I try to flush them down the toilet before the kids see them. I remember when I was really little. I found a nest of mice in a drawer at my grandma's house. They were all super tiny and pink like little naked piggies. I wanted to keep them for pets and my grandma freaked when she saw them. Life is certainly different when you're a kid. Charlotte's Web was fresh in my mind and all animals had a personality. I think those mice ended up in the toilet or as playthings for grandpa's tomcat.

I was driving Ethan to my mom & dad's yesterday so he could help my dad cut firewood. He goes to help my dad about every week..... for a fee of course. We were driving past Gray's Lake and I saw a bald eagle swoop down on the lake to catch a fish. That was very cool. It has been warm here and there is no ice on the lake.

Please pray for our new nephew - he is 15 days old and has an infection which is very very bad. We are supposed to go to visit and have a baby dedication celebration while we are there, but now it may have to be cancelled. If you don't know what MRSA is - it is a super resistant infection that can only be treated by certain kinds of antibiotics. Usually only happens in people with weakened immune systems.... babies, old people, etc... Anyway, little Andrew has it. :( and he was flighted to the big hospital in New Mexico to get properly cared for. They are thinking at this point, that he may not be able to come home for up to 6 weeks...... so no baby dedication. I guess the weather down there is really bad too and roads are practically impassable. New Mexico cities do not have snowplows and salters. Some of the highways have been closed.
So we may be looking at not going down there at all now.
One year we went down there and there was snow the whole time we were there. It was terrible driving. We went down there to escape the cold weather and it ended up colder and snowier there than it was back here in Iowa. So much for hanging out in the hot tub.

I have to work this weekend and then on Christmas day we are having my side of the family over for Christmas Dinner. Edgey will be doing all the prep over the weekend. At least it is more like a potluck this year. Some years we do all of the cooking. There may be times I feel like a scrooge, but there are some years nobody in my family has any holiday spirit.... nobody wants to cook. I think the most fun Christmas dinner we had was when everybody brought mexican dishes and we had a Christmas fiesta. Feliz Navidad! We also did one year with Chinese food. Everyone brought some chinese dish. We had homemade egg rolls, crab rangoons, lo mein and flied lice, veggies, etc... That was fun too. I like tradition, but sometimes it's fun to spice things up a bit. This year we are back to tradition and we are making ham balls. It's a recipe I got the year before I got married.... from the pastor's wife at the church I was going to at the time. They are soooooooo good. I had never had ham balls before. I think I was 24 years old. That woman was a good cook! I got several recipes from her that I still use today.

Just 5 more days till Christmas!


Had to share this rule of thumb:
Don't argue with an idiot; people watching may not be able to tell the difference.

oh, and here's another one:
Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

just one more......
It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat! (I think that there's funny-I don't care who y'are)

Drama

Yesterday was my day to run around. Mom watched the kids for me. I spent way too much time at Hobby Lobby. I needed to find a couple of things to finish my craft stuff I am working on for Christmas presents. That took up most of my afternoon, unfortunately. Then when I got done there I came home and had to find the rest of the craft stuff that was up in the attic. That was "fun". When Edgey got home he came up in the attic and we spent the rest of the evening organizing and moving things around in there.

I decided I will put a few things out for Christmas but I am not getting my snowman dish set out or the Christmas tree. I have a set of 3 small trees ( 2,3 & 4 ft- the kind you put in the entry way) that I was going to do as a craft project and I will do at least one of them and then we will use that as the tree this year. Edgey said we can set it on the coffee table in front of the window and then it will look tall. No 13 footers in this house. :)
I am only going to put out a few snowmen too. I don't feel like getting out the whole collection and then putting them away.

When we finished up in the attic, I had to go pick up the kids..... and me, being the wonderful daughter that I am, called mom and asked if she wanted anything before I got over there. Well, she wanted a drink of pop. She has not been buying pop too often and she told my daughter how awful it is for us...... so now Elizabeth has been on a "no pop" mission with the entire family. "Grandma says it's bad for you and it sucks the calcium out of your bones. You shouldn't drink it cause it's really bad, mom!" Anyway, my mother is afraid to let her grandaughter see any pop in her house now. Last time I went over there, she gave me a sack of empty cans because SHE didn't want to have them there in case Elizabeth saw them...... then SHE would have to explain herself.
So I stopped at the Kruegers gas station to get some pop for my mother. While I was there there was quite the commotion going on. There were some people hollering out in the parking lot. One of them was drunk and wasn't walking very well. The gals from the gas station were hollering at them to be quiet because they didn't want any problems at the station.
Come to find out the girlfriend of this guy was hollering at him to stay there and sit down because the guy was in a fight with a homeless guy, down by the river camp, and he got pushed and held in the camp fire. He was walking around with no shirt on and burns on his left side and shoulder and the skin was falling off his left arm because he was burned so bad. He took his shirt off so the air would cool it off. He had a coat over his right shoulder to keep him from freezing.
Here I am standing there watching all this. The guy's girlfriend was yelling at him to stay in the parking lot until the ambulance came. I guess the ambulance had already come once and they couldn't find the guy cause he had gone into the bathroom so they left. The gas station lady called 911 again for the ambulance. The guy "Donnie" was walking again and the girlfriend was crying..... so I go over there to see if I can get him to stay there till the ambulance got there. He had about enough teeth to count on one hand. He was all dirty and you could smell the stale beer on his breath.
me: "Hey, why don't you come sit down till the ambulance gets here?"
Donnie: "I can't sit down because it hurts too bad and if I stand out here, the air cools it off."
me: "Ok, well just stay here. You really need to get that fixed up. I am a nurse and your arm looks really bad... you could get an infection if you don't get it cleaned up and taken care of."

So he goes on to explain how they came to visit their cats and bring leftover thanksgiving turkey bones and stuff and check on the cats. They have 12 cats they were taking care of. They were living in Urbandale in an apartment but they had been homeless and living down by the river for the last 2 years. They come to check on the cats periodically and bring them food. One of the cats had followed them back up to the gas station. His name was Cujo. So he is drinking with a couple of other homeless guys by the river, cause they know each other and are friends, and he ends up in a fight with "George" who is 2-3 times his size. George pushed Donnie in the campfire and held him down in it. His shirt was melted. The girlfriend was showing that to me. It was a Popeye's Chicken uniform shirt because that was where he works now. The girlfriend was hysterical trying to tell me the story. I can't even remember her name. Another guy that saw the whole thing was there too and he was just nodding his head . His name was Jimmy and he was about 65 years old. He lives down by the river too.
The cops finally got there. There were 4 cop cars that showed up and then the ambulance. No one asked me anything. No one said one word to me..... BUT they were VERY rude to these people. It was unbelieveable. I just said to the first cop "He really needs an ambulance" and he was on the radio with them. Then the cops were all there asking Donnie questions and getting a report. The girlfriend tried to tell them things and they kept telling her to shut up and get back and I finally told her to come stand with me away from them by the doorway pillar. She was still hysterical and told me the whole story again. Meanwhile a couple of the cops go try to find George. They want to know which camp.... north or south? So they take off and leave the other cop standing there talking with Jimmy who was the actual witness.
I am trying to keep the girlfriend calm. I was really looking at her then. She had dishwater blonde hair. Her teeth were messed up too, at the gums. Probably from meth or something. Her face was really dirty, but she was wiping her tears with her hands off and on, and there were streaks of dirt down her cheeks from that. Her jeans were really dirty and she had on a man's coat.
I kept telling her everything will be ok- did I believe it? She wanted to know if Donnie was going to be ok, because the burns were bad. I really didn't know because they were REALLY bad. I mean, if you could have seen it you would have grossed out. The skin was literally falling off of his left elbow. It looked like a piece of bacon. The elbow wouldn't straighten out. That was the worst spot. The rest looked like huge red blistered blotches on his side and shoulders and stomach. I will be really surprised if he gets by with his arm intact. So how is he going to work now? I mean really!!! The guy finally gets a job and taking care of himself the way society thinks he should and got an apartment, etc.... taking care of his girl. He is going to be in the hospital now. He can't afford dr. bills for that. If he can't work, he will lose the apartment. She will be homeless again and he will too, once he gets out of the hospital.
But you know.... she doesn't say anything about any of that.... you know what gets to me? She just looks at me crying and asks me, "Can I have a hug?" and I gave her a hug. Two things ran through my mind. I wonder if this is what Jesus feels like? and I hope she doesn't have lice.

The ambulance driver came looking for her to go to the hospital with Donnie. Jimmy had gone to the bathroom so she kept looking for him and I told her I would wait and tell jimmy where she went. She left.
Jimmy came out and I told him where she went. Jimmy had on a nice warm winter sweater and a hat. He was like, "Ooh great, she has my coat." That wasn't going to be such a great night with no coat. I offered to take him to the hospital on my way back from picking up the kids... it was actually right on the way back home from my mothers'. I told him I needed to get my kids and I would be back in about 5 or 6 minutes to get him.
I explained everything to my mom and she went and got an old coat for the guy to keep. I drove down there to pick him up to go to the hospital but he was nowhere to be found. I even went inside the gas station to see if the girl had seen him, but she hadn't........ but guess who was in there?????? George! He was talking to the girl about being in a fight by the river. She says, "Don't even tell me you're the one who pushed him in the fire." He just looks at her. She says, "You better get out of here because the cops are looking for you."
One of the other gals is trying to get the cop's attention - he is over in the parking lot across the street. He doesn't see her. So I left and drove over there to tell him George was just in the store and he was now taking off south towards the river.
The cop just looks at me and shakes his head. Then he left and went to go find George. I went home. The kids were asking me all kinds of questions! Why were you talking to the cop mommy? How did he know to roll down his window? We left and drove home. I never did find Jimmy.
Today I am wondering how they are. I kept thinking about B's mom, Ruby. She probably knows them.

Warming

At some point during the last couple of months, I recall writing that I was bummed out because I had planted my birthday mum and it never bloomed and it had already frosted...... well, after the nice big frost it warmed up again - and this is a picture of it sometime in November. It made me so happy to see them bloom, I had to take a picture and with my camera phone of all things. It has been such a warm fall. Actually the flowers are still open right now but slightly wilted. It is supposed to get up to 54 degrees today.

I was just listening yesterday to the news on the radio and they were talking about how in Russia it so warm that the bears have not hibernated yet, and there are butterflies and flowers blooming, etc..... It hasn't been that warm there for 500 years.
Makes you wonder what's going on. The other day I was watching Al Gore on Oprah. He was discussing the movie that he was promoting called An Inconvenient Truth which was discussing global warming and how our pollution has made the temperature increase in the earth.... It was very eye opening! It showed before and after pictures of different areas of the earth that previously were glaciers or snowcapped mountains that have almost nothing left of snow or ice. He gave statistics also regarding the increase of temperatures in the ocean and different areas of the world.... and how eventually the rise in temp will increase the severity and number of storms, hurricanes, tidal waves and so on.

I may have to get the DVD to watch the whole thing.

Santa

I thought I would share my favorite Santa with you...... (oh and the date on there is incorrect)
I'm trying to get in the mood for Christmas. We haven't put up the tree yet. Neither one of us really wants to... which is strange, because in the past either one or the other of us wants to put the tree up and one doesn't.
I love Christmas and I feel like a scrooge this year.
Santa hooked up the lights on the house though... so that made me happy. Sunday when I came home from work, the house was all lit up.
I figure if we don't put up the tree for a while, then I won't have to hear a zillion times, "When will Christmas be here?" "How many more days till Christmas?"


Well Santa is coming home for lunch, so now I need to go cook. I must say that was a short entry but I will try to write more later.