My 21st? Birthday!

Christmas Morning

Kelsey Turns 18!

Tile, Missing Bird and Snow?

As I was getting ready for work this morning I was summoned to the downstairs by both my daughters screaming to me up the stairs. It seems our live in wildlife was stalking prey last night and the evidence was left in the living and around the house.


Never did find 'the body', still looking.....

The Tile is down!!!

With the hard work for Rick (thank you, thank you - I have great friends)... we worked to get the tile down and the stuff back into some semblance of a house....there is still some patching, painting to do on the walls and finishing work.....but the floors are in and looking awesome!!! As always, random images of Alex appear on the camera

Snow is on the way to our fair state and as usual catches me having not gone shopping for groceries for a bit. Now to hear my girls tell, there is No Food in the house but a quick scan of the pantry and freezer tells another story. There is no use, I must hit the store and endure all the last minute bread, milk, egg buyers.....

We are taking a break from the house wrecking follies to slow down and participate in the looming holiday season. Shopping, decorating and possibly some cookie baking still needs to be enjoyed! Work will resume after the holidays with my own personal deadline of February for full house completion..stay tuned.

The Floors

It began in October with the tearing out of the wall and removing the viynl and carpeting. I am putting down porcelain tile downstairs, it is coming along and will be finished soon - I am so excited. A friend has been gracious enough to do it for me, he started the weekend we went to granny's. With him laying the tile, we do the grouting and clean up, I move everything to start the next section. This has allowed me the benefit of keeping my household functioning. We are almost there, this week we will grout, then I get to clean up, move stuff and get ready for the last phase...

Course, this just lets me move onto the next thing....getting ready for Christmas and Kelsey's birthday on the 7th - dang, where is the time going.

Grandpa's Cabin & Church

My grandfather was a scoutmaster for many years in Kansas City, it was his life and he did many things to move the organization of Boy Scouts along. He was a 'father' figure to many young men. When he passed, they named the Boy Scout cabin next to the church for him.

In the 90's, the current scoutmaster Mr. Ealy was shot by a 13 year old boy trying to steal the money from the boy scouts popcorn drive. They re-dedicated the cabin in both their names.

Thanksgiving with Granny B

The girls and I packed up and headed to Kansas City. My grandmother is moving to Chicago from a 3 bedroom, full basement house to an apartment. She decided to make only one move versus staying in Kansas City, then later having to move to Chicago.

As you can well imagine, this is both stressful, heartbreaking and sad for her, she is leaving her home of 60+ years, the few friends she has left and a life she has known. For many, this is an easy move, for granny I know it is hard.

The house she leaves behind has gone through raising 2 natural born children and 100's of adopted children who were grandpa's scouts. I lived there for the first 5 years of my life and many summers after that, my grandfather battled cancer from the front room of the house, watching friends, neighbors, his scouts and the squirrels. It has a lot of good memories and like any long lived home, some bad ones...but it has served us well.

When I was younger, the gardens were beautiful under the loving care of my granny, a true green-thumb. The raspberries and gooseberries are harvested for some of the sweetest jelly you have ever tasted. She would like to tell of me digging up the front gardens cause you could find the best night-crawlers there. I played red-rover over the brick walk and spent many of hours with my friend on the front porch.

So, over Thanksgiving, off we went to pack up memories, grandma's house and for me, try to get her to listen to some reason. You can imagine after that many years there was a lot of stuff, did I mention a lot of stuff........

She wants to take it all. Now just measuring the dimensions of the two homes, we know it ain't going to fit. So through pure stubbornness she taught me with honed skilled....as I kept telling her I learned from the master. We got through it with getting rid of a little stuff. Okay, I screwed up sorting and sending some of the sweaters to the salvation army, and yes I heard about it....but things that are precious to her are lovingly packed so they will make the journey, and slowly it is coming together. My parents worked so hard, I was glad I could help in some way.

Oh, I failed to mention I endured being told to shut up and threaten to be hit with the sledge hammer by my granny...I laughed....bless her heart, she can't help it!

Love you Granny B....I know this is hard.