Visit from Rose

We had a nice two day visit from Rose...

Rose helped gpa cover up his woodpile...

We worked on afghans .

Rose tried to get a good picture of the finished afghans.....

JMB had to get on the ladder to take a picture of the afghan...




Here it is !!!!!

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Rose left in the rain It was a nice visit...

Easter Dinner 2008

Easter Dinner...2008 at Gma's house. There were nine people around the table. Good Time!

It was a wild party...here are some of the guests..

After Dinner the boys watched the basketball game and the girls cleaned up.

Mt. Juliet

Welcome to our home.....

Let's have a party

Maury and her Grannie

Maury and her Mother

Time to go to work...

Here's Todd taking us back to Knoxville.

Well it finally snowed...

My Valentines

Valentine Party

My Funny Valentine

Sunday Morning

Gpa's Birthday....

The Birthday Party just never stopped. Gpa got cards and calls and many "Happy Birthday" songs.

Butch and Joquita surprised us last Friday night . They took us to the Chop House for birthday Steak and Shrimp.

On Thursday we took a big birthday cake to the O'Connor Center and we had 30 people singing Happy Birthday" and eating chocolate cake with us.

Rose took us to the mountains on Wednesday and we drove all over looking for a Christmas house for next year. We took Rose to our favorite Italian restaurant in Gatlinburg.

We had three grandsons celebrating with us at Littons last night...Then we came home and ate some more birthday cake.

The party went on and on.

I say...Thankyou God Again.....

Christmas 2007....Well, we had a reindeer after all. Butch and family showed up with a head-nodding, lit-up reindeer. It was perfect for our Christmas Tree. We put our gifts under it and on Christmas Day we opened the gifts one at a time. We found what Santa had left in our red stockings. The cousins all found blue T-shirts with COUSINS printed on the front. Zach and Stacy had fun posing with their Cousins shirts.

The house was directly on the beach and although the weather was cool, it was sunny and everybody enjoyed walks or runs on the beach. David and Zach and Stacy ran down to Fort Morgan every day.

Scott took a dip in the ocean just because...

There was a birthday party for Gpa complete with Happy Birthday played on the kazoos.

Gma had a white chocolate, cranberry birthday cake made by Laura.

For Gpa's birthday there was a photo shoot on the beach. We had to take off our shoes and pose in the cold sand at sunset. It was great fun and everybody enjoyed it.

The cousins fixed a delicious Christmas dinner..

It was a wonderful family time...

and I say Thankyou God Again...

Christmas 2007

Gpa's Christmas present arrived in the mail. It's a 17 volume set of William Barclay's Commentaries....
Gpa will sit and read them from Matthew to Revelations...He won't miss a word.
Fortunately the print is large enough to read without a magnifying glass.

We have been emailing back and forth about taking the plywood reindeer to the beach. I thought it would be a good idea to carry it on the hood of the car like real hunters do. Some people thought that wasn't a good idea, so we are now looking at carrying it in Paul's van in the back seat. The grandchildren really love that reindeer and it wouldn't be Christmas without it. Does anyone have suggestions about how to take it to the beach?

Thanksgiving Walk 2007

The lineup Thanksgiving 2007

That's the best we could do with some characters missing.

We hiked around the lake ..

It was a nice warm fall day, so we drove to Big Ridge and walked around the lake. We were the only people on the trail, but we had lots of memories with us. Garvey used to love that trail. When he was a puppy, Paul carried him around the trail. Later when he was on his own, he ran ahead of us and came around a curve where a woman was sitting on a rock. He jumped in her lap!! Fortunately she liked dogs. We took Andy on the trail with us when we were dog sitting. He loved it.
When the children were little, we camped at Big Ridge so that they could take swimming lessons in the cold lake. We camped in a tent and I cooked our meals over the fire in a big iron skillet. We would walk down to the swimming pool to get an ice cream sandwich.
We rode around the lake on horses once. I was on the lead horse with the children behind . JMB stayed on the dam to take our picture...
We stayed in two cabins for one of our family vacations. The ranger had to come quiet us down one night because we were doing the electric slide to loud music.
It's a three mile hike around, and we're glad that we can still walk it...

Big Ridge State Park

Fall 2007

Trip to the Mountains

It was cold , but the leaves were still on the trees in our neighborhood, so we decided to go check out the mountain leaves. We went to Elkmont by way of our secret route down Chapman Highway...White School Rd. ..River Divide...New Era West Rd.... Goose Creek...Walden Creek...Wears Valley Road....Metcalf Bottoms..
The leaves were beautiful up to Elkmont...red oaks covered the mountain side all the way to the top...We drove through patches of all yellow beech leaves, and then we'd pass orange and red maples and black gums and hickories to name a few.
The leaves were gone up the Elkmont road where we hiked; there was snow on the ground and it felt like a winter hike. We walked two miles and then came back to walk through Elkmont campground to get a drink of the good mountain water and to eat our peanut butter sandwiches and apples at a picnic table. People were camping on the first loop...there were motor homes and tents.
We drove back to Cades Cove Loop Road and saw some magnificent views of the orange and red and yellow covered mountains. It was a clear day . The mountains looked like the view you get from the top of Leconte...just beautiful We had to stop to let a deer run across the road in front of us.
The drive back to Townsend was beautiful with yellow leaves hanging over the road. There is still water in Little River, but it was down. We stopped at the visitor center in Townsend . They are showing a display of mountain paintings....
When we got home, our beautiful trees were waiting for us. Oh it was a nice fall day!!
May you have one like it ....

Fountain City

Beautiful Fountain City Park

We walked down to the park today. The walk back was tough but we made it. There was a bazaar going on at the Methodist Church so we looked but didn't buy. We talked to some square dance friends and some pool friends. We came home to sit in the sun and read our books on the front porch. We listened to the UT game while we watched another one on TV. I knitted another triangular scarf. This one is red. We had crockpot split pea soup and cornbread for supper. Just another day in Paradise.

Fontana

JMB and GMA used to hike in Fontana every fall with a group of friends. Well, for years we haven't tried to hike for one reason or another...(hip, knee, pelvis, back)...We went this year and our old friends from Indiana and Kentucky were still there. They were glad to see us and we all enjoyed a nice hike up Twenty Mile Creek. We went as far as the "flat-landers" used to go and were proud of it. Tina Wesson (of Survivor fame) was our leader and she talked that night about her Survivor TV show. She lives in Fontana now.

The highway to Fontana from Maryville is called Dragon's Tail for good reason. It was loaded with motorcycles on Sunday afternoon. We just pulled over and let them go by . There were hundreds of motorcycles at Deal's Gap which is right before you get to the Fontana village.

We stayed in the lodge and went to meetings at the recreation hall.

We drove to Steocah Gap to have dinner at Toodies place. ... fried catfish, fried okra, fried squash, and hushpuppies.



A funny thing happened when we were getting ready to leave. A car with a young family drove up and the mother got out of the car and asked"Where is the closest interstate?" We told her it was a long way to I26, and she said "It doesn't matter." I think they would have done anything to miss that curvy road .

What Pappy memorized...

JMB's grandfather liked to entertain the family with this sentence. He had learned it when he walked from work every day. It was written on the side of a building in town. It was advertising something..................................................................................................................... .When promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficinal sentimentalities and amicable philosophical and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your verbal evaporations have lucidity, intelligibility and veracious vivacity without rudomontade or thespian bombast.

Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous propensity and sophomoric vaculty.

After he ate he would say..."My suffiency has been quite saronsified, paragorically speaking. "

Fair

Rose and me at the jewelry booth at the Fair. Rose sold lots of orange earrings until after the ballgame...I crocheted the tops of flip-flops...

Tennessee A&I Fair

We have been in the Kerr building for a week now...NOT AIR CONDITIONED...It gets to you around 6:00 p.m. You are ready to go home and you have 4 more hours to sit there ...We sit and guard the pottery and ceramics. No one has tried to steal them yet, so I guess we are doing our job. The The"girls" sang "Happy Anniversary" to us yesterday and gave us a card signed by everybody. Betty let us out for lunch and Puleos and she let us leave early. We got calls from David and Melissa and Todd..
Today we will be at the fair from 10 to 10...Rose is coming over this afternoon to sit with us and sell her jewelry.

ROSEISM

Rose Garden
Sometimes life seems the best when you are walking in your garden. Or walking in someone else's garden.. or just walking...anywhere. Rose....

Fair

We have survived three days at the fair . Yesterday we sat in an UN-airconditioned room for 8 hours . .Our booth was pretty dull ..We had about 6 people come in with pottery and ceramics. People kept coming to us saying "When Laverne was here , she did this and that." I would get up every now and then to talk to people in the other booths. I have learned the life-history of everyone in the place. The needlework person was very busy..She had three long tables piled high with entries. People walked by our booth all day with entries for the photography exhibit. That table was stacked high. It will be a hard one to judge.
Our pieces may all get a blue ribbon because of so few entries.
Rose and Paul came by when we were getting ready to leave...Rose could tell that we were very tired and hot . She volunteered her and Paul to give us a break Saturday. I told her.."You can't ask Paul to sit at the Fair on his day off. We are going to work out something with them..Rose is still on crutches, so she can't go far...
The fair hasn't officially opened yet, so we have 10 more days of 10 hour days. Then we will have our heads examined.

blogs

Those Burka Boys sure can keep us informed about what's going on in their lives. They must have inherited some of Hugh Allen's writing genes...Oh yes, Laura is also good at writing details about her life. It makes happy reading for a grandmother..

We go today to get our pictures made for the Fair Badges...We will be sitting at a table like Todd described in his blog. He prepared us for dealing with the public. We won't be giving out pens; we will be asking people to vote on pots and ceramics...very exciting stuff.

Our boss, Bettie says that we will be sitting across from the White Lily flour booth, and every day we will get to eat biscuits hot out of the oven..Oh Boy...We will get to hear the entertainment at the outdoor theater...It will be right across the way from our booth. Since our building won't be air conditioned, the doors will be open to everything that's going on outside.

We are driving a bright blue Chrysler Sebring...For explanation, look at previous blog.

We go to a birthday party today for a friend who is 96 years old. He is in our water class...

this and that

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year here so far...97 degrees. We have been reading a lot because we can't go outside much. I am rereading NORTH WITH SPRING by Edwin Teale...my favorite book. It's just as good the second time. Next I'll read his summer, fall, winter books. I have them all. The only other book I reread was TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE. ...LOVE that book.
We went to church last night before supper and I started thinking about a hamburger and a piece of strawberry pie at Shoneys. We never go there, but it just had to be last night. We went after church and the hamburger and onion rings were so good, and the strawberry pie was as good as it used to be.
Edith brought some just-picked okra to church and told me how to cook it. She said to cut it into small pieces and soak them in buttermilk...Then roll the pieces in a mixture of half self-rising flour and half self-rising meal. She deep fries, but I'm going to just fry in oil...We'll try that for lunch today along with some corn on the cob...I put corn in the husk in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes each...then take it out and pull the husks off...soo good...
My Michigan friends from the campground taught me that.
We are going to Chilhowee park tonight to a picnic for Fair workers. We start working at the Fair in September. We will be in charge of the pottery and ceramics booth...We checked out all the books the library had about pottery so we will know what we are doing. Rose and Paul will be the judges for our booth.
The bad news is that we have to stay there every day until the fair closes at 10:00 p.m. And the building is not air-conditioned. Wow!

new bumper and right fender and headlight

compliments of State Farm Insurance. Well it was HER fault so her insurance is paying.
I was merging onto the interstate in a construction area with concrete barrier on my right. She was merging on the other side of barrier. She didn't yield and I hit her..She was driving a new Saturn and it didn't even dent it...
I realize that this puts another brick into the nursing home...Butch already has us looking.
Rose wants us to take
safe driving course at the senior center..

Rose has a new knee. Dr. Parsons went in to look at her partial and he said the bone was too soft to repair it, so he did a total knee replacement. Rose went into surgery at 3:00 p.m. and arrived back in her room at 7:30 p.m. She was wide awake and very thirsty. They did a spinal but the doctor said she slept through the surgery. They will get her up this morning! Amazing! She's in a lot of pain, but she's glad to have it over with. Now for therapy and recovery. She's looking forward to walking again.
She had the partial in 2004 and then the repair work done in 2005. She's going to be careful not to fall on that knee this time.
The doctor said this knee should last for 25 plus years. Its made of titanium..
Watch out world...Rose Goes.....

4th of July 2007

We usually have a family party at Roses on the fourth, but Rose and Paul have been invited to Dudley's farm today. Butch is working in Pensacola this week, and David and his family are in Pennsylvania. The boys are hiking the AT . They started at Harpers Ferry and they are going as far as Boiling Springs, PA. It has been a five day hike for them with Melissa meeting them at the halfway point with lunch. They are staying in motels at night. What a way to hike.!! David doesn't have to carry a pack...just some water and a candy bar. He has his cell phone with him.
We talked to him on the trail this morning...he had passed the halfway point of the AT...Way to go David!!!

JMB and I went to Fountain City Park for our fourth of July celebration. The Lions Club was selling hot dogs, drinks, ice cream, and watermelon...50 cents each...We ate with our neighbors from down the street, and we talked to two old round-dance friends. The Lions Club was doing a rummage sale too, and we bought a hot water pot for $1.00.

And the highlight of the outing..we got to pet SMOKY....He is number nine and he has been the Tennessee mascot for four years. His owner says he is a good Smoky. He was very calm ..just sitting in the shade.

It was hot at the park so we came home after walking two rounds. We are in a drought here...JMB was sitting outside yesterday afternoon and he heard a loud cracking noise..a big limb off of our oak tree just decided to fall on the driveway. JMB got to use his new electric chainsaw to cut it up.

Speaking of firewood...Tim from church and Colby arrived yesterday afternoon with a load of firewood for us. They had it cut 18 inches to fit in our fireplace. They stacked it at the end of the new driveway. It will be easier to roll in the little cart on level ground to the back door .

Well I guess we'll go to church tonight and then come home to watch the Capitol Fourth. Fireworks are outlawed around here because of the drought.

Happy fourth everybody....

Things are getting exciting

Well it doesn't take much to excite grandmothers...Let's see.....We have a new Porsche in the family. Our grandson is getting his Masters Degree Saturday. Another grandson is coming to visit us May 14. We are going to the beach with our Greenville family in June after the high school graduation of our granddaughter. Our married grandson and his wife are going to visit us in June after we get back from the beach. Whoooeee!!!!!

Alaska

I've been reading a blog called UP IN ALASKA..about a girl who lives in Anchorage. She has beautiful pictures of Alaska in her blog and she has many adventures. I recommend her blog to anyone thinking of going to Alaska. (like Scott).
Of course if Scott goes, we will all visit him.

afghan