Friday, April 04, 2008

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 !!!!!

Monday, March 24, 2008

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.






















Monday, March 17, 2008

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.






Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Monday, February 11, 2008

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Monday, February 04, 2008

Saturday, January 19, 2008

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.












Monday, January 07, 2008

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...

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Sunday, December 16, 2007

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?

Friday, November 30, 2007

Saturday, November 24, 2007

The lineup Thanksgiving 2007


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

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

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



Saturday, November 17, 2007

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 ....

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Saturday, November 03, 2007

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.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

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. "