Christmas 2010

Christmas 2010 is over and what fun! Dan and Katlin went with me to candle light services at church Christmas Eve. The weather was frightful but inside was so wonderful and warm it was worth getting out in the cold. Shane Cindy and Kyann came Christmas morning. Wasn't sure how Kyann would be this year. Everyone was hoping she could stay awake and take part and she did. She unwrapped almost all of her presents and seemed to have a good time. She makes a jolly little elf and maybe next year she will grow into the hat.

This is her cleaning trolley from Gma. She liked it really well till we turned on the vacuum part and it was too noisy. But she did sweep and mop and used the vacuum hose for a gas hose to put gas in her car.

I got Katlin a double fiddle case and put her initials and a music note on it in hot pink and she really liked that.

Dan wanted a pasta maker and wanted me to change the dinner menu to include some kind of pasta he could make. Didn't happen but I am hoping to get invited to dinner some time soon for a pasta meal.

This is a Wood Duck house Dan made for Shane. Do not confuse this with a wood duck house. They are not the same thing!

One of the things Cindy wanted was a cake decorating kit that is a gun instead of a bag.

One Cookie. That is how we got Kyann to smile for our family picture. Everyone was smiling but Dan. But I know he can because I got a picture of him and Katlin for Christmas and he is smiling! Also got a picture of Kyann and one of Katlin, a bobbin winder and bobbin holder, new socks, hand towels for my bathroom, the game of Bezzerwizzer, a new recipe box, a Go Fish CD, and the promise of a hedge trimmer come spring. Everyone had a good time. Ate too much and had good traveling weather. We celebrated Shane's Birthday on Sunday before they went home. We got him a boat cover. And the Bears won so it was a bonus birthday gift for him.

Gingerbread House 2010

Katlin and I again made a Gingerbread House. It turned out pretty good considering we were rushed to complete it.

Katlin's Christmas Program at Church

Went to Katlin's church Christmas program Sunday. She was in the choir and also in the orchestra. It was a very meaningful service. Dan was drafted to be a Shepard as one failed to show up. He is the one in green. Katlin thought he looked funny. He said everyone was envious of his costume cause where they had to wait before they came out on stage was cold and in his robe he was very warm. Some of the actors were barefoot or had sandals on. Don't remember anywhere in the Bible about tennis shoes but I could be wrong. Katlin hadn't gotten to practice with the others so they went early so she could run through it with them. She did a wonderful job and looked darn cute too.

She is growing up so fast. We had lunch and then went to the movies to see Yogi Bear. Pretty funny!

Katlin's School Christmas Program 2010

Dan and I went last night to Katlin's school choir program. They had been predicting freezing rain all day but roads were clear when we left. We had trouble finding the church. The last time we had been there it had been in the daylight and I had some directions. We could see it in the distance but couldn't seem to get there. If they hadn't had a star on top of their steeple we might still be driving around. Couldn't use Nigel cause it is a new church and isn't on map quest it just takes you to their old address. We made it with a few minutes to spare . I was watching for Katlin to come in and almost missed her. She looked so grown up and pretty until she smiled I wasn't sure it was her.


She is the one in the middle of this picture. The pictures weren't very good because it was so dark.



This is most of the group. They did a good job but was hard to hear. We left after her group finished and headed home trying to beat the snow. We almost did. Got almost to Washington before it got heavy but the roads weren't bad and it stopped before we got home. Glad I got to go.

Duppa 2010

We had Duppa Dec 11th at the Libertyville Community Center. It was Mary's turn to host. The weather was so iffy not everyone made it. Think we counted 32 total. We had a good time and as usual lots of good food. We had a little time before people started coming so I taught them a new card game called 99.

Dan, Jeanine and Lloyd played music for us while we played cards.

We had five little girls ranging in age from 5 to 4 months. Haylee seems quite tickled with Marley.

Since Mary was is charge this year she opted to play "Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader" Not to many of us were. Divided into 4 teams and took turns answering questions from "Jeff Foxworthy" (aka Larry). Mary kept score. I am proud to say I took my team to the winners circle. It was close between Team 1 and Team 4.

This is one group of players. I think Brianne might have had a slight handicap. But a really cute one. We played a couple of tables of 99 and one of Farkle after. The roads weren't too bad and the wind held off till we got home.

Cookie Exchange/Domino Tournament 2010

The Cookie Party was hosted by Geri Lynn this year. We all got to tour her new house and decided it was perfect for them. There are so many personal touches that make it special for them. Jill catered the affair and the food was wonderful! She is a great chef. We ate snacks all morning and then had lunch of broccoli soup, chicken salad sandwiches and a yummy salad, banana cake and fondue for desert. This is a picture of the cookies before we had our exchange. They all look yummy! There were four newbies this year. Tiffany, Jeanine, Linda King and Linda Norton. I think everyone had a really good time. Geri had a concussion and probably should have cancelled or postponed the party. She was sure a trooper and had lots of help from Jill and Tiffany.

It was Miss Marley's first cookie party and she was as good as she could be and as cute as a button too!

These people look like they are concentrating really hard. And that is a crazy looking chicken foot. Thanks Geri. Next year it's Penny's turn.

Ode to Cosmo

Cosmo, Katlin's Hermit Crab passed away today. He was a good crab and quite colorful as you can see. I had just made him a crab cozy for his cage. He was looking for a new shell when he passed. We will all miss him.

Thanksgiving 2010

I went a few days early to get ready for Thanksgiving. I picked Katlin up after school on Tuesday and went to Cindy's. Didn't think Kyann would have anything to do with me since she had a playmate more her age but she would come and get Grandma and include me in their play. She is talking up a storm now and is very funny and fun to be around. Here they are peeking out of the Micky Mouse Tent. Katlin actually slept in the tent a couple of nights. Thanksgiving was good. Traditional dinner Turkey, ham and all the trimmings. Everything tasted really good. We ate leftovers for a couple of days then I disguised the turkey, gravy and vegetables in a pot pie. Like a whole new spread. HA HA. We girls started our shopping early by going to a couple of stores on Thanksgiving afternoon. Came home and made our game plan for the next day. We tried to go to Toys R Us. They opened at 10PM on Thursday but the line was ridiculous and they were only letting in 50 people at a time. Gave that up and went after we were all done Friday. Here we are all dressed and ready to go this is about 3:15 Friday morning.

We did get some good buys. I spent 20 minutes in line at Target while my cohorts had a slushie at the snack bar. Go figure.

We took is easy on Saturday. It was pretty cold. Kyann is ready to go on a walk. or maybe they were getting the mail. I kind of forget but loved the hat. I came home after lunch on Sunday (Pizza no more turkey) and carried all my bargains in and found a place for them . I had a really good time but it is good to be home.

Out with the Old and In with the New

Thanks to family and a lot of hard work I now have a new tub, shower and surround!!! My old one had a crack in it and I had been wanting to redo it for some time. Finding a time when it worked for everyone was no small feat. Dan took me to Burlington Thursday nite to get the new tub and surround. They didn't have in stock at Lowe's what I wanted so we went to Menard's. Spent some time picking out what I wanted as they didn't have in stock what I wanted exactly either. But I picked something I thought would be OK. We paid and went to the warehouse to load it and they didn't have the tub. So we took everything back and decided to go to Coralville on Friday afternoon and get one at their Lowe's. Friday Dan took off work a little early and we went to Coralville and picked up everything we needed. A very nice associate named Scott helped us find everything on the list. We got it home and unloaded into the garage for work on Saturday.

While everyone was doing the demo on Saturday I went out to the garage to unpack the new tub and it had a big crack!!! I called Lowe's and they had another tub so was going to exchange it and Larry asked if maybe we should check the surround. It also had a small crack. They did not have another surround! So Dan and I loaded up the damaged merchandise and went back to Coralville and picked out another set. Scott was there and he actually gave us a discount for our trouble.

This is what the demo looked like. Look at that wallpaper!

Wednesday nite and it looks wonderful and it is wonderful. Thanks to Larry and Donnie for all their work and Dan for finishing up all the trim. (I think he liked the demo better than the construction. ) But I am very happy with it.

Happy Halloween

Dan and Katlin's carvings for this year. Katlin's was supposed to be a cat but turned out looking more like a raccoon. Cute however.

Cider Making and Hay Ride

Our last hurrah of summer. Saturday we made fresh apple cider and had our annual hayride. In spite of the rainy forecast we managed to get every thing worked in and stayed mostly dry. Dan had some friends come up from Missouri who had never made cider. Here Ronnie is having his hand at turning the crank. Louie had already had his turn. Not as many apples this year. We made two years ago and had pickup loads. But the cider was very tasty.

Mike, Craig and Gary are working the press and Dan was helping Jeanine , Geri and Donnie strain and bottle it.

Not sure how much we ended up with, around 10-12 gallons I think. Never really counted. It sprinkled just a few drops when we were cleaning up before the hayride.

Making cider is hard work as Larry and Marley found out. They decided to have a short nap before the hayride.

We had two hay racks this year. Probably could have gotten every one on one rack but wasn't sure how many were coming. It was the shortest hayride in history. Up to the corner and back. I think Donnie, our weather man knew it was going to rain or he may have just been really hungry. Who knows.

We went down to the gully for the wiener roast. Here is Donnie helping Mary off the wagon. I was sure he was going to drop her!!! But she was safe and secure. We all had a few laughs. Notice the nice fire. Thanks Gary and Amie for being our fire starters.

Everyone got into the act roasting the hot dogs. Dan didn't have time to put a longer handle on his roaster and was getting pretty hot but Gary fixed him right up with and extension.

Here it is a long stick and a clamp of some kind. It worked really well. Thanks again Gary. Food was good and way to much as always. And for the first time in history the cup trick didn't work. . We packed up and headed back to the house for some picking and grinning. Just a few feet away from the house it really started to pepper down with rain. but no one got too wet as we scurried in to the basement.

Here we are warm and dry picking away. Sorry for the blurry picture. My camera dial got changed and it didn't turn out very good. But we had a good time playing. I gave out about 10 as I had worked the night before and not slept much in the morning. But I'm sure everyone had a really good time.

Fall Family Campout 2010

Our fall camp out had an Hawaiian theme this year. We started out Friday night with a Spam throw down. Spam being very big in Hawaii. We had escalloped potatoes and spam, several spam pizzas, spam enchiladas, hominy and spam, sweet potatoes and spam, pasta salad with spam, bacon wrapped spam with mustard sauce,
and spam won tons with duck sauce. Actually most of it was good. But then I like spam. Dan said if you couldn't taste the spam it was a winner. But actually Connie won the prize for the best dish by an unbiased group of voters (her family) She won a can of spam. Saturday we had our Hula lesson as you can see. I guess it was pretty funny.

This is a 4 generation picture of some of the Hula girls. Grandma Angie, Mama Kirby, Little Marley and Great Grandma Connie

We had a limbo contest, Connor John won that. We had our volcano lesson, as you can see the bright lava flowing down the side of the volcano.

Jeanine opened the coconuts for us with a drill, and we all tasted coconut milk. I could drink it if I were dying of thirst. One of the coconuts turned out to be a rotten coconut. Ugh!

We had a luau for supper Saturday night. We roasted a pig (aka pork roasts) in a pit. Dan had that honor. The other guys disappeared. He started about 1:30 and put some coals in the pit and covered it with some dirt and then put the meat in and covered it with more dirt and built a fire on top. He was just starting to dig it up here about 5:30.

This is what it looked like. kind of raw. New lesson learned must take a lot longer or have a much hotter fire. I think he was afraid it would burn if he got the fire too hot. He ended up finishing it on the grill. It was good once it got cooked.

We had music both nights and lots of laughs. The weather was good. Cool at night but nice in the day time. We are hoping for one more nice week end so we can do our hayride. Left Sunday afternoon about 2:00.

Fall Festival 2010

Fall Festival couldn't have been any better weather wise if we had ordered it ourselves. Nice warm days and cool clear nights. Connie and Dennis went on Tuesday and Dan and Jeanine brought their campers down on Wednesday evening. Connie had supper for all of us. Dan and Jeanine entertained us for a while with music then they both drove back as they had to work the rest of the week. Mary and Donnie came about noon on Thursday. After a quick lunch we went to Cantril to the Dutchman's store. Didn't buy much but both Connie and I got big beautiful mums for $3.50 each. Came back and played some games. Friday morning we went garage saleing in Keosauqua and while were were there Doris Jean called and said she was coming to spend the afternoon with us. We cooked a hot dog for lunch and then played games again.

Connie and I worked on our volcano for the Hawaiian week end coming up. Here it is drying in the sun. Looks better now that it is painted.

I think this is Bow I can't keep the two of them straight but I think she is the quiet one. We had awesome music both nights although different groups played each night. Friday night and Sunday morning Keota, a group from the Macon Mo area played with us and Saturday night Gary and Millie Vannoy and Ed Long (from Possum Trot) came and played

Donnie was star struck with Ed Long.

As always we had good food and way too much of it. We all kept remembering last year when it was so cold we couldn't get two feet from the fire without freezing.Everyone had winter coats and gloves. This year was much nicer. We almost got kicked out of the park. We were suppose to quit playing music at 10:30 but all our neighbors were standing around listening so they just kept playing. About 11:45 the park ranger came and shut us down. He came back Saturday night to make sure we knew that quiet time started at 10:30. Dan told him we would quit at 10:29. But actually we quit before that as the Vannoys and the Longs were driving back. Left about 1:00 Sunday afternoon and noone really wanted to go yet. Hope next year is as good.

Mr. & Mrs. Corey Hickenbottom

Charissa and Corey were married on October 9th 2010. Here they are cutting the cake. They had a small ceremony for just family and then had a reception. It was a beautiful day. They looked so happy together. The tables were decorated with vintage linens and at each place were handkerchiefs as favors.

Here they are with Gary and Amie.

Mr and Mrs. Hickenbottom are honeymooning in the Northeast for a couple of weeks.