Happy Holidays!

We had a fantastic Christmas and you can view some of it by clicking on "Our Pictures" on the right hand side of this page.

We had Christmas Eve at Ray and Diane's across the street. She fed all 40-50 of us homemade lasagna and pizza. It was a warm evening and we spent a large part of it outdoors. After dinner we came to our house (the Shumbies' and us) to relax and open a few gifts as the midnight hour was approaching.

On Christmas Morning we went over to the Shumbie house first thing to open the remainder of the gifts. Wow, was Santa ever good to everyone. We had a blast, took our time and looked at each other's gifts and enjoyed. And of course we had so much fun watching the two dogs play and open presents. Socks taught Jake to play tug of war with the bone and also to chew on cardboard - which is one of Sock's favorite things in the world to do. Jake tried it but just couldn't really get into it. Well that took all morning so then Kirby and I went home to clean up and relax until time to prepare the rest of dinner.

So, Shumbies came back to our house. We just went back and forth all the time! Kirby had been marinating the turkey in tabasco sauce for almost 24 hours and had the cooker all set up out back. It is really fast to cook the turkey in hot fat! Only 55 minutes. It was a first for us and we had a really fun time with it. And then we proceeded to eat again. We have certainly been well fed through this holiday.

After dinner we all sat back and watch "Fred Claus" to finish out the evening. They will be back this afternoon as we didn't get any game playing in yet and we must do that!

I hope your Christmas was as wonderful as ours!

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New Fireplace

I was wanting to post a picture of the fireplace that Kirby redesigned so today I asked Jake to sit in front of it and let me take his picture. He didn't really want to so he gave an exasperated look for the camera.

And as I said before, I never thought to take before pictures. Probably that is because I say to Kirby things like, "Maybe we should redesign the fireplace?". And then the next day I come home and the old fireplace is just GONE! Then we have to try to come up with a new plan. Yesterday I came home to a hole in the kitchen wall - and you thought he had finished the kitchen didn't you? Ha! I had mentioned that the area that backs to the fireplace needs a nice cabinet and showed him a picture of a couple nice pieces. So he decided to build it in. He bought a ready made kitchen cabinet which really matches what we have very well. He will install it right behind the fireplace as there is plenty of room. Too bad the builder didn't do it. And we don't use heat in the fireplace anyway - as you can see from the picture!

So here is a picture of the fireplace when we bought the house. A very nice design but too colonial for our tastes.

Dottie's Cookbook

I have started a new blog! A few years ago I started adding my mother's recipes to an old recipe program and never got them all entered before we left to go cruising and the computer went away. Christie has been holding the recipes for me and I just recently got them back from her. They are in a large plastic index card box and I am going to attempt to put them all on a blog. I am hoping that her descendants will enjoy them! And actually, since my father was a good cook too, some of these are his.

Take a look and let me know what you think. Happy eating! There is a link on the right - My Mother's Recipes.

http://dottiescookbook.blogspot.com/

Tug-a-War Lessons

I know everyone probably gets tired of seeing pictures and video of Jake and Socks and I promise (?) not to do it often but this one is so precious. In it you will see Jake chewing on a nylabone. Socks comes along and wants to play tug-a-war with him and the bone. So, she teaches him how to do it. She is a very pushie girl! So, take a couple of minutes and get a laugh out of this. Turn your volume OFF or you will hear us all making "Oh, so cute" noises as we watched.

And you can see that Kirby cut the carpet back to work on the fireplace. One of these days we will get around to getting the new carpet!

Old Folk All Dressed Up

Kirby and I enjoyed my company party last Friday night. It was held in the large ballroom at the Marriott downtown Charleston and there were probably 500 people there. They fed us, entertained us and gifted some of us, just not Kirby and I. Lots of door prizes - the best being $500 gift certificate to Best Buy but what I really wanted was the "Day Off" certificate. Darn, I didn't win. But we had a really good time and it was fun getting all dressed up. Here is the picture that Christie came over and took of us. Not bad for old folk, eh? We clean up pretty darn good, even if I do say so myself!

Love - pure and natural

That's my youngest grandson, Kevin, who lives in San Diego (the one with the red curls), with his best friend Zack. They have known each other all there little lives. This is one of the most beautiful pictures I have seen in a very long time.

Christmas 1951

I have been wanting to put this out on the web for years now. With this blog I think I have the correct vehicle. I have a document that came with my dad's things when he passed away. It is a poem written by his cousin, A. J. Erwin, while in Korea during the Korean War. It expresses one man's frustration over war and it just seems to me that in over 50 years, nothing has changed.

The original poem is typed on onionskin paper and is a carbon copy. It has been folded up for over 50 years and is very fragile. It would be wonderful if somehow the descendants of Mr. Erwin would see this and write to me. It would be nice to know a little bit about the man. Anyway - here are his words.


Here is an excerpt from the Truman Museum & Library -
In October, General Douglas MacArthur predicted that the war would soon end and that American troops could be going home by Christmas. He had not foreseen the entry into the war of Chinese forces that began in earnest in late November. The troops would not be home for Christmas. Instead, during the bitter cold and snow of their first Korean winter, they would be in a desperate struggle to stage an orderly withdrawal before the advancing Chinese forces. Three Christmases would pass before the fighting would end in Korea.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/korea/large/gi.htm

Kitchen Remodel

Kirby has been working so hard on the house ever since we moved in. He has done everything himself, from the new toilet and water heater to the tile floor and redesigned fireplace. I know that what he enjoys most is the planning and designing of projects so I really appreciate all the hard work he has done. No one likes dealing with toilets, that's for sure! There is no telling how many times he has been in the attic crawling around and the trips to Lowe's would fuel a cross country trip.

The kitchen is now finished. And we had to hire the granite people. Only help he has had. We considered doing tile countertops as he could have done it himself but the granite is just so beautiful and easy to use and maintain - so it won out.

Of course I didn't think to take before pictures but we do have the pictures that Christie took when we were buying the house (since we were in California and she was here). So for your entertainment - here are some pictures.

This is the kitchen before.




























And this is our kitchen today. Everything is new except the cabinets which have been painted. The walls were painted, new tile floor, new stove, microwave, dishwasher, reefer, countertops. I LOVE IT!!