Good Quote:

"I’ll keep my God, my freedom, my guns,
and my money,
you can keep THE ' CHANGE. '
Vote for McCain/Palin"

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Boy it was cold this morning. Here is my little baby all snuggled up in bed. He didn't want to get up this morning. It was too cold. He was all snuggled in.

My sweet little doggie. He loves to keep warm and he loves sleeping in our bed. He would stay there all day if he could.

Is Winter on the Way?

Yesterday I took a picture of this trying to catch the bluebirds on the feeder. They took off as soon as I got near, but I thought the picture of plant (I won't even try to spell it) was very pretty. Usually they bloom in the summer. Mine always wait just until it gets ready to get cold and then the cold knocks it back.

Tonight it is supposed to get down to freezing. Is that CRAZY??? This is Florida in October.
Wonder what it will look like in the morning.

Here is our Chinese Honey tree. As you can see it is loaded. We have already been eating some. They are not quite ripe yet so they are tart...well actually very sour and that is how we like them. When they turn orange they become very sweet and then I don't like them as well. They are good. Hope the cold doesn't hurt them.

Before and After

Here are a couple pictures of the house after the shutters and window boxes are down, the plants are all cut back to make painting easier.

Here is the finished look. (well the front is finished). Notice the grasses are already growing back after just a week.

By the time I get to put up the Christmas lights the decorative grasses will be grown a lot more.

I think the darker grey makes the green in the yard look greener.

Plan B

Sometimes you have to just go to plan B. I had this wonderful idea of painting this house in a week=end and then I thought I could get "all" my Christmas lights up in the 4 days while Tanek and his mom and dad were at Disney. WELL....first of all I didn't get the house painted in the week-end I thought I would. Then 3 of the 4 days it rained. So, I have the front of the house all finished which only took me 5 days. (You know, take everything down, put everything back up, etc etc.) not counting the paint time. T oday hubby and I were going to get both sides painted. Woke up to rain, well more like mist, but wet just the same. SO, I decided I would paint the back porch and get it cleaned off and then I will be able to start decorating it on the days I can't paint. Now at 4 PM the sun has finally come out. But the back porch is also painted. So, I am sorta painting this like a puzzle and then will put it all together. Hopefully. Talked to Tanek and He is having fun at Disney. I can't wait to hear all about it from a 2 1/2 year olds eyes.
Anyway, that is what has been going on around here for the past week. No lights up yet and the house only 1/4 done. That's ok. Like Sarah Palin says. WHen you are behind you just work harder. Hope it works for all of us. Happy Saturday anyway. And the Gators won. Actually they pretty well skunked Kentucky. Now hopefully the bulldogs will win (for Ricky) and GOOOOO BAMA.

31 days to go!

31 days to go. My sister, niece and nephew are coming to spend Thanksgiving with us and I am SO excited about that. So my goal is to have all my Christmas decorating done before they come. Ususally this time of year I have a good start on putting up my thousands of Christmas lights. Well, I had this great idea that I would Paint the house first. I thought I could do the whole house in a week-end. WELL, I can't. I have just spent 5 days working on it and I have the FRONT done. That still leaves me 3 more sides to do. I am beginning to wonder "what was I thinking?" It isn't that it really needed painting but I wanted to change the color. I paint a lot.
I am not a fast painter because every spot has to be painted and I am a messy painter. But I do get the job done....eventually. The only other person I know who comes close to painting as much as I do is my sweet daugther -n-law Heather. Only she is a fast painter. She can paint a whole room while I am still getting it ready to paint. So I had 4 days this week that I could paint non-stop and guess what?? RAIN! It rained off and on today and it is predicted to rain all day tomorrow. 2 days of painting out. We (my dear husband) got all the new shutters put up and I did get the door painted and all the touch ups, but I had thought by the end of today I would have the first coat put on at least one of the sides, hopefully both sides. But no! So tomorrow if I can't paint I will do something else. It has been a great time of year to paint though. It has been rather cool and today it was very cool and next week it could even get too cool to paint. I think it needs to be around 70 degrees to paint. So I am hoping on Sat. to get a whole bunch of painting done. Anyway, when it is done I will post some pictures. I am pleased with the way it is turning out, I just wish I was finished. I also wasn't planning on having to put 2 coats on it, but since I am putting a darker color over a light color it needed two coats. Anyway, the next time this house gets painted it won't be by me.
Would love to hear what other people are doing this time of year. Has ANYONE started putting up Christmas lights yet??? Probably not. Let me know what you are doing this time of year.

More Pictures from the boys playtime

We took the boys to McDonalds after the pumpkin patch. Tanek was very hungry. He ate all his lunch and part of Masons. This was the first time I had ever even been inside this McD's. Since the boycott is over I went there. They had a lot of fun and ate a good lunch.
They really enjoyed the playyard. They got up quite high and enjoyed coming down the slide.

Meme had to go up and make sure they were not going up too far. I think she had as much fun as they did.

She actually came down the slide and said it was pretty fun.

Tanek was very proud of himself for climbing up so high.

After a very fun day at the pumpkin patch and McD's he was worn out. Time for a short nap. I only let him sleep less than an hour and he was up until 11:00 PM. He is a night owl like his Nana.

Pumpkin Patch TIme!

Today Jan and I took our 2 grand-sons to the Pumpkin Patch at the Methodist church in Keystone. We can't seem to grow pumpkins in Florida, but there were plenty of them. The boys had a great time looking at all the pumpkins, scare crows and especially throwing the hay around. After the pumpkin patch we took the boys to McDonnalds for lunch. I will post those pictures tomorrow. They had a lot of fun there too.

Mason is such a cute little guy and he and Tanek are just a month apart in age and play together very well. They both are very close in size and stuff they like to do. They had a great time today.

All the pumpkins around and Tanek is pointing to a "big truck" that went by. He is very interested in trucks and has been watching all the trucks go by our house that are dumping dirt up the road.

Throwing hay is SO much fun.

So many pumpkins to choose from. Lets sit awhile and decide what to do next.
Here is one just my size.
What is this big thing? Not a pumpkin for sure but an ugly green gourd. And it's heavy.
I like this little one. I think it is just the right size.

Good buddies hug sometimes.

And hug again
And sometimes they just fall down.

So we tried it again and this time it worked.

Gotta Love those Bluebirds

I have been trying to catch these little guys on my camera for weeks. Every Spring we have bluebirds that nest in this one birdhouse. From time to time during the winter months they will come back and check out their house and make sure no one has moved into it. But for some reason they have been hanging around all the time for the past few weeks. One morning I saw 4 of them which makes me think some of them are from their nesting last Spring. I love to watch them. They are so pretty and very tough little birds. They will fight any other bird that gets near their house. I have seen them fighting a big wood pecker, a black bird and a mocking bird, and doves. They are also know to try to chase away all the finches that come every winter. There are ususally so many finches that they don't get them to leave. We love watching them when they make their nest and lay their eggs. All during this time the male bird brings food to the female. When the babies come the male bird takes care of the babies as much as the mommy bird. They bring food in to the babies all day long and when it is time for the babies to leave the nest both the mommy and daddy bird is there to be sure they get off safely. It is really neat to watch them.
I was very excited to beable to get a picture of them. Usually they fly away as soon as I go out the door.

These two pictures are of the male bluebird. You can see he is bluer than the other one,
This is the female. She is more a grey blue than the male who is very blue.

Sweet Home Alabama

Anyone want to go RVing? This is Jerry and Barbara's little "Castle on Wheels". All the way from Fayette, Alabama.






Yesterday we spent the afternoon with some very good ol time friends. Jerry and Barbara were the very first friends we made when we first moved to Starke. In December it will be 35 years. (Where does the time go).? We had such a good time. Jerry and Barbara are the kind of friends that you may not see or even talk to for years, but when you do we just pick up where we left off. When they moved back to Alabama we hated to see them leave, but over the years we have always got together from time to time. They live about 45 miles from the University of Alabama where Richard went to school. We had a great time watching the Alabama-Ole Miss game yesterday. They are both retired now and travel around in this little "Castle on Wheels". It is so nice. Literally driving your house around. They spend a lot of time in Destin, Fl. but made their way down to Starke to visit us. Jerry grilled some great Burgers with all the trimmings. Barbara made a great lemon pie for desert. We just spent a lot of time reconnecting and finding out what everyone is doing. They have 5 grand-children and we have 4 so we never ran out of things to talk about. Jerry and Gary were in a singing group when we first moved here. Jerry played drums and Gary the Bass guitar. That was a lot of fun and we thought back on all the fun we had in the "old" days when we were all young. They have a grand-daughter that is going to Auburn (that other school in Alabama) that we love to see lose at football. She is on a academic scholarship. They are very proud of her even if she went to the "wrong" school. Ha.

Jerry, Barbara and Gary eating dinnner. I always remember the camera when everyone is eating.
Jerry being Jerry. You can see they are big Alabama fans too! Love to see that "Tide Roll".
Don't hold your breath too long Jerry
Nice little home away from home. Duplicate picture here, but hey, it is very late and I am posting this while I am half asleep. It was such a nice cool day. We finally had to go inside because it got "very cool". I was actually quite cold. It was after all down in the 60's.

Boiled Peanuts???

For my family and friends up north here is a picture of yummy hot salted peanuts boiling. Very yummy. Gary eats them just as soon as he thinks they are done. I prefer to let them simmer for hours until they are very salty. I only like them hot and salty. Since I don't have to see any doctors in the next few days that will tell me to "just watch your salt intake" I can salt away and enjoy. I sent some home with "my southern kids" who also like them. I just had a bowl of them and wanted to share them with all of you who don't have them in your part of the country. I do enjoy them occasionally, but I really would rather have a nice tart fresh apple from the apple orchard.

Cuties

I forgot these cute little girls. We went by a place that was doing free face painting and they went and got their faces painted. Here is beautiful Morgan. Morgan and Drew. Are they not just the cutest little girls? Morgan was my riding partner on splash mountain and the haunted house. She is a sport.
Have you ever seen just cute Pink Halloween shirts?

Not So Scary Mickey

Thursday night I went to Disney with Anita, her sister-n-law Carol, her niece Tracy and her husband Scott, their two children Drew and Max, and 2 of Anita's grandchildren, Garrett and Morgan. We had a great time. We got there about 7 PM and left about 1 am. It actually closed at midnight, but we literally closed the place down.

Here we are just getting there. This is Carol, Anita, Drew, Max and Morgan.
The front of the entrance is all decorated for Halloween.
Me and Anita
This little guy was showing us the way. Cute huh?
Downtown Disney

Here are the three cuties again
Even Disney World is in favor of the Gators.
It rained the first couple hours we were there. It wasn't bad though because it was warm. Here they all are with their rain gear on . I just got wet. It felt good and once you were wet it didn't matter.
Some of the fireworks. They were awesome. I couldn't catch them all on film, but they were great.

More fall decorations. The whole park was decorated and looked so cool. It was all geared to a "Not So Scary Mickey". It was so much fun and when the rain started everyone must have taken cover because we were able to walk right up to the rides. We went on splash mountain and you get wet on there anyway so it didn't matter that it was also raining while we rode it. I loved it. I wasn't too sure about the 50 ft drop at the end,but it was so fast you didn't have time to really think about it.

This was one of the scenes in "Small World". They have totally changed it since the last time I was there which was about 9 years ago.
When we were leaving the park I saw something that was very familiar that I had seen someone else take a picture of....a storm drain. I knew the minute I saw it that it was the same thing I had seen a picture of. And I must say, It really did look kinda like a storm drain. Ahem!
Anita's niece Tracy and her husband Scott have the neatest jobs. Tracy worked at Disney for years and still does sometime. She helps train the characters. She works as a puppeteer and has been on Sesame Street and they just came back from Oklahoma doing a program with Joyce Meyers. Scott makes puppets and he has made them for Disney and Sesame Street. How cool is that.?