Monday, June 8, 2009

Empty Nester Home Evening

Just got home from a sweet Empty Nester Home Evening. Brother and Sister Johnson are the sweetest people. Very simple, spiritual and loving people. Discussed Family History and how to go about connecting families. Very interesting. Guess Daddy and I need to get busy and do genealogy. It would be nice if daddy knew how to operate this computer we sure could get a lot more done. Good night everyone.

Janae's Birthday

Today is Monday June 8, 2009 and Cindy said, Mom you better start blogging today, so here I am.

Well we celebrated Janae Newell's birthday yesterday which was Sunday June 7, 2009. Her birthday was Friday June 5, 2009. She is Robert's sister and lives here in Arizona as a Chef for the American Indian program. She teaches there and now has her own office. She is very happy about this promotion. Anyway, Sunday started out really great but then as Janae was coming over for her birthday dinner, her car broke down on the 51 freeway and Indian School Road. A kind, elderly man stopped and helped her push her car into a parking lot and helped get her car cooled down while daddy went to pick her up. They filled up her radiator with water and put some oil in her engine and after several stops filling up her radiator and putting more oil in the engine as they drove through the surface streets, they finally got here to our home.

We made Janae's favorite dinner which is somewhat of a german meal. I made fried potatoes with sliced onions and then added sliced Kielbasa sausage, we had red cabbage, green beans, and a tossed green salad to go with the main dish. Her favorite dessert is ice cream cake, but I made an ice cream dessert for her and it was delicious. Everyone loved it. I could have eaten another piece but that would have put more inches on my waist. I would like to share this dessert recipe with you.

Dessert Recipe:

Frozen Oreo Cookie Dessert

1 - (1 lb. 2 oz.) Pkg. Oreo Cookies finely crushed
1 cube butter or margaine melted
1/2 to 3/4 of a gallon ice cream any flavor, the extra ice cream is to fill in the spaces.
l pint whipping cream or 1-12 oz. carton cool whip
1 can chocolate frosting or you may use our home made hot fudge sauce.
Hershey's chocolate syrup for serving dessert
Optional: Chopped roasted almonds or pecans

For cookie crumbs I put them in the food proccessor. To (reserve 1/4c. to 1/2c. cookie crumbs for garnish is optional.) Put crumbs in a mixing bowl, add melted butter, mix well pressing mixture in a 9" x 13" pan with a fork. Put in freezer for a 10 minutes, remove from freezer, layer ice cream on top of crumbs, filling in the spaces with extra ice cream, smooth out, return to freezer for about another 10-15 minutes. Spread frosting or our homemade hot fudge sauce over ice cream, return to freezer for another 10 minutes, spread cool whip or sweetened whipped cream over sauce. Return to freezer until ready to serve. Garnish with reserved crumbs if you want to. Take out of freezer 15 minutes before serving.

When serving, drizzle a little Hershey's chocolate syrup over dessert plate, place ice cream square on plate, drizzle a little more chocolate sauce over the ice cream square, sprinkle with nuts or leave plain. ENJOY!

Have to run as dad has the palm fronds in the car and we have to take them over to where the chickens are and put them over the cage to help keep them cool. Be back in a minute.

I'm back and it is very dark outside with lightening in the Northeast valley. Sure wished it would rain. The Buff Orpington hen is brooding and she loves to have you hold her and she just purrs like a little kitten. Daddy has to push her out of the nest because she needs to eat and drink. We just love this chicken project. We are having such a good time. Got 13 eggs yesterday and 12 today so far.

Last week I had a sore tooth, so we went to the dentist and I have a tooth that needs to have a root canal. This will not be fun. They will drill through my cap right into the tooth. I have been on heavy duty antibiotics since last Thursday and this coming Thursday is when they will to the work.

I have a whole list of things that I need to blog about but will do it tomorrow.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Growing Up Memories

This is how daddy and I grew up. Those were sweet times. We never knew that there was never enough money for things and us kids played hide and seek, kick the ball, mother may I etc. or just lay on the grass and look up at the blue sky or watch the clouds that passed by. The girls would play house or play with their paper dolls which I did not care for too much, also jacks, which is still fun and the boys played softball and marble games etc. When we were teenagaers all the kids riding their bikes together would sing all kinds of songs and harmonize. It was a fun sweet time in our lives. I probably could think of a lot more things, but right now I have a headache. I got the following in an email:

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?' 'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.'
'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'
'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.' By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it :

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card . The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow).

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 5. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a.m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had. We didn't have a car until I was 4. It was an old black Dodge.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you make a call, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6 AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

An old Royal Crown Cola or 7-Up bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. It was the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons.

Man, I am old. I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life! A simpler time.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

CELBRATING MY BIRTHDAY

Today I celebrated my 72 nd birthday. Daddy took me to a matinee to see the movie, Australia. We had popcorn and a diet coke while we watched it. This is a very good movie almost 3 hours long but worth seeing again. Then we went to the Olive Garden for an early dinner. We used our gift certificates that were given to us for Christmas from Denise, Jessica, Dan, Tim and Bekah, also the Movie tickets from Kristin and Clint from 3 Christmase's ago. We went to Lisa's for birthday cake that one of our dear friends made for me, it was a coconut pecan cake made from scratch. Very, very delicious. Thank you Maribeth! As we walked in the door, and what to my surprise and complete shock was my oldest daughter Cindy. I just lost it, because I wanted my family to be together so much on this special day. And I also received an email from my son Gregory. My niece Kristin her husband Clint, my grandson Joshua and his wife Meredith, were all in on the surprise. I am so blessed to have so many wonderful friends and a great wonderful family. Lisa kept such a good secret that Cindy was coming, I could not have asked for a better gift than to have her here. The other day Lisa called to tell me that she was running errands, and I said what errands and she said just errands and I said okay. She was really on her way to pick up Cindy at the air port. She is very special, she was blessed with always making others happy and has a great imagination and a good sense of humor, and always lifts up your spirits.

Each one of our children are unique in their own way. They all have something very special to give, to make this an eternal family. I love daddy and all of you for making my life so beautiful.

Thank you for a beautiful Birthday!.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Christmas Quiz

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? both!
2. Real tree or Artificial? Artificial
3. When do you put up the tree? right after Thanksgiving
4 . When do you take the tree down? Sometime just before Easter
5. Do you like eggnog? Love it!
6. Favorite gift received as a child? Itsy, Bitsy,Teeny, Weeny, Betsy Wetsy Doll
7. Hardest person to buy for? Can't think of anyone
8. Easiest person to buy for? myself
9.Do you have a nativity scene? yes 2 of them
10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail
11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? The pink bunny pajama suit daddy got me
12. Favorite Christmas Movie? It's A Wonderful Life, Miracle On 34th Street, I like so many of them!
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Usually after Thanksgiving
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No
15 .Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Unfortunately everything!
16. Lights on the tree? always clear mini lights
17. Favorite Christmas song? Silent Night - Always reminds me of my Mom & Dad and reminds me of my childhood
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's? yes
20. Angel on the tree top or a star? floral
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Used to open gifts on Christmas Eve which was a tradition when I was a child which was the German tradition. But when I married Ward and I would let the children open their Chritmas Pajamas.
22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? Commercialism.
23. Favorite ornament theme or color? Love them all. I'm pretty traditional: red, green, forest green, gold, silver.
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Prime rib
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? Spend time with family and friends
26. Who is most likely to respond to this? Natalie, Adrianne, Meredith, Lisa, Mom, Gwen, Kristin
27. Who is least likely to respond to this? Don't know
28. Favorite thing about Christmas? Love decorating, baking, Christmas music, cold weather, happy people.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

"Christmas is Here"

Everyone is always welcome in our home!









Just wanted to share with you some our Holiday decorations. I love this Holiday. Christmas. I love what it stands for the Birth of our Savior. I love what the colors mean and the spirit of everthing. If I could I would leave everything up all year round. Have a Very Merry Christmas to all of you and may you find love, joy and peace. Love, Grandma and Grandpa.





"Happy Thanksgiving"

Grandpa and Me with the Duffy Children and spouses! Love you all!
Josh, Cliff, Dad, Me, Lunetta, Merideth

Pre dinner munchies! Always delis!


Cannot resist this darling dog!



First of all I want to thank Cindy for putting a new Christmas background on my blog. Thank you honey. We where up and the Duffy cabin for Thanksgiving and we had a blast. Besides the being sick it was a fun being in Utah and with the Duffy's. Here are some pictures dad and I would like to share with everyone.