Early fall

We have spent days on end trying to keep up with the leaves that have fallen from our cottonwood tree (not pictured). Also had to rake up two wheel barrows of apples that had fallen from the trees. Paul has been cleaning the leaves out of the gutters. I trimmed back all of my flowers and shrubs and planted a new flower bed. I also painted 10 pieces of patio furniture and they look like new. Lots of hard, time consuming work. Luckily I can retreat to my front porch and enjoy the view. For me the view is always changing and after 15 years of sitting on my front porch I am still amazed by the beauty of nature. In this photo you can see the golden soy beans growing, almost time to harvest. Might be that lots of folks pass by these soybean fields everyday and never notice the changing colors or have the time to stop and just view the beauty in a warm fall day. My front porch is one place where I can truly find peace. I will miss this view as we prepare to travel south for the winter.

Haulin' House

The footings are in
Next the foundation
Here comes the house
Making the turn to come into the driveway
Almost here
The welcome sign on the door
Getting it ready to move onto the foundation.

It truly was an oversized load. The end.


Back in May our son and daughter-in-law's house was destroyed by fire. The house was over 100 years old and the cause was determined to be old wiring. The good news is no one was home at the time. So all summer long the planning for a modular home has been underway and today was the day for "Haulin' House". Well actually half of the house. The other half comes tomorrow.

It is quite a process to see what goes into setting a modular home on a foundation. So four of us, Paul, our daughter-in-law, her aunt and myself stood watch in case the crew needed any extra sidewalk superintendents. I am posting some of the photos. Our son had to work so we wanted to show some of the steps of the operation to him. Took the last photo for my daughter-in-law as she likes unusual snapshots.

Sept 1, Where has the summer gone.

Bella

Bella Blu Bixler

My water feature for our yard in Texas

The boats line up to watch the races

Captain Shirley takes us for a nice ride

Okay Shirley and I wanted to pose too.

The fellas had to have a photo under the tent for Big Dick's which is a bar.


Captain Ron's sponsors the race

Thought this guy might roll right into the lake.

Well it seems like the summer months flew by and while I am glad it is September, I hate to see all of my days go by so fast. Could the weather be any more beautiful than it was today? 50's at night and 70's by day.

We ended August with a trip to Ron and Shirley's at the Lake of the Ozarks. The occasion was the Lake of the Ozarks annual Shootout, not a gun battle but a competition of several classes of boats. Ron and Shirley's house sits right at the finish line so the view was excellent. Ron and Shirley are the best host and hostess I have ever met. You always feel like a welcomed guest and the food is always excellent and plentiful and also any beverages you would like. We drove the motorhome down as did Bill and Jo. The temps turned pretty chilly Saturday evening and Sunday so jackets were required.

Two other couples who travel to Texas in the winter also joined us, Rita and Brent from Ill and Jim and Nancy who also live at LOZ. It was good to see them again and a reminder that soon we will all start our trek south. Before we can head out to Texas we have to do some repairs to the roof of the Rolling Turd. It gets black streaks really bad so we are going to put a new coat of rubber something on the roof. Sounds like fun. Oh yes and we get to buy new tires for it. So September will be a busy month as we get ready to travel south and finish up projects at the house. So looking forward to raking up the leaves before we go. NOT.

Forgot to mention that when we get to our RV park I plan on planting new shrubs. Want to do a tropical theme as everything seems to thrive in the valley. Anyway I wanted a water feature and found one at Walmart. It's not exactly tropical but it was such a good deal I couldn't pass it up. It had been marked $128 original and knocked down to $45. Pretty good mark down I would say. It is a bird fountain and it's really cute for the price. As soon as I find the photos on my puter I will post them.

Probably the most hectic weekend we had in August was when our newest "granddog" came for a three day visit while her mom and dad went to Branson. Bella is a little darling, a Shi Tzu/Yorkie mix. She is full of energy and can run much faster than Paul or I. She is very small but mighty. After her visit we realized we are probably to old for a puppy. If/when we ever get another dog we might have to get an older one. But we do love little Bella.

Testical Festival

Us

The meal


Paul and Connie

Jo and Bill


Sharon and Chuck

Well the big evening arrived finally. We took our neighbors, Sharon and Chuck, along with us as they said they like turkey and hog fries. Bill, Jo and Connie met us at the Elk Lodge. Connie had arrived early to save a table for us just in case there was a mad dash by all the locals for turkey and hog fries.

The meal was pretty good but then I had fried chicken. I think the others thought the "fries" were okay. And there sure was plenty of food followed by chocolate cake. What can be better than that, good food, good friends, a few drinks and chocolate cake.

Happy Anniversary

Today is our anniversary. We have been married 44 years. WooHoo! Okay we didn't do anything special. We went to Pennys outlet and then stopped at Arby's for sandwiches. Came home and fixed some more "Bodacious" corn on the cobb.

Tomorrow night we are going to the Elks Lodge for the Testicle Festival. Fun for the whole family.

Coco

Coco's pup Missy
Coco in the RV window
Marching in the St. Patty's Day Parade
It was so hot but we put her in a costume
Sitting inside the motor home.
The week before she died.
Always one of her favorite spots.

On Sunday, August 2 , Coco started having breathing difficulties. We held off until Monday and took her to the vet. We knew our time with her was over. We were relieved that she no longer suffered. She was a great little pet even though she had an attitude (independent). We will miss our "Little Miss Puppy" but feel lucky we got to have her for 15 years. I have also included a photo of Missy, Coco's pup that we kept. Coco and Missy were such good companions for each other. We lost Missy, who was 10 years old, in May 2007 and still miss her too.

I hope we reunite with our pets in heaven as we should have several of them there.

August started out with family

Paul, Jordan, Blake, Rob and Granny
Paul, Rich and Jennifer
Johnna and Cayley
Trading hats, Johnna and Cayley
Jordan, RastaMon, Rob and Blake
Paul, Rich, Jordan, Blake, Rob
Volynn and Jeff
Shell, Jennifer and Paul
Johnna, Cayley and Tot
Mark, Rich and Jennifer
Paul, Rob and Shell

Our daughter Shell, pictured with her little Mexican dog, Daisy and our son Rich with his new pup Bella Blu Bixler.

Shell along with her husband Mark and son Rob arrived here early in the morning on July 31. She was here to attend her 20 year high school reunion. How can that be? Time has gone so fast.

So this was a perfect time to get the entire family together. We had a great time with our big kids and our grandkids.

Paul found his Rasta Mon hat and had to put it on for the kids. Great time to pose with the grandsons. The little girls loved it and had to take turns wearing it and the "hairy hat".

I don't know how our grandsons grew up so fast. I am so proud of all of them.

I told my kids I hoped we could have a summer reunion every year since we can't all be together during the winter holidays. We laughed so much and everyone just really enjoyed themselves. Well at least they said they did.

More about July

One of the great things about living in the country is all of the fresh produce that our neighbors grow. We tried growing a garden once and it was too much for us. Our neighbor Chuck kept us in Zucinni, lettuce, squash and okra. Then last week our next door neighbor, Ron, provided us with corn on the cob, tomatoes, more zucinni, squash, and cucumbers oh yes and green beans.

This week Ron has once again provided tomatoes, 30 ears of corn, jalepeno peppers, banana peppers, green peppers, cabbage and I may have forgotten something. Ron's corn is the most delicious we have ever had. It is called "Bodacious" and it is even sweeter than our long time favorite "peaches and cream". It is so sweet you can eat it without cooking it. Ron is a very kind man and believes in sharing with his neighbors. Once he and his wife have put up all of the vegetables they will use they invite their church members to come out to pick what they would like.

I still had frozen peaches in the freezer from our tree from last summer so I thawed them out and made about a dozen freezer jars of peach jam. Sooooo goooood. Now we have several bags of frozen corn and green beans put up and at least 20 ears of corn we will need to eat in the next few days. Not a problem. We fixed BLT's today and each of us had 3 ears of corn. Oink! Oink!

Oh yes also made two loaves of Zuccinni bread. Shared some with Ron and Joanne and like the piggies we always are, Paul and I ate the rest.

What happened to July

Okay so it's been over a month since I have written as my friend Shirley has reminded me. Sometimes I think that our lives are pretty boring when we aren't traveling so I find it difficult to write much.

Jeff, Volynn, Sierra and Paul
Totiana (with her bikini on and pink cowgirl boots, Tamara and Alex
The gang at Darren's house.


We celebrated the 4th of July at Darren Doustou's house along with his parents, brother and sister and lots of friends. Jeff and Volynn and 5 grand daughters also joined us.

We had alot of good food and good laughs but too many fireworks for us. But we did enjoy ourselves. Cayley and Johnna
Johnna with a big grin. (Minus a few teeth)


On the 18th of July we headed up to our sons house. He lives near KCI. His sweet little girl Johnna was turning 8 on July 23 so we had what she called a "pretend birthday" since it wasn't the actual day. Little kids are always particular about celebrating their birthdays on "the day". When we arrived Johnna and Cayley were having lunch. You can't go wrong giving cash as it is always the right color.

We keep mowing every week as we have had plenty of rain to keep the grass growing and the flowers blooming.





We also went out to eat several times with neighbors, Chuck and Sharon and friends Connie and Joe. Had fish fry at the Belton VFW and steak night at the Elks lodge. Oh yes and there was that all you can eat pizza at Mazzios. Yummy.

We both have been getting regular medical tests done and Thank God (literally) a biopsy I had in June turned out to be benign.

Also during July our little dog Coco was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Our vet gave us water pills and blood pressure pills as we wanted to try to keep her a little longer if she would stabilize. Coco had just turned 15 on the 13th of July and had been in such good health that this was a real surprise. Once medicated she seemed to rebound, not to her spunky self but she could breath easily, wag her tail and growl when she wanted something. So we felt we would get a little more time with her.