Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Ongoing Christmas






This has been a wonderful Christmas! We started last weekend in Corinth with my family. And I can't remember what order the photos are in but one is a whole group photo and one is me laying on the floor in order to steal a hug and kiss from Tracy and that is NOT an easy thing to do! There is also a photo of Wyot, Bil and Andrea's youngest with his $20 in pennies that his Aunt Diana gave him...at least she rolled them for him. She was nicer than me...if I'd thought about giving his money to him in pennnies, I think I would have just given him them in a jar. There's one ofour famiy with John, Laura, me, Tim, and Joe and one with Tim with Bows on his head. We have fun being together even if it was just for the day. I went back to Corinth last weekend while Tim and Joe were skiing and Diana and I took Mama and Mutt out to dinner and then we went to a movie. Diana got up early Sunday moring and went to Indianola to spent some time with Tamara Lynn and Brian and Billy. I went to church with Mama and Mutt and Robin and Cheryl and ate lunch with them. And got home in time to wait around at the airport for about two hours for Tim and Joe to get in, but at least they got in!

Now Tim and I are in Huntsville. Laura and John have been in Austin with his family and will be headed home today. Denise and Wayne were here yesterday as well as Jonathan and Sandy but they left last night as did Scott, Cathy's husband. Cathy and Noah are still here with us waiting on Carol and Charley and James and Laurel to arrive sometimes this evening. We played dirty Santa yesterday and Noah even payed with us. He got a re bandana that Tim had put a $20 bill in and he sat on it so no one else could see it. It was really funny...he kept telling everyone that they didn't want to take it because it was stinky...he'd aleady done something bad on it! But alas, his Uncle Wayne still took it from him and he ended up with a really neat Star Wars ship transformer thing that he was just as happy about. We get to play dirty Santa again tonight with Carol's family. Tim and I are learning to be quite dirty at playing this game since we do it about 4 or 5 times each Chritmas season.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Fun Skiing

I talked to Tim and Joe tonight. They made it in just before the blizzard got really bad though they say they could see the snow coming down hard past the lights on the plane. Several plane loads of people got stuck in Hayden, CO where Tim and Joe flew into (I think). They are having a great time and so am I! Looks like a win -win situation to me!

Just talked to Laura and John on the phone. They're about 30 minutes away from John's mom so we'll assume that they'll make the last few miles safely. Laura said that John had several other interviews-6 total now- one in Canada that is a reserch institutuion which is really what he wants to do! He was one of 3 they picked out of 135 applicants. He has been acceptd to present papers at meetings in Orlando this spring and in London this summer. We're pretty proud of him.

Merry Christmas!

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Good Weekend...even better week?

I just dropped Joe and Tim off at the airport to go skiing in Colorado until Sunday...now what will I do with these few days alone? How I wish I could just lay back and watch TV and read good novels, but I must study for my MFT Boards and get my teaching materials ready for Ghana and see a few clients in between but at least I don't have to worry about taking care of anybody but me! Pray that I'll get a lot done while they are gone and that they will be safe. On Friday they have a day planned to go on the back side of the mountain on a snowcat in the "real" snow...

Last weekend was really fun with our family. Poor Mama was confused most of the day and couldn't remember who everybody was - especially the grandchildren that she doesn't see very often, but she did sit around with a big smile on her face all day knowing that her family was all there around her. We had wonderful food and wonderful fellowship. Tamara Lynn kept telling John stuff that he did not need to hear about how to get to me if I made him mad! I'm not sure that was a good thing...but we enjoyed having John and Laura with us for the little while that they were here. Tracy got on a singing Christmas Carol kick that was really fun. And Dirty Santa was fun as always. The younger neices and nephews all loved their Hard Rock Rome stuff and thought it was really neat.

OK, I'm off to do whatever I want to do...haven't decided yet what that is...what a wonderful feeling!

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Great News!

We found cheap airline tickets at the last minute so John and Laura will be flying to Memphis this weekend after all to go to Corinth with us...much cheaper than Tim could fly up in his plane to get them anyway and they might even get here in time for Carrie's wedding! HOOOOOORAAAAAY!

P.S. John got a job interview in Maryland. Can't remember the college name, but he's excited.
and Tim has been laughing at me since my last post because I spelled Check Republic wrong...I still don't know how to spell Check Republic correctly, but you know what I mean anyway...

Monday, December 11, 2006

Sad But Understanding

I talked to Laura yesterday. She and John have decided that they are not coming to Corinth next weekend for Christmas with my famiy. That makes me very sad; however, I do understand why. Laura does and always has hated to fly in the little plane and the fact that Tim was going to have to go get them on Saturday morning and then take them back on Sunday was a little more that she is willing to face. A 9 hour drive one way is a bit much also so I guess we'll just have to wait to see them at the real Christmas holiday but it will be sad without them next weekend. John has sent out resumes to about 30 different places so maybe they'll end up someplace closer to here or in Europe...who knows? He's a bit discouraged teaching undergraduate students who are required to take his classes to graduate - not because it is what they choose to take and they don't take a whole of of interest in them other than gettng enough out of them to pass. He's been teaching graduate classes until now where the students were there because they wanted to be and it makes a big difference in their interest level.

Carrie Beth Frederick is getting married on Friday night so I don't know if we'll fly down to Corinth after the wedding or if we'll just get up and go Saturday morning. Tim wants to be back here for Sunday morning service and I want to go in Cointh with my family, so I may drive and he might fly. He's in the middle of doing a painting a little at a time (you can see the final result at artist-tim.blogspot.com (it's in several posts back) each week to do something diferent while we are looking for a new preacher to keep things interesting. But we planned our family Christmas for that weekend last year at Christmas so we wouldn't interfer with any other in-law's Chritmas plans and I intend to be there for as much of the festivities as I can, but of course, I can't miss Carrie's wedding - she's one of my children (I just don't have to pay for the wedding, thank heavens!)

When I got home from Italy, Tim had gotten me a new computer. Mine had been in the Apple store for 21 days and they called and said they couldn't get the part they needed so they would sell him one for what the repair bill was going to be. He took them up on the offer. Then soon after I got home, he started talking about giving his mothr his old computer and teaching her how to do e-mail on it and getting himself a new one like mine. Before long, he'd gone to the Apple store and done just that. Now I just hope she really will use it! I told him that he had used the principle of gettng forgiveness rather than asking permission on purchasing a lot of things including cars, the second aiplane he bought, and now this computer. He's been looking at new airplanes, but I told him that principle WOULD NOT work on another airplane and if he decided that he was going to do that he had better be reday to pay a high, high, high, high price. I've been telling Leslie (whose daughter is going to be a missionary in Togo) and Judy Shockley (whose daughter is a missionary in the Check Republic) to get their passports ready becuase if Tim shows up with a new airplaine, we're going to Togo and Check Republic and anywhere we want to go in between on his credit card! I think that might hold him in check for a while anyway.

Pray for me while I try to study for my Marriage and Family therapy boards and get my teaching materials ready for Ghana at the same time and see clients. I can ususlly multitask pretty well, but I'm not being very succesful at it here during the holidays! Too many places to go, people to see, and fun to be had!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Reagan and Gene are off!

I took Reagan and Gene to the airport last night. I was so excited to get to do that! I told Gene that we were old enough that we had earned the right to hail a taxi whenever we wanted to...just to be sure it was a real taxi and not one of those scammers who meet you inside the train station or airport and charge you double. He grinned his little Gene grin and agreed. Reagan was going to try to upgrade her ticket to sit with him in business class. I hope she was able to do that. It won't be long now until they are all back together as a family. HOORAY! Have a wonderful Christmas Holiday, Weavers, in Italy!

I've got to get my personal Christmas Card list finished today or they won't get mailed. Hope I can get that done!

I'm going to get my roots done in a little bit and I don't have a client until 5:00 this afternoon, so I should be able to have time IF I don't use all day playing on the computer (the Christmas card list)...

Tonight we have the elders and staff Christmas dinner to go to at church and then tomorrow night we have our annual group dinner that we'ver been doing since before we had children so that's been at least 27 or 28 years.

Happy Holidyas to all!

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

More Italy photos


The look on Vivian's face very time the train went through a tunnel.
Sunflower table clothes for Diana.

The oldest area in Italy (I think).

One little tidbit





This is the size diamond that I am gong to replace mine with if I ever loose it again (hehehe). Actually it was a doorknob on a shop in Capri.
The nail polish I wore in Italy was called "Marvoleous Memories" and we certainly did make a bunch of them!

Saturday, December 02, 2006

one more thing about Italy

Being in Italy this time with Beckie was like being in England with Katie (Reagan's friend) in England in 1996(? - could it have been that long ago?)...Katie made us walk up and down every set up steps in London as many times as she possibly could...well, this time in Italy, Beckie found a way to make up walk UP HILL BOTH WAYS any time it was possible and I had the best time giving her a hard time about that! But since she let me reward myself with gelato and cappacino every day, I couldn't complain too much and she let me sit down to eat almost all of my meals instead of eating on the run. That was wonderful and relaxing!

Italy among other things






After a long flight to Amsterdam (on which I took a sleeping pill and slept all the way and I made Vivian take one, too, so she would not go crazy on the plane), Vivian and I had almost a whole day to wander around there. Trouble is, we didn't stop and get a map so we ended up spending a great deal of our day in the red light district. That as quite interesting. I dared Vivian to take photos of the ladies in the windows, but she wouldn't do it. When we got to Rome, we took a taxi to our hotel. Don't ever get in one of those cars where the guy comes up and tells you he is a taxi. He quoted us 20 euro to take us to the hotel and when we go in the real taxi line, it only took about 7 euro to get there. Beckie wasn't there yet and we were a bit worried, but she did finnally show up - she'd taken the wrong train! We spend two busy days there seeing all the things Vivian had missed on her one whirlwind day trip there in the summer of 2000. We managed to make it through will all our wits and wallets. On one city bus the man standing right behind us had his wallet stolen out of his camera case while we were all there. I think that he just put it in the camera case and the thief saw him do it. On Thanksgiving day, we ate dinner at the Hard Rock with a girl from Houston that Viv had talked to in the Amsterdam airport while we were waiting for our plane. She was traveling by herself and we just happened to run into her there. That was kind of neat.

Beckie did discover that she had been the victim of a theft while she was in Rome but it did not happen in Rome. Starting about four days before, she could not get my ATM/VISA card to work in any of the machines. They kept saying that her bank wanted them to confiscate my card but it gave the card back anyway. She called Reagan and asked her to run by the bank (since she used to work there) and see what was wrong...it seems that she was victim to the card fraud that has been going around Searcy. She am not sure how they got her information since she hadn't used that card in Searcy since September but someone was using it in MEXICO. They used it at a Burger King, Walmart and an ATM. The bank shut it down before it could be used anymore. The bank also has replaced all the money they stole.

Now, back to the trip. After Rome we took an overnight train to Taormina in Sicily and spend the day in that beautiful town. We went back to Messina and had to spend the night there because all the trains back north were full. That is a town were EVERBODY goes down to the main piazza on Saturday night and walks around or drives around. I have never seen anything like it! People, young and old, were everywhere walking around - kind f like at the fair! Next morning we took a ferry to Reggio di Calibria and strolled around there until time for our train to Naples. At the train station in Reggio di Calibria Vivian and Beckie were waiting for me to finish some necessary business when all these police started pouring into the station. They first thought it had to do with the fire was billowing smoke out of an office building but then a police officer came up and asked them why were out by the train tracks. When they showed him their tickets he said in a very serious voice that it was "dangerous" for them to stand there and he moved them back into a little hallway. They told him that their friend was still in a room down the outside of the building but he didn't quite understand. In about a minute a group of either soccer players or fans came trouping through the train station and the police made them walk between two lines of poilice officers until they got on the train. Right then, I came walking out of the restroom and walked right behind the police line and never knew anything was out of the ordinary. I wondered what was going on, but I just walked through them all like I knew what I was doing until i got to the hallway were Viv and Beck were and they jerked me in there with them and told me what was going on.

We spent the night in Naples and first thing the next morning went to Sorrento. I love Sorrento. It is a beautiful little town known for it's inlaid wood products. We found a great hotel near the station and roamed all through the town. The next day we took the ferry over to Capri. The views were wonderful but many of the shops have closed for the season. We decided not to take the bus or a taxi up to Anacapri because Vivian is so prone to motion sickness. I was afraid that she would be up there and not able to get down!

After two nights in Sorrento we headed back to Rome for Viv and me to catch an early morning flight home. Beckie went back to Firenze to get ready for the next round of company. It was a wonderul trip and if I can figure out how to put some photos on here, I will!

Last night, Tim didn't pan anything for my first ngiht home, thank the Lord, but Firday night, we went to see Grease at Arlington High School. It was great. Ed Riddick, the chorus director, played Teen Angel and he was awesome! I saw Bill and Jessica Ganue there and it was fun talking to them, too.

Tonight, the praise team Christmas party is here. You know how Tim was supposed to have the Christmas tree up...well he did have it up but not one ornament on it so I've gotta go get that done!