December 2015

CB, hope your reports are good news..............let us hear.

Robin, thanks for Rose's temp snail mail addy. Sure hoping she is feeling a bit better today.

ELLEN, I was amazed at the concert. The garage band is really getting good.
They did Christian rock songs I didn't know. Their singer is really good. They had piano, bass guitar, elec guitar, drums......they started playing 7 yrs ago so now are hitting their stride. Then we had a 13 yr old solo singer......holy cow, she was amazing. She did contemporary Christian songs solo with taped background music and then did 3 songs playing the piano for her accompaniment. Then we had a screen with words and we all sang traditional Christmas carols, each singer taking turns playing the piano. Everyone brought food and we had wine, There was lemonade for the kids. The little kids all played on the swings etc and played bean bag toss throughout the concert. There were about 100 people there all from church, maybe more.

... SEASON’S GREETINGS …

… to you my FOOP friends. Even though I’m not very adept with finding appropriate things to post on comments, I do appreciate the comments left by others. I'm also pretty severely challenged on the art of posting pics, etc. Yes ... occasionally the "blind hog finds an acorn" and I get lucky and can get something posted. lol!!

This FOOP community is certainly made up of a very varied collection of folk that come from different backgrounds with different beliefs, thought processes, experiences both good and bad, and unique talents and capabilities. Fortunately, we are (for the most part) courteous, understanding, and accepting of our differences and very happy to help a friend as best we can.

Please know that I genuinely appreciate your friendship and love … my unresponsiveness at times does not mean your love and friendship offered is unnoticed or unappreciated.

I want to borrow a three word phrase from Les Miserables and use it in a Holiday Greeting and toast: “May we share in our Blessings as we sip the ‘wine of friendship’ from the goblet of love and mutual respect.”

HAPPY HOLIDAYS … SEASON’S GREETINGS … and yes, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Love,

Ric

The appts. yesterday were for harry. he got his bandage off....stitches r uglllly....but healing fine. then I paid a bill, got groceries, horse grain, we had a subway for lunch and on to pt and then rushed home to feed before dark! made dinner and frankly was ready for bed! my appt is the 30th.....hate waiting............

My wish is that y'all have a merry christmas! stay safe if traveling.....enjoy....


MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas, FOOPS!

Just wrote a long post which DISAPPEARED just before I finished it. Gosh, does that make me MAD. And I know enough to write it first in WORD so that that doesn't happen. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB!!!!!

Maybe I'll try again tomorrow after the smoke has cleared.

Just wanted to thank Rick for voicing wonderful thoughts that I could not have framed better.

And to say that it's wonderful to hear that Harry is doing well, that Rose is out of hospital, that George's injuries weren't as bad as they seemed at first - but also that I'd love to hear more about Tuzee's Mike, and about Rose. I am wishing all well.

AND to thank ARK for a gift she sent here. I sent her and DONNIE something, too, but only by way of a thankyou for all the wise and kind work she's done keeping this tribe together all these long years.

I'm doing fine -- wrote, in my lost message, about finishing a scroll-saw sign today that reads "CATS RULE," with a silhouette of three seated cats between the two words, done on request for a woman planning to give it to her daughter for Christmas. And she gave me $30 for it! I may be making a career shift here. ha ha:bball: ...

Off to an assisted-care facility tomorrow to have Christmas dinner with an old friend whose memory has gone all to smash.

Fuller report later...

MERRY CHRISTMAS MY FOOP FRIENDS...

Praying we all have a safe and very happy day with friends and family. Be safe on your travels. And yeah what Rick said. I love ya'll...

Love and many prayers for all...

MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS.

I'm both sending love and good wishes for our friends here AND thanking you all for the love here.

Everyone have a good safe happy day.

God bless. Prayers for ALL.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FOOPS AND FOOPETTES!

Our afternoon has settled and the temps are falling off here. It will be about
30-33 tonight, clear, and our moon is full and gorgeous.

We are all sleepy and FULL.

This moon is special, won't be one like it for a loooong time, take a peek, its big bright with reddish coloring.

Had a nice day....girls all called, amazingly.....

Hope everyone had a great christmas day.

Sweet dreams y'all......

Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas!  We started out the day running to the barn to clean it up and settle the horses before the next rain storm hit us.  We just made it!  Then Donnie made pancakes that we smothered in a taste of Maine .  Thank you for the maple syrup, BEECH, what a nice surprise!

Finally after that great breakfast, we put on Christmas Story and watched it while opening our presents.  My big present is sitting out in the yard, the horse trailer, and Donnie was sitting in his big present.  We didn't open anything up early, so had fun opening up things from friends and family.  

We gave Kazi a new stall made from the old goat stall.  It is comfy.  Daisy got Kazi's old stall that is bigger, but then  Daisy is bigger than Kazi.  This made the whole front of the barn for Ivan and Areion, giving them more space.  We have had so much rain, we needed to put Daisy where she couldn't get into mud.  Her feet are bothering her.  She now has the luxury suite.  

The rain just doesn't stop.  If we had the equivalent in snow, we would be up to our ears.  The temperature is about 25 degrees above normal, which would be enjoyable if we weren't drowning.  So Donnie and I watched videos, cooked a nice dinner, and stayed home today.  No ride for me!  But it was a very nice and relaxing Christmas.

ARK, we watched Christmas Story and Planes, Train, & Automobiles. Of course I admired our "fra jill ee leg lamp" and our Red Rider B B gun. Those movies both are so funny. John Candy driving that ratty convertble rockin' & rollin' going the wrong way on the freeway is hysterical.

Unfortunately, now people get so drunk they really do that. We had a drunk grandmother last year going the wrong way that killed 2 people. In the Planes, Trains, & Auto movie it never occurred to me that could really happen.

Hopefully everyone had a good day yesterday.

Everyone have a good day.............hope we hear from ROSE soon.

Ok, its dig out the rowboat and find the oars time....had to wear my flippers to feed this morning and tonight I'm gettin my big innertube out so I don't fall in and drown anywhere! luckily its dry under the shelter for the horses....but its deep where the water runs off the roof...mucky mud. rain rain go away, go where folks need you on another day! I'm a sharing kind of foopette!

I was going to wal mart but changed my mind.....I didn't want to get caught in one of these nasty storms, having low visibility driving.....flood alerts coming in on my phone.

We keep losing our dish tv...too much heavy rainfall......

Kickin back, hubby is napping, I am lounging....the doxies all on their doggie beds and odie curled at my feet......christmas just made us soooooo tiredd!

Stay dry, have a good weekend!

Oh, CB, I wondered if you were in that storm path. I wondered if ELLEN was, also. Glad you're fine and wise move not to go to Walmart.........don't take chances that you don't have to.

Windy and about 35 right now. Moon high, sky clear. I put the horses in as the wind was so bad it was blowing the hay. Weather is just plain odd everywhere.
We're colder than it is in NY.

ARK, has your rain stopped?

Nite ALL.................

GRAYMARE
The rain seems to be past us now. It was very cloudy and misty all day, but no downpours since last night. The mud is as bad as ever. The horses want out into the pasture, but can't go until it dries some. We had over 2 inches in the last 72 hours, and I don't know how much over the last week. Enough!
No wind, though.

It was about 60 degrees today. Donnie and I had lunch at a country kitchen restaurant. Yum! I wore a pretty white sweater with horses on it that I got for Christmas.

ELLEN
We never did decorate our tree . I threw a bit of roping and three horsey ornaments on it, and that was it. The cats have enjoyed it! Donnie took some pix of ThunderPuff sitting near the top of it. He made a very large, fluffy ornament!

No rain is predicted for Sunday. Ivan and Areion are so coated in mud that they are matching brown horses. Crusty ones.

As we sat talking ....god forbid he couldn't watch his cowboy show, satellite went toots up for the 100th time today....anyway we noticed we hadn't seen any cars go by, feel like we r cut off, us and 3 other neighbors by a creek on either side of us....I will venture out tomorrow to see for sure......we have had over 5 inches since 3 am this morning.....I had better learn how to swim! more tomorrow AND monday......luckily our house sits on a small rise, so the creeks won't get to us, but any low spot has water and MUD....I HAVE DUCK PUDDLES ALL OVER THE PASTURE AND YARD! the geese were swimming in them! wild geese.
We r fine, have food and hay....I just hope we don't lose power.....

Floods, tornados and snow all at the same time and record high temps in places....makes one wonder.

Y'all hum for everyone in all this weather.....tia.

Now the wind with rain and cold....yuck! you know those big black feeders that hang over the fence, they were full of water and spilling over....that's a lot of water coming down. horses were ravenous this morning. I wish we had a barn for them and not just a shelter....what a mess my pasture is. This year one will be up. helping bro get moved took a lot of our time.
I can hear the creek rushing but can't see it, but a older pickup came by this morning, first vehicle I've seen in two days!
Everyone stay safe. I kept getting flash flood alerts on my phone all night....we heard thunder rolling and booming for 48 hours now, just continuous.....its kind of eerie spookified!

Ack.....it just keeps raining........................more......and more......road to pt is closed, so may not be going tomorrow.....my duck puddles r full fledged ponds, back pasture is a lake.....may think on building an ark.....hmmmmmmm

Home again, home again......
I got home this evening after a fun long weekend with cousins. Because of the schedules of in-laws and out-laws, we didn't have the big present-opening until this morning. It actually worked out rather well - nobody had to open gifts and hurry off to another relative's party. We had an abundance of gifts for all. Mine was a really nice multi-purpose printer, which I have needed for a long time. My old cheap one only worked for about 10 uses and quit, and the ink cost more than the printer.
Our weather was very mild, into 50s and even 60s until last evening. Then the rain started. It rained hard all night and most of the day. I think it might still be raining where I was. Here at my house, it looks like we've had some rain but not a whole bunch. The temperature has dropped by about 30-40 degrees and we are supposed to get freezing rain tomorrow.
I hope everybody had as nice a Christmas as I did. There's nothing like watching a 2 and a 3 year old cousin trying to play together. The younger one is very smart, and a little spoiled. He was quick to point it out when he was displeased with things.
Naturally, there were waaaay more goodies and food than anybody needs. We couldn't let it go to waste, so we managed to do away with a lot of it.
Back to real life for a few days until Thursday when we will all get together to see in the new year.

ELLEN
Good to have you back! Sounds like a great time with the cousins!


CB
Don't drown!!!


We had an unbelievably nice day! It was like the best spring day ever. We had sunshine all day, a light breeze, and 73° !!! After a week of near constant rain, it was just wonderful. We are already spoiled, the return of rain or winter weather will be beyond a little depressing.

I rode Ivan this afternoon, he was very good for a horse who hasn't seen much exercise in a couple of weeks. It took quite a bit of time to scrape the worst of the layer of mud off that he was wearing. Donnie took photos, I will try to get one here. I had a fun ride! Ivan has improved so much this year.

Ark, I is so dang jealous............riding and nice weather! who and what did you bribe!

Road is open to pt so we r going to give it a whirl. the bigger creek that runs partly on our bottomland has not gone over the road, the sides of the road r washed away tho,,, and the smaller creek on the neighbors property has gone across the road. just the waythe terrain lies.

I'm feelin soggy and somehow our bathroom took on water yesterday, almost as shocking as having the snake in there ...butttttttttt not quite! its coming in under the sink?.....

It hasn't stopped yet! the lake has risen 21 feet in ou neck of the woods, one house has slid into the lake and another lake south of us whole towns and campgrounds evacuated. 8 drowning fatalities at this time.....so if I see water on the road I will turn around.

Well almost time to go, later y'all and wish me luck....

CB, our news & weather reported your area is bad right now. Wow.
STAY SAFE!!!

Freezing rain all day. It seems to have taken out Internet service. It is supposed to Warm up enough to melt the ice in a few hours.
CB, the news was talking about your area having a lot of flooding. Stay safe.

After being without internet for all afternoon and early evening, they finally have it back on. I feel very sorry for the guys who have to work in the miserable weather conditions that have been going on all day. The temperature has come up slightly, so maybe this stuff will start to melt off.

CB
Don't be too jealous, our one day of great weather is over. It was 73° yesterday, dropped all day today and is now 39° with more rain. And more rain is coming tonight for the next two or three days....We will have to just bask in the memory of yesterday.

I got the barn cleaned up and horses happily munching.

We got gas at Krogers today for the incredible price of 67¢ a gallon! We filled both car and truck and a five gallon container, 35 gallons, for $23.76!!! Woohoo!! We had gotten gift cards at Krogers for Christmas presents for relatives who prefer such things when Krogers was doing their 4x points. Then we waited while Krogers, Wal-Mart and Sheetz conducted a price war here in town. We had a dollar off per gallon and it has gotten down to $1.67. We felt like we robbed them.

Wow! I wish Indiana would have a price war. Ours is about $1.90 and going up for no good reason. It might go down a little after the weekend. They always to raise the price just before a holiday weekend.