Merry Christmas!

It is Christmas morning here in San Antonio.  We went to a lovely Christmas Eve service last night and the two of us are spending a quiet but contented Christmas together.  We hope your Christmas Day and New Year are all you hoped for and more.

I am putting our Christmas newsletter here for all our friends who have emails.  One reason I'm doing this is that I'm late getting cards/newsletters sent out this year and another reason is that because I'm late color copies of the newsletter would have been $2 each.  I've made black and white copies for our snail mail friends but the photos that mostly make up the newsletter are much better in color.

December 5, 2013

This is our wonderful grandson, Travis!  He was nine the last time we spent any time with him and is now 22.  Today is the official day of his sister's death which made our reunion even more special.

We only had a few hours but talked and talked and were all so happy to be together again at last!  We plan many more meetings in the future.

Bandit

We had seven pies for six people at Thanksgiving dinner.  The one with the M on it is mine since no one else likes mince pie.  I managed to get it home on the train and still have a few pieces in the freezer.

Did I get a photo of my sister or her husband?  No.  But we get several of their darling little bird, Bandit.

Gaylord's Ice Show

We took the train to Fort Worth to visit my sister and her husband for a couple of days.  We wandered through Grapevine mall on our way to the ice sculpture show at the Gaylord Hotel.  I spotted this coat in Nieman Marcus and loved the clean, simple, elegant look of it so I checked the price....

EEEEEK!  I didn't buy it.

The lobby at the Gaylord Hotel.

This is made of ice!

We had never been to an ice sculpture show before and were surprised at the colored ice.

Ice slide.  We didn't do this.

Ice Taxi.

Karen, Galen, Fred, and Kathy.

Everyone gets one of these warm blue coats to wear in the sculpture area.

Misc Mountain View Pics

Double-yolked eggs - fresh from the farm.

There is trick or treating at the Folk Center on October 31, and hundreds of people show up.  I took photos of these cute pumpkins on the way into the park.  On the way out, the pumpkins were singing and their mouths were moving!  Too cool.  I asked how they did that and was told it was magic.  :-)

We took this photo of a walking stick on our tire for our grandnephew.

Leaf Peeping

We didn't know where we were going when we left, but we ended up driving to Yellville, AR, leaf peeping and taking photos along the way.  Galen took all but one of these photos.

We had a pretty good lunch at this spooky looking restaurant in Yellville.  The building was once a bank and there is still a vault inside.  There was a mummy guarding the door.

The Yellville Courthouse.

Paws for the Cause and Beanfest

The Long Ago String Band playing at Paws for the Cause.

One week later - Beanfest.  These folks, many of who got their chairs in place on Friday night, are enjoying music and dancing on the courthouse lawn.

These folks are waiting for beans and cornbread served free at noon.  There were 34 beanpots fired up at 7AM to cook beans.

These folks are playing and listening to music in the pickin' park.  That is our friend Roger on the washtub bass.

Dead Refrigerator

The cooling unit on our fridge gave up the ghost and we without refrigeration while we waited a week for an Amish made unit to be delivered and a repairman to get here to install it.  As he dismantled the old one he came across these scorched places and said we were lucky there hadn't been a fire.

Several Cemeteries - Geocaching

Harness Cemetery

The gate closure at Ramsey Cemetery.

One of the Ramsey Cemetery Graves.

There wasn't really a skeleton trying to escape from this grave.  I just couldn't resist a bit of Photoshop foolishness.