One of Sal's big fish from our camping trip with a professional fisherman. He caught several this weekend, as did many of our friends from our camping group.

Our new camper!

This past weekend was camping "commencement" weekend for our camping group, we had tried to schedule 2 seperate trips prior to this but Mother Nature decided to give us our only 2 snowstorms of the year these two Spring weekends! We went to Pueblo this weekend for 4 nights, the weather was beautiful the first two days and just ok the second two. Steve and Julie and Vince and Lisa camped with us and some other camping friends joined us for dinner on Saturday. Here are some pics of the great weekend and our new second home!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY GRANDDAUGHTER KAITLIN!! SHE IS 5 YEARS OLD TODAY!

BINGO - Have you ever had the Bingo Police come after you? Well, here in North Carolina it is evidently very bad to use different colors of daubers....... I am here visiting Melissa, Chris and Aidden and Melissa, Dawn (Jerry's wife) and I went to Bingo. When I play Bingo I like to use different daubers and make my bingo cards as colorful as i can, not just 2 differenet colors, sometimes 3 and 4. Melissa kept telling me that was not allowed there, I laughed..... You mean anyone would actually care if you used both blue and yellow on the same bingo card......seriously now....so I kept on using the three different colors - yellow, purple and OMG Blue! So, here I am in the middle of a coverall and some lady comes up to me and says "no, no, no, you can't do that", I thought Melissa or Dawn put her up to it and laughed, she said "If you win, we won't pay you...." I laughed again and asked her if we were on "America's Funniest Home Video's" or "Candid Camera" she says no its in the rules......OK - why in the heck would anyone care if you used more than one color, she says - well, if you bingo then someone else has to verify it - ok - makes sense for about 2 seconds cause they don't verify cards anymore, they just read off the printed black number at the bottom of the bingo card.....Seriously now, I have played Bingo in many different states....this is a first. The BINGO Police are alive and well in North Carolina - and I thought Louisiana was a little backwards........Do you think they allow different color of daubers in France????

The holiday season has come and gone! Today is Sal's birthday and he is Washington DC for work meetings. Not a whole lot is going on in our lives which can be a good thing. I miss my grandkids even though I just saw them in Nov/Dec. I will go see Kati and Ava in March for a week but that seems like so far off right now and hopefully will see Aidden sometime soon also. There just isn't a whole lot to report on, here are a few recent pictures of the grandkids:

It's Christmas time

I just can't seem to get into the holiday spirit. We've had a rough time lately with friends that have had strokes and another one that passed away this past week. All's you can do is to be there for those who need you. I really don't have much to say I guess..........

Praying that I am wrong

Today is the morning after Barrack Obama was elected President of our United States of America. I pray that my feelings about him are wrong. I am happy that last night was a historic event and that the American public is rejuvinated with this pick. I have always stood behind whomever is elected into office and I will do the same here.

Oh, how things change!

Its October!!!! I love the fall, but change is in the air, is it for the good or bad, I think the good! We pray and pray for all of the things in our lives to be "fixed" or "made better" and sometimes how we think these things are going to happen are not the way that God fixes them or makes them better, sometimes you just have to sit and think "why didnt I think of that!"
So much has been changing that we have to trust in him, always.

Mel and Aidden just came for a visit and came camping with us this past weekend. We love it when our family comes to visit! Aidden was a little ham and kept everyone laughing, he is just so darned cute.

I am in a "great" state of mind! Some of my personal burdens have been lifted and I feel great! Now we all just need to pray that everyone else's are lifted also.

Summer 2008

Summer, 2008. It has been a great one and a busy one. Mike, Leigh Ann, Kati and Ava were just visiting Colorado Springs for their vacation. We had lots of fun! Frankie went with us to the Royal Gorge, we went camping with Frank, Dawn and Frankie up at Mueller, went to the top of Pikes Peak on the Cog and lots of other fun! We all had a really good time! We also went to Omaha this summer a couple of times, once for my sister Lisa's 40th Surprise Birthday party and also for my niece Rachel's wedding to Dr. Phil! Dr. Phil is not really a doctor, but a great teacher! But we still call him Dr. Phil, I am sure he is probably tired of it by now, but he is now part of the family and has to take the abuse like the rest of us. The wedding was absolutely beautiful! Melissa was maid of honor and Aidden was in the wedding also, it was so much fun to spend a week in Omaha with our kids and all three of the grandkids there! Sal and I have had some great camping trips this summer also!

Camping and more camping....

Every weekend is a new adventure. So far this year we have camped at Pueblo, Mueller, John Martin Resevoir and Lathrop State Park and it is not the first weekend in June yet! This month we have another Mueller (primo sites - I had to fight some woman off for these, she probably got site 123 though......) and Pueblo. We are going home for a week for my niece's wedding also, and get to spend 7 glorious days with ALL of our grandkids - Melissa will be there with Aidden and of course, Kaitlin and Ava live there so I am thrilled to be able to spend time with all of them together. Ok, I know I always talk about seeing the grandkids, but I am equally as excited to see everyone else!Ok, let me tell you about our camping trips - Mueller a couple of weeks ago, Frankie, Sal and I went for a hike (Dawn was really sick all day Saturday and big Frankie had to go into work). We went to the visitors center and walked over to some trails from there, we noticed we did not have our water with us so Sal walked back to the visitors center to get the truck (maybe 10 minute walk) and I just said "I'll go ahead and take Frankie on this short hike and we will meet you here when we come back" Big mistake.....first clue - no water - second clue we are at about 10,000 feet altitude, third clue - straight down a mountain means straight up a mountain later. When I say the 2.6 miles I thought, no big deal, Buddy and I do 3 miles all the time (on level ground) - It was a beautiful hike down to a lake, Frankie had a blast and then we started seeing where we needed to go to get back......here is a picture taken of me when we saw the first hill....

Sal was a little worried about us by the time we got back..... We had a great weekend though with more hikes and fun. Here is Dawn trying to entice a squirrel to come down out of the tree and eat her treat..<
Next we are off to Lathrop State Park and we spent Saturday at the National Sand Dunes Monument
from there we are off to Zapata Falls - you first drive up the side of a mountain on a very buppy road for quite a bit, then you get out and hike 1/2 mile further up the mountain to a beatiful stream, then you hike up the stream in the water and rocks into a crevice which has a waterfall inside the cave. The water was so cold I got a minor case of frost bite on my toe....it is quite the hard walk and you are holding on to people you don't even know, we got all the way up inside the cave and the entire waterfall is frozen solid, when we got back Dawn and I just sat there with our beet red feet up in the air trying to get the feeling back, remind me never to sit next to Dawn in our pictures again......skinny b