Windows and Doors open on December 30th

Who'd have ever thought we'd be enjoying such a beautiful day with the breeze blowing with the windows and doors open and hearing the neighbor kids playing outside in shirt sleeves and playing on the trampoline!! Don't cha just love it!!! You Betcha!!

Black Eyed Peas and Cabbage

One of my Moms favorite dishes to make was Black Eyed Peas and wilted Cabbage on New Years day, she always said that Peas were for Good Luck and Cabbage was for money...unfortunately, she never had much money, must not have eaten enough Cabbage! I've never eaten anyone elses wilted Cabbage, but I think hers had to be the best! She would cook Bacon and crumble it up and pour Bacon grease on the cabbage and sprinkle the bacon on it! Yum!

Making Peanut Butter Cookies

Made Peanut Butter cookies with some of Bens friends and realized it's funny how you do something the way a mom or grandma taught you and you don't even think about it. I was measuring the peanut butter by using a measuring cup with the same amount of water as I needed peanut butter, when you add the peanut butter to the water to 2 x's the amount, it's exactly the amount of peanut butter that you need and you don't have it gunked up on the sides of the cup. The kids were so surprised about seeing it, I thought everyone did it that way!

Jamaica 2008

Randy, Ben, and I just returned from spending 10 days in Montego Bay helping some missionary friends work on their new church. It was the first time that we went and didn't spend our time on top of the mountain. It was in the 90's the entire time we were there, with 100% humidity most of the time. We thought we would freeze when we came home to 50 degrees! Randy and Ben worked really hard preparing and painting concrete walls, it will be a beautiful place to worship when it is finished!

A year has gone by since my last post!!!

My goodness time flies!!! So much has happened since my last post! I lost my Mom on June 24th to lung cancer...I just don't understand why I still see kids smoking with all the deaths around them due to smoke related cancers!!! It is an ugly death! I miss her greatly...I remember thinking when I was young and had friends lose parents, that I hoped that I would be older when I lost mine, thinking it would be easier, but it's not! We think our moms will be there forever!!

Here is a new picture of Ben, He is really growing up! 

Ben in his Sunrise Buffaloes Uniform

Bens football pictures for 2007

The church gang that came to cheer the Sunrise Buffaloes on!!! 

Our weekend in Denver

We found out we could go to Dove Field in Denver and watch the Broncos practice, so the Fergusons, the Smiths, and Bens friend Sid hit the road. We decided to tour the playing field while we were there, didn't look near as big as it does on T.V. Pictures are the invesco Field sign, the Broncos locker room, the Broncos practicing and of course, the fridge where they store all the beer for the game!

 

Denver Weekend

A picture of us when we visited Invesco Field in Denver. Found out we could go and watch the Broncos practice and took a tour of their playing field while we were there. 

Here is a picture of my mom on her 74th birthday,













one of my mother in law Erma and my mom when I dumped them out of the car after spending way too much time traveling with them,























one of me in jail after spending way too much time with them,








and one of Ben in his Tuxedo in the Sound of Music. 

Ben is now 14!!!

My pictures are coming out blurry for some reason, here is one of Ben after we got back from eating African food at Seringeti's, none of us had room for cake! 

some kitchen pictures

Here are some before and afters of our kitchen, I haven't figured out how to post more than 4 at a time yet, I think you can click on them and make them bigger to see.

Some new pictures of the house

Here are some before and after pictures of our (ok, Randy's and Ben's) Den, it's really starting to feel like home.

The Move is ON!

It's already January 16th, My Mom always said that we wish our lives away until we are 21 and then the years fly by!!! How true that is!!! We are about 2 weeks from moving into our house!!! The carpet is going to be installed on Thursday!!!! Not everybody gets new carpet for their birthday!!!Whooppee!!!! Maybe life will get back to what ever normal is!!! Ben has a part in the school musical "The sound of music", he's glad he's a Nazi and not a little boy wearing shorts and suspenders!!! It should be fun for him, they have an awful practice schedule though. It will be a good excuse to get more pictures of him to post, I hope!

New picture of Ben

 
Ben needed a picture of himself to use when he is auditioning for a play today, so I took this one. He doesn't give me many chances to take pictures of him. 

DECEMBER 11th ALREADY!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!

Ok, did this year go by as fast for all of you as it did me? What in the world happened to August???? Hope you have all gotten your Christmas shopping done and are relaxing by the fire with the family. We are getting closer to moving. Looks like it will be sometime in early January, that is if we decide on carpet, tile, wood, linoleum, peel and stick, laminate, or whatever else there is to put under our feet....and then there is the countertops....formica, granite, Laminate, wood, stainless,soapstone, marble, concrete...and I don't even like to cook!!!! Don't get me wrong...I feel totally blessed to have these kinds of "problems", but those of you that have bought a "fixer upper", know exactly what I'm dealing with!!! lol We're having fun with the project though...today we sat outside of Home Depot for an hour waiting for the store to find the shower stall that we purchased and in the beautiful 1963 heirloom Ferguson family pick up that we were in, people kept walking past us I'm sure thinking we were homeless and I kept hoping they would toss change into the cab to us....but we used the much needed "family" time to do some bonding and get a few laughs.....you get it where you can!!!! We are really enjoying being a part of our church family and found out today that we have a potential buyer for our theatre turned church in the 50's and we will be building a new one within 2 years....wooo hooo!!! That will be exciting!!! It's been in the works for around ten years....We have a great new pastor that makes it fun and exciting to be there!!! Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!! And the happiest of New Years!!!!

New pics of Ben

Here is a couple pictures of Ben playing football (he's the one crouched down in the middle in the maroon)and after his Junior/Senior Vocal Concert. I think he found out that if you want to get the girls, you have to be where they are....life for Mom just keeps taking interesting turns....

A Sign of Renewal

Isn't this a beautiful picture? It is the first sign of hope for the beach in Biloxi. It's been 2 months since the waters receded back into the ocean to show what wasn't left of Biloxi and the rest of the Mississippi coast.

oh boy....Here we go again !!!!

We have taken the dive again and bought another fixer upper, this one we are going to call home! It is going to be hard to leave the house that Randy has called home for so long, but the nice thing about it is that it is 1 1/2 blocks from Ben's school and about 10 minutes from Randy's work. But....does it need work!!!! In my imagination it's a comfy ranch style home with everything on one level (yeeeah, no more falling down the basement stairs for me!!! Yes, I am a clutz!!!!) It has the original 1960's look to it and the floors are all nasty!!! I will post some photos of it now, and then post some of the after...I wish this was the was the show "While you were out" and I could be out, but we get to do the work ourselves, with the knowledge and energy of my wonderful father-in-law Wilber!!! He's the brains behind the operation!