An Unusual 25th and a Happy New Year too!

We were almost packed up, all set ( and eager) to jump in the Van to go for our yearly Christmas dinner at Denise's. It was to be our last as their house has been sold to make way for a mansion and Ron and Denise are moving to Costa Rica. Well, Teresa came down with the stomach at just that moment. A sudden change of plans and I stayed home to take care of her. We took a few minutes to change our menu and we sipped on ice cold Sprite together. Teri took off for bed and slept on and on.....

Tim had just stopped by earlier, on his way to Oklahoma. He was hoping I would babysit Ed, his undercover poodle. I will have to post a picture of Ed as he looks like a perfect English Sheepdog but with an aire of Royalty. He's handsome- just a poor traveler.

Anyway, as I sat in the middle of the couch and stared at the Christmas tree-I thought of how it was a most unusual Dec. 25th. It was too quiet, the air was absolutely still except for the hum of Teresa's fish tank motor and the occasional rattle of windows as the jets took off from Bush airport.
So, I determined to just enjoy the moment anyhow.
I did, but I do have to admit that I missed you all a LOT.
After all my"enjoying", I was so relieved to hear someone at the door 5 hours later! Lolli was back with her blinking colored necklace, an armful of presents and salted plums and lemons. She always fills up a room with her laughter and chatter. The house came alive again! Everyone arrived home shortly after.

I love you all and pray you will have a really wonderful NEW YEAR. I have a feeling that we will all be needed and appreciated more than ever. One of the things I was thinking of when I was staring at the Christmas tree, was how very proud I am of all or you and even if we weren't together in Houston, I felt so close to you and so much thankfulness that you were all in good places, happy and busy at "making a difference".

Hey I don't have a lot of time to write about this one, but I wanted to say thus; I made the first snow-man EVER at our house.
That is, the first snow-man ever made AT our house.
I took pictures of Maurice (the snow-man) and will post them presently.

Bunny babies!

Today, or rather this morning I woke up and went to feed my rabbits. (For those of you who haven't guessed, or the exceptionally slow readers, this is Teri writing, and yes I did get permission.) And the fur in Honey's (my female rabbit) nest box was moving. At first I was taken aback and shocked at the sudden appearance of movement; but due to the fact I was freezing my rear end off I recovered enough to drag myself inside. By the time I had gone through the door my wits were fully repossesed (or as much as they ever were. Some of the less scrupulous members of our proud wells family will tell you many discouraging things about my wits, much to my dismay of course.) and I ran throughout the house yelling for my mother to come quickly. The rabbit had had a litter!
She was a grandmother again!
Now I figure I'm boring you with my story, but let me say one last thing; I took pictures of these 7 little beasties for you, but the lighting wasn't the best so we'll have to cope.
(I took pictures for Kiona, whom I had promised them to.)
Here goes:

There's them lying comfortably in their nest.
Don't the look warm?














Here's the best individual picture I got.
Yes, they're pink, hairless and rather ugly.
(Naturally, they run a close second in ugliness to none other than my immediate precedent sibling.)











Aw, well unfortunately those are the only two good pictures I have. The rest make them look too much like the aliens they are.
As they get older though, maybe when they're a week or so, I'll take more pictures and post them.

ever seen a Golden Doodle?

This is one of my little boys. He is just about 5 months old- barely. He evidently loves to swim at Galveston. With our weather of late, he might be doing search and rescue in Galveston before too long.
His new family live down that way. It looks like he is rapidly becoming a English sheepdog. When you start making hybirds- no telling what you might come up with!

Christmas Parties

Ah yes,we had a tough time finding a place to have our Christmas partythis year. After some late night intense searching...we finally found a place, thanks to Father Christmas! The Taqueria Arandas promised us their entire bar area for a few hours and we sure had plans to fill it up! But alas- it snowed the day of the party! It was all day and quite heavy in places, that is by Houston standards. Even the weather men were shaking their heads as no one anticipated this one. We were a bit dismayed at first as no one here is very good at driving in snow. We were wondering if our little home would be eating fajitas and stacks of tortillas for breakfast, lunch and dinner for weeks on end!
As it turned out, most people came. The snow had a drawing allure and so many people were out and about, thankfully, in our direction.
We felt the full effect of a white Christmas. We had a great turnout. a few people shy of 100. 40 were guests and the rest our wonderful co-workers in faith. Of course, the wonderful promise of a fajita meal at the famed Taqueria Arandas, was pretty hard not to brave a blizzard to get to.

Andrew and team filled the entertainment bill. Even the waitresses were stopping work to pull out their cameras and snap pictures. It was so well done.
Our resident Italian chefette- Teresa. copped out and deprived us of her usual fare of scrumptious baked goods and settled for making cute little packages of Keebler's cookies,Christmas cookies and candy canes for all the kids. They were quite happy about that anyway. She exhausted herself at Thanksgiving with an amazing array of pies.( Photos coming at a later post.)

All in all- we had a great Activated Party and the common comment was- Hey let's do this again soon.....








Our friends, an wonderful group from all over Houston, filled up the bar area. It is always so unique to see the variety of people that come together- we even had great Security and 2 of our visitors were retired policemen. Walt, a scientist friend, can never pass up a chance to teach and Teresa went away from the evening with something pretty cool on a napkin. It was some kind of formula. I hope it was the one to turn our vehicles into hydrogen running cars.

snow in Houston!

I was driving home just now from buying Christmas cookies for our party tonight and.......as I walked out of the store, I was taken back to my years in Sweden. I was blasted by a flurry of icy snowflakes! I remembered all those icy days of trudging around on those dark winter days. My first Christmas in Sweden I spent up above the Arctic circle in a little place called Jokkmukk.
It is so rare that we see snow here so just to let everyone know. First Ike visits us and then SNOW! This global warming is really getting on my nerves. Gripping aside- I love the snow and cool. I have this sneaking feeling tho' that it won't stay around long.
So sad...say I but I know you Northerners are chuckling about my folly.

A very special Birthday

Here are a few pictures of Jeff, daddy,papa,David etc...

Well. it's Dec. 6th once again and so chilly in Houston that everyone is still hiding out under their bedcovers- even the Birthday boy. He was out late last night last night with his Ambit friends. They had their yearly Christmas Party. So, if I plan a party tonight, what can I do for a man that goes from party to party?

Being the Sag that he is, I don't think that's a problem.

How old is he? Well, he is over half a century now. That seems like such a burdensome way to count. Maybe it's easier to say he was born in 1052....oops, I mean 1952. That would have made him a peer of William the Conquerer. Come to think of it, if he had been born in that particular time, I'm sure William wouldn't have been such a grump and would have had a more positive outlook on life. Maybe William would have kindly stayed in Normandy and the whole French Revolution would have been averted further down the line.

Back to Houston-

Even tho' we don't see him around home all that much- he has the Lord's gift of caring for the needy and bringing a sense of peace in troubled times. He's the son of a son of a son........of a diplomat. More accurately- one of God's ambassadors.

Everyplace I go, people come to me and tell me how wonderful he is and how the Lord used him to change their life. He just seems to have to right words at the right time.

His days are crazy. He usually starts it off by asking me to turn off the light. I get up at 5 and he doesn't as he is usually just entering his 2nd or 3rd hour of nightly slumber. The way he so soundly sleeps. I never have figured out how he detects when I have a light on. Since I usually have a litter of pups somewhere in the bedroom, he then gets up to let the mom out for a pee break, then stumbles into the kitchen asking if there's coffee. Since Jeannie moved, there usually isn't any so he makes it for all of us. Then he plops down on the couch and cracks open the laptop for a bit before he so gently runs off a list of things he has to do for the day and casually states at the end, that he is already late. Then he is hurriedly out the door. I can count on a phone call within the next 5 minutes with reminders and such. About once a week, I trudge down the street to see if I can find the coffee cup, phone or whatever, that he accidentally left on the top of the car. One time I had to go an entire mile to recover about 20 large display board pictures of his trip to Kosovo that had fallen at intervals all the way to the I-45. It was dark but I recognized the big folder and pictures and managed to dodge the traffic and collect them all .

The things I do for love.....

His car, that is a different topic. It is amazing. There is so little time in his life for pit stops and repairs so the little gray Hyundai keeps announcing it's arrival and departure at all hours with a squeal that makes the squirrel's fur stand on end. She is trying to raise a family in the tree right by where he parks. One neighbor suggested putting dish soap on the car's belt. That worked for a day. His car is fun, you never know just what you will find in the back seat. He keeps a supply of everything there- just "in case". His security is great tho. You can never really find anything specific in the pile.

Then, in his regular day, he traverses Houston a few times- going from need to need. He is always just a phone call away. I am seriously doubting that cell phones are a good thing but all his friend's love the idea. I had this plan that all of our friends could move into the same area of town. Now, it's not really that bad but when gas was at $4, I was seriously looking into motorized tri-cycles. He would of had to have a sidecar for all his things! Still, Houston is so big, it would be nice if everyone didn't live 100 miles apart.

He knows the value of taking time off and he diligently does that. He takes a bit of time each day. Why, he sits down and rests daily........... (and fix networks and computers, send out e-mails etc.)

What does he enjoy? He does love movies but only if it's the Patriot, Gladiator, Waterworld, Don Quixote, Postman or the Ultimate Gift. James Bond and some of the other action films are ok in a pinch.

He loves fruit salad and chicken fried steak, artificial sweetner, eating at Black'-eyed Pea and Valorie, Denise and Lisa's leftover takeout at the office. I can't forget to mention that they are discussing charging him rent at the local Taqueria Arandas.

Well, I could go on. He is a colorful person and always fun, mysterious and a very busy missionary.

Happy Birthday and MANY more......

I am a peaceful person

Few things have gotten under my skin enough to bring out any acts on my part that one might interpret as violent. I enjoy life and see the good side of things more often that not and enjoy the ups and downs of life as they add color.
Now, for my true confession. I have been fighting and waging a war of sorts, sometimes seething mad under my cool exterior when it comes to the recent intrusion of the PC into my life. That was about 21 years back. Well, sort of recent. The first one in our lives came rolling in on a delivery truck to my peaceful island home in Shikoku. Thank God that one never really worked very well, if at all. Some friends sent it to us from across the ocean.

When I first got married and started my family, I had no such competitor and me being a person that has always hated sitting in a chair and especially behind a desk and notably, especially with any kind of machine in front of me, I enjoyed the fullness of life .

As we traveled and lived in many other countries, we wore out baby buggies, numerable pairs of boots, clogs and other foot gear. My kids got plenty of freckles. We enjoyed camping, climbing mountains and exploring Swiss meadows in Springtime, seashores on 3 different continents and 2 islands, and even braving the driest deserts in the world- Death Valley and the Atacama in Chile. We biked and hiked to our hearts content. We swam and snorkled in different oceans and seas around the world. We ate an amazing variety of foods, some a bit dubious, ate in all kinds of establishments and at an assortment of tables.
We had a rare chance to become a part of so many people's lives around the world and learned their languages and customs. We had so many exceptionally bonding and joyful times as a family and I just named a few!
We had few physical possessions but we were blessed.
One possession that eventually came our way, in spite of it's blessings, has taught me that I indeed have a dark side to my nature. My family has never been the same- much to my dismay!
I have waged an internal war from time to time with these crazy machines that have become so important to those I love and love to spend time with.

I found the COMPUTER hard to compete with and at times felt like borrowing the neighbor's sledge hammer (ours is broken) or chain saw. I have thot of taking up Latin Dancing and concentrating on one square foot of area. I have definitely harbored numerous other destructive thoughts. I hated search engines and their new found power over the minds of man. I could go on and on.
Anyway, I have an announcement and that is, that I have conceded defeat. Those of you close to me know this already but it may come as a shock to many that I just purchased one of my former enemies. I have saved money to buy one for years, but always chickened out.
How did this happen? I am not really sure. I did a great amount of soul searching and goal setting and a hard look at the future. This is what I came up with. Knowing so little about this former foe, I am on a path to find out more and get the better of it and progress. It is a hard thing for me to do but I am determined. Teresa is quite humored but very patient.
I have owned a computer for a few days now. She asked why I have not yet been on it much....I am getting there. Yes, I will. I have a patient teacher- Teresa.
My former enemy will become my friend- but I still have to admit that I miss those special times I had with my family. They were and still are- my life.

By the way, I am writing on my new computer. Don't laugh.

Waking up on the wrong side of the rock!

I told Ethel I couldn't stand that cheap junky hair gel she gets at Walmart just because it's a pretty color.Anyway, go ahead and laugh and it might be the last thing you do.... I met this fellow at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.
This old bucket used to be a pot for something until it just started being used for storage about 100 years back.

Grapes are "in".....at least in wine country. These vines have finished their yearly job and are packing it up for yet another year. Actually, these vines produce the Glines' yearly raisen crop. They get sulfered a bit and dried on the tin roof of the shed and packed away for winter use.

Guess which city this is. I really can't remember either except it isn't Houston.

This is one of 3 palms. Dad informed mom that 1 has to go as they take up too much room. I will try and post pictures of the other two also and we can get a vote going to submit to the woodcutter. Save the palms!

A quick visit back to Yuba City....too quick but wonderful!

Here are a bunch of pics in no particular order. This is a tangerine tree that keeps a lot of people happy each year. It looks like someone just finished off the few left at the top.

The summers in Yuba City was basically rainless but it finally rained on my 2nd day there. The roses were beautiful-right after a rain. My parents apologised that I came so late in the year that I missed the real beauty of their garden. I didn't even notice. I thought it was great at this time of year. Autumn is my favorite time anyway.

My dad tries to relax and it's always a team effort. He isn't in his chair but for a few short minutes before they all pile on. When my mom first started raising Dachshunds, my dad's take was that they didn't deserve to be called dogs as their legs weren't long enough. I was amazed when the smaller girl jumped up on his greenhouse shelf. These dogs don't let those short legs limit them from jumping high!

From the green house. He used to have more Orchids but now he has a lot of cactus of all sizes,shapes and interest. I think this a jade and I don't know the tall one's name. Maybe it's a cactus?

By the outdoor jacuzzi . That stump used to be a walnut tree.





Sleepy dogs

summer squash

just a sample of the abundant cactus life. It was everywhere! I think that one is called Old Man's Beard.






One more rose.

Mom and dad- This wall was carved by my dad a few years back.

I couldn't get enough of these roses.

The oranges started to split but they will taste great anyway.

My dad was into fitness as a young man. I found these in the corner of the green house. I remember not being able to lift these as a kid. He just filled paint cans with cement. Great idea!

Shasta Daisies. My mom was raised in a company town in McCloud, Calif. It was run by a lumber baron
that owned the town, everything and everybody. She always had these daisies on the hillsides as a child. My Grandpa was a lumber jack in those days.

I picked up quite a few of these and stuffed them in my suitcase.

Dad.s shop .

He loves these shoes. I pointed out that they were actually two different shoes and didn't even match. Never the less, they keep his feet dry,at least most of his feet, minus the toes.

One of my favorite pics

His greenhouse

a small plant in a abalone shell

Wicker furniture just feels better with scraps of carpet!

This used to be in the front of the house.

Otis and Dad. He's their oldest dog and my Dad's constant companion- even at work.

Dad was 21 and mom was 17 when it all started. He had just come home from the Navy and WWII.

My Grandpa wasn't real happy they eloped but made my mom promise to at least finish highschool. Grandpa put the shotgun away but never liked my dad very much. My mom was the only girl in her family.













A Reflection on my visit home last week........

It is always such a unique experience to return to the place of one's childhood. I lived in the same city until I was 15, traveled all the backroads, riverbotttoms and explored anything looking remotely interesting on the back of my independent- minded Pinto horse, Ringo. My parents picked me up at the Sacramento airport and drove home on the back country roads to show me how things haven't changed. I was jolted inside but kept a straight face. I had ridden those dusty roads on Ringo bareback on hot summer days- just to get a Popsicle or orange soda. It was the highlight of my day to enjoy a Popsicle while looking at all the permanent merchandise that had sat on Charlie's markets shelves forever. Charlie really never seemed to get anything new and didn't seem like he even thought about it. Everything was just sitting on those old wooden shelves slowly becoming antiques.

Well, I couldn't really believe Charlie's Market was still there but the street looked as it did when I was viewing it from horseback 40 odd years ago.

It's good to take those trips back. I came from a heritage of rice patties, fruit and nut orchards, endless quiet roads and the Sutter Buttes- the smallest and most beautiful mountain range in the world. I want to mention that the Buttes are rather unspoiled and have remained beautiful . The current and long lasting landowners,if not actually the original settlers, are the cantankerous diamondback rattlers. They are known for their intolerance of tourists and progress of any kind. They are in cahoots of some sort with the black-widow spider. They are the villains of my childhood that snuck into my dreams by night and always seem to be on the lookout for me by day. I made it easy tho. Once my dad bought me a horse, I was a kid that went anywhere and everywhere. I bumped into all kinds of country dangers. I even developed a reputation of sorts as a Pomegranate Pirate. My handmade saddlebags were full of anything tasty that happened to be hanging off a tree and no one was around. That's how I got so tall so young and as it was, probably got on the wrong side of the law eventually. I got my early training as a fruit and nut rustler. Of course, I never told my parents all this. I kept quiet, looked innocent and my parents trusted me.

Parents- that is a little warning about when your kids smile a little bit too big and have a hard time making eye contact.

Anyway, I did have a lot of emotions on my trip back. It was great. My parents are my heroes, having put up with us kids and all of hair and hackle raising antics. Somehow, we all seemed to have turned out ok and are alive. My dad can't see much but their property is a garden and orchard that is a treat to the eyes and palate. I spent hours in their garden- just taking pictures ( and eating) fruits and nuts. I no longer have a horse to roam the countryside so I had to keep my pilfering limited to my parent's backyard. I arrived in Houston with a suitcase of Pomegranates and a big bag of walnuts....leaving all my extra clothes behind!

So , on my birthday this year, I have to say, I have the best parents in the world. Not only did they raise us, but they raised half of the neighbor kids throughout the years. They always had open doors and open hearts and still do- a sample to us all.