Christmas Wish List 2006

Everyone Loves Raymond Season I
Everyone Loves Raymond Season II
Everyone Loves Raymond Season III
Everyone Loves Raymond Season IV
Everyone Loves Raymond Season V
Everyone Loves Raymond Season VI
Everyone Loves Raymond Season VII

I just loved that show!

Thanksgiving 2006 -- Twenty Years!

This year will be my twentieth anniversary of Thanksgiving's with the Leech Family in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It's difficult for me to believe that 20 years have come and gone, but they have. We have had some terrific years together and this is sure to be nothing but the best.

This years theme is "The Best of the Best!" I'm not exactly sure how that will be played out, but my Mom has set the bar high. You see, almost every year Mom has graciously and generously prepared bread for our gathering. And every year it's something new along with the annual favorites. Well, this year she told me that she was going to prepare 20 varieties, one for each year. She called the other day to tell me she had just finished making the THIRTY FIFTH variety. She got so excited I guess she couldn't stop. I'm not making this up! The next day she emailed me the list of breads she's sending this year. Here it is:

1. Cranberry Pumpkin
2. Pumpkin Swirl
3. Cream Cheese Pumpkin
4. Pumpkin Pinapple
5. Pumpkin Chocolate Chip
6. Strawberry
7. Rhubarb
8. Pear
9. Plum
10. Blueberry
11. Cherry
12. Applesauce
13. Apricot
14. Lime
15. Lemon
16. Pistachio
17. Orange-Blueberry
18. Sweet Potato
19. Carrot
21. Raisin Bread
22. Cinnamom Raisin Bread
23. Old Fashioned Date Nut
24. Chocolate Banana
25. Pinapple Banana
26. Cranberry Fruit Bread
27. Cranberry Orange
28. Gift of the Magi (My Favorite)
29. Gumdrop Loaf
30. Tex-Mex
31. Savory Cheddar
32. Peanut Butter
33. Butterscotch Bread #1
34. Butterscotch Loaf Bread#2
35. Eggnog

In case you may be wondering, these aren't all full size loaves of bread. They are a smaller verson, but large enough for everyone to have some. Hopefully there will be a full version of Pumkin Swirl and Gift of the Magi though! They're annual favorites! I am determined to make a book out of this so stay tuned!

Thursday, October 5th

It was cloudy today but still seemed pretty warm.

Wednesday, October 4th

Sunday, October 1st

This is a picture of the tree across the road from our house and on off our back deck. I am going to try and take these two shots every day in October. We'll see how the fall color unfolds. Stay tuned.

A Day With Jewell

It was a joy and a priviledge to spend this afternoon with Jewell and her roommate Megan. We went to a movie, School of Scoundrels (hilarious), shopped and then had dinner at The Olive Garden. All-in-all, it was a great day!

Read This Book!

This is an INCREDIBLY insightful book! I highly recommend anyone who plans to vote in the next election get a copy and READ IT!

TIP: If you're vocabulary is like me, you'll need a dictionary by your side... Mr. Rich is the "rich" in Readers Digest "Enriching Your Word Power."

Take your time though and read this well written book. It will open your eyes folks.

Wake Up America!

My New Hobby

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

2 Months Later...

And sometimes we don't blog.

But I'm back. I can't believe it's already February 7th. Goodness!

Well, let's see, where do I begin? I guess the most significant thing that has transpired since my last post is that on January 10th I had back surgery. Yeah, what a blast! Ha. Actually it's really been quite a breeze. Thanks to a terrific doctor, great meds and a supportive, loving, and caring family the past four weeks have flown by and I'm recovering brilliantly. I am walking about 4 miles a day now and taking physical therapy 3 days a week. I hope to be back at 100% very soon.

We had nice holidays... blah blah blah. (Gene, it's been 2 months... come on!)

Well, I will try and get back to more interesting things again but will let this suffice for now.

Cheers!

December Is Here...

December is here and I am glad. Thanksgiving was nice, too. We had another good visit with our friends the Leech's. It seems the road to Steamboat gets shorter every time we drive it. We did have a longer trip home though as we drove through some of the bad weather the Mountains and plaines states had last weekend. I always say I don't want snow to visit me, I will go visit it. And we certainly got some on this trip.

I have an appointment on Wednesday with my neurologist to determine just how bad the two discs in my lower back are herniated. I will be so glad when this problem is fully diagnosed and resolved.

I called Kip tonight and spoke to him briefly. He will be coming back to Arkansas Christmas Eve and he will be staying home for good. His diesel training will be complete. I'm very proud of his accomplishments up there in Alaska. He has a job lined up here with an excavating company and he will maintain all their heavy equipment. I know he is very anxious to be back and near his fiancée, Jessica. One would hope he is will be excited to be around us, too. But I know how that goes.

Well, Have a great week. I hope to have more interesting posts soon.

P.S. Are any of you like us and yet to decorate for Christmas? I need to get that monkey tree up!

Ithica

As you set out for Ithica
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that one on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfumes of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

~ Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

My Salsa Recipe

This is the original copy of my salsa ingredients that was penned over 10 years ago. I still have it in the same gold frame that it has been in since the summer of '95. It can be found in our kitchen, tucked away somewhere out of the way, but always ready in case we need a salsa fix. I no longer make the salsa in my "Handy Chopper" but rather in a food processor. I only pulse it for a couple seconds, just enough to chop up the ingredients.

I have posted this recipe for CJD and others that would like to have it. I would love to learn how to can it in jars so that I can keep it on hand. Anyone out there that cans, please send me instructions.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Memories

These three pictures represent the things that keep me coming back for more, every year now for 19 years: Endearing friendship, terrific scenery and great food!
These photos are some of the earliest ones I have, from the second year of our gatherings, 1988. I was only 26 years old but Beth and Charlie haven't changed a bit. My how time flys.

When I saw this snapshot I laughed out loud. This was in 1989 in Colorado Springs. Charlie and Tao Woo entertained Beth and I to some interpretive dance. At one point I think Tao turned into a whirling dervish.





No Thanksgiving is complete without several phone conversations with Betsy to check in on their celebration. This particular year, 1993, Beth was prepared with a headset and extra phones.












Over the years several friends have joined us in our celebrations: Barbara Powers-Berger, Cathy Schwamberger, Lance Osbourne, Cole Smith, Brady Cline, Aaron Szabo, and Jordan Duncan. This was in 1994 when Lance joined us. He was only on the ski slope for about 15 minutes when he fell and sprang his wrist.


This was the first year the Chris and the kids joined us. It was about a month before our wedding in 2000. We rode out with Jim, Barbara and Alexander Berger. What a great group. My how the kids have grown.


And this was the first year Andy Leech joined us! 2001. What a wonderful addition to the Leech family and the holiday. And I'm trying to remember if this is the first year we shared the holiday with the Murphy's? They sure have become good friends, too. Aaron Szabo and Brady Cline joined us this year as well.


Well, I could go on and on but you will have to catch the whole story in our book that will come out in a couple of years, hopefully. We have discussed on several occasions the idea of putting together a book of snapshots, recipes, crafts and humor of 20 years of Thanksgiving Memories.

Hopefully one of these years we are going to convince my mom and dad to join us on our journey. That would be the best year ever! For years mom has made bread and cookies to send out with us. Her bread has become know as "Nada Bread" (her name is Nada). And I am not making this up when I say that she has probably made us close to two dozen kinds of bread over the years. Our favorites are Pumpkin Swirl, Banana Nut, and my favorite, The Gift of the Magi (filled with chocolate chips, coconut, cherries and all kinds of goodness. There is sure to be a large chapter in our book dedicated to the Nada Bread!

Well, this has been a little random, but hopefully just a little window into our almost 20 year tradition. I hope this year is full of wonderful memories as well! We leave in a week or so!

Cabinetry and Country Music

For almost as long as we’ve lived in this house I have been telling Chris I was going to build an island for our kitchen. For a couple years now I have been doing research, reading books, visiting home centers, looking for ideas and drawing up plans for an island. This week I finally put all the planning into action and I have been working diligently in our basement building the cabinets that will make our island. I’m very excited about being done with this project. Not because I’m not enjoying the task, but simply because I’m anxious to see it finished. I really think it is going to be a huge improvement to our kitchen and our home.

While working on this project I have had a very antiquated and tired boombox tuned into our local “Hee Haw” country music station. Why, I don’t know. As a general rule, I do not listen to country music. A couple years ago I decided that I would no longer say the words “I don’t like country music” because it had become so diverse, with so many different artist and styles that I thought surely I could find something in the genre that I could appreciate.

Well, after a week now of listening to songs with lyrics such as (and I am not making these up) “Mama’s in the graveyard, poppa’s in the pen…”, “Tequila makes her clothes fall off…”, and “She never cried when Ol’ Yeller died, she wasn’t washed in the blood of the Lamb…and I ain’t gonna cry when she’s gone”, I have, once again, decided that I do not like country music.

Country music is like a roller coaster ride of emotions. At one moment I’m feeling happy for the estranged wife that “let herself go” to Vegas and Honolulu and the next I’m in tears for Sarah, the cancer patient teen whose boyfriend just compassionately shaved his head. And when the songs are over I feel just as sick to my stomach as I do when I get off a roller coaster.

I guess the good news is that I am now in the running for a new four-wheeler. I called into the station when they announced that the next five callers would be put in a drawing for this “toy” and I was caller number one! The guy that answered the phone simply asked me my name and asked promptly, “You do know you have to be present to win?.” I said yes but as soon as I hung up the phone it occurred to me that I had no idea who where or what business was holding the give away. Zoinks! I had to listen for another half hour before they announced it was at the local “Car-Mart”. Again, I’m not making this up. Car-Mart is a real place. Kind of the Wal-Mart of dealerships I guess.

Well, I guess I will continue to listen to the country music while I do cabinetry. They seem to go together. And who knows, maybe next week there will be a drawing for something that I can really use, like a hot tub to relax achy, breaky back.

Have a great weekend.

P.S. Jewell turns 18 today! Yee Haw!
P.P.S. The island is 6'x3'

All About Me

I always find it interesting to read these type of lists that people email around. Here's how I filled out the last one I saw thanks to my friend Andrew:

Nicknames: Genor, Gern
Parent's names: Marvin and Nada
Number of candles that will appear on your next birthday: 44
Date that you will blow them out: March 23
Pets: 2 cats: Jaki and Niki
eye color: Blue
hair color: Red
Piercing: none
Tattoos: none
Ever egged a house? No
Favorite color: Blue
Hometown: Amboy, Illinois
Current Residence: Harrison, Arkansas
Favorite Food: Currently, Lasagna
Been to Africa? Yes. Egypt
Been toilet papering? Every weekend my last 2 years of high school.
Loved somebody so much that it made you cry? regretfully, yes.
Been in a car accident? Yes, a few
Croutons or Bacon Bits? Bacon Bits
Sprite or 7UP? Sprite
Favorite movie: Too many to choose. Maybe "The Sixth Sense"
Favorite Holiday: Thanksgiving
Favorite Day of the Week: Saturday
Favorite word or phrase: ?
Favorite Hobby: Carpentery and crossword puzzles
Favorite restaurant: The Brown Pelican, Santa Barbara, CA
Favorite cola: Diet Coke
Favorite sport to watch: College basketball
Preferred type of ice cream: Vanilla
Favorite Sesame Street Character: none
Disney or Warner Bros.: Disney!
Favorite Fast Food: Steak and Shake
When was your last hospital visit? Never been in the hospital
What color is your bedroom carpet? Beige
How many times did you fail your driver's test? Passed 1st time
Have you ever been convicted of a crime? No
What single store would you choose to max out your credit card in? Nordstrom
What do you do most often when you are bored? Play solitaire on the computer
Name the person you are friends with that lives the farthest away: Chris Wulliman, Sudan
Most annoying thing people ask me: If I can fix their cell phone or look at their cell phone bill
Bedtime: Anytime after 1:30 a.m.
Favorite all time TV show? Too many to choose
Last person you had dinner with: The Stuckey Family
Last movie you saw in the theatre: don't remember

Fall Colors

This is a tree that is directly across the street from our house. It's beautiful this time of year. And this year the color is especially brilliant. You can see in the snapshot the gap out of the top. A couple years ago it was struck by lightening and they lost a big limb and the top of the tree. It really was a shame, but as you can see it is still beautiful.

Four New Monkeys

Some of you are aware that I have a monkey Christmas tree. For those of you that didn't know that, I do. It is a 7' narrow Christmas tree and every single ornament on the tree is a monkey. Why? I really don't know. I guess it goes clear back to a conversation I had with Beth Leech one afternoon while strolling State Street in Santa Barbara. I told her I wanted to collect something but I didn't know what to collect. She suggested monkeys.

My mother is the Christmas tree queen. She has... plenty. At least one in every room of their home. And several of them are theme trees. I think it started way back on the farm when she started collecting pig ornaments. Then there was the kitchen utinsel tree, the victorian tree, the mittens tree... it goes on and on. Well, I wanted a theme tree after Chris and I got married and I suggested monkeys. Why? Like I said, I really don't know. But everyone thought it was a good idea and now, several years later, we have many monkeys on this tree.

Yesterday I was in Springfield at the mall and I found 4 new ones. They aren't anything spectacular, but anytime I find one I'm pretty happy because they aren't that easy to find. Here are the ones I got yesterday:

Happy Halloween / Creepy Photo

This one is for you, Andrew. I had forgot about this picture until this evening when I was going through snapshots. This is a photo I took at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, last month when we were up for there for the Irish Festival. It was taken down the hall on the second floor that was supposedly used for the movie "The Shining." Remember the child on the bicycle? Well, when the photo was developed, there was this eerie light that was showing up in the picture. I have seen and heard a lot about images similar to this purported to be manefestations of spirits. Isn't this creepy. Happy Halloween!