Joan on the Road...of Life

Christmas 2010 came and went and I did really enjoy it. Part of that enjoyment came from not being out there fighting the crowds to buy stuff. We did some "cooperative" gift buying online and gave uncreative money gifts to the grands...but no one complained about that!

We got some really special gifts. Our kids chipped in to buy us the electric awning for the motorhome. Neither Jim nor I should be moving the old heavy awning up and down. So that is installed and is absolutely wonderful. Naomi created a scrapbook for us using pictures across the years. Of course, tears came to my eyes. I brought it home and added to the notebook the letters the kids and grands wrote us for our 50th Anniversary. So whenever I have an excess of Kleenex I can just pull out the notebook and review our life from the eyes of the kids. it is very touching and meaningful to read about the impact we've had in the family.

Mary gave each of us a baking certificate gift and since she's such an amazing cook...I'm going to love this. Renee made us some new placemats and gave me some Facebook credits. She gave her Dad a Superman T-shirt because he's still strong and smiling after all the "crap" he's been through this year :)

I think one of the best Christmas memories may be sitting around the "grandma great" table at Renee and Tom's rockin' out to golden oldie songs. It seems that the table encourages sitting long after dinner, talking and even singing. Evan told us he had a song to sing for us and proceeded to belt out "It's a Grand Old Flag" in its entirety! Seems he's learning old patriotic songs in his kindergarten. How awesome is that? :)

The family calendar turned out great! Several people made up pages so I was surprised with new pictures this year. I loved it! We did wind up with some duplicates but that just means those are well loved pictures. You can actually see the 2011 Family Calendar on my Picasa Web Albums page.

So as usually happens, the year is coming to an end and I'm thinking about what to do in 2011. It's really hard to make plans when we have all these health issues and checkups going on but I need plans and goals to look forward to. As we RVers say...plans are made in jello...easily changed and moved. So we'll make some and hope for the best :)

Posted by Joan at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well finally I might feel in the Christmas spirit but now time is flying by and I'd better get busy. I've got Family Calendar pages to prepare, Christmas cards to create, gifts to buy and maybe a few presents to wrap. Oh, and should I make some cookies?

Cookie making will commence on Saturday when we go to Renee's for our annual Girls' Bake Cookies Day. We start about 1 pm, whomp up multiple recipes, bake and decorate....sampling dough as we go :) It's fun with Evan there trying to get him to decorate sugar cookies. While we bake there's a pot of chili cooking. When the "boys" get back from their electronic gadget shopping we enjoy a casual chili and cornbread dinner. We are kind of late this year in our cookie baking but maybe that means we won't put on so much weight nibbling cookies every day of December.

I had in mind to get out my Roland keyboard from storage and practice up my Christmas carol repertoire but when I got it home I was absolutely not motivated. I bought it in 1993 as a gift to myself after completing my MBA but I never really got into learning all the wonderful things it will do. I realized this week that maybe the dream of playing the keyboard/piano really well was not MY dream. It's good to recognize what dreams belong to us and which ones really belong to someone else. So the keyboard goes back to storage until I figure out what to do with it.

My card creating program doesn't work on Vista so I needed a new one and bought the top recommendation ...Printmaster 2011 Platinum. It has way more functions than I need AND, can you believe, I could not figure out how to print a half-fold card. Amazon return!!! I just want to make greeting cards easily, I don't want to go in the party city business :) Guess I'll have to go back to the old laptop where my old card maker resides.

I feel the need to bake something on this rainy afternoon so I'm thinking...Mary's Country Apple Tart. So easy, so good!

Posted by Joan at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok...so this is ridiculous. No post for nearly 6 weeks. But once again we've been busy with health issues. Last time we chatted we'd taken the MH out for a spin. That night and the next two nights Jim experienced severe pain in his chest after eating to the point that he was losing his dinner. On Monday, Nov. 1 we checked in with the doctor who sent us to the emergency room.

Long story short he had a hernia/tear in his diaphragm and over half his stomach and part of his colon had poked up into his chest cavity. Two surgeons and 4 hours in surgery and he's a new man with a goretex patch on his diaphragm and some stray lung tissue cleared out. This was pretty serious surgery and he's a lucky guy to now be walking around on the mend. Full recovery is probably 3 months with limited lifting and stretching.

So that has pretty much consumed our time and energy. We are so very thankful for the help from our kids and grandkids. Renee was the traffic coordinator, providing rides for me to and from the hospital. That was a tremendous help and I thank everyone for doing that.

During this time I had my 2 year checkup/ mammo post breast cancer and I'm good to go. Yeah!!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends and are looking forward to more family holiday time. We start the season with Bryan's birthday tomorrow.

We wish each of you a wonderful holiday season and a very Merry Christmas! Wrap those gifts, bake those cookies, sing those songs :)

Posted by Joan at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)