Old Hallow's Eve

Old Hallows Eve is quickly approaching.

Are you ready?

Do you have plenty of candy for all the ghouls and goblins that will come knocking at your door?

Are you prepared for any tricks that might be coming your way on this spooky night?

As you walk through the woods do you hear foot steps following behind?

Do you feel the impending doom blowing in on the cold breeze?

Listen closely. Do you hear ghostly footsteps creaking on your floor?

What is that scratching on your window's and doors?

This is the night the spirits arrive to walk the earth by our sides.

Look out, Look out, Hurry inside.

Lock the doors and close the blinds.

Decks

I'm not very good at taking before and after pictures.

The deck on our house was old and rotten. It was quite dangerous with big gaping holes you could fall through, so last Summer we tore it down and sawed it up into firewood.

Here is a picture of the old deck.

Willie is building us a new deck & I love it.

A house really should have decks on all sides, one for sun, one for shade. You can never have to many decks, or to many chairs. Don't you agree?

Mud Ball

It was so nice this weekend. In the 70's Perfect weather. My Blazer was a total mud ball so I got out a bucket of warm soapy water Sunday afternoon and gave it a bath.

It was nice and clean for one day. Tuesday morning we woke up to muddy roads. It had been raining all night.

This is what the Blazer looks like now.

End of the season

Dawn & I went to the last football game of the season last night.

Boy was it cold. I brought Penny, my little dog along as a lap warmer and sat under a quilt with one of the players Grandma's. I was wishing I would have worn my snow boots. My toes felt like Popsicles by the time the game was over.

Our team lost, but it was a good game. Both teams where tuff.

Earlier in the season we witnessed the cutest scene.

A little grey haired Grandma was waiting for the huddle to be over so she could get her picture taken with her grandson.

Over comes a big tuff football player and kneels down by his grandma for the photo shoot.

As she was walking away he called out "Love you Grandma"

Football is over for this year. Soon starts basketball. I'm glad those games are played indoors.

Duck Fest

Have you ever been to a duck fest?

Dawn, her friend Courtney & I went to a duck fest in the small town of Bowden, North Dakota.

On the way we saw a series of signs that started out with one quack and ended with quack, quack, quack.

There where duck tracks leading up to the building the art and craft fair was held in. Inside we voted on our favorite artwork, watched a hanky quilting demo and scoured the tables for crafts and yummy baked goods.

On the way home we picked up this ghoul. It is getting close to Halloween. You never know what kind of characters you might find out on the road.

Turn the Page Tuesday

This months reading challenge was Young Reader, which are some of my favorite books.

"So Far From The Bamboo Grove" by, Yoko Kawashima watkins, had been sitting on my shelf for a very long time waiting for me to read it & once I picked it up I could not put it down.

"Nineteen forty-five was a bad time for a Japanese girl to be living in northern Korea. More than ever, the Koreans resented the Japanese, who had taken over their country and ruled it as their own. Now it was threatened by World War II. The Russians, who had outposts close to the Korean border, might at any time join their allies, the United States and England, in the war against Japan. And the Americans were already bombing industrial sites in northern Korea.

Yet before the danger started, Yoko Kawashima had been happy in her home in a bamboo grove. One of her early memories is of her father bringing her a pair of canaries. Sitting before their cage, she carried on long conversation with them, which she later turned into a story for school. When her classmates laughed and told her that people couldn't talk with birds, Yoko insisted that she could and had. Even then she knew she wanted to be a writer, and of course she was pleased when her story was published in the local paper.

She couldn't know, however, that within a few short years she would be caught in the middle of a real-life story-so grim, so tragic that she would spend years of her adult life trying to get it down on paper.

Yoko Kawashima Watkins, who now lives on Cape Cod, is married to an American and is the mother of four grown children. Her struggle to master English and to record the nightmare of her private war story is a demonstration of the persistence and will she showed as a little girl, escaping from Korea and learning to survive when-as she says-she was "in the most bottom of the bottom."

When this book was accepted for publication, a writer friend told Yoko that now she would be competing with other writers. Yoko said, No, she would not compete with anyone for anything. "I competed with life and death when young," she said. "And I won."

Here is the story of her victory.

- Jean Fritz

Come on Over

You are all invited to my house for peach pie, tea, coffee and rousing conversation.

Lets get started.

I will ask a question and you answer it in a comment.

The next person will answer your question and ask one of their own.

My question is.

"What is the most incredible weather event you've ever been through in your life?"