Well, Alli's cold took a turn for the worse yesterday. We did a walk-in clinic at 5:00 last night for a breathing treatment. They diagnosed her with acute bronchitis, but they did send her home (rather than the hospital!) The clinic doctor prescribed prednisone and antibiotics as well, but the pharmacy did not get the prescription, and the clinic was closed (Alli was the last patient) so we haven't started the drugs, and I don't know that they are needed. Ralph is staying home with her today, and will call her regular doctor to see if he wants to see her too, and if he thinks she needs an antibiotic. She is doing okay this morning. She obviously feels better - she was up at 5:15 this morning, and is in giggling watching TV, but she is still having issues with her breathing. We ran the humidifier in her room all night, too. Poor thing!

I finished a Christmas present today - so Cindy - don't let Rachelle see! This is a puppet, and turned out pretty darn cute! I tried to get AJ to model it for me, but that wasn't going to happen! I had to make do with me as the puppeteer and the photographer.

Whew! We made it through Thanksgiving - bring on Christmas! I ended up with 17 people here for dinner Saturday, and so far, none of them have reported getting sick, so I probably didn't poison anyone. (Of course, most of the side dishes were brought by Jeff and Kirby - Thank you Kirby!) No major disasters, but we did have problems with one squirrel that wanted to come to dinner, and wouldn't take "no" for an answer.


After dinner, the "kids" went out for a football game in the street, and had the garage door up so we didn't have the front door unlocked (to keep Alli in!) The audience (Dave, Dad and Ralph)noticed a squirrel run into the garage. Dave couldn't scare it out of the garage, so he got Ralph's welding gloves and caught it and put it outside. The darn thing came back! They caught it again, and put it outside and put the door down, and the squirrel then wanted in the house. Mom almost let it in when she opened the front door at one point in time. Dave finally put it up the tree, and so far, it hasn't come back to the house or garage.


Here is a picture of the "after dinner crowd" - the ones that were not washing dishes! My kitchen was pretty full, so I don't blame them for going outside.

Here's a few of the game after dinner as well. AJ got up this morning going "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" When I asked him what hurt, he said his ankle on one leg, and his knee on the other - he couldn't even limp!

What a busy day! Since I have company coming for the weekend (at last count, 19 for dinner on Saturday!) I tried to get everything done today that I could. I had taken the day off work, so I made good use of it. I shampooed my carpets, cleaned (scrubbed the bathroom, vacuumed, mopped and dusted) the guest house, did the shopping for Saturday, cleaned up miscellaneous things around the house, and still managed to take AJ in for an emergency orthodontist appointment (he broke his bottom retainer) and even got in a little crocheting! Not too bad! Above is a doily that I finished on Saturday. It is about 20 inches across - made with size 20 thread.

Alli got a clean check-up with Dr. Asaikar today. It was our normal 3 hours drive down, half hour wait, 5 minute appointment (actually only about 2 minutes this time) and then a three hour drive home. Alli did very well - since last time she had a major melt-down in the office, I was quite glad! We left the house this morning around 6:00, and the picture above was taken on the way down - the sun on the mountains to the West of I-5, down south of Corning I think (I don't remember how far south I was by this time!) Gorgeous weather - and the farmers were burning on the way back, so lots of smoke in the air.

Alex and I raked leaves today, before it started raining, and the leaves were still "light and fluffy". There are still a ton on the trees, but at least we got a head start. Please note that AJ was running around in shorts and bare feet. It wasn't that warm here! Alli came out for a visit, but, as you can tell by the expression on her face, wanted nothing to do with raking leaves! Jasper came out and helped too! (Koori tried, as AJ left the gate open when he was hauling leaves, but we managed to catch her and get her back in the yard!)

Talk about a false alarm! Alli woke up this morning at 5:30 - laughing, talking, playing, clapping her hands, etc., so I thought "It's going to be another early day around here!" (She was up at 5:00 a.m. yesterday!) So I got up, started the fire, started the coffee, checked my e-mails, etc., and the stinker didn't get up yet! She is still playing in her room - I could have slept in for another 30 minutes or so! Oh well, I am up!

It rained all day yesterday, so I got very little done - I watched movies and crocheted! I did get the weekly shopping done, the house vacuumed and dusted, the kitchen cleaned etc., so I guess I was busier than I thought! I guess I should say "I even got some crocheting done, too!" instead of saying I didn't get anything done!

Dinner, on the other hand, just didn't want to play last night. I seem to have too much milk on hand, so I decided to make cream of potato soup. Then, since it was raining, I decided to bake fresh bread to go along with the soup. I dug my bread machine out of its hiding place (I haven't made bread in a long time!), and started a batch of bread. When I walked by a half hour later - the machine had turned itself off! I started it again, and everything seemed to be working, and then an hour later - it was off again. I started it one more time, and this time it cooked through the whole cycle - I have very pretty bread - that was ready at 8:00 last night! (Dinner was at 7:00) The soup didn't go as planned either - the recipe calls for dried dill - so I added a spoonful to my simmering pot - and the dill was full of bugs. Yuck! I started over from scratch! Two tries for soup and three tries for bread! The soup turned out "marvelous" according to Ralph - I had no left overs! Even Alli ate it. I have a request for more soup, so we may have a repeat for dinner later in the week! Thanks to Dad, I have lots of potatoes!

I cropped the slide picture just a bit more - Alli's expression is just so cute! The park is on my agenda for this weekend too - as long as it doesn't rain a lot. Alli likes the rain, so some rain will be okay - I just don't want to get soaked!

This weekend was a "do nothing" weekend! The house was clean (Thank you, Robin!), Ralph was gone, so the kids and I just played! Sunday morning, we went in to town, and played at Kid's Kingdom for a while. Alli had so much fun! I really need to make it a point to take her more often! After some shopping, we went back and ate lunch there too (Burger King - Alli's favorite!) I was hoping for some fall colors, but all the trees there are Live Oak trees - no colors! It makes for a green park all year round, but no pretty leaves in the fall!

The joys of being a teenager at Halloween! Here are some pictures of AJ and the neighbors last night! AJ is on the left, Alan is in the middle and Dallas in onthe right, just in case you couldn't tell who was who! (And their pumpkin was waaaaaay better than mine!)

I carved a pumpkin, but it didn't win me a prize! (Of course, I started carving the pumpkin at 9:00 pm, after getting in from Scouts and making pasta salad for a pot luck, etc. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but it was pretty cute!) The dark picture shows it pretty well, but is just a bit fuzzy. The one in the light shows a bit more detail! I also had some help taking pictures from Lucy.

Our "Indian Summer" is back - temps are in the mid-to-upper 70's with lots of sunshine. We had a wind on Thursday that blew most of the colored leaves off, so we aren't as pretty as we were! Ralph mowed our lawn yesterday, so I don;t have to rake leaves now, but there are plenty left on our trees to rake later. Yesterday, Ralph called me out to look at my fountain - I had a frog! He is a gorgeous rust color! Poor thing - it is going to get cold really fast around here!

I finished up a few more snowflakes this week too - and got them blocked yesterday.

I love my digital camera! I took AJ and Dallas out to the Pumpkin Patch last night, and they ran around in the corn maze and the haunted house for a while. While they were running around, I took some pictures. I am amazed at the pictures I got from that camera! There were flood lights set up all around, so you could see where you were walking, but there wasn't anything out in the fields. The camera had a special setting, so I tried it out, and got better pictures than I thought I would get! The moon was just gorgeous - thins wisps of clouds, and almost full!

The boys LOVED the haunted house. AJ said Dallas was scared the whole time, and Dallas said that was because AJ went first, so they were picking on him all the time, since he was always last! They did a great job in setting things up for the house. Dallas is going out tonight with his parents, and is all ready to "scare" them some more, since he know knows what is is there.


I went shopping for a new party dress last week - and told Mom I would post a couple of pictures of it!