3 houses........

We have been spending most of 2.5 years remodeling a house for my mom to move into across the street from us, pictured above. My husband retired and we got that great idea when the elderly neighbor's house came up for sale about that same time. It was a huge job and actually we still are still not totally done on it. You know you always have little things to do, but the interior is done. It takes forever to get things just the way you want them, and we are slow and feeling older by the minute! :) During that little endeavor I had 2 carpel tunnel surgeries, my hubby had a knee surgery, and while he was still recovering and also working on the house...he broke his foot....Finally we got her moved in late summer a year ago, but we still had to get all of her 54 years of accumulation sorted out ,what you want and that that needs to go bye bye, and moved to the new house....then work on her house to sell it(pictured upper right). We haven't even started that yet... I am just about ready to start on the house I grew up in then......guess what........

WAIT A NEW YORK MINUTE!

Hubby jumps in and starts on our basement remodel! Hey we gotta get it going for our company to have a place to stay!

Okay, send me right on to the nut house will ya!

We are gutting it and starting over to give me some extra storage for my office and hobbies. It is very 1960's ugly and has the potential to be really neat. For months my husband would try to talk to me about making decisions on what I wanted to do and I would cry and say I don't know....boo hoo! I was just too overwhelmed! I have always dreamt of the perfect room for myself, but when it came time to do it....I just wanted to run! The basement has always been our guest quarters, it has a bedroom, bath, and a huge family room with a fireplace with a large window wall, but the main function of it's use is it is my work room + office. We are getting new furniture and will also use it as a media room. I am a gal of many interests, I sew, paint, scrapbook, make jewelry, upholster, on and on... it takes tons of storage just for my "stuff". I am totally misplaced now I don't know where anything is...at least my computer came up to the bedroom for now. Well we started tearing out the ceiling yesterday and just like always with a remodel, you never know what you are going to get into..... that is just a given! What seems easy turns out to be hard and what seems hard is usually easy. Well no one ever told us about this sort of a surprise......

Yes, that is hubby in his anti dust garb....who ever knew that a ceiling would be filled with tons and tons of sawdust! I mean tons and tons right on top of your head every time a piece of sheet rock comes down! Could you believe just how much first fell out when hubs pulled down that first sheet? No wonder I could never keep the house from being dusty! I guess when they built our house they would just sweep the sawdust from the sub floor installation down on top of the basement ceiling sheet rock....oh and there was mortar in it too from the upstairs fireplace... Now I know why you have to watch ever little thing when they are building a new house, I guess contractors thought why clean up when you can just hide it! So that has been hiding between our upstairs floor and the basement floor for 48 years! They must have been calling it insulation! So I am going to be vaccuming for the next 48 years to get it all out of the house!

to be continued................. :)

Love this digital frame!

For all of you out there looking for a nice size digital frame for yourself or gift giving I bought this one and it is very nice for the money. It is 11 inches with a plain black frame. The photographs are very bright sharp and clear and the size is great for a desk or credenza. I have an older one of a diffrent brand and this one is far superior. I also bought a 4GB memory stick for it and that will allow me to have tons of photographs on view, the internal memory of this frame is 128MG.

SmartParts 11'' Digital LCD Frame, Black

Sunday finest

J & Z looked so nice in this photo taken last week, sad news was Jay's dad passed away.

A tale of 2 sisters, twins that is...

Taylr and Karly are our miracle babies, they came into our lives with a bang and it has been that way ever since. We all fell in love with them the minute we first laid eyes on them, it was all done, my heart was theirs. My mom just melted all over .... Aunt Dodi was hooked, line and sinker.

Taylr & Karly


Now aren't those the cutest little squirts you ever saw! Okay, okay, I remember their mom was almost that cute! :)

Taylr was the the baby who always said she was my girl. I mean how can you argue with that,

she has good taste. :)

Karly always claimed she was my mom's special girl.... Aunt Dodi, she's mine!

Karly still whispers secrets and tells jokes to Dodi...... ha ha he he...!!!

those 2 have some kind of secret club I think....

I think the girls just did that to tease us... and try to get a buzz out of us telling us who was their favorite...it was funny, we would laugh, and we all have been accused of favoritism but that isn't so, we love each other equally. We are bonded for life!

Taylr and Karly's first horse show and
ribbons........1st and 2nd place lead line.

They are the cutiest little cowgirls aren't they? I know I think all "my"

kids are the greatest, but hey, they are and don't try to tell me that they aren't!

They have Annie Oakley in their blood too! He haw!

They used to love to play dress up and then do photo sessions. That was always the most fun

They dressed up in all sorts of things I had around the house. I have an old hat

collection... that was their favorite spot when they hit the door, then outside they would go

me armed with our trusty camera.

but how do you get from this....

to this ..............

Taylr

Karly

so quickly????? and how do you explain how much you can love kids that aren't your own. They may be my

cousins girls, but I love them like they are mine,

..........oh heck I love 'em more than that actually!

they moved to another state several years

back and we haven't had the time together we

used to share, but the love is the same!

miss you guys!

Cowgirls in Art and Life

I love Terri Kelly Moyers art work. I always envisioned myself as one of these girls that she paints...and the secret is I still dream about it at a-hum, 50 something years old! I could always see myself dressed like this and recreating Annie Oakley and riding a black leopard Appaloosa! Do you think that comes from watching too many Dale Evans and Roy Rogers shows as a kid with my brother, or is it all those westerns we watched at night as a kid with our Dad? I really don't know... but I will tell you I was ate up with horses and cowboys for my whole life! It is something about the romanticized lifestyle of the old West.

I nagged my parents for a horse as a kid, every waking minute....I knew if I kept at it hopefully it would come true ...daylight to dusk...nag, nag, nag. My aunt and uncle were living in New Mexico and had an extra horse to feed and they called and asked if I could have it! Oh my gosh I am getting a horse... they were going to bring Wendy to me for my very own! I just did not realize Wendy was only a yearling and I couldn't ride her yet. Well the story of Wendy is interesting, she was a wild mustang caught as a very very young foal...I will leave that for another story later down the line, but the jest of this story is this. My dad had been looking for just the right horse for me already. None seemed to fit the criteria in his way of thinking. We looked at horse after horse. No, K that horse isn't right for you, you have no experience and I don't like that one. I thought any horse with 4 legs was a great horse (I was 11 yrs. old). Then one night we were sitting down to dinner just a week after Wendy had arrived and the telephone rang. Mom answered and said let me get W, it was a different uncle telling my dad about a horse he might come look at. It is a little registered 3 yr old grey Appaloosa mare that my boss took in trade for an unpaid propane bill. We have her locked in the fence at work and you will need to come quickly to look at her before he sells her. We jumped in the car the next morning and drove the 70 miles to see her. She was locked in the propane tank yard on gravel, and she was the most beautiful horse I had ever saw in my little eyes. Well the rest of the story was history because that little mare came home to our barn. She had been mistreated before and was not broke to ride, so the challenge for my dad was on, to get her ready for a dumb little girl who knew nothing about horses! My daddy could do it, he could do anything! Well he did do it, he was a great horseman, and come to find out Tequila hated most men....uh oh..........my dad did fine with her, but no other men could ride her without an incident. The story was some teenage boys tied tires to her to make her buck. She trusted women and girls, just not men. It was so funny my grandma wanted me to change her name because it was Tequila! My Grandpa had to call her Twilla so he wouldn't catch any slack from Grandma! I loved that mare until the day she died. She provided me with tons of great memories and gave me lots of love and kept me out of trouble! I will forever love my little Appaloosa mare and she still lives in my heart!

my girl Tequila Twist

Okay now back to the subject I started out about loving Annie Oakley.....Well low and behold awhile back I discovered I am related by BLOOD to none other than Annie Oakley on my mothers side! I do genealogy and I found out why I must be so obsessed, it is genetic! She was always my idol as a kid, she could ride, rope, shoot a gun better than any man, had cute clothes, beaded gloves with the fringe on them.....cute little fringed skirts, that has to be it! I am not related to the King Of England, it was even better for me...Annie Oakley is my cousin, the Queen of the American West! How lucky do you get?

Annie Oakley

but then I have also found some other "famous relatives" out there too... like:
Butch Cassidy
John Wesley Hardin
Doc Holliday
Clyde Barrow
John F. Kennedy

Theodore Roosevelt

Georgia O'Keefe

Emily Dickenson

Jane Austen

and

Jimmy Hoffa
so really which genes are my predominate ones?

Kind of scary isn't it?