An offer on my local freecycle group

--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Cathy wrote:> From: Cathy > Subject: [Odenton_Freecycle] OFFER: Snow> To: Odenton_Freecycle@yahoogroups.com> Date: Monday, February 8, 2010, 7:23 PM

We have plenty of extra snow. In our yard, on our cars, on our bushes. Good quality snowman snow! Clean, no yellow spots, and it's all yours if you want it, especially off the driveway and walkway! Let me know if you are interested.

THE GROUNDHOG WAS RIGHT!!!

The snow started Friday, 2/5, around 11 AM and didn't stop until late Saturday evening. The measurement we took was 28". I climbed out the window on the back of the house to clear the snow from the roof and satellite dish. We didn't get the entire driveway cleared until Sunday evening even with the snow blower.

Cassie taking a break from shoveling. She did the front walk and back deck path.
Driveway looking toward the street

The poor leland cyprus bent over in defeat

driveway partially cleared

Me in snow. I couldn't get my feet all the way to the ground.

J.D. and Candy couldn't climb up onto the snow. But they loved playing in it.

AND...........we have another 10-12 inches predicted for Tuesday night/Wednesday. Maybe we'll get another snow day.

Books I've Read in 2009

Just After Sunset by Stephen King
Four Corners of the Sky by M. Malone
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peal Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Late Lamented Molly Marx by Sally Koslow
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
Darling Jim by Christian Moerk
Beginner's Greek by James Collins
The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblowski
Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Gift by Cecelia Ahern
If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern
There's No Place Like Here by Cecelia Ahern
PS I Love You by Cecelia Ahern

I'm now reading Under the Dome by Stephen King. It was a Christmas gift and is almost 1100 pages

National Christmas Tree Lighting

It was an unusually warm day for December 3 - about 60 degrees - but it got cooler and windy after the sun went down. Security checkpoint

Mounted park police

Tree after the Obama family flipped the switch

View of Obama on stage

Harvest

Pickles and a few jars of pickled green beansGreen Beans

Tomatoes

Peaches

Applesauce

Still to do - jelly from berries picked in the spring.

Millenium Quilt 2

FINALLY, I finished the second quilt for my grandson Joshua's birthday. It was about as thrilling to him as getting socks and underwear, but hopefully he will appreciate it one day.

Family Reunion/Vacation With the Boys

Another wonderful family reunion

Lots of good food! Happy family members! More good food! Swimming! Fishing! A little rain. More good food! A get-together at the house to roast weenies and make s’mores.

Pauline, Missy and Judy

Mikey Mike, Pat & Louise

Joshua and Tony in the pool

Mike, Mikey, Pat, Aaron and John

My Uncle Pat and me with our "Murphy's Bar" t-shirts I brought from Ireland.

We plan our vacation around the family reunion so we can bring our grandsons, Tony & Josh, with us for a week. They love being in WV. They remembered the reunion at Audra Park last year and walking the trail around the park. They talked us into doing that on Sunday afternoon after everyone had left. Little did I know! It was hot and humid and little did I know that the trail was miles long. It took over 2 hours to walk it. Along the way, we stopped and took a dip in the river. When we started out again, Joshua ran into a yellow jacket nest and was stung three times; Tony was stung twice and Glenn once. Kinda put a damper on the hike. Some interesting sites along the way:

Doesn't it look like this tree just sat down to take a rest?

The boys had seen a show on tv about the Mothman of Point Pleasant. And I had seen a show on Food network about Hillbilly Hot Dogs in Lesage. So, I told them I’d take them to Point Pleasant to see the statue of the Mothman, but on the way we’d stop at Hillbilly Hotdogs. I didn’t know it was 3 ½ hours away! The boys didn’t know what to expect when we pulled into the hot dog place. Joshua’s words were “this is quite unexpected.”

The outside of Hillbilly Hotdogs.

This is the attached bus that served as the seating area.

On the counter inside was a marker and everyone (and I mean everyone) wrote their name somewhere. Here's where Joshua and Tony wrote theirs (Joshua's is down by his right hand on the wooden bar):
After getting a corn dog and plain weenie, we were off to Point Pleasant. What a lovely little town right on the Ohio River. And everyone was so nice. We saw the Mothman statue and went to the Mothman Museum and the River Museum and walked down by the river. By the river there is a flood wall with murals painted on the river side depicting some battle between Chief Constalk and Gen. Andrew Lewis. There were even statues of them. We even got to see the artist painting a section.

Glenn and I took the boys on a four-hour train ride from Elkins on the New Tygart Flyer. We went to the top of Cheat Mt. Along the way we had a great buffet lunch. At the top of the mountain, the train stopped and everyone got out to look at the falls of cheat. Then we started back down the mountain. For some reason, the generator on the train stopped working and we had no lights or a/c. It got over 80 degrees in the cars. Someone got the bright idea to open the door between the trains to let some air in, but all we got was diesel fumes and the doors were quickly closed. All in all, a very nice trip.
On the last day of our vacation, we went to my niece’s for a crawdad boil. Frank and Vicki did a great job. Even Tony tried them. For those of us who didn’t eat crawdads, Vicki made some great lasagna.