Sunday, January 18, 2015

Letter from home - January 18, 2015

Dear ones, what a nice day (50 degrees) and a great dinner as your dad cooked the roast beef and smashed the potatoes and made the gravy. It hit the spot! (I baked the black raspberry pie so I contributed!) Sorry to miss you, Craig and Traci, but hope Joey is feeling better and that he and Craig get well quick. I am praying that everyone avoids the Influenza and other crud going around. I am better or so I thought. I have coughed for two weeks and thought I was better and then last night, I coughed all the night.

Happy Birthday to Hannah! She is now 11 years. (Sorry Maddie, I missed you!) I took very few photos today . . . What was wrong with me?

I only worked a little this past week. I worked Monday in the Elem/Middle School kitchen and I saw Audri and Maddie but no Jack. I worked as crossing guard at Rainbow Park Tues through Fri and Tuesday was brutal, let me tell you! Minus 10 degrees. Fortunately, there was what they call a ‘warm’ bus. A regular school bus, driverless, left to idle with the heater on. I wasn’t forewarned, didn’t know enough to get on and watch the kids so I stood outside and froze my tush! Fortunately, it warmed up from then on and wasn’t that cold again. And no more ‘warm’ buses either.

Next month:

February 2 - Casen’s birthday. He will be 9!

February 3 - Craig’s birthday. He will be 39!

February 5 - Morghan Grace’s birthday - she will be . . . OMG.  No. She will not be 16 years old! 

February 8 - Granny’s birthday. She was born 95 years ago.

I’m thinking about 2/21/15 for February family dinner. Let me know what you all think about that. Oh, wait. When is Super Bowl?

I’m starting to think about going ‘South’ . . . but Dad hasn’t yet started that process. Or if he has started, let’s hope he comes to that conclusion soon!

I didn’t get a whole lot accomplished last week. I did cook a couple of meals tho. One day, I baked some awesome fish in the oven and served fried rice with it. I made plenty of rice so I’d have leftovers and then ate rice, rotel tomatoes and salmon or rice, rotel tomatoes and chicken for my lunches. I go on binges. I should remember to take photographs when my cooking turns out well. 

Yesterday, I drove to Winterset and Aunt Beth and I toured beautiful Madison County. We had a good time. We look for old stone buildings and houses and, of course, Aunt Beth knows where a bunch of them are but here’s a little Coincidence Story from Saturday. Cruising along, no sunshine to speak of and I was about 5 miles outside of Winterset on Hwy 92 when I noticed light coming through a large old corncrib. A photo opp, if I ever saw one. Even though I was a little behind schedule, I whipped my little red Chevy around and went back. Whipped her around again and pulled up even with the corn crib where I noticed that beside the corn crib was an old stone farm building. I took some pics, took note of my odometer reading so I would know how far out these things were from town and I headed on to Aunt Beth’s. Upon arrival, she was telling me what she had in mind for our tour and said we were going to go west on Hwy 92 to the Earlham Road.  I mentioned I had seen a stone farm building this morning and she said “oh good; I have not been able to find that one”. She reads and researches and has had access to all the National Historic buildings records.  She has tracked down a lot of these stone buildings.

So, I had my mileage, we found the stone milking shed and another little stone building there and we started our excursion out right! To the left is the big old corncrib and under the new green roof is the old turn of the century milking shed. And below is what caught my eye -- light coming through the slats of the corn crib.



Aunt Beth and I drove and tromped and clicked for well over two hours and then Beth wanted to see the Macksburg wind turbines as she hadn’t gotten there yet. We found them in all their glory and found the Macksburg CafĂ© opened so she stopped and had cheeseburgers and onion fingers or onion sticks.

So two great days in a row!

Next week, I am not on the calendar to work at all. Tomorrow I will not work as I have plans. Also, I will take Alice out one day this week so I’ll decline work that day too. I sure do like this . . . having the freedom to say “no thanks, no work today : )”

I need to get to Missouri to get Vi set up on Facebook Messenger. She’ll be going to Colorado soon and we’ll need to stay in touch.

Meanwhile, you all stay in touch, too!
                                                                        ‘til next week, take care!
                                                                         Love you, Ma, Nance, Nana
                                                                             http://nanasview.blogspot.com/

3 comments:

Erica Jo said...

Wow, sounds like you are getting to enjoy your retirement!! I really need to start making fish and rice. I remember we used to have that when we were little. Do you just fry up your rice in some butter?

Nance said...

Dad fries the best fish! I can bake some that's good. We'll need to have a fish fry soon for you and Dana. Will your children eat fish? I'll email you a fried rice recipe.

Erica Jo said...

a fish fry is a GREAT idea!!