A visit to Boiling Springs

It’s always fun to go to Boiling Springs to visit my son and his family.

Scott is taking guitar lessons and sounds really good.


Alex put a Halloween scarf on Sadie.






Chris grilled some burgers for us.


On the way home we stopped by Benzette to see the elk and were surprised to find this bull and 5 females right near the road. He wasn’t even bothered that cars were stopping and people were taking his picture.

Just a cabin in the woods

Don has been helping Jack Giering, a friend from Knox, build a hunting stand/cabin in the woods near his home. Every day Don traveled almost two hours each way to work on this project. It’s almost complete now and will make a great place to hunt deer.

The Karrasch Cafe

Today was the girls lunch at my house. I had a surprise for the girls when they got here. It was a participatory feast. I handed each girl an apron and had them help make the lunch. Yrsa was in charge of making Angels in Heaven an angel food pasta dish with pine nuts, spinach, bacon, sun dried tomatoes, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. Kay made the salad with mixed baby greens, strawberries, mandarin oranges, mixed dried berries, with warm Poppyseed dressing served with Parmesan round crisps. Linda’s job was the Sausage Wellington made with crescent dough wrapped around sausage and cream cheese with sesame seeds on top. It was a full meal along with multigrain artisan bread, honey butter and a pumpkin layered mousse. We had a great time…even Sadie who finally settled down.
The table was set with the dishes that the girls gave me for my birthday.
I gave each of the girls a baking mix (blueberry, pumpkin or cranberry muffin), a kitchen towel and small utensil.

Water Aerobics

This morning I went down to the YMCA to try out water aerobics. Since I turned 65 I am eligible for the Silver Sneakers program sponsored by my insurance  company to instill wellness habits in the “older” folks. There were about 12 ladies in the pool and one of them was the temporary instructor due to the illness of a child of the regular instructor. First we used weights that were made of foam, but really had a lot of resistance in the water. We passed weighted balls and did exercises using a foam board. There was a lot of twisting, and aerobic moving and I must say I was completely worn out by the hour’s end. They meet every M-W-F but I’m not sure how often I will go.

It’s the Season

 

A snowy backyard

Button up your overcoat. Winter has come early in my backyard. Are you finding yourself singing Winter wonderland yet? Yesterday I got two calls wishing me a Merry Christmas. As much as we grumble about the snow…we stand in awe of its beauty.

You’ve got to admit….it’s beautiful!

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Welcome to fall in Bradford! We awoke this morning to the contrast of snow covering the colored leaves.
Sadie and I decided to go for a walk in the nearby Willow Dale Cemetery. She wore her new winter coat and jumped in the snow and pulled at the leash to get a sniff of some little animal who found shelter under a bush. It was so beautiful there with snow on the trees. Our first snowfall was spectacular!
 

Ready for winter, Sadie?

 
This picture of the courtyard looks pretty nice, doesn’t it? Well, what you don’t see is all the fine snow coming down fast. You don’t feel the 31 degree temperature and the wind. Yes, it’s fall/winter in Bradford. It comes early, even before the leaves have changed and fallen. We are hoping for an Indian summer, but the forecast doesn’t look good..snow, snow and more snow. It was time to bundle up Sadie when she goes for her walks.

Here she is in her winter jacket..notice the fur collar. When we went for our walk this afternoon she didn’t even mind that she had a coat on. It kept her from getting wet from all those snowflakes.

And this is her sweater with a snowflake on the back. She actually likes this one. She is definitely a Bradford dog.

This is a picture Don took before I read the book, Leader of the Pack. Sadie, and Top Gun too love to sleep on the back of the sofa. Now I know that it was a sign of a dominant dog so she can’t do that anymore.

Congrats to Dan!

How proud am I ? Dan emailed me that he got 100% on his midterm chemistry exam. And that is the subject that he likes least. He is such a smart boy!

 
               Here is Dan with his high school letters.

Beautiful Fall Weekend

I can’t believe that I didn’t take one picture during the whole weekend. I guess I was just too busy having fun! Being with my family is just the best. The weather was so wonderful..a blue sky, warm sun, fall day. Everywhere you looked there were trees changing and colorful mums all over. Scott and I had some alone time while I took him to Hanover for his Pokemon tournament. While he was playing I went shopping and managed to find some Christmas gifts. Saturday night we ate at a Chinese restaurant and when we got home Don and Chris put in a new shower surround. Dan went with his friends to the movies. On Sunday Alex took Sadie and her two dogs into the woods for a long, long, walk. Sadie loved being free and running all over! We took Dan back to State College on our way home. A super weekend!

It’s Thursday already!

I can’t believe  how fast the days go by. It’s Thursday already and time for the weekend. Every day this week has been so busy. I thought retirement would be a time of sitting around and reading but I find that my days are just full of things to do. I love my morning coffee group, lovely ladies who are a great support group for me. And each morning that the weather permits I get Sadie for a little walk.
      Then there are those household chores that just eat up my time…just like everyone else in the world housecleaning needs done on a regular basis. I must say that I love me house…even this afternoon I was reading the Victoria Bliss magazine (the Christmas issue) and thinking how I would like to decorate for Christmas. I know, I know, it’s way too soon, but that’s where my mind went.

This is a fall pic from the magazine.

Today Don is extremely busy. He is getting everything out of his boat and put away for winter. He puts his boat into storage for the winter. Then he is going through some of his old coins. He used to be quite a coin collector when we were first married and now that he has a spot at the Salamanca Antique Mall he is sorting and deciding what coins he will part with and how much they are worth. Not only that, but he is up in back of our house cutting up the wood that once was our deck to use in building a hunting camp with one of his buddies from Knox, PA. 
   Just an update on Sadie. Don fixed the fence so that she can no longer escape . Her behavior toward me has changed since I tend to not give her so much attention and not baby her so. I’m trying to be the leader of the pack now. She seems to be responding.

The Leader of the Pack

Miss Sadie went with us on our trip to Buffalo yesterday and she was as good as gold. She loves to ride and as long as she is with us she is content. Of course, she had to stay in the truck while we had lunch at the Cheesecake factory and stopped at Borders. I bought a book on dog training called, “Be the leader of the Pack”. I realized that I had done all the wrong things with Sadie. I let her think that she ruled me…well, she did. She told me when she wanted to play, what toy she wanted, when she wanted to go out, when she wanted to eat, and so on. I spoiled her into thinking that she was the boss. Boy did this book set me straight.
   First of all it said that I had the right to do things without her interference. When I tried to use the computer she jumped up on me and barked demanding attention. When I didn’t give it to her she found some trouble to get into. It also said that she didn’t have to be in everyone’s business all the time. I had let her nose around everything that I did. And she shouldn’t sit higher than me. I let her sleep above me on the back of the couch.
   So it seemed that I had done just about everything wrong when it came to training Sadie. So starting yesterday I decided to take the leader role. First I didn’t give her so much attention. I ignored her pleas to play tug (a game they don’t recommend because the dog thinks that you are it’s equal) and just threw the frisbee outside with her. Something must have worked because today she has been laying around and sleeping all day….or it could have something to do with the lousy, rainy weather. Wish me luck in my new mode of training.

IT’S ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA TO KEEP AN EYE ON SADIE

Yes, the rascal has been at it again. What is a person to do? Miss Sadie, the Jack Russell Terrorizer, loves to chew….and prefers shoes, electric shavers, and slippers but will also eat kneeling pads for gardening, boxes of roofing staples, gloves, and anything else left lying around. It doesn’t matter that she has plenty of hard chew bones, she just loves to grab something and carry it up on the bank and tear into it with her teeth. She is like a wayward child…if it gets too quiet and she isn’t with you, you’d better go check because she is up to no good. Where is the Dog Whisperer when you need him?
She is the smartest dog I’ve ever met. She discovered that if she sat on the table she could see over the railing and look down the bank to see what was going on in the neighborhood.

The first Saturday in October

It’s the first day it hasn’t rained all week and Don and I spent quite a few hours outside. It was time to cut back my herb garden, cut down the bedraggled hostas, and empty all the planters. We carried all the summer furniture, cushions, and decorations down to the basement to store for the winter. We will pile some of the planters alongside the lion fountain and cover them with a tarp for winter. The courtyard looks very bare. We left up the porch swing and small table and chairs in hopes that we will still have an Indian summer.
      Sadie is in the doghouse for chewing up my new high heels. She just doesn’t know that she is not to chew things. Even though she has plenty of chewies she gets soooooo bored! She is intelligent and wants to be with people and playing all the time. She only has two speeds….stop and turbo. Tonight she will have to stay alone in the kitchen while Don and I have date night. We will go to the movies to see Surrogate first and then to Applebee’s for dinner. She sleeps while we are gone and then when we get home she is ready to play. I was too busy to take pictures today so this is a picture of my mirror in the sun room. My goal is to be a better photographer. I need to carry my camera with me all the time and take a lot of pictures.