Husband's Birthday

The 24th my husband turned a year older.  I baked him an orange cake and frosted it with white icing.  I made a good dinner; chuck roast with potatos, mixed vegetables, and bread.  It was so good!  The kids arrived in the afternoon and spent the whole evening with us.  That was the best treat, if you ask me.  It's always fun when the kids come for a visit.  The house just isn't the same with them being gone from it.  If I ponder on it too much, I make myself sad.   Anyway, I think dh had a good day with his family here all together. 

Bedroom Makeover

It's finally come to pass that I started clearing out my bedroom to repaint and 'resparkle' the place that is a suppose to be a peaceful, tranquil space to lay down my head.  I've been waiting, putting off doing this because the clutter, okay the hoarding in my room was so bad that I couldn't even get my mind around where to begin to declutter (or de-hoard) or in what corner to begin packing stuff away.  I do watch hoarders on tv and I so believe I hoard.  I can remember when I was a child I would not throw out things because I emotionally got attached to them.  I don't know why.  I cannot think of anything in my childhood that would make me so insecure that I needed to hang onto stuff.  Although, I did have a blankie until I was 9 (or a piece of it).  The only reason I become detached to that was because I left it on the couch one night and when I went back to get it it was gone!  Can you imagine how devastated I was when I couldn't find my blanket to take to bed and cuddle up with?  Well, I was.  It was not until I was married that I asked my mom about my blanket and she told me that when I left it on the couch she found a great opportunity to throw it in the trash.  Maybe that incident made me feel insecure and therefore everything become a part of me.  So, instead of going through my bedroom stuff, I bought plastic bins to throw everything in as a way to get it packed up and out of my room.  I will deal with it later.  But for now, I have pulled wallpaper and borders off the walls.  I have also washed them down and now they are ready for spackling and painting.  My goal for this time next month is to have a peaceful, beatiful room to lay my head; to study my Bible, and just to listen to calming music.  Peace, that's what I'm going for. 

Now, my daughter recently moved into a new place.  The bedroom walls were painted eggshell and had been lived in by people before her.  Which means marks on the walls.  Since she is renting the place, she had to get permission from the owners to paint her room; to change the color.  Below is the before picture. 

When we got done painting  and decorating (and yours truly making the curtains and accent pillows), well, I just think it's now a great place to find peace and comfort for her.

I want mine to turn out as pretty.  I just have to keep my eyes on the prize!  As far as all the stuff in the bins that I just threw in there, I will go through them little by little until I've either used it, donated it or sold it. 

Feeling the Fall

Donald with the farm animals

Since it's beginning to look like fall around here I wanted to start feeling it.  I wanted to visit pumpkins (and buy a few to carve), so I suggested to Donald we go to the local nursery.  When we got there, they were having a fall festival for children.  Pony rides, pumpkin bowling, decorating pumpkins, face painting and a couple of farm animals were some of the activities that were taking place.  Without any children or grandchildren we felt out of place.  No sooner had I mentioned that to Donald that my cell-phone rang.  It was our daughter telling me that she was sick.  She didn't have any food in the house so we went to the store for her to get her some chicken noodle soup.  So we ended up spending the the rest of the day with her, nursing her back to good health!  ***Three days later she is feeling better, not wonderful, but she is back to work and school.***

There were some homemade jellies, pies and cakes one could buy.  There was a big harvest of fall vegetables.  It was an interesting day, that's for sure.  I still want to do some scare crow hunting!

A Nighttime Stroll on the Boardwalk

Friday night Donald and I took a stroll along the boardwalk in North Beach, MD.  North Beach is an old town along the Chesapeake Bay.  The town has really changed over the years.  What used to be a huge beach is now taken up with townhomes, huge rocks and the boardwalk.  The beach is there if you look really hard!  I remember my parents taking me there and it was awesome seeing the huge body of water.  I remember walking out on this wood thing that went way out into the water and almost falling in while my mother stood on shore telling me to turn around so she could take my picture.  Then my little brother did the same thing.  There's a huge fishing pier at North Beach that used to have a sorta house on it.  The house is no longer there and the fishing pier is huge now. Here's a picture of it; you can see how far out into the water it goes.  Today, though it is not made of wood--the wood has been replaced with those plastic milk carton fake wood planks. 

Anyway, we went out onto the fishing pier and I was surprised to see how many people were fishing at night.  While we were watching, a man caught a fish and another man catch what I thought was a needle nose fish, but rumor was going around it was an alligator. 



Sitting on a bench on the North Beach Fishing Pier

So we don't know what it was.  After we walked for an hour or so at North Beach, we drove over to Smokey Joe's for a bite to eat.  Smokey Joe's is on the other side of town, but is in the city of Chesapeake Beach.  It was karaoke night (we didn't know or we wouldn't have gone.  However, when we got seated and Donald was looking at the karoke guy, he realized the dude was a man he worked with but had recently got laid off.  So Donald went over to say hi to him and to catch up on what was going on with him.  You just never know, do you?  We had a great night out!




Smokey Joe's in Chesapeake Beach, MD

 

A Couple of Things...

Time sure does fly by.  As I get older days run into the next, it seems.  When one is young, the days/years are so long, but when one advances to the other side of the hill, the years are so short and go by so fast. 

Some of our members who went on the covered bridge ride

Donald and I are  part of the Christian Motorcyclists Association.  In September we had our tri-state rally in Woodbine, MD at the Ramblin Pines Campground.  It consisted of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland.  All the members from those state get together each year to fellowship and praise the Lord!  It's a wonderful time.  We have bike games (that's motorcycles!), campfire, food, rides...and we don't let the rain stop us, either.  We all really look forward to it every year.  Next year it's Delaware's turn to host it.  We'll be going to Herrington, Delaware at the Fairgrounds. 





Adams Birthday



Our Beautiful Katrina

The end of September was our son's birthday.  Another year and he'll hit the big 30!  Our daughter, Katrina who passed away would have been 30 this year.  Just can't imagine it.  Her and our son were only 16 mos apart in age and people would ask them if they were twins!  Both are redheads.  So we went to our son's house for his birthday; asked him where he wanted to eat and he said the Olive Garden.  His roommate went along with us.  Then we went back to their house to open presents and have cake.  I bought him an ice cream football cake and it was so hot in the house that it started melting before we got to eat it, but we plopped it on our plates anyway.  It was still good!

Last weekend Donald and I took a ride (in the car) to the National Harbor.  We have never been there before and it was a nice Friday evening, so I suggested we go. 

I didn't realize it was a little city with apartments, hotels, shopping, restaurants and a marina.  I told Donald I might be able to live in a place like that.  There is also a convention center there.  And the sunset is gorgeous!  Of course, you have to pay for parking, but it was worth the view and the walking.  The entrance to the place reminded me of entering Disney.  Same kind of set up.  I liked it.  We'll probably go back, maybe to shop or just to walk around again.