Today is baby boy's 16th birthday! The years do fly by fast.

One hundred years from now
It will not matter
What kind of car I drove,
What kind of house I lived in,
How much I had in my bank,
Nor what my clothes looked like.
One hundred years from now
It will not matter
What kind of school I attended,
What kind of typewriter I used,
How large or small my church,
But the world may be ...
a little better because...
I was important in the life of a child.
~~ Author Unknown ~~

Here we two are in foggy Medford, hitting a few stores in our quests for "that" gift. Are you feeling sorry for me, yet? Don't, I really don't have that much to buy but Laurie on the other hand surely has a list! Needless to say we are having fun. We will be at the Parade in Ashland tonight and to see the lighting of the town! Maybe we'll see you there!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

(Thanksgiving in Yerington, Nevada 2007)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and you know what that means............gobble, gobble! Bad for the turkey, good for us. Was hoping to get a photo of the turkeys down the road but it was foggy!
I will be marinating my turkey tonight with a marinade made of fresh lemon juice, soy sauce and dijon mustard. Tomorrow I will stuff the lemon rinds in the cavity and stuff herbs under the skin of the turkey. I love the smell of the whole mix when the turkey is cooking. I will also be trying out a couple of new dishes; chorizo corn bread stuffing and butternut squash gratin and a triple chocolate pumpkin pie. Also bought a variety of different wines to compliment the turkey (got great info from a site that sends me wine stuff). Of course the usual stuff mashed potatoes and green beans (not the green bean casserole thing). Are you hungry yet????? Luckily we'll be leaving work early today. Last night I chopped a ton of onions and some celery, made Rocky's birthday cake (froze the cake, will frost on Saturday) just to get a little jump start.
I stopped at the Village Bakery before work and bought 2 different types of yummy bread. I thought the cranberry hazelnut would be great for turkey sandwiches (copying a sandwich that Morning Glory used to have on the menu). Okay, I'm tired already.........luckily Pete is home dusting and vacuuming because when I get home my company will probably be there!

OMG, Pete is really getting down to the bitter end of the path! You know what that means ..........landscaping this Spring!!!!! Hope I have my surgery early so that I can be in shape to start planting!

Picking Rocky up at Lincoln school after the Play-A-Thon.

Rocky (& Lizzie) after he got home!

Well, we didn't make it to the midnight concert and Rocky was okay with that. After moving rock for a good portion of the day Pete's legs were jello and of course I'm don't move very fast once I get home from work.

Rocky had a blast and at 2:30am the kids in Orchestra had a talent show and guess what.................my son got up and sang 2 Beatles songs. Geri (music teacher) says that he has talent! Who knew? This is definitely Rocky's break-out year! Homecoming Prince and now singing in front of his peers! What's next.............girlfriends - ugh!

Today is AHS's Orchestra's Marathon Concert. They are meeting at Lincoln school around 5:30pm to practice, eat dinner, etc. and will start their concert at midnight, so you know where I'll be at midnight! Oy vay, can I make it? We will probably be running there in our pj's, more like sweats. So if anyone is lurking around on the streets of Ashland at midnight (why would you????) please stop by and see these guys play.

(Plunk no early morning texts please, I plan on sleeping in).

Since Lizzie, and Shadow are always asking for blog-time, and once in a while Rocky, I thought I should also include Pete. Pete's daily ritual is the Tribune crossword puzzle and he's pretty good at it. Occasionally he might get stuck and throw it at me and occasionally I might have an answer or I just throw it back at him!

Did you notice my "View From the Porch"? Yes, Pete is back to working on the path. I told him it would be nice when I have my party that people could find the front door.
Also, had to change the photo cuz sis-in-law would be sending me an email to change it!

Okay, I've got nothing!!!!

Here's a picture of me pigging out with a goodie from the bakery in Sisters........yum!!

OMG, did you know that Thanksgiving is next week!!!!!! Yes, start looking in those cookbooks, and magazines for those recipes that you will need next week! And you know what happens the day after............SHOPPING!!!!! Even if you don't need anything it is the day to shop for bargains. Personally I'm almost done with Christmas shopping, except for those hard to buy like my mom.........

Sis-in-law Laurie and bro-in-law Tim will be here next Wednesday so I need to get their Christmas gifts wrapped because it's simpler to send them home with their gifts in tow.



Spent Saturday at Scrapbook King with the girls, eating, scrapping, and a little field trip to Craft Warehouse where they were having an Open House, the line was so long, that we decided we didn't need anything that bad so we ran into Joann's, picked up dinner and ran back to the "King".



On Sunday, Pete and I were busy doing things around the house. I basically dusted (with Pete's help) and mopped the whole house. Pete was in front of me with the vacuum and I followed with the mop. I also had Pete take care of a couple of honey-do's for me. Thanks sweetie! All in all a productive but very uneventful day and a very tired gimp.........

I will be at Scrapbook King today with the girls scrapping the day away, more like working on Christmas gifts. Trying to make a few gifts this year so my cards will be Costco photo cards instead, sorry...........

This is actually a picture of me at home instead of at the store, but this is pretty much what I will look like!

Well, I decided to bring back "The View From The Porch" since we will be having some interesting weather for a while. If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see the photo I took this morning. I will try to keep it to a weekly shot unless there is something REALLY interesting to shoot! Here is the other shot I took..........

I realized that I posted Rocky's photos but not ours. Here is the photo that Rocky took of us. We had gone to see "Coriolanus" and had a few moments before the closing dinner started at the Festival. You know the Festival has a closing dinner for the outdoor theatre and a closing dinner for the other 2 theatres. This dinner was being catered by Alex's.

Oh, and by the way I picked the one of him smiling as our yearly photo for "the wall of Rocky". Thanks to all that responded.

Oh where, oh where has that Kelly girl gone, oh where, oh where can she beeee............Well, on Saturday Anita and I hit a couple of the Holiday Bazaars and after we hit the scrapbook stores including Michaels and Craft Warehouse. Craft Warehouse had the Bo-Bunny word books on sale for $4.88. While checking out the latest stuff I almost bumped in to KELLY, well yes bumped into Kelly and sis, Karen.

Yes, Kelly is still around, working for a dentist in Ashland and guess what...............she got married!!!!!! She was wondering where the NBP scrapbookers had migrated to and I told her and I also gave her my blog address and yes, Audrey, I told her to go on your blog for the latest scrapbooking info. Anita and I bumped into them again at Sugar and Spice. Also bumped into Linda Sawyer at Sugar and Spice, she was sporting a new haircut. Sugar and Spice was busy. I did notice some familiar faces. In case you're interested S&S did have the Christmas Cosmo Cricket paper. I wanted to check there classes but didn't see anything that rocked my world!

Anita is the big winner with Robin a runner-up.

Barbra Streisand or Babs as we like to call her sung "Don't Rain On My Parade" in "Funny Girl", the Fanny Brice story. Anita guessed the artist and movie, Robin guessed the artist.

AHS Orchestra is having a Play-A-Thon, November 21 and 22, 2008 to raise funds for a trip to San Francisco in the Spring. While in San Francisco we will be representing the state of Oregon and Ashland by performing in Concerts and attending a concert by the San Francisco Symphony (and also take in a little sightseeing). We are counting on funds to help support our trip. You can pledge a small amount for every hour played or just pledge anything.

It starts at 5pm to 9am and anyone can go to the concert at MIDNIGHT in your pajamas.

*This message has been brought to you by Rocky La Pierre and is mostly intended for family and extended family.

Rocky #1

Rocky #2

Rocky #3

Rocky #4

Rocky #5

Well I'm glad that's over with!!!!!

Now onto more important things. I need to pick a photo for my "wall of Rocky". Every year for Rocky's birthday we take a picture, blow it up and hang it in the hallway, hence "the wall of Rocky". I've taken a couple of Rocky in Lithia Park and now I need your help to pick out the best one, so here goes.............(yes, I know only one has a smile and that was all I could get out of him!)

The crowd is waiting..............

Here they come.................

Mig's mom, Carmel works in the box office, she always has on a great costume!


Cool hair!

Everybody and their goats were there!

Batman and Wonder Woman lost?


Great costumes!

Is that her husband????

and of course Rocky was right.........Elvis is alive!

Don't tell me not to live,

Just sit and putter

Life's candy and the sun's,

A ball of butter,

Don't bring around a cloud,

To rain on my parade.............



Well it almost rained on our parade but we pretty much made it rain-free. Everybody was out! I saw Lisa but missed Audrey. All in all it was fun, you never know what you'll see in Ashland!! I love this town.

(Can anyone tell me what those lyrics are from? No cheating!!)

Isn't this one great?

Scoutmaster Bob hard at work.

I seem to be running into Anita and Brooke's gal-pal Pam everywhere I go!
Lots of help with a big supply.
One of my favorites.......

The big ones get put on the truck so they can get placed.

Rocky carved 2.

Part of the supply......they actually clean them out before everyone gets there to carve! I carved one, I forgot to upload the photo, pretty plain-Jane.

It's that time of year again for the Scouts and anyone that the Piersons happen to know to stop by and carve pumpkins. They supply the clean pumpkins, pizza, soda and a fire to keep warm. All you have to do is carve the pumpkins so they can be put out on Halloween and lined up across their property, sure is a sight! Unfortunately, it was so windy they all blew out. It is something to see if you haven't done it before.

(don't know how to get rid of this extra shot, sorry)

A few of my favorite halloween things..............I love Halloween as much as Christmas!

All lit up!

Rocky's, Pete's, mine

Helping Rocky a little, he didn't get the creative gene

Wow, I actually made it in a couple of shots! (okay, she cut my hair too short, just wanted a trim.)

Picking out a design..........
A couple of shots of our night of Pumpkin carving...........