At Home with Emily

We arrived in Portland late Sunday night, so Emily was already asleep. Steph had an early morning dental appointment, so Grampa and Nanajo just waited for Emily to wake up and discover us. She came out of her bedroom, looked at us without moving, and then when I spoke to her she literally ran into my arms. She kept saying (and is still saying), "I'm so glad to see you, Nana Jo!" Here are a few pictures of what we've done at Emily's house.

Making cookies with Mama (Emily is wearing her Home Depot apron)

Stephanie's tree was really pretty but had no presents. One afternoon while Emily slept, I wrapped what we brought with us plus some that Stephanie had. She said that since Emily was used to the tree being there, she might not notice the presents...WRONG. Emily walked up to the tree and said, "Wow! Presents" and then sat down and rearranged everything. She never seemed interested in opening anything, just playing with them.

Slip Sliding Away

No pictures--too busy hanging on to be able to find my camera. Because this weekend is the annual State School Board Conference in Albuquerque, Ed & I drove over yesterday afternoon after my last class at 3:00. By that time it was already snowing again in Capitan. but folks about 30 minutes ahead of us saide the roads weren't too bad yet. Boy, were they wrong! We got just the other side of Carrizozo (about 35 miles from home or so) & almost found ourselves in the middle of a 15-car pile up. There is a really steep hill there after quite a few curves, and the cars coming toward us were not able to get up the hill very well and started sliding all over the road. Then a car that zoomed around us (because we were going less than the posted 65 mph) came upon the crowd, couldn't stop, and crashed head first into the side of the mountain. By the time we got there and managed to get our car back into control after sliding all over the place, mostly sideways, there were plenty of people out helping, so we just maneuvered through the jam & kept going. The roads were like that all the way to I-25 until we were just out of Albuquerque. Whew! We were certainly glad to get here safe and sound. By the time we leave Sat. afternoon, this state-wide storm is supposed to have moved on.

Trick-or-Treaters and HOPE

Our church, along with 3 others, have just opened H.O.P.E. (House of Prayer for Everyone) in mid-town Ruidoso. It is going to be a really great facility fashioned after the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. Today the merchants in midtown Ruidoso sponsored trick-or-treating for all the local kids, so HOPE set up the mobile cooking station and gave away free hot dogs and hot chocolate, along with the obligatory candy. I have a few pictures, but when things got really, really busy, no one had time to take pictures. Approximately 750 hot dogs and cups of chocolate were given away, and I can't tell you how much candy! The temperature was in the 30s with a fairly strong wind, so the warm food was very welcomed by the cold families. Here are the few pictures we did manage to get. The last one is Linda and I freezing our behinds off handing out candy!

First Snow of the Season

We couldn't believe it when we got up this morning to snow! There was snow on the ground, and it was snowing quite heavily. Since it is so early in the season, the snow was gone by mid-morning, but it stayed cloudy and cold all day. It's so nice to come home from school and sit in front of a blazing fireplace! These pictures are (1) from our front deck and (2) the view behind our house of the hillside.

Raising the Roof

A couple of weeks ago several people from our church, along with a few other community friends, met at the house of a lady from our church to put a new roof on for her. Her house is an old adobe house that has been in her family for over 80 years, and we think the roof was the original. Needless to say, it was full of holes, but she was unable financially to have it repaired. Because of her health problems, it was extremely critical. We made a day of it, complete with hamburger/hot dog cookout, and got a new shiny roof on.

Here is what her roof looked like before.Using Jack's backhoe to hold the old shake shingles as the men pulled them off the roof. This was tricky because the roof boards broke easily threatening to drop the men into the house.As the shingles came off in the front and side of the house, they were gathered up in tarps to be loaded into Jack's dump truck and taken to the land behind the church so anyone could come get them for fire kindlingBrave soul David Brooks actually rode the backhoe bucket with the tarpful of shingles to deposit them in Jack's dump truck.

This is Ed working on the drip edge before the steel sheets could be attached to the roof.

Sheets of steel going onto the roof.Lisa and I cooked about 40 hamburgers and hotdogs for all the hungry workers. The ladies of the church provided lots of desserts, chips, drinks, and other goodies.

Here are all the "lunch ladies": Lana Meyer, Jo Beth, Linda Greene, Vi Vinson (Ed's mom who was visiting us at the time) and Lisa who was taking the picture.This is what I call the "almost after" picture with all the crew we could round up for the picture. It was starting to get "dusky" and cool, so everyone was working as quickly as possible to get finished. Before dark, however, the roof was done, and everything was cleaned up and ready to go. It was a great community day.

New Greenhouse

We are so blessed to have received a greenhouse this week from our friends Jack and Linda. Jack came over with his backhoe yesterday and helped Ed set it up.
The greenhouse is really neat because it automatically opens its top flaps to regulate the heat. It is fun to watch them open and close as the day progresses.

This is us peeking out the back door of the greenhouse.

This is the front of the greenhouse which faces the east side of our house (the front part of our parking area) which will be handy to access from our back walkway. We still have to get some more pavers for the inside floor, some decorative edging stones to go around the outside so the dirt banking won't wash away, and of course, we'll have to build some planting benches inside.

First Snow on the Mountain!

Today as we were going to the Aspenfest Parade and activities in Ruidoso, it looked like there was snow on the mountain. We drove up there to see for ourselves and to check out the fall folliage on the aspens. We also saw several flocks of wild turkeys roaming around.