Not much happening around our house. We are getting ready for Larry's birthday next week, followed by Thanksgiving. I am also trying to get things ready for my annual Christmas ornament exchange party. That is always a lot of fun and many of the women from church ask me months ahead of time if we are having it again this year. I think this will be the 9th or 10th year I've done it. We play some fun games and eat and have good Christian fellowship. I look forward to it every year. Some years I have started planning ahead as far as February. but I'm a little behind this year.
We will have most all of Larry's family here for Christmas and we are really looking forward to that. We expect it will be about 19-20 of us.
Wish everybody a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Literally. The kids are giving a big Halloween party and again having their insane asylum/spook house. We had one about 2 years ago and we all had a lot of fun. They love doing this and really get into it. I'm so thankful that we have a house that we can open up and let people into. We are very fortunate.
Actually we are having a sanitarium this year. Called Sunny Oaks Sanitarium. I know there are kids from several of the local congregations helping out. We will have games and freaky finger food too. I am looking forward to it and know several others are too.
The weather has been beautiful. Crisp clean air to stimulate our lungs and clear our heads. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

1. My nickname when I was little was Buster.

2. I once had a chihuahua (sp?) named Bozo.

3. I love sweets! and unfortunately am a diabetic.

4. I have traveled through/to 24 of the 50 states of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico but have never traveled overseas.

5. I love paper crafting.

6. I love to read.

7. I enjoyed water skiing in my younger days, but I can't handle it anymore. I learned to ski when I was 11 years old.

8. I don't much like to talk on the phone. I'd much rather talk in person.

Now that's pretty boring I think, but they are random facts.

8.

We have so much to be thankful for don't we. We weathered the storm last Saturday and feel fortunate that we received very little damage compared to so many others. The storm blew in early morning Saturday and we woke to the smell of smoke in the house. We were afraid the house was on fire but finally realized that we had had an electrical surge that blew something (we were unsure just what) and it had gotten in the AC ducts. We lost our electricity about 8am and turned the old generator on. One of our neighbors is an electrician and he had come down just the night before and rewired the generator into our dryer outlet so we had lights, fans, & TV throughout the entire storm. Ike lasted here about 7 hours and we had about 6 fairly large tree limbs down. The largest landed right in the middle of the back yard, right between our fences, missing the house, shop and our trailer. One landed on top of the shop, straddling the top of it, and another landed on our power line actually pulling the power meter out of the house. After all was over we examined the damage and found that we lost part of the eave where the power line connects, and siding was pulled out from there, there was a small hole in the shop roof where the limb fell on it (we originally thought it was going to be ok). The worst damage was inside the house I think. The surge we had before we lost power actually wiped out all of our kitchen lights, microwave, bread maker, all of our alarm clocks, air purifiers and we found out today the upstairs AC (ugh!!), all our phones, the kids stereos. We were without electricity from Saturday morning til about 10 am Friday. The good Lord blessed us with natural air conditioning that has kept us mostly cool.
Thank goodness for insurance. They say just keep our receipts and turn them in. We spent most of Sunday afternoon cleaning up the yard, thanks to neighbors and friends and yesterday and today, Larry spent most of his day replacing lights. I know that the Houston area is much worse and we are sooo thankful that we are all ok. I was traveling for work yesterday and realized what a wonderful nation we live in. I saw a caravan of electric trucks traveling south all the way from Detroit and one of my patients told me he had a crew from North Carolina helping him. Isn't it great that we all help each other out.
Larry's foot seems to be doing very well. He has not had any of the old complaints of pain, and he has been on his feet a lot! He says he has some soreness on the top surface of the foot from walking more naturally. Thanks for all y'alls prayers.
I know this has been a long post but wanted to let everone know we are all ok.

LOVE BUGS that is. What a stinky mess. I have been having to do more driving than normal and these pesky little bugs are in season again. I have dreamed of someone inventing a magic vacuum truck that goes along the highways and just sucks them all up into the tank and then they are gone forever. Anyone up to the challenge of inventing it? I will gladly share all mine with any willing taker!!!
Larry is still having to wear his "pretty shoe" but is progressing well. He is still off work but I'm hoping the doc will let him go back to driving his bus next week.
All the kids are back to school now and trying to get into the swing of studying. Dru is at SFA, and Meagan is at Angelina.
Larry's sister in LA has electricity. They were only without for about 4 days. Much better than they had been told so they are thankful. They actually had it better than we did when Rita hit us back in '05. We were without for 5 days. Thank the Lord for David Jones!!
Just getting y'all up to date on everything. Oh yea. Larry's oldest sister, Larie, had a son-in-law leave for Iraq last week. Please keep him in your prayers as well as all the military folks!
Take care all! Thanks for your prayers and comments on Larry. Keep praying!