Well, it has been a month since my last post, and it is still cold. Right now the thermometer is saying 34 degrees. Booooo! Oh well, at least the sun has been shining. So, you may be asking yourselves, what have the old folks been up to lately? One of Opa's projects was sausage making. I bought a pork shoulder at Krogers. Opa ground it with my old hand-crank, clamp-it-to-the-table meat grinder. Then he seasoned it with salt and pepper. He had Papaw's old sausage stuffer, and some casings he got from the Troy meat market. If Kasandra gets to read this post, the casings, which are the tubes you stuff the sausage into, are made from the pig's intestines. They are all cleaned and scraped. You place one end of the casing over the tube that comes out of the bottom of the sausage stuffer. Then you push the entire length of the casing onto the tube. The sausage is placed inside the stuffer, and a metal plate is placed at the end of the long screw you can see over the top of the stuffer. As you turn the handle, the screw forces the plate downwards, so that the sausage squishes out the tube and into the casing. It was my job to turn the handle, slowly and steadily. Opa slowly drew the casing out as the sausage filled it, until we had a tube of sausage several feet long coiled up in the pan at his feet. We cut the sausage up into links about 4 inches long, and then we put them in ziplock bags in the freezer. We put water in the bag around the links, because we have found over the years that the sausage stays fresher tasting that way. When we fried up some of the sausage, it was delicious! On March 10, little Eryn was one year old. We went to Cincinnati for her birthday. She had a lot of fun playing with the other little children who came. She also enjoyed the delicious cupcakes that Anna made. She was very neat while she was eating them, and didn't get frosting all over her at all.

Last Saturday we went to Granville for Jared Honeycutt's wedding. It hardly seems possible that it has been almost 12 years since he and Anna graduated from high school. While Jared was studying in Oxford, England, he met Wendy, who is now his wife. (I got to meet her when we visited Oxford in 2007. She laughs a lot, and has a great sense of humor.)Her family is originally from Malaysia, and now lives in Melbourne, Australia. It was a very international wedding, with people there from Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, South Africa, England, and the U.S.

The wedding reception featured an English high tea, a remembrance of their meeting in Oxford. They also had "bangers and mash" (sausages and mashed potatoes) and fish and chips. I was disappointed though - there were no mushy peas, an English delicacy that goes with fish and chips in some pubs. But the food was very good.

Below is a picture of their wedding cake. The two little creatures on top are little English hedgehogs, which are very shy little creatures. Jared and Wendy were very shy and slow in becoming a couple, just like the hedgehogs.

This is Jared and Wendy cutting the cake.

Anna, Jim and Eryn were at the wedding, too. Eryn was very good during the ceremony, quietly dropping pew cards on the floor for us to pick up. The maitre 'd at the reception brought Eryn her own special plate of fruit and yummy macaroni and cheese. She'll have high tea another day.

Jared and Wendy had a specially coreographed dance for their wedding. A friend who does ballroom dancing taught it to them. They had a lot of fun, but I think Jared should go ahead and keep studying for his doctorate. Dancing with the Stars probably won't call this week.

Notice how Jared doesn't look any older than he did as a high school student? If he and Wendy have children who smile as much as they do, they will have a very sun-shiny home indeed.

It was good to see Jo and Clyde, and Jocelyn and her husband Mike. Jocelyn is expecting a little girl July 2. She said they are going to name her Aubrey Nichole, but I don't know if that is how they are going to spell it, so stay tuned. Seth and Emily were there, too. Emily is working on a masters in theology at Wake Forest University.

That about covers all the news for now. We're looking forward to a trip to Atlanta the first week of May for Micah's graduation from Georgia Tech. The week before that I am going out to D.C. for an "Oma deployment." It's going to be a busy spring!

Hello, Kasandra!

This is a special blog post for Kasandra. I would like to introduce her to all my family and friends. She is a girl from Bradford who has been my friend for a couple of years now. She is mentored by Mrs. Chris Palsgrove every week at school, and I am their prayer partner. Kasandra keeps a journal in which we write messages to each other every week about things that interest us. Since I am away from home this week, we are staying in touch via my blog, which Mrs. Palsgrove will print out for her.

Dear Kasandra,
How are things in Bradford this week? I am in Woodbridge, Virginia, which is about 26 miles south of Washington D.C. My son Andrew had to travel to California on business, so I am helping my daughter-in-law Amie take care of my grandchildren while Andrew is gone. I'll tell you more about that in a little bit, but first I'd like to show you some pictures I took when I flew out here on February 13.
This first picture was taken out the window of my airplane. These are the tops of the clouds. Down below the clouds the weather was gray and dreary, but up above the clouds it is always sunny. I try to remember that on cold winter days when I am feeling a little blue.

My first picture showed what it was like to fly above the clouds. The next one shows what it looks like when you are flying in the clouds. All you can see is white cotton fluff everywhere you look.

I had to change planes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As we were landing there, I took this picture of a large ship on the Delaware River. I saw many large ocean-going naval ships and cargo ships docked along the river.

I flew from Philadelphia to Baltimore, Maryland, because it is cheaper to fly into Baltimore than into Washington D.C. From the airport I took a shuttle bus to the Amtrak train station, where I bought a ticket to Union Station in D.C. The train trip there took around 45 minutes. After arriving I went underground to the subway, which is called the "Metro" in Washington. Here is a picture of a train platform:

I went as far south as I could on the subway, which got me within about 15 miles of my son's home. He and my grandson, Grant, picked me up at the station.

I soon found out it was a good thing I came out to help, because all the kids had some sort of tummy virus. Each day last week someone had to stay home with me because he wasn't feeling well enough to go to daycare. This is Grant, who is 4 years old, looking out the window into the woods to see if he could see any squirrels or deer or birds.

When Jordan, who is two, was home sick, we took our picture together. She is really a funny little girl. She is two.

My daughter-in-law's tummy hadn't felt too well all week, either. So on Friday she decided to take a day off. She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, and she works at the Pentagon. That is our nation's military headquarters in Washington. It is very stressful work, so she enjoyed her day off. It was warm, and the kids were feeling better, so we went outside to rake leaves.

The next picture is of the littlest grandchild here. Her name is Keara, and she was born on July 2, 2010. She is Oma's (that's me) sweetie pie.

Last night it sleeted and snowed here. Right now the sun is shining and the streets have melted off. I sure will be glad when spring comes!

I will be coming home Thursday evening. I will be glad to see my husband Dennis after 11 days of wishing he could be here to play with the grandchildren, too. I think I will even be glad to see the dog, Sydney.

I hope you have a good week. Stay warm!

Your friend,

Teresa

Ice Ice, Baby!

Well, this winter just goes on, and on, and on, and on...............The first picture is of the top of the rail on the kitchen steps. That is about a half an inch of ice, from the first wave we had on Tuesday. Opa went mushing off to work, and said that he's gone in worse.

But then came Tuesday afternoon. He sent everyone home from the office an hour early, because the storm was cranking up for phase II. Another brief round of freezing rain was followed by several hours of sleet, which came down as what you might call "micro-hail" - little tiny ice balls about the size of the head of one of my small sewing pins. That lasted until after midnight, when there was a temperature rise above freezing. This melted just enough of the little ice balls that they all melded together into one glassy, all-encompassing ice sheet. This morning when I let Sydney out at 8 am, she slid down the steps, could barely get enough footing to do her business, and then she almost couldn't get back up the steps. A little later Opa went out to try to clean off the steps:

That is 3 inches of solid ice that Opa is chopping through with his adz. After clearing off the steps he gave up, because he didn't figure he could hack through the whole driveway and barnyard.

He did chip a little path out by the stump for Sydney. That dog doesn't know how lucky she is.

This last picture is for the wimpy mail delivery people in Atlanta. This is the view out our bedroom window this morning. 5 inches of snow on the ground from last week, 1-3 inches of ice from the last 24 hours, 4o mph winds, more snow - and OUR mail still went today. Ha! Our carriers eat little girly men like you for breakfast!

Other than the weather, there isn't much going on here. Grandma 'Carty is about the same as usual. We went down to Jim and Anna's last Saturday, and got to see Eryn take some of her first solo steps.

I had someone come to check out our bathroom and give me an estimate on having some work done. It would include new wall board, a custom shower (no tub), ceiling vent fan and light plus wall switch, electical outlet, medicine cabinet and lighting, new flooring, and painting the cabinets. The custom shower is because our space is a little smaller than standard. I'll be interested to see his numbers. I'm praying that the postal service won't close my post office before I save enough paychecks to pay for this.

We are in negotiations to see if Jordan can come to stay with us the first week of March. I am really excited about that. Then we'll try to see if Grant can come in April or May.

Everyone keep warm and take care. Spring has to come sometime, right?