Celebrating a life well lived

We had Aunt Betty's funeral today. It was a lovely Mass and Dana (Conrad's sister) and Paul (Conrad's brother) spoke of lovely memories of Aunt Betty. Then we moved on to our house for the real celebration. I think she would have approved of this party.

Margaret (Conrad's sister) showing us how it's done. She's got it goin' on!
The men were holding court and Anna kept walking through and around their circle.
Exhaustion takes over.
This is the first time Uncle John (Conrad's brother) and Anna have met.
Parker's pooped.
Conrad's brother George and cousin Mark.
I wasn't even looking through the view finder when I took this picture. Awesome, huh?
Conrad's brother Joe and their mother, Peggy (Aunt Betty's twin).
Sweet Bonnie (Joe's wife).
The spray that said "beloved wife". It was beautiful.

Farewell

Betty Jo Hill Meitzler

January 24, 1923 - March 29, 2007

Farewell, Aunt Betty. You brought laughter and love to everyone who knew you. You will be missed.

I told Madeline of Aunt Betty's passing. I told her that now Aunt Betty has a new body and can dance and eat and she's in heaven. It happened to be thundering outside. Madeline threw her head back, looked up at the sky and said "Hey, Aunt Betty, is that you making all that noise?".

Stardusting

Sadie is trying out for StarDusters. It's the dance team they have at school. We stayed, today, to watch. Never again. It's too long for Mads and Anna. Mads did pretty well but Anna...fughetaboutit. This is her loving on Sadie right before practice.

Sadie stretchin' out those muscles.
Getting ready to do the routine to "YMCA".
Doing the routine.
"If I have to hear "YMCA" one more time..."

Tryouts are on Friday. Keep a good thought for her.

Pray for Aunt Betty. She's really not doing well at all.

Litter Free

Today we took part in the "Proud to be Litter Free" trash pick up in Arlington. We picked up trash in Veteran's Park. We picked up lots of big trash. I'm proud of the kids who came. They worked hard and were very excited when they got big hunks of stuff to put in their bags.

This was a big stringy thing (probably decayed carpet or padding of some sort) that we all worked on getting out of the ground. YUCK! They really worked hard getting this out.
After we cleaned up, we played and fed the ducks. We also found these duck eggs. One looked like it had broken but the others were intact. Hopefully they will hatch to be fully productive ducks. If you happen to know otherwise, don't tell me, I like my dream world where all eggs hatch to be cute little ducklings. Well, the duck eggs, anyway.
On the way back from feeding the ducks, this family of turtles was pointed out to me. Daddy's in the back then Momma and if you can see if front of Momma, there's a little baby turtle. I can hear my Aunt Janis now, "show us pictures of those kids, we don't want to see no stinkin' turtles or duck eggs"!
This is Sadie's tent. Up because she and Madeline are sleeping in it tonight. Well, maybe. Last night they tried it and I don't think it was very late before Sadie was in MY bed. Madeline slept out there all night. Conrad was on the couch, sliding door wide open, keeping watch.

Can I just say sleeping with the sliding glass door open is not a good idea? We had all manner of cats roaming through our house last night. We probaby had some other animals I would rather not think about, too. However, I was happy that my manly man was keeping watch over the girly girls.

Spring is here!

Spring has sprung! It's hard to get the girls in to do their homework. Anna wants to be outside and so do I. Housework can wait. Homework, however, can't.

Anna smells the flowers and in the next breath tears the flowers off the stem.

"I do not want to go in".
My little Rosita also enjoys being outside.
I wish I had a "sm-uter" a computer that you could smell through. This gardenia is the first one to bloom in my possession. I planted one gardenia last year then got this one and never got around to planting it. The one I planted is still there, hanging on for dear life but this one has bloomed (in it's original pot) and smells ab-fab.

She did not tear this flower up. She would have lost an arm if she had.

Spring break memoires

Here's what we did over spring break. On Friday, I left here and took the girls (all 3) to Shreveport to spend the weekend with my brave mother. I then travelled on to West Monroe where my Auntie B lives and literally did nothing but scrapbook and eat (with two trips to Hobby Lobby thrown in for good measure). This is what I looked like all weekend.

This is my Auntie B (or Aunt Brownie for some of you). She gave me the coolest machine. It's called a "cricut". It will cut shapes, letters, whatever out of any piece of paper you put in it. It is WAY cool. She has assured my invitation to many a "crop" with this gift. She also bestowed upon me some scrapping items she doesn't use anymore as well as some new "Creative Memories" items that have been very useful. Thank you, Auntie B. for all the scrapping goodies and the lovely weekend.


This is my Uncle Howard (Auntie B's man) and she bopped him in the nose for sassin' back so he had to stick tissue in it to keep from bleedin' all over the house. Not really but it sure makes a good story.

Below, is Uncle Howard's fix to the problem that I left him with. I took a shower in Auntie B's shower and broke the water faucet handle off. OOPS! Ingenius fix, don't you think?


I had all sorts of help scrapbooking. Especially the furry kind.


On Sunday, I went back to Shreveport to save my mother from sure insanity. I got there in the nick of time. Whew!

On Monday, we went to Sci-Port which is a science "hands-on" place complete with planetarium and all. Totally awesome place. In it, there is a big pendulum that swings and knocks over chimes. This is the picture of the pendulum and after that is the video of it knocking over the chime. Tell me I don't have good timing. The video isn't edited, I don't know how.

On Tuesday, we went down to the Boardwalk and had lunch with Allison (my totally cool step-sister) and shopped for Easter dresses. No, you can't see them until the big day. But let me just say, you'll need to sheild yourself from Anna - she'll be so cute.


Anna got tired of walking and needed to rest.

This is Allison, my mom and me having lunch. Sadie took the picture.

Bathtime because....

Oh yeah, Anna's first pudding experience. My mother found pudding everywhere. Drapes, floor, table, you name it. What were we thinking?

Trains!

Today we went to the Train Show in Ft. Worth. This is Sadie, Uncle Ernie, Anna and Madeline waiting for Conrad to park the "Ernie-mobile". Uncle Ernie was all atwitter with excitement.

This train had "real" smoke coming out of it, it was very cool. Uncle Ernie loved it.
We got some nachos while we were at the train show. Anna loved the cheese. Couldn't get enough of it, I guess.
Yep, couldn't get enough of it.
Only in Ft. Worth will you see a horse downtown. OK, maybe in Dallas but seriously, a horse? Do you really expect to see a horse in the parking lot?

We had loads of fun.

I'm going to go backwards tonight. I will start with today's happenings on our vacation.

We stopped at Autumn's (our Niece) to see all the new babies in the family. We had 3 born within 8 days of each other, the youngest are 2 weeks old. Autumn fed us yummy food and we had wonderful company, it was a really great stop in the middle of the otherwise rather boring drive. See if you don't think this was worth it.
This little cutie with a head full of hair is Brylee Wangler. She is as sweet as she can be and even burped for Auntie Lisa.

This is an actual baby, not a doll. I don't know if it's the lighting or my camera but little Rainee (I hope I spelled that right) looks like a living doll. Madeline got to hold her before big sister did. Actually, I don't think Sadie held any of them. She loved playing Referee-mommy-playmate to Anna and Parker, the big kids of the bunch.
This is Rainee's brother, who's name escapes me at this moment (please forgive me, I'm sleep deprived) but I know it starts with an R. Well, I'm pretty sure it starts with an R. Anyway, he slept through the whole thing. Kids playing basketball 3 ft. from him, throwing crayons around, Anna pokin' him in the forehead - didn't bother him a bit.
Yep, she touched his nose, too.
And then Miss Kitty's babies were waitin' for us when we got home. 2 that look like "Banda", 2 tiger stipes and one that looks like "Blue" (from her first litter). She was so sweet, she let us pet them and hold them.

Now, I am going to bed. I will catch you all up on as much as I can tomorrow. We really did have an exciting vacation and did lots of fun things. I can't wait to show them all to you. 'Night!