Surviving the freeze Florida style

We had a hard freeze the last two evening (that means 30 degrees). No snow of course. Here is how we survived Florida style--roasting wieners, playing games outside and playing with the roosters.

The power of cabbage and black-eyed peas

I'm sure you know that in order to be rich in the coming year, you have to eat cabbage and black-eyed peas as soon as the New Year starts.  Some think that is just a foolish Southern superstition, but I'm a believer now. Right at midnight Caroly had delicious fried cabbage with ham and a pot of black-eyed peas for us to eat. I had another bowl of both in the morning for good luck.This afternoon Sage was looking though the books in our library to find one to  take home to read to her children, You'll see below the surprise stash of money that she found inside one of them!

I'm now a billionaire several times over--at least in Hungarian Pengös from after the Second World War!! We collected them when we lived in Hungary in 1990 after the Berlin Wall fell. We had forgotten where we had stashed them for safe keeping.

The moral of the story. When you wish for riches by eating cabbage and black-eyed peas at New Years, be sure to specify what kind of money you want to get, The Pengös are worthless except as a souvenir of the power of post war inflation. They use the more stable Forint now. But technically I'm still a Pengö billionaire due to the power of cabbage and black-eyed peas. Click on the picture to take a closer look if you don't believe me.

Surprise for Grandma

Grandma was sure she could quietly become 75 with no one noticing. Grandpa remembered to serve breakfast in bed (farmers omelette, toast, yogurt, and orange juice) and give her a mushy card and a small cake to make sure she thought that someone remembered. But at six that night there was a knock at the door and half of our grandkids rushed in with a surprise hug, a helium birthday balloon, flowers, lots of fried chicken and lemonade and a cake covered with horses. Grandpa had kept the birthday surprise a secret for a week. She didn't suspect a thing. The pictures should tell the story.

Merry Christmas!!

Grandma thought for sure that since we had no children or grandchildren visiting for Christmas that Santa would pass over our house. But to grandma's surprise HE DIDNT FORGET US!!

However, grandma forgot to put out milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for Rudolph. So Santa stopped by after we had opened the presents for an energizing snack on the way back to the North Pole. Rudolph was disappointed that grandma still forgot to put out the carrots!! Shame, shame!!

Christmas afternoon we joined Sage, David, Jessica, Stephen, Victoria, and Mary for our traditional picnic fun on our beautiful Florida beach in honor of those northerners who insist that they prefer "change of seasons" in the frozen, snow-bound northland rather than the pleasant Christmas weather in Florida.

Getting ready for Christmas

Prince David invited us to a madrigal dinner and concert to get us in the holiday mood.

We've even had beautiful sunsets to get us in the mood.

So our house is all decorated and ready for Christmas.

December Home Improvement

Each month we try to finish one more project on our log cabin. This month we installed lights and fans on the porches.

November Fun with Grandkids

Cross country meets:

Toe fishing and bungee cord walking

Fossil hunting

Beach and water fun

Sport fun

Developing survival skills by drawing, building houses, cracking coconuts for food, looking for information electronically

Relaxing in hammocks or sitting around talking

Of course we had lots of good food to keep the troops happy!! (I didn't get a picture of the 20 or so boxes of breakfast cereal and the several gallons of milk that was a key to their happiness.)

G

M

T

Detect languageAfrikaansAlbanianArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBelarusianBengaliBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKoreanLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSerbianSesothoSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshYiddishYorubaZulu

AfrikaansAlbanianArabicArmenianAzerbaijaniBasqueBelarusianBengaliBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CroatianCzechDanishDutchEnglishEsperantoEstonianFilipinoFinnishFrenchGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKoreanLaoLatinLatvianLithuanianMacedonianMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiRomanianRussianSerbianSesothoSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTeluguThaiTurkishUkrainianUrduUzbekVietnameseWelshYiddishYorubaZulu

Text-to-speech function is limited to 200 characters

Options : History : Feedback : Donate

Close

Missionary Thanksgiving

It rained 10 inches for Thanksgiving, all our expected guests were sick or out of town, so we had two simple Thanksgiving dinners to honor our two missionaries, Aurelia in Mandarin speaking New York City and Summer in Meridian Idaho.

To honor Aurelia, Debbie made us a lunch of home made spring rolls, sushi, pot stickers, and Zinger cherry tea.

To honor Summer, Mom made us that evening TV dinners of mashed potatoes, turkey and dressing.

It was all delicious.