and in the week after Christmas....

Hope all had great holidays.  Our French son, Mat Albarel wrote this week and said he was having a good Christmas vacation.  He lives in Paris and just began a new career in Executive Recruiting with Michael Page.  Jim is also a "headhunter", so it was nice for them to talk about their experiences this past August at our son David's wedding to Amanda Sutton.  (Good Times, Good Times)
We had a wonderful day with visits from almost everybody, our newest grandson Kent was with his father that day, we missed him.  Matt and Jennae, they are deciding on a name for their daughter who is coming in May, Morgan and John with Zoe and Lily (they have decided on James Peter for their son who is coming in April), Kate and Sammy with Dominic and Xavi, David and Amanda and Betty, my mom.  We decided to not have a sit down dinner, just sandwiches and other spreads and lots of cookies and candies.  It was more relaxing, believe me.
The day after we took off to Guards for a couple of days.  Sammy and Kate and the boys came also.  We did some target practice with Sammy's guns and rifle.  The next day J,Sammy's brother and his wife Nicole, came up after hiking at Chimney Rock.  (Very cold and some trails are closed during the winter, very normal)  We had our 4 dogs and Charlie and Bailey and Gus.  So the dogs outnumbered the adults!  But everyone was very well behaved.  Bailey (tiny version of a pit mix) is not trained on the invisible fence and she did take off for about 45 minutes, she is very fast and ran up and down our little mountain and around the pond.  Charlie is well trained for a 8 monthe old Yellow Lab. (He reminds me of my old Dooley, very goofy and lovable) And Gus is a 1 yr old handsome German Shepherd.
After Bailey got snagged up by Nicole, Jim and I stayed up at the house with the boys and dogs while the others had a little obstacle practise (I am fighting with Kate about the spelling of this word) shooting at targets.  Lots of loud bangs.  Then Jim went down to shoot our old shotgun.  (You have to have one in the mountains, we have bears and bobcats,(Jennifer remembers) and of course snakes in the summer)
Then a great dinner of pulled pork fajitas and spanish rice.  Then a big corn hole tournament, Jim and I won the most games, imagine that?  And Jim went to play Jenga with Dominic and Xavi.  I played Scattergories with J, Nicole, Sammy and Kate.  Nicole won!  But it was great fun with lots of trash talking.  Back to Weddington for a day or so, and then back up to the farm.  Also we await our friends Jeffrey and Lea Anne passing through on their way to Sanibel Island.  As always, living the life of Riley......

night before night before...

Think we have everything done for Christmas.  Had a little Ladies Luncheon on Wednesday.  Spur of the moment.  I put invites out the week before and had 19 or 20 people show up for a few hours of chatting, catching up on things, etc.  It was fun.  Morgan and Katelyn helped me as I tend to not be able to focus on the important things at times.  They kept me on track. 
David's dog, bullmastiff Zeke had surgery this week, may be the same cancer as Riley.  Hopefully they took wide margins also.  We hope for the best.  Zeke is going to be 9 and he is immense, but very laid back. 
We found out that Matt and Jennae are having a little girl, so it's #6 a boy (Morgan and John) and #7 a girl.  It is fantastic to be welcoming in the newest generations.  We feel very blessed. 
We have had lots of rain up at the farm so cannot wait to see where it is on the dam.  And we will start looking at the process to renovate the old log house.  Got to do it in stages, and we will be asking alot of people for help and advice. 
And I guess we will start thinking about the next "Art in the Holler" event for the fall.  We have been kicking around a few new ideas.  With one under our belt, we feel we are on to bigger and better things.    All our best to any readers, please comment, I'd love to hear from whoever you-all are! 
Living the life of Riley.....

twas the week before Christmas...

Well, it is about 12 days before Christmas, and everyone seems to be doing ok.  Have had some dramas in the last few weeks but things have straightened out so Thank You God.  We are not a family who celebrates Christmas on a high commercial level.   I always made things for friends and relatives.  Different kinds of Santas, holiday trivets, clothing, birdhouses, etc.  Sometimes it seemed so expensive to send things up to New York for the family, would have been cheaper to purchase some small item, but that is how we have always done it.  Last year I found a way to make decals of pictures and put them on ornaments.  It was alot of fun, and they turned out pretty well.  This year I fear I have some sort of craft-block and have not even thought of what I can make.  And I need to send the gifts up by Thursday, so this tradition train looks like it is clearly off the track! 
But we do have our appointment at Portrait Innovations for our grands yearly photo shoot.  This year we have 5 grands, like herding cats, but I am sure it will go well.  I am not picky, don't need a thousand different poses, and they wear one set of clothes.  (Last year when we went there was a family who I swear had three different outfit choices, I swear they were at the studio for two hours!  not many happy faces on those kids)  That is part of our Christmas gift to our children, the outfits for the grands and pictures to send to all the families.  I like to think it takes some of the stress out the holidays for them. 
And I don't shop for our children-all eight of them.  There have been some incidents in the past where the girls did not care for my fashion sense....mock turtlenecks...So now we write a check, if it goes for a cell phone bill or electric bill, that is ok with me.  We just buy a few things for the grandkids.   We never want to outperform Santa! 
So the house is decorated and I thought I would have a little holiday luncheon for some women I know a little or know alot.  No big Martha Stewart kind of thing, just a little get together where you don't have to show up with a present to exchange or wear some fancy outfit.  I hand delivered (well, to the mailboxes, taped the invites to the boxes-ever fearful of breaking some federal law) about 28-30 invitations.  Some women are people who I say "Hi" to on my walks or stop and chat for awhile, and I might not even know their names.  We'll see how many rsvp.  I think maybe 10 will be here, and we'll just low key it, no fancy china or food.  My Christmas gift to myself.  (Jim does not like to entertain too much)
Riley is doing very well.  He seems to be back to his old self.  I am bound and determined to put this cancer stuff out of my mind.  Heck, it worked for me!  And two of my grand dogs had their snip snips this week.  Biscuit and Charlie are doing fine.  Scarey knowing that we are 16 large in people in this family, and 13 large in dogs.  We do our best in the rescue world, living the life of Riley....
PS Have safe and grace-full holidays!

New Pond

About a million years ago, (1993), my four children started digging a pond for me for Mother's Day.  It was on the side of the backyard at our home in Weddington.  Well, they dug and they dug and finally were able to make a hole about 6 ft by 8 ft.  Morgan was almost 15, David almost 13, Matt almost 11 and Katelyn almost 7.  They dug their hearts out in this hard clay.  Years before I had double dug my gardens.  It had looked like I was digging graves for the longest time, (1988). Neighbors laughed at me, but I come from the land of double dig. When the kids had done what they could with their muddy hole,   Jim stepped in and started the engineering phase of the pond.  We laid sand on the bottom, made a ledge for the liner to be held in with rocks and finished it up.  Added water and then some fish.  In 1994 we noticed a large fish, about 6"in the pond.  He was black, whereas my other fish were Walmart goldfish.  We figured a bird had dropped him in the pond, flying from the lake across the street from our house.  I love that pond, the kids and grandkids love that pond.  We spend alot of time feeding the fish, watching the birds and animals around it.  In 2008 the big black fish, who loved to jump up every once in awhile and splash around, jumped up and out of the pond.....  He couldn't shimmy his way back in and he died.  I was so unhappy, David came down to bury him.  We measured him and he was almost 20" long.  He was just a carp, but I saw him every day and fed him every day, so it was so hard for me to even walk out to the pond for a long time.  David had given me a couple of real koi around 2004, but they were still pretty small.  I guess the big guy ate most of the food.  They all started to grow larger and we had more and more babies. 
A week ago last Monday I came out of the back door and saw the Blue Heron around the pond.  I have chased him away before, and the 4 dogs usually keep him at bay.  The next day the pond started losing water, really losing water.  So I filled it up, checked the fountains.  (One time the squirrels chewed the hose to one of the water pipes and almost drained the pond)  Everything looked fine.  Except the pond kept losing water.  And the orange koi and the gray speckled one were gone.  Still have lot of black and orange babies, though.  But such is life, right? 
So we build a new pond, even bigger, maybe even build a waterfall?  John, Morgan's husband, came over Sunday and started ripping up the brick patio to build me a bigger pond.  We will finish that pond, move the fish over to it and then try to repair the original one.  Try to connect them in some way, I'll figure it out when the hole is dug.  So wish us luck, Jim said he is out of the pond business.( He does this Pontius Pilate thing with me all the time).  He has enough on his hands with the acre pond at Guards Farm in Shingle Hollow.  Talk about a leak....we have to have the entire dam rebuilt.  Talk about a money pit!
Riley is doing great, he gets his staples out on Thursday and he is back to running around and causing trouble.  We have great hope.  Living the life of Riley....