Where did October go?

My niece, Amber Plemmons and her boyfriend, Seth Fish at Youth Challenge

Jaxon, JaLayna & JeNessa

Andrew is quite an artist and drew pictures on Jaxon's wall in his newly redecorated room. This DOZER is one of the pictures he drew on the wall, then painted. This talent did not come from his mom or dad, that is for sure!
Another drawing / painting on Jaxon's wall.

CAT sign that Andy painted.

We were PACKED in the hayride wagon.

Kara and Kaitlynne on the hayride.

Kaitlynne with a kitten she found at the hayride

Katie was in her glory on this pony.

Riding home from the festival.

So tiny and precious!

Kara still has the touch to calm little JaLayna

Grandmy Plemmons prepared a lovely birthday dinner.

Aunt Lelah, Cousin Ronnie and Jennifer - sharing in the special day

Mamaw is enjoying this moment.

Jason and Katie were partied out and took a nap in my wheelchair. :0)

Grandmy Plemmons still has the touch

Grandpy Watters holding little JaLayna

Jaxon - Look at those eyes!

Grandmy Watters holding little JaLayna

Grandpy Plemmons holding JaLayna

Andrew and his girls, JeNa and JaLa

Andrew & Jennifer

Baby JaLayna looking at her Mamaw

I have been receiving 'side notes' from friends (thanks), prompting me to update my blog and I opened it today to realize I have not updated since October 1. Whew! It is hard to believe that October is almost behind us!

Work has been extremely busy, with the training of a new girl in the front office (where I have worked for 17 years) and learning my new position.

On the 'homefront', I have been repainting my basement, with the help of Jason and Kara. It is so much brighter being an off-white color as opposed to the darker blue. A little paint makes a huge difference in a room. I also had blind put up in the basement, as that sliding door area was wide open and I am just a little 'scaredy-cat' sometimes. My mercury light behind the house does not work. I think the wiring needs to be replaced because I have had the fixture changed twice and it still doesn't work on a regular basis. I need to do that before winter, so I am not so afraid!

I went with Jason and Kara to their church hayride and we had so much fun. I felt like I was falling off the wagon a time or two but I enjoyed it. The wagon was packed!!! We had to go over a very narrow bridge and that scared me to death but we survived.

I traveled to Cincinnati last weeked for a Women of Worth Committee Meeting at GBS. It was so nice to be with Ryan again. With the gas prices, I haven't been going too far and this was the first time I had been at GBS this year, so it was nice to be with him. I went a few hours early and helped him with a big project that has been on his plate and that is sorting wedding pictures. He shot a wedding a couple of weeks ago and had thousands of pictures to sort, so I helped him with this project and now he will need to go back through the pictures and touch them up with a touch only he has. I don't see the blemishes he does or the different variations to each picture that he does.

On Saturday (of last weekend) Ryan was pretty anxious to be on the road by 11:00 a.m., heading to my parents for their Homecoming Weekend at their church. I kept thinking, "I would really like to just do something in Cincinnati (I LOVE CINCINNATI and always have)." He said, "I would just like to get out of Cincinnati." I thought, "Oh well. I guess we will leave Cincinnati." He was up early and ready to go. He had to wait for me and boy is that unusual! So, we started out and he led the way. I kept thinking, "Why aren't we at least going the speed limit? After all, we still have two hours to drive and I know we are tired. Let's just 'get there'. We stopped to eat and he took his dear old time. After all, he said he wanted to leave Cincinnati by 11:00 and it was only 9:45, so we had time. (????) We finally got to my parents around 1:05 and when I walked in the door, there was a whole bunch of people yelling 'SURPRISE". My family had planned a surprise 50th birthday party with the black balloons, wheelchair, walking cane, cake with 50 black candles that nearly burned the house down, scaring us to death, and lots of gifts and cards. It was so nice to have all of my kids there with all of my grandkids. We got to see the new little one JaLayna, for the first time (for many of us) and it was so much fun just being together. My aunt and cousins came over and my brother, Don, traveled over from Fort Wayne. It was a beautiful day and a lot of mysteries to me were suddenly enlightened as I realized 'why' we needed to be here at a certain time (he was planning for 1:00), why my dad was off on a Saturday and why Ryan didn't want to stay in Cincinnati.

This weekend, I traveled with Dan, Clayton and Amber to the Cincinnati area again, to attend the Youth Challenge. What a special time that was. We all had a great time and it was fun being together with YOUTH. I won't be 50 until October 29th, so it was fun interacting with YOUTH again before the big day. :-)

I will share a few pictures of recent weeks and will try to better at blogging more often. We'll see how a 50-year old brain functions and if it remembers to blog. hehe

New Room

I have decided to re-do Ryan's room, as the carpet was so bad in there and it was bothering me. So...Jason and Kara came over one day and started getting the carpet out of the room in preparation for new carpeting. We had went to a local store and chose a remnant (boy, is carpeting expensive!) and I had made a deposit on the carpeting. The next day, while Jason was tearing out the carpeting he made a wonderful discovery. Beautiful hardwood floors were under all of that carpeting and padding. What a blessing!!!!!! I cancelled my order of carpeting and got my deposit back and now - wah-lah - I have beautiful hardwood floors. I little sanding and revarnishing goes a long way. This gives this room a totally different look. Here are some pictures of the new room. We put up new wallpaper border (boy, that's a treat to do when you are inexperienced), put some of Ryan's pictures that he has framed in there and also some of his Ansel Adams prints. It gives the room a totally different look, that is for sure.

It is a bit more feminine that Ryan would probably have decorated but I have a young lady who graduated from Lenawee Christian School (where I work) who is going to be moving in with me while she is teaching at Adrian College and working at the University of Michigan. I am looking forward to having someone in the home in the evenings for company and it will help me financially. This is a God-sent blessing, for which I am grateful. Like someone at my office told me the other day when I had a miracle transpire in my office (in front of her) "God always takes care of you!" Yes, HE DOES! He promised He would and He never goes back on His promises! Enjoy the pictures.