Title Change and Some Ponderings

To go with the previous blog this is a picture that I took of the train at The Tweetsie Railroad four years ago.Have no idea why the picture turned out so small.Guess you could click on it and see a larger image if you are interested.

I changed the template on my blog once again.I like this one a little better.

I got then to thinking about changing the name of my blog.We love to travel and I love to take pictures.So I decided to change the name of my blog to reflect that.I will be sharing pictures of our travels here.Guess I already do that but this gives me more reason to share our travels.

Travelling is on my mind since we are in the middle of planning our trip to Niagara Falls Canada.Nothing should stop us this time since all of the passport cards have arrived.One was a little late coming so we had to cancel our previous trip plans to Niagara Falls Canada last month.

One state, that shall remain nameless, but is in the south, and begins with the letter G, took from the beginning of April to June to send a requested certified birth certificate to our oldest daughter.The funny thing is that after it was taking so long and thinking the request was lost she got on line and requested an expedited birth certificate be sent through an online company.

You guessed it....the expedited certified birth certificate came within a few days followed by the previously requested certified birth certificate a few days later.By then it was too late to get a passport card for the travel dates we had planned so our trip was postponed.We are now getting excited about our upcoming trip to Canada.We are hoping to take a side trip to Toronto while in Canada.Grandson Jeremy wants to go to the CN Tower in Toronto.

My Weather Pixie

This picture doesn't have anything to do with the title.I just so happen to love black eyed susans.I took this picture 4 years ago when we took our grandchildren to The Tweetsie Railroad Amusement Park in Boone NC.We were on the train when I captured this picture of these lovely black eyed susans.Now back to my story......

I decided to get back to blogging last week.Didn't even realize that I hadn't posted anything since March.

Today I wanted to change things up some so I went and got a new template and background colors.Not too fond of the color but thought I would give it a try.Will probably change it soon.

I noticed last week that my Weather Pixie is gone.I really enjoyed watching how Pixie dressed according to our weather.Little things like that give me such pleasure:)

Did some snooping online and saw that Weather Pixie has been down since March due to server problems.Sure hope it gets up and running soon.I loved that little addition to my blog.

Hope Weather Pixie finds her way back to my blog soon:)

Lemonade Days

Anyone for some free lemonade?

Last week our town experienced three days of 90 degree or above temperatures.

We are called Nature's Air Conditioned City.Whenever the temperature reaches 90 or above free lemonade is served at different locations in our area.It is a special program that our local Chamber of Commerce started years ago.

We hadn't experienced a lemonade day in two years.Last summer was rather mild for our area.I enjoyed it tremendously.I'd much rather have the summer days in the mid 70's to low 80's.That is typical for our mountain area.

Three summers ago we experienced I believe 18 lemonade days.That was one hot summer.Sure don't want to break that record.We had over 80 inches of snow this past winter and broke a record.Sure don't want to break a record for heat in the summer!

More Pictures of Bub

These are two more favorite pictures of Bub.The top picture is Bub in the fenced in area at the far end of our back yard.I was waiting for him to want to return to the house so I took some pictures while waiting.

The second picture was taken this winter.Bub loved the snow.It didn't bother him that he had to work harder to walk in it.What fun it was to walk him to that back area,not!

In Loving Memory of Bub

Our dear dog Bub passed over "The Rainbow Bridge" on June 22nd.He was 12 and soon to be 13.We adopted him from the animal shelter back in November 1998.They thought that he was about a year old then.

The bottom picture was taken when Bub was about 1 1/2.He looks a little spoiled doesn't he! He loved sitting and sleeping on the love seat when in the living room.

Ken says that Bub was my dog.In all reality that is probably true.Bub slept on the floor at night on my side of the bed.He would also cry and whine and look out the window for me whenever I went somewhere by myself.He was always so happy to see me on my return.The funny thing is that Bub did not react like that whenever Ken went somewhere by himself.

The top picture is Ken walking Bub in the snow this past winter.I included that picture since Bub loved the snow.We have a fenced area in the far back of our yard that we let Bub run around in and do his business.He loved running and jumping in the snow back there.When we first got Bub we thought that would be a nice area to let Bub stay in and enjoy some time running around.He wouldn't have it.We tried a few times and he cried and whined when we left him.So,we would take him back there on the leash and wait for him to have his fun and then bring him back inside.He did not want to be far from us.

Our two grandchildren loved Bub.Our grandson can't wait to get another dog.We told him that we would go to the animal shelter in October to look for another dog.He is really excited about that.We have two trips planned before then and didn't feel that it would be right to get a dog then to leave it in a kennel already.The funny thing is that my birthday is in October and our grandson wants to know if that will be my birthday present.If he wants to think of a new dog that way it sure is fine with me.

Bub...you are really missed!

March Coming In as A Lion

Thought I would write something about the month gone by and boy are we happy to see it go bye bye.I wasn't one bit surprised to see that I hadn't written anything in February.It was such a snowy month that we spent most of it inside and off of the roads.Needless to say there wasn't much to write about except for snow and more snow.

Our small city has broken its all time snow fall record.Not sure how much above we are now.We have now broken the all time winter snowfall record of 80 inches.That is one record that we never wanted to break!

I took this picture looking out our front door a few minutes ago.Schools are opening on a 2 hour delayed basis this morning.I am praying that the school buses and parents cars arrives safely since the back roads such as ours are still snow and ice covered.

Wait....news flash....the sun just appeared.Boy,oh,boy is that ever nice to see.The roads should be in much better conditions by the end of the school day.

There have been quite a few times in February that we spent inside days on end.The last string happened from last Wednesday to yesterday.We had a blizzard warning and a winter storm warning.Yesterday after shoveling our driveway once again we decided that we wanted to get out for awhile.After we got the driveway shoveled it started snowing again!

The new snow didn't stop us.We ventured out to Applebee's and had a wonderful meal.What a time we had getting back up our hill.We live on a hill and when it is snow and ice covered it can be quite a task getting your car up the hill.The snow plow had been through earlier in the day.We didn't have any problems getting down our hill going out to eat but coming back up the hill was a whole other story thanks to the new snow fall.

Glad we finally made it to our driveway but it was quite an ordeal since we got stuck a few times.Thanks to a car wanting by us they nicely made tracks in the road so Ken was able to follow the tracks of the car ahead of us and made it into our driveway.I felt bad for that car since they couldn't make it all of the way up the hill but made it to our neighbor's driveway just above us.They turned around slowly in our neighbor's driveway and came back down.We are so thankful that we don't live any further up the hill since a lot of people up that way really struggle to get their cars up the hill in these wintry conditions.I am sure some have bought 4 wheel drive vehicles since we do see vehicles going up our hilly street and not struggling.

More Snow

Took this picture with my new cell phone camera looking out our front door yesterday.I had the camera aiming down the street.We had 8 inches of snow which started around 5 on Friday.

We were under a Winter Storm Warning starting at 6 PM on Friday and it expired at 6 PM yesterday.Schools let out at 12:30 on Friday.

We are very fortunate that this is a light fluffy snow and that we didn't get any ice like the states south of us experienced.

Are we ever happy that the weather was so nice last weekend.We had rain and there was was heavy wind but we didn't experience either of those until our return home.

Last Saturday we left for an overnight trip to Charleston WV which is 100 miles north of us up the West Virginia Turnpike.Had to pay $6 in tolls each way to only go 100 miles each direction.The tolls went up last August.That is a sore subject for those of us that live in the southern part of the state and have to travel north to the state capital.

Our big adventure last weekend was to attend the Rascal Flatts concert at the Charleston Civic Center.The group is our 8 year old grandson Jeremy's favorite.He first got interested in them thanks to the movie CARS and the song Life Is A Highway which they sang in the movie.Jeremy enjoyed the concert as well as I did.The women behind us even commented that they could see how much he was enjoying himself:)

The opening act was Darius Rucker.Really enjoyed his country songs which we could understand.When he sang some former Hootie and The Blowfish songs hubby Ken and I had no idea what he was singing.Jeremy didn't care for him and wanted him to stop already and bring on Rascal Flatts!

Had a nice time in Charleston.Visited their indoor mall.Jeremy enjoyed the escalators and elevators since we don't have any in our area.We were on the 8th floor at our hotel.Jeremy loved the elevator ride in the glass enclosed elevator.Jeremy is already talking about wanting to go back to Charleston and do more exploring.He wants to see the gold domed state capital building:)