Flowers and Pets

It is such a beautiful sunny day out that I just had to take a few pictures of some of my flowers.







These purple ones are my Balloon flowers. Before the blooms pop open they look like a balloon. Pretty cool.












Here are my Dahlias. Always so bright and pretty.


















And here they are together in the middle of the flower bed.

Then there is the queen of the house.

Her name is Baby. We tried calling her Patches, but that didn't work. She answers to Baby, so what you gonna do??!!




We adopted her from the pound and she is the funniest thing ever, except when she decides it's time to play at 3:00 a.m. :}







My pictures aren't the best. She just isn't real good about holding still for me when I'm trying to take her picture.



<<<<<And this pic shows exactly how she feels about me taking her picture!!


If I could just figure out how to not get weird eyes. Ah well, at least you can see how cute she is!!

Blast From The Past

I never should have started going through the old picture album. Found some more pictures I'd like to post.

This is one of my favorite pictures. This was taken in 1982, the first Christmas after my dad died. I was 4 months pregnant with my son Frank.

There's me, about 27 years old, my mom was 64, and my brother Bobby, age 30.








And here's me with Bobby, 23 years later in 2005.

The REST of The Baby Pictures

Well, since I've embarrassed my own kids with putting their baby pictures on here, I think it's only fair to do the same to my step kids, don't you??

This is my step son Shannon in 1972 when he was around a year old.
















And this is his sister Shawn in 1974 when she was about 6 months old.

















Mission accomplished! All four kids have officially been embarrassed by me!! :)

Father's Day

I MEANT to post pictures on Father's Day and just didn't get around to it.

Here is a picture of my dad when he was about 8 years old. He was born in 1912.
Francis Henry Reiman born September 28, 1912 died July 16, 1981

This picture is of my husband Dan and his son Shannon. Can't tell they are related can you?? :)

NO MORE WHIRLYGIGS!!

If I never see another whirligig seed from a silver maple tree, it will be too soon! Whoever decided that there should be silver maple trees in our whole neighborhood should be shot. Every year we get so many of the whirligigs that our gutters fill up along with the flower beds and it takes days to try to get them all cleaned out. Our front yard looks like it snowed seeds. Almost can't see the grass!! I spent a good part of the morning already cleaning out gutters, and that was just in the front of the house. I haven't even started on the gutters on the back side of the house or the flower beds either. The old body only takes so much bending, stooping and reaching at a time anymore.
Ah well, just needed to vent some before I go back out and work on the mess some more.
At least it's not raining today and it's only about 70 degrees right now, so it's really pretty nice out.

GTA Sweater Drive

Every year GTA has an annual sweater drive. Most of the members concentrate on making just sweater outfits during this time period so we can have plenty of them to keep the babies warm! This year the drive runs from June 1st to August 31st.
These are pictures of sweaters I have done so far for the drive.



The red, white and blue one is for the 4th of July. The picture on that one didn't turn out as well as the others, just couldn't get the detail to come out right, but at least you can tell it's red, white and blue!!

Sometimes you get tired of doing just sweaters so I made a striped crib blanket to go with this light sage green sweater just for something different to do.

I made this cute little sunsuit just for fun.

Mindy's Turn

Well, since I embarrassed Frank with a baby picture, guess it's time to give equal billing to his older sister, Mindy. Here she is, about 18 months old. Love ya Miz!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRANK!!

Today is the 26th birthday of my son Frank. He is my youngest child. Here is a picture of him when he was about 1 year old. Isn't he a cutie??!!

Now that I have embarrassed you Frank :) hope you have an awesome birthday!

Love you lots!

Happy Mother's Day!!

Happy Mother's Day to all!! It is an extremely rainy day here in eastern Iowa with lots of wind.Could be worse. I remember one Mother's Day when the kids were young where we had tornadoes in the area!


Here is my mom, who is no longer with us. Wish the picture was better, but we don't have very many pictures of her. She just never liked having her picture taken.


Elva Crescentia Pool Reiman born: June 12, 1918 Died:February 12, 1993 (Picture taken around Christmas, 1990)

Bettis

This is my son Frank with Bettis, my daughter Mindy's rottweiler.

The Grandkids

Chase, Landon, and Carlie

Tribute To ROSCO 1986-2008

This is a picture of my big guy, Rosco.
He passed away on January 3, 2008 and I miss him every day. He was 22 years old.

His History
Rosco was born in 1986. We never knew exactly what day so we just used New Years Day as his birthday every year.
Rosco became a part of our family when he was 8 years old. He originally belonged to a lady that my husband worked with. When she found out her children were allergic to cats, she knew she had to find a new home or have him put down. :( That's when he came to live with us.

When Rosco was born he was the runt of the litter. He had to be hand fed by bottle. He grew up to be 16 lbs!!

Rosco had a pretty unique personality. We jokingly always said he had to be at least part dog because of the way he acted. He was definitely king of the house!

He was never selective about what he ate. If you were eating, he was supposed to be eating. His favorite foods were fried chicken, taco pizza, cheese, cheese puffs, potato chips, salmon and MILK. He had to have his milk, every morning.

Every morning he would follow me down the hallway (meowing all the way) to get his fresh milk for the day. You weren't allowed to pit stop at the bathroom either, just because you just got up! All was well if Rosco got his milk.

Rosco never took any crap off of any other animals we brought into the house either. He always let them know right away who was the boss and they were in HIS house.

My daughter had a 135 pound Rottweiler named Bettis (yes, for Jerome Bettis of the Pittsburg Steelers) and he KNEW Rosco was the boss. When Bettis was a puppy, he always wanted to play with Rosco. Nothing doing. Rosco would just give Bettis' nose a good boxing, hiss nastily at him and walk away. Bettis finally got the message.

Many a time I believe Rosco was teasing Bettis. When Bettis would want to go down the hallway to go to bed, Rosco would stretch out in the middle of the hallway. Bettis would have had to step over Rosco to get to his bed. Well, that wasn't happening! He knew he would get a good smacking from Rosco if he tried that! So, poor old Bettis would have to stay up and wait until Rosco decided to move out of the hallway, then Bettis could walk down the hallway to go get some sleep.

In 2003 at the age of 17, Rosco was diagnosed with feline diabetes. He was losing a lot of weight and peeing everywhere he wasn't supposed to. After putting him on special food and learning how to give him an insulin shot twice a day, things improved dramatically.

A lot of people would say if they had to mess around with the insulin shots, they would have had him put down. Not me!! He was my companion and a great little buddy. Because I took the time to take the extra care of him every day, he gave me an additional 5 years of his love. You can't ask for more than that!!

The day he died was one of the hardest days of my life. He was old, his lungs were filling up and he was having a hard time breathing. I gave him a pain pill to help ease his discomfort. When he died, his took his last breath snuggled up in my arms, being petted and told how much I loved him. Of course I cried buckets. I am glad he was able to pass in my arms at home.

Rosco led a long, adventurous, fullfilling life and I miss him every day.

I'm sure he is bossing the other kittys around on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

RIP little buddy.

Sweater Pictures

Here are pictures of some of the sweaters I have made with the Kelly's Sweater pattern.