Five on Friday

Pictures downloaded from my cell phone, in no particular order...

This is Bucky. He's a very-very-very good friend of my friend Don I met years ago. He pops up at random times in my life, when I'm least expecting it. These random pop-ups scare the junk out of me. He sent me a selfie just a few weeks ago. I actually exclaimed "OH MY WORD" when I opened the text. He was my phone wallpaper for awhile. Anytime I picked up my phone it was the same response. I finally changed it when someone in the quicky-mart asked me if everything was okay when I looked at my phone and exclaimed "OH MY WORD". Bucky.

 Christmas Eve 2014. Santa took a picture with my cell phone before he ate those cookies off to the left. You will read more about the cookies later. Mike's mom makes those stockings for family, friends, well, lots of lucky people. She learned to make them from her mother-in-law. Slowly but slowly (I have finally learned to knit well enough to hide my mistakes with the sewed on sequins) I am working to knit the stockings to carry on the family tradition. It's kind of neat that it was passed to a daughter-in-law and to her daughter-in-law.

 The famous frog rain slicker. Teresa passed this on to our family when Joseph was 3 years old. He wore it till the sleeves crept up his wee arms and then passed it down to Julie (sweet relief, she was JONESIN to wear it). This is Julie in her second year of wearing the coveted frog slicker, circa fall 2014. NOTE: Teresa's son James (freshman in high school next year, been taller than me for countless years) wore this slicker before passing it on to us...and who knows how many lucky kids wore it before him...Joseph wore it his first day of preschool at Bushy Park ES...I didn't take a picture of him walking in because I was so overwhelmed with joy and fear...the moment is permanently burned in the back of my retinas...I remember wee-preschooler-Joseph walking in line into school as Miss Katie (speech teacher) touched his shoulder, looked at me and laughingly said "He is so CUTE" then she rubbed his back as he walked past...I let out my breath...I knew he was in good hands.

 Mom in the hospital on 11/11/2014. She had started a new chemo and soon after I received the hospital phone call from Dad that he had woken to Mom having a grand-mal seizure. Scared, I drove to Waynesboro Hospital not knowing what would be going on when I got there. When I walked down the hallway towards her room, I could hear her familiar laughter. She was tired, achy, puffy...and somehow happy. I took this picture to send out to a few people to reassure them that Mom was okay.

Santa's cookies circa 2014 (featured in the Christmas Eve pic above). It was time to go to bed on Christmas Eve. A seven year old and five year old in our house wanted to leave Santa some cookies (a tradition known throughout, well, a lot of people have knowledge of this little ditty). In my typical Mom-of-the-Year fashion, I did not make fresh-baked cookies nor purchase said cookies for the jolly fellow who would be soon on our scene. Bless be I had met my dear friend Elizabeth a few days before...SHE had made fresh-baked crab sugar cookies. Bless be that Mike and I did not eat all said fresh-baked crab cookies in one sitting. Kids were thrilled to leave fresh-baked-crab cookies, with added Rudolph red nose gummies, for the fat man. Bless Elizabeth.