Beatin' The Polar Vortex Impact !

We (in California) are one of a few states that are escaping the icy cold from the polar vortex. On the other hand the house across the street is just covered with icicles hanging along the roof line -- put up yesterday . . .

It was a busy week for Gail who had two visitors for lunch this week and had two wonderful visits and is feeling warm & fuzzy after the reminiscing and catching up with current events.

The above collage captures some of the moments without being too intrusive, but wanting to document the events. And I get to enjoy some of the leftovers . . .

Dates For Next Week

Quite a few birthdays and several wedding anniversaries for folks from the tree:

Best Wishes to All!

A Bumgardner Cousin

This week I did wind up spending a lot of time in my maternal side of the tree -- specifically with the BUMGARDNER branch. I found several new cousins and a lot of interesting tidbits about some of them.

The information above pertains to a cousin that I never knew of before this past week. Her name is Anna Belle Bumgardner and if you click on the image you can see her lineage.

She is a 2nd cousin, daughter of Edward T & Grace Bumgardner and she married Wiley M Perkins and had, it looks like seven children. I never knew that I had Perkins as cousins. But they lived in -- where else -- Muscatine, Iowa.

And another interesting fact is seen from the 1936 Muscatine City Directory (above) that shows that Wiley makes his living as a "button cutter". A few posts ago we talked about Muscatine and the button cutting industry that so many of the population was involved with.

What will I find out next . . .


Flash from the Past (Gail's i.e.)

One of the benefits of Gail meeting with an old friend that she has almost known longer than any other friend is that they exchanged items that had meaning to each.

For Gail she received some photos from her past that she had not seen in a while AND some of the letters that she had written from way back when.

It is fun to share these types of things and it makes you wonder about "where all the time went"?

We will try to make it a point to schedule some possible other connections in the coming weeks with an eye to exchanging . . .


What's On Our Nightstand

Last night we finished the Carol Burnett book -- "This Time Together" and found it to be very entertaining, informative and quite emotional at points.

We both thoroughly enjoyed the read and purposely read smaller segments each night so as to keep the book going.

Tonight we will start a logical follow up to Carol's book with one by Tim Conway -- "What's So Funny?" Tim Conway was always and is always a very humorous person to say the least.

When Tim was on the Carol Burnett show along with Harvey Korman and the three of them did skits -- it was always side-splitting.

We are looking forward to this book and will probably mention it in future posts.


And Lastly

In a few days (10 or so) it will be Thanksgiving. We are just getting around to putting the left-over Halloween candy in a safe spot and now we are having to defrost the turkey for the big dinner.

About eight weeks ago we contracted to have the fence around our yard (and 5 of our neighbors as well) replaced -- of course the work will progress given that there is NO rain which is an uncertainty
at this point as it rained hard a couple of times this week and polar vortex or not it may rain next week as well . . .

So big deal -- fence or partial fence -- one fact remains:

So we can do the count-down and worry about getting our Christmas shopping done . . .

Saturday night -- the menu is "up in the air" surprisingly enough. See you all in a few!