Sunday, July 20, 2008

This is the week that Betty leaves for Hawaii, so we celebrated my birthday today. She leaves from Mason City on July 25th early in the morning. This afternoon she came about 4:00 and picked me up and we visited Grampa in the Care Center for a while (he was sleeping so we had to wake him up) and after we visited we went to Waverly to Godfather's Pizza place and met Leah and the kids there. Kyle was wearing his Hawaiian shirt that his Great Grama Gamunday made him. That is his favorite shirt! Katelyn was wearing her Hawaiian necklace that I gave her last week. Shelby and Rachel were both wearing their favorite shorts and summer T-shirts. They are sure cute kids!! We all enjoyed pizza and had cinnamon streusel pizza for desert (that was my birthday cake) last week we celebrated Kyle's birthday at the Pizza Hut. We have had a lot of rain lately and hot, humid weather. You can see the corn growing and the beans are covering the ground where our corn field was destroyed with the wrong spray. We do have one patch of corn that did not get sprayed and it is really getting tall. I have lots of new flowers coming out now around my house so I am glad to be out in the country where I can enjoy the country scenery. Betty brought me a new outfit today to wear to Trisha's wedding on August 8th. It fit perfectly! Betty is a good shopper and knows just what I like. That was a nice birthday present! Now I will have to get some new shoes to go with it. You will probably see us all in the wedding pictures in a couple weeks.

The other night I was reading Erin's blog and it was so interesting. She told all about getting locked out of her house. It was just like reading a book and so exciting. I'm glad she finally got in and didn't have the baby before she got back in the house. Ha Ha Maybe you had better put your house key around your neck, Erin, until after the baby comes anyway! That sure made an interesting story anyway. I always kept an extra key at my house for Betty's kids. They were always getting locked out of their house in Shell Rock when they were going to school. Bill locked car keys in the car on the first interview he had when he was going to UNI. He probably doesn't like me telling that.. I remember he called home and we had to take a key to him. ( I think it was some place close to the Waterloo airport). I have a friend who has had to call a lock smith two or three times because she lost her car keys.

You probably won't hear from me again until after the big wedding. We will be anxiously waiting to hear when our new great grandson is born. That will be #13 great grandchild. Wow! I wonder if he will be born on my birthday, July 27th?? LOVE; Grama Neal

ERRORS IN MY LAST BLOG HA HA

IN MY LAST BLOG I NOTICED I MADE SOME ERRORS. THE ONE THING I WANTED TO CORRECT WAS THE SENTENCE WHERE I WAS TELLING ABOUT THE FIREWORKS IN CHARLES CITY. I SHOULD HAVE SAID I DON'T KNOW HOW BAD THE 37 PEOPLE WERE HURT INSTEAD OF HEARD. I TRIED TO FIND THE PLACE ON MY BLOG FOR CORRECTIONS, BUT UNFORTUNATELY I DIDN'T FIND IT SO THERE ARE A FEW ERRORS, SORRY ABOUT THAT. WHEN YOU GET TO BE 88 YEARS OLD THAT IS A GOOD EXCUSE FOR MAKING ERRORS. RIGHT? LMN

(I made the correction for you. Now we just need to work on the ALL CAPS :) --Bill)

Sunday, July 6--Summer Update

Betty was just here helping me with my blog. This was a busy day for me. My friend picked me up this morning for church about 8:30 and took me down to the care center for church. I still play the keyboard and today we sang patriotic hymns since it was 4th of July last Friday. It is quite a job getting all the people to church in their wheel chairs & there are volunteers who come and do that every Sunday. I always play a lot of music before church starts. I have known the minister and his wife for years, they are special friends of mine. He is also a volunteer and doesn't get paid, but this is his mission work.

After church I went to see grampa, but he was asleep, ever since he got out of the hospital recently he has slept a lot and is on oxygen. I went with my friends out to a nearby restaurant and we enjoyed visiting and had doughnuts and pop. This afternoon Betty came and we went down to the care center and played Uno with grampa for about an hour. He seemed to enjoy that & helped pass the time for him. Betty brought me home but didn't stay long because it looks stormy. She helped me pull some weeds in my garden first. We really need rain to make the soy beans in the field grow.

Probably you dad told you the man who does our farming put the wrong spray on the corn field and killed all the corn. The farm manager hired a young guy to plant 3 rows of soy beans between the corn rows and they are coming up but need rain. We have had tornados, floods and our own personal disaster of the man who does our farming make a big mistake and put the wrong spray on our corn. It looks terrible and I have to look at it out my picture window all the time. Hopefully the beans will grow fast and make the field green again.

We got Erin’s picture today and I agree with all her friends, I’m glad it's her instead of me, but of course it will all be worth it soon. Do you suppose Avery will be born on my birthday, July 27th?

I will be 88 years old and I have never seen so many disasters in Iowa as we have had this spring, tornados and floods and wrecked roads we can't drive on and lots of detours. It is going to take a long time for lots of these towns to recover from all these disasters, plus new bridges to build, etc.

Tomorrow I meet with 3 other ladies for lunch. We all graduated in 1938 and get together once a month. I also belong to the "red hat club". We had a shower for Trisha at Cindy’s house a couple weeks ago. Cindy and Mike fixed up our old house in town so nice. I wish you all could see it!! Trisha is busy getting ready for her wedding in august. We all have lots of fun when our family gets together. They had a disaster at the Charles City fireworks. They said it was like a war zone at the end. The fireworks exploded and 37 people were hurt. It was lucky Trisha and Jason were not close to the fireworks, but watched it from the distance, they knew something bad happened at the end. It may be on the national news. I don't know how bad people were hurt. I watched the fireworks in SR at Cindy’s house and they were beautiful and the weather was perfect for both the parade and the fireworks.

Hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July celebration!

Sunday, July 6th, 2008 - Summer has arrived!

This is a test to see if I can get it posted. The last one didn't seem to work.

My First Post on My New Blog

This my new blog for 2008 and Bill is here from Hawaii so he can get me started on it. I don't have a lot of new news. You will be able to tell what we've been doing. I'll write more after we visit Grandpa at the care center.