It is Spring, kind of

I know I am late but Happy New Year.  This year has already started off  - busy - if not well.  The year was 2 days old when my Mother died and 4 days old when we had her funeral.  I started to say buried but she was cremated so we didn't actually bury her.  The funeral was rather different but ended up being fine.  She would have approved, I think.

Susie, Karen and I had the most bizarre shopping trip during that time.  Mama and Belcher had decided on their chose of funeral, many years ago.  At that time they had picked out an urn.  Flash forward to the time to use it and we couldn't find it.  They had just moved and we went through boxes and closets and we just couldn't locate it any where.  What to do?  We went shopping!  We went to Hobby Lobby and wandered around the store looking at vases.  Karen, who had gone through this earlier (her husband, 2 years ago) kept saying "no, not big enough", " no, the mouth wasn't large enough" and so on through the store.  We finally came down to 3 and we made our choice and went back to the house.  As we all gathered around the dinner table to eat something, there it sat in the middle of us.

Flash forward to mid-January and Shelly and Jason are flying out the door to fly to California to adopt a little girl they didn't know they were going to adopt!

Bob is looking for another job and will be here in Houston on the 21st and Cyndi and Jeremy are looking to interview with other schools, as well.  Everything seems to be in an upturn.  I hope 2009 calms down and runs a little smoother from now on.

We heard that two members of our Ward are in the hospital and have had major accidents in the last week.  With each one there was a great possibility they wouldn't survive.  One of them, a wonderful man in our ward was helping someone clear some land with his bull dozer and evidently was hit by a low tree branch and thrown to the ground.  Brother Caraway is one of the most caring men I have ever known.  When I had to go to the hospital in November, he came over and watched the kids while I was gone.  He is wonderful with the kids and has taught Glenn an enormous amount about our tractor and chain saw and how to live out here.  Our Ward is having a fast on Tuesday for him and Sister Lopez.

Spring has arrived here in Houston.  I took these pictures last week and am looking forward to the return of the green trees. I will get the pictures on soon.  I have new soft ware for my new camera and it is installed on the other computer.  It said it was installed here but doesn't want to save anything.