We've adopted a new Christmas tradition for us, however, one that is not new at all!Christmas Tamales!A couple days before Christmas Terry makes dozens of tamales, we sample a few and freeze the rest for when the leftover turkey and stuffing get tired! Yum!I love new traditions!Christmas in the new kitchen was a blast! We had 26, yes, 26 people for a sit...

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Sorry this post is so late, but thought I'd start with the night before Christmas Eve. . . all through the house, the cookies were bakin' and Taylor shows up!We baked and baked and baked in my new oven and look how big my counter is!!Our WHITE CHRISTMAS EVE!Yeah! Snow! We headed out for mom's Christmas Eve and low and behold if a...

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Taylor is helping me out with a very special surprise for Christmas.I can't say very much except that it is priceless and I came across it quite by chance thanks to two members of the family (and one other).It became very complicated and required much finesse and gentle care, not to mention a bit of research. Thanks to Terry, too,who also was very...

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In the sunny LA 78 degrees, I send out greetings of sunshine and fair weather to the East Coast digging out of snow laden walkways, driveways etc.I decorated the front door, porch and am showing off my wreath sent to us by our contractor who completed our dream kitchen this summer! Thank you Mr. Bailey!And even got to decorating that poor tree that...

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It was pouring rain much of last weekend when we decided we had just enough time for getting our Christmas tree.The guy at the lot triple bagged it for us since it was flocked and so it would survive the ride home. Yeah!The guys brought it up the back deck to the living room and unbagged it.Perfectly dry and intact, the tree came...

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I came home last night to my house lit up eerily bright!No one else in the neighborhood had their house bright lighted. It was so wierd and spooky.I came in the house and looked out the front door to see what was going on and. . . couldn't see a thing for the blinding light coming from across the street! I found Taylor...

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Tonight I care for a teenager with a sign above her bed that reads "Hope".Her parents visit and plead for 1 and 1/2 hrs. for her to wake up.She does not.She is tired, they say. She is trying, they can tell, when her eyes flicker.God will heal her and she will wake up, they tell me.They believe, they hope.Her beautiful graduation pictures are...

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Taylor is taking PanAfrican Studies this semester. I benefit!Not only do I get to go to the theatre with him, he has another assignment to see "Precious", the new movie I heard is really great.So, last night we went downtown to the new LA Theatre to see "The River Niger". The theatre is really a complex of several small theatres, so there were...

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Sometimes it is the little things that make us feel great. For me, it is this tiny little closet in the hallway that makes myself feel terrific.It is our broom closet. Just a broom closet. . . but everytime I needed the broom, the mop, the dustpan, a screwdriver out of the tool box we keep in here, it would be a major...

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It all started with an inspection of the work being done on the property in LA that mom and Aunt Dorothy are supervising. We met Andrew, their property manager and he showed us all the progress on the house being renovated.The foundation was terribly uneven, so his contractor jacked up the house and placed new posts and beams under the foundation to fix...

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