Thirty Days of Gratitude - Day 18 - Sister

Christmas is coming. I cannot think of Christmas without thinking of my Sister, Bonnie. She was a lot of fun when we were kids, but she was especially fun at Christmas time.

One year, I remember that we watched from the doorway as Santa placed all of the presents under the tree. As soon as Santa and his helpers had left, we waited about three minutes. We went into the room. We rearranged things the way we thought that Santa should have done it in the first place. We proceeded to wake up everyone in our household. We continued by calling all of the neighbors until every light in the neighborhood was on.

When I was a young GI in Colorado Springs, Bonnie gave me a special Christmas gift. She knew that I loved to paint and that I had a blossoming interest in ceramics. She gave me a greenware nativity set. I enjoyed preparing it. I enjoyed painting it, and for more than 35 years, that nativity set has been the centerpiece in our holiday celebration to remind us about the true meaning of Christmas.

I grateful for my sister for her thoughtfulness, her kindness, and for her love of Christmas.

I got tagged by Danette

I got tagged by Danette and I didn't understand what that meant. She explained that she had tagged me to put the fourth picture from my file on an entry. I have lots of picture files, but this one was forth in one of the folders.

When we took this trip, we went with my cousin, Randy Vance to California. We stopped at Mesa Verde, the Grand Canon, Disneyland, Universal Studios, the Pacific Ocean, and San Diego. We visited my Sister, Bonnie. We visited my cousin, Gordon.

This picture was taken at the Grand Canon. Andi and Robert's shirts say "Generic Kid". I was wearing one labeled "Generic Male" and their mother was wearing "Generic Female". Randy was just wearing a regular old shirt.

The Girls In My Life

Larry, I tried this to see if I could create a slideshow visible by you. Can you see this one?

Our Disney Vacation

Years ago when our children were small, we decided that it was time to take them to Disneyland. My elilelpsy was still giving me difficulty so we decided that we would take someone with us to help us drive.

Randy Vance had just come home from his mission so we asked him if he would be willing to come with us to drive and to help us with the children at the amusement parks. He agreed to come, and we were off.

Randy had just come home from a mission in Scandanavia and he had developed a love for cheese. Everywhere we stopped he check out the cheese to see if there was some type that we hadn't tried before.

Along the way, we stopped at the Grand Canon. I was in awe at the magnitude of the canon. No picture or film can begin to describe the magnitude of that magnificent place! It begs to be experienced in person.

We stayed with Bonnie and Emery when we got to California. They were living in Torrence and Shandi was a tiny baby that had cholic. She cried most of the time that we were there. They took us to Redondo beach which was a beautiful plalce. I enjoyed the ocean, but I did not enjoy the sand in my swimming trunks nor did I enjoy cleaning the oil from our skin after swimming in the ocean.

The trip to the Disney theme park was a trip that I shall never forget!! Emery drove the lead car and we followed. I had never seen anything like the freeway through LA. Somehow we took an exit we shouldn't have. We took the next on ramp onto the freeway at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour.

The amusement park was quite an experience! There was a death on the monorail the day we were there. Some teenage boys decided that they didn't like the ride and got off it in the middle of one of the tunnels and then were hit by the next car through the tunnel.

Many rides were not available to me because of the lights and were not available to Robert because he was too short. We ended up waiting while Randy and Andi and her mother took the rides.

Both of the kids enjoyed "It's a Small Small World". They thought it was cool when the ghost sat beside them in the Pirates of the Caribean, but Robert didn't like it when the explosions in the water were too close to the boat.

Robert and I went into the Haunted mansion. We went into the elevator and the walls began to grow taller and taller, he reacted. He turned to me in all the courage he could muster and said, "Daddy, I love you, but I won't come back in here!"

Neither Robert, nor Andrea liked the costumed characters.

Now that Betty and I are in our second childhood, we think that it would be fun to go to Disneyland ourselves. We can't afford it right now, but we can both return to the memories we have of the times we did go.