Dear Kirk & Carol & Kido's Those pictures are priceless ~~~ That little toddler is a prize picture award winning model !!! The picture is out of this world.... Love the Sled...price tag and all!!! Adore the handmade by mother Carol Quilt !!! that precious little adorable smiling face tells it all..... This is the life for me !!! He says !!!!! Thank you sooooooo much for sharing !!!! and Jeannespines.... LOVE YOUR PICS ALso !!!!That bird house is awesome! we have lots and lots of snow here in ILLINOIS but it does NOT seem as beautiful here in the city... as these pics.... guess it makes me miss my oldddd...120 acres in OKLAHOMA ! But NON SQUAWKING FLIGHT>>>> I'm trying to bloom where I'm planted.... It is God's will I am where I am just for TODAY!!! who knows what this NEW YEAR 2008 ~ will bring...... God Bless YA'LL H A P P Y NEW YEAR 2008 !!! see Ya when I get there !! sigh*** ~~~~~~ Susie

Suzie, You never know, she might get a thundersnow storm. We've had a lot of them in recent years. I grew up in Texas just about 80 or 85 miles south of where we now live in Oklahoma, but I'd never even heard of thundersnow until we moved here. I won't say we have thundersnow here at our house every year that snow falls, but probably about every other year. We had it last year, and we've already had it this year. Jim Cantore was very entertaining the other night. I'm sure a lot of that is part of the "show" he puts on for the camera, but I also think he was shocked to see thundersnow that far north. The other weather phenomenon we have here that I don't remember having in Texas is derecho winds. The first one we experienced here came during the night with 60 mph winds and hit the house so suddenly and so hard while we were sleeping that we thought a semi-truck or an airplane had hit the house. I also had about 20 flats of plants on the screened-in porch (so it must have been April) and we had to run out and bring them all into the house because the temperature plunged probably 30 degrees in 10 minutes when the derecho wind hit the house. I think we've experienced 3 or 4 severe derecho wind storms at our house since then. The one I remember best, the local met on the TV news at noon told us it was coming and told us if we went outside 5 or 10 minutes before it was due to hit our area, we'd hear it coming like a "mighty rush of wind". Of course, Tim and I went outside 10 minutes before it was s supposed to hit and went down to the road so we'd have a clear view of it coming by looking up the roadway (too many trees around our house). Sure enough, a few minutes later it came roaring towards us like a freight train (we could hear it for a minute or more before we could see the blowing of the vegetation begin) and we went from clear skies to dark grey ones in about a minute as the wind blew through and the temperatures plunged. The other one I remember was a severe derecho squall line with multiple bow echoes accompanied by tons of lightning. This time, the TV met kept cutting into regular programming to warn that anyone working outside needed to get inside by a certain time. Our barn-style detached garage was being built then, and the buys working on it were welding steel beams together. I talked with them about the weather and convinced them to heed the warnings, get down off the structure, put up all their tools and head home. They literally were driving down the driveway when the derecho hit here and the first raindrops started falling, and we sure did have lightning! I was glad they weren't up on that metal framing when it hit. You've got to admit, Oklahoma's weather is never, ever dull. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Facts About Derecho Windstorms

Here, I plant out the frost-sensitive stuff the 1st week of June. But all of May, I collect a huge amount of grass clippings and stockpile them by the veggie garden, so when we get a forecast below freezing, I go out and make a huge heap of clippings all around the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. I'd say I have to do it every other year. Then there was that one year, we got down to 17º on June 22nd, and in spite of everything I did, it all froze off, but I managed a decent harvest anyway. But that was the year the acorns froze, and the bears decided that the local 'hood was way easier to find food in than up in the hills, and a resident population is now firmly established.

Here is a tip from my mother and her sister. They went and had a colonoscopy a few years ago and got the bad gas pains. To take care of the "problem" they were instructed by their doctor to get on their hands and knees and put their head on the floor with their butts in the air and let nature take its course! Looks funny, but they both said it worked for them! Picture two older women doing this together so they could finish the day shopping at a mall! Hey, it worked for them, you might give it a try!