We often get catering orders at the Asheboro airport for corporate or charter jets. They usually fax us the request and we make the arrangements to have the particular items delivered in time to load on the jet before the passengers arrive.

Yesterday, we recieved an order that was pretty spectacular - for a party of 6 leaving today: a tray of cold seafood - PER SERVING - 6oz lobster tail, 4 shrimp and 4 crab claws, 2 trays of sliced fruit, 2 trays of gourmet cheese & crackers. Oh, and 6 diet cokes.....

Here is the bill....













This what the stuff looked like....





I wish I was going on this trip!!









Forgot to include a photo of the diet coke - ha ha ....

Went to the Siler City Christmas parade last night - unfortunately, the photos were pretty dark. The parade starts at 7pm - all the local politicians ride down the street....and pretty much anyone else who decides to participate! The kids band marched playing Christmas tunes. A good time was had by all!











Here is one of our local Cubscout Packs.











And here is our band - they didn't have to dress in uniform - just Christmas colors.

Sorry for the long time between posts - we've been busy, I guess. We had a nice trip home for Thanksgiving. Ended up driving up instead of flying since the weather was just awful - wind and rain. Thursday actually turned out beautiful (a bit chilly, but nice) Here are some photos from dinner at Mom & Frank's Wednesday night.





Dinner was great, as usual. Mom & Frank fried a turkey and everyone brought yummy things to share. I brought the cranberry salad/relish that Duane's mom makes. I asked her where the recipe came from and she said it was her mom's recipe from Indiana. Teresa will have to change this to include some jello substitute, I'm sure!

Here's the recipe:

Cranberry Relish

1 bag fresh cranberries
1 large box cherry jello
1 cup sugar
2 oranges
1 can crushed pineapple

Put cranberries thru food processor. Remove seeds from oranges - put thru food processor until pulverized. (Yes, shred the peel too!) Mix together with sugar and set aside.

Make jello per package directions and let set up until almost hard.

Mix together with cranberries, oranges and pineapple. Keep refrigerated. Gets better with time!


We went to Duane's house for dinner Thursday afternoon. I forgot to get the camera out until dinner was over. This is the only shot I took:




We had an uneventful ride home (if you call Richard driving uneventful!!)

Love, K

Read all the way to the end of this!!


Yesterday, I was going to just do sandwiches or something for dinner...but Teresa inspired me - so I got out a bag of greens that one of my employees brought me...

I did my usual - just "fried" them with garlic and some olive oil....this time, I cheated and used a couple of spoonfuls of prepared minced garlic I keep in the refrigerator for just such instances.

It's amazing how much the greens decrease in size. An entire grocery bag full of fresh greens ended up being just one great big serving for me!!


I had to have something else to go with the greens. In keeping with the theme of veggies that were given to me, I cooked an acorn squash that Granny and Corty had given me last time I was in Asheville. I just punctured it a couple of times and cooked it whole for 10 minutes in the micro. Then I split it and took out the seeds - then just sprinkled powdered sugar and cinnamon....so I had a nice veggie dinner.




Now for the really good stuff!!










I decided I just HAD to do something with my hair....here's the before shot -












And here's the after shot....it's been a while since I had any "style" ....I kindof like it!

Love, K

Do lots of red berries on a holly tree mean a bad winter is in store??? I hope not!! If nothing else, it means I'll have plenty of decorating material for Christmas!!



When I loaded the holly picture onto the computer, this shot taken from our deck, was on the camera....don't know who snapped the photo, but it is kindof pretty...



It's not a pretty picture, but it is important to Robert! This is his new (to him) transmission....hopefully he'll be back in his Blazer soon. He's not happy driving our Ford F150 pickup. He says it doesn't turn or park easily. Hard to please, I'd say.

Gotta run! Love K

Hey, I forgot to upload yesterday's dinner photos....my neighbors, Dick and Lindy have a fall garden and let me share greens & turnips. Here is the arugula and turnips. I love the peppery flavor of the arugula - I 'd never heard of it before Lindy gave me some. I think they eat it raw in salad, but it's a bit bitter for me to do that. Lindy doesn't like turnips, so they've given me lots...




All I do with the greens is chop them up and boil them quickly. I use some olive oil to brown some garlic - then I "spin" the greens dry - and toss it all together in a big pan and just sear it a bit. I use stems and all - it steams really tender.

The turnips are just boiled with some salt...

This would have been a really nutritious meal - except I got out a bag of frozen garbage cookies and had 2 after dinner!! Oh well, they were yummy too!

Better go for now...love, K

Hey Teresa! Did you get a notice about the blogspot beta?

We've been pretty busy this weekend - I spent my weekly day off (I try really hard not to work on Fridays...) getting a "Senior Ad" ready for Robert's high school yearbook. These days, they sell the back pages of the yearbook to parents/grandparents who want to send a special message to their graduating child. I guess it's kindof expected, so I went on and put a 1/2 page together for Rob. (A full page was just too expensive...) They only let you use 6 photos, so I spent the day searching thru my albums and digital photos for photos that I thought Robert would find meaningful and representative of his life....wow, what a hard thing to do!! I'll upload the 6 I chose....not necessarily my favorites, but the ones that I thought Rob would appreciate.

The last one, with Duane and Robert kidding around after a concert didn't make it to the yearbook....but it's one of my favorites!
I also got to write a mushy little "we're so proud of you" note to him.

Friday night we went with Pat & Diane to our local mexican restaurant for dinner. It's a homey-but-clean kindof restaurant. All the wait-staff is male- and come to think of it, that's the way it is in most mexican restaurants....oh well - must be their custom. Anyway, the food is very good there and we've never had a bad experience, so we go pretty often. (Remember, the population of Chatham county is up to 25% hispanic....) We don't even need to look at the menu - we know what we want...I always get this dish called Pollo Tapatio. It is (of course) chicken - it's two breasts pounded flat - served in a sauce with cream, white cheese of some nature, sliced fresh mushrooms & sauteed onions, fresh spinach leaves just barely cooked served over rice & beans. I know you couldn't do the chicken - but the creamy sauce and veggies is just wonderful! We asked the waiter and he said that Tapatio is a "country" in Mexico. We looked it up one time and found that is like a big state down south in Mexico.

We were planning on going down to the boat for the weekend, but decided we needed to stay here and fix cars....plus Robert had scheduled another Eagle project work day this morning. It's kindof rude of us not to be here for that....

Notice all the shirtsleeves - it was absolutely beautiful here! It was 80 degrees again. There's a cold front coming thru tonight, so things will be a little more seasonal soon. I've still not turned the heat on - it got down to 29 one night, but the next morning was sunny and it heated up nicely.

After the Scout crowd left, the boys all worked on cars for a while - nothing's fixed yet - I think we'll be headed to the junkyard for a new transmission for both of them....oh well. I think I told you earlier that we've promissed Robert a reliable car for college - if we can patch the old Blazer together long enough to last till his birthday, we'll probably go on and give him the car then. You haven't seen Rich's car- it's a 92 Explorer - it has BIG tires and a frame on top to haul sporty things- like surfboards, kayaks, etc. It also has those KC fog lights. Anyway, we bought it cheap in April....and Richard is kindof a leadfoot - so I suspect the transmission just let loose & quit. Strange how this happened to both of them within a week of each other. I know it would be easier just to go on and buy them better cars, but I guess it's good for them to have to struggle with Duane to fix their old ones.

Oh - I fixed the time zone....I found it when I was editing my preferences. Better go -

Love, K

I think I got my Christmas present early - a new laptop! My old laptop had gotten a little "broken" - the screen didn't like to stay illuninated 100% of the time....something in the hinge was "loose" and it would occasionally blackout the screen....then I'd have to "fuss" with it to get the screen to come back. A real pain - and it was getting worse & worse. So, I shopped around on the Lenovo employee purchase site - yes, IBM employees get to take advantage of the Lenovo employee pricing - at least for now! I ended up getting a wide-screen Z60m model - I love it! It's really clear & bright. It also has a DVD read-write - which my other machine did not have. Haven't used it yet, but it will be nice if I want to.

So, I've spent the last couple of days transfering files and getting this machine set up the way I want it. Now the only problem is that my passwords aren't stored on this machine, so every website I visit that requires a password - I have go find info I haven't accessed in a good while.

We're supposed to go to the boat this weekend, but we may end up staying home to work on the boys' cars (is that the proper punctuation? plural possesive or something like that??) Both of their cars are having transmission problems - and we're going to have to make a fix/buy new(used) soon! Well, we've promissed Robert a "good" car for college - so that will be an easy decision. It would just be nice if we could eek out a few more months out of the old' Blazer!

How's that for exciting? OK, so not really....

That's all for now - later!!

Thought you might enjoy a view from home from the side door! I snapped these after I had lunch with Mom and Frank Tuesday. I think I was just a little late to catch the leaves at their prettiest. Pretty enough, though! I forget how graceful and relaxing gazing out at the hills in the distance can be! It never ceases to amaze me the difference I feel now when I come home....I never even thought about a "view" before I left home. Strange how absence does that to you.



And here is Grandma during one of her non-stop tale-telling sessions. I tried to record a little video of her, but she didn't understand that the camera would also take video. She just sat and smiled for the camera - I was trying to get her to talk, but she just got very confused - not very good for video!

She also continued to insist that she didn't like the sound of her voice recorded, so I guess we're going to have to live without that!



I had promised a few days ago to try to put a photo of Robert on one of his Eagle Scout work days...finally got the upload working - so here it is! He is required to provide "leadership" only for his project - he can't do the work himself. Here he is directing one of the Scoutmasters and another Scout concerning cutting/drilling the wood for his trophy case. I'll put some pictures on later showing the construction as it progresses.

Later!