Vera enjoys a Chick Flick?

That's right! For those of you know me well, you know I am NOT a Chick Flick type of person. However, tonight a group of ladies from church had a girls night out and went to the movie Mama Mia. It was a great movie. I highly recommend seeing this one!!!

Christmas 2004 - in Arizona

I got to looking through my photos and found some of when mom, dad and Neal helped Jeanette move to Arizona so she could stay with me for a little while. The move occurred during Christmas break. Neal had fun swimming on Christmas Day and, as the story goes, he enjoyed bragging about it to his friends when he returned to school. You will have verify that with Neal! During that vacation, we also went to the little town of Bisbee and took a tour of an old copper mine, which we all enjoyed.

The website for this mine is: http://www.queenminetour.com. If you ever happen to be in that area, I recommend this as a place to visit.

What do you get when...

You mix 110+ degree temperatures with numerous fires in the area?

THIS!!!

Believe it or not, this is NOT a cloud coverage. As most of you are aware, California has several fires burning and we have had about two weeks worth of this smoke. As the say on the news "If you can see you are breathing it." I am just glad that I do not have breathing problems like so many.

4th of July ... 2005

I got to reminiscing about the 4th of July activities and decided to post about a few years ago when the Smith family got together in 2005. Marie did a good job with the details of the traditions in Caliente (you can click on her link from my list of family and friends). Our tradition, as children, was to sleep out on the night of 3rd and wake up at 6:00 A.M. to the dynamite blasts and the fire sirens (which are actually old air raid sirens). Well, this year, I decided it would be fun to have all of us sleep out on our parents lawn this year, like we did as kids. I had long forgotten how cold the nights still got there (and as most of you know, I am the biggest wimp when comes to being cold). About 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning, I decided I was to cold and was about to go finish the night inside. I then had the realization, that it was MY "bright" idea to sleep outside in the first place and if I copped out and went in where it was warm, I would get severely chastised, so I decided it would be best, for my own welfare, to tough it out.
Here are a few pictures from that weekend. I have chosen not to show any close-up photos of the adults for fear of retaliation!

Is this what happens when you get woke up by dynamite at 6:00 in the morning?!!!