Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice

Jessica, Opening gifts

3 months and going strong

The Telemetry gang represented

What are little girls made of? Sugar and Spice and everything nice--until they are wet, fussy, messy or hungry! But they are Oh, so-o-o cute! Jessica will soon have a little girl to spoil, and so of course--we had to have a shower. Her husband is a doctor, so the shower was given by his partners wife and another doctor--Diana--who held it at her home.

I guess I have a little bit of a competitive spirit, because I won one of the games we played. Then of course, it was time for gifts. I am SO glad I'm past the stage of taking care of babies! However, it is really fun to see all the cute little outfits and new stuff they have for babies these days. I certainly wouldn't mind having a grand-baby to play with once in a while, but I don't think that's going to happen. I may have to find one or two to adopt.

The little guy in the middle picture is 3 months old. His mom is also a nurse on the unit where I worked, so we had a shower for her not so long ago. He's a cutie and was very good and contented at the shower.

I'm very happy for Jessica. My advice to her was to just thoroughly enjoy the baby--they gorw up SO fast! They have one boy and 3 girls already; her son said since it was another girl, he might have to go and live somewhere else! It was a very fun shower--I hadn't been to a baby shower in a long time.

Embracing the Sweat!

This past Saturday my husband, Lynn, and I went to Ohio to do some outdoor work on my Dad's farm. (He passed away in June, and we eventually want to sell it--when the market is better). There is a huge yard around the house and barn that needed mowing. Also, there was lots of brush, scraggly bushes, weeds, etc up around all of the buildings. It looked a little overwhelming to me,but we just started, one building at a time.

I had just retired from my nursing career on Thursday. To celebrate, Lynn bought me 2 pair of work gloves--what a guy! In his defense, I had told him I would need some gloves to go work at the farm, so it wasn't quite like it seemed. It did make for some laughs, however.

The tree by the smaller building in the picture was a walnut tree, and all the walnuts had fallen on the ground. So my first job was to pick up all the walnuts, and then we cleared away all the brush and weeds from around that building. We started a fire in a depressed fire pit in the back yard, and ended up burning brush most of the day.

I started mowing yard, while Lynn was weed-eating, clearing brush etc. I mowed some of the yard by the house, and over half of the barnyard. Let me say, I wasn't quite used to such outdoor activity. Thus the title of this blog--embrace the sweat. That is a phrase I got from my sister Brenda; she has a broken leg and her physical therapist told her it was a good thing to embrace the sweat! Easy for her to say!

I really wish I had thought to take some "before" pictures of the buildings. Suffice it to say that it was quite a mess, and by the time we finished, the yard was mowed, and the barn and 2 other buildings were cleared of weeds and brush.

We started about 10:00 am and finished about 5:30 pm with about a 45 minute break for lunch. We headed to the Barn Restaurant to eat some supper. I bet they wondered at their clientelle--we looked pretty dirty and scruffy. They were gracious and didn't say anything so we had a good meal and then headed for home. What a day! These past 2 days I've had aches and pains from muscles that had forgotten how to work. Guess I'll have to give them regular exercise to keep them in shape--now that I'm "retired".

A Time to Celebrate

The Cousins at Applebee's

Sometimes something that starts out small seems to just grow and expand. Such is the case with the "little" retirement lunch that we were planning for my retirement. Two other cousins, Carol and Barb actually retired this fall from teaching as well; so back in July, Carol said, "we'll have to get together for lunch after you retire". I was actually planning to retire Sept. 30th but ended up working for another month, and officially retired on Oct. 30th.

I told Carol I would be available on Friday, October 31st, if she wanted to get together. We asked Barb, of course, as she was also newly retired. But then we decided we might as well invite siblings if they wanted to come. WELL, as it turned out we had 9 out of a possible 14 Gisel Girls cousins at lunch at Applebee's on Friday. (We actually have 13 girls, but we adopted Carolyn, a cousin-in-law). We apparently have some die-hard party goers in our group who won't miss a party if at all possible. My sister Brenda arranged to be there from Wheaton, Illinois. Then, much to our surprise, my cousin Dee came all the way from Arthur, Illinois just for our lunch celebration!

What a fun time we had! We ate and talked, and talked, and laughed and laughed. Fortunately Applebee's wasn't extremely busy, so I don't think we made a total nuisance of ourselves. We arrived at 12:00 noon, finally left the restaurant about 2 pm, but we stood in the parking lot and talked for about another hour. I received a balloon, and several cards, and I just really felt very special.

I'm already working on trying to find another occasion that would warrant getting together for lunch. Now, at least, if something fun-to-do comes up, I won't have to worry about my work schedule. Life is good!

Retirement is a Reality!

It almost seems surreal--I went to St. Joseph Hospital for my last day of work as a nurse! I don't know what I expected to feel but I have had mixed feelings. I've really gotten to know the nurses I work with and have developed friendships with them. It's going to seem kind of sad not to be seeing them on a regular basis. However, after having worked a total of 44 years in nursing, I am so excited to finally not have a work schedule! It means I won't have to worry about working holidays, or how I'm going to get to work in the snow; it will give me the flexibility to spend time with family and friends and go on little trips without worrying about if I have enough vacation days.

I can't believe that I didn't remember to take my camara to work today! I was going to take some pictures of co-workers; also they had a really nice lunch for me and a gift. Once again, I missed a blogger's photo op. I promised to keep in touch, and who knows, I may really miss it and go back to work on a very limited prn (as needed) basis.

After work today, my wonderful hubby took me out to eat at one of our very favorite restaurants--'The 9-Mile Restaurant". I had fish(Cod) and he had barbeque ribs. They have a really good spinach salad and we also had baked potato. It was yummy.

So, as you can see, I've already started to celebrate. I think this is only the beginning, as we are having a Gisel Cousin retirement lunch tomorrow in Ft. Wayne. There will be 7 of us, including two teachers who also retired this fall.

So many people have asked me what I'm going to do. For starters, I'm getting involved in a teen mentor program through our church; I have organizational and re-decorating projects here at home; and I want to do some scrapbooking and maybe even some creative writing. (However, since I've started blogging, I've decided I'm not a very creative writer. Some of the blogs are written really well and some are so entertaining. ) I guess I'll have to work on developing that skill. I do write some poetry and I'll probably continue to do that.

For now, I'm just excited about the prospect of having flexibility with my schedule and not having to get up at 5:00 am to go to my 7-3:30 job. Some have said that I will get bored, but I can't imagine that happening. One of these days, I'll probably wonder how I ever had time to go to work!

Faith Foundations

I feel so blessed and truly fortunate to be able to worship in the church of my choice and to meet openly with other believers. Sunday in our S.S. class we had a regional missions director who was telling us of the opposition that many of our missionaries face. Then last night in church we had a missionary to Israel (He is of Asian descent--Ed Kim). You wouldn't think it would be difficult to talk about the gospel in that country, but in fact Jews who accept Christ are persecuted and missionaries there also face much difficulty.

In our Wednesday night services our pastor is doing a series on Faith Foundations from Hebrews 11. This past Wed. night it was about Noah. I don't think I had ever really considered how much faith it took for Noah to build the Ark.

• He trusted God for what was Unprecedented--there had never been rain, much less a flood, and certainly not an Ark--especially considering its dimensions.
• He took a stand when it was Unpleasant--he overcame discouragement & criticism; also the project took a very long time and he had to finance it.
• He gave a witness when it was Unpopular--In Genesis it says he was a preacher, and was no doubt preaching and witnessing while he was building.

God will put us into situations where there is no precedent or parallel established. I know I have faced some challenges with my adult son, and I really didn't have any previous experience to draw upon to deal with some of the issues. But God is faithful and all He wants is for us to be faithful and to trust Him with all of the situations that come up in our lives.

I guess you've now had my Monday Morning Message. Thanks for listening.

At the Drive-In

Sometimes when you are mid-life (or a little older) you have to get a little crazy and do something you might have done in your teens. This was the case when our S. S. Class planned an outing recently. We decided to go to the local Drive-In (A & W) for coney dogs and burgers. So we all drove up in our cool cars ( actually one couple did drive a re-built 1950's car).

We sort of took over the little picnic area; we laughed and had fun, and anyone else who saw us probably thought we were a bunch of silly old people! (We actually do have a few younger couples in our group) It was a really perfect evening for October in Indiana. (This picture is a little dark, but I wanted you to see the cute table)



I am usually the official photographer, but one of the guys insisted on getting a pic of my sweetie and I.

After enjoying our Drive-In experience, we went back to the church for a dessert pot-luck. We had so many sweets--home-made donuts, cheese cake, brownies, lemon cake, etc. We enjoyed a great time of fun, food, fellowship and friends. ( As you can see, we did have a really young one with us--the granddaughter of the lady in blue beside her.) As they say, A good time was had by all!

Day At the Auction!

Getting the ambiance!

Where's the flannel shirts?

I thought I was all ready for our big adventure. I hadn't been to an auction for a long time so I was really kind of excited. My husband's only advice was "don't raise your hand or nod your head!" After we arrived, we realized we were unaware of the dress code. It was a mostly male group of bargain seekers and we sort of looked out of place, as we didn't have a farm cap and a flannel shirt. (Since it turned out to be in the mid-80's I was glad I didn't have flannel!)

The sale started at 9:00am and we thought we'd be done by noon. However, they started the sale with a lot of small equipment (and stuff that looked like junk to me). They did have some intersting looking items, and we were thinking maybe we should have gotten a bid number.

The Case 411--Dad's Work Horse

My good-looking siblings with the Case.

At about 11:00 we were told it would be another hour until they started selling the tractors, so we headed to the Home Restaurant for a quick lunch, then hurried back so as not to miss any of the excitement.

There were really a lot of people at this sale. It was billed as an antique tractor sale, and there were probably around 100 tractors for sale. I was amazed. I tried to get a picture of the row of tractors, but it didn't turn out. There were 2 rows with approximately 50 tractors in each row. Our beloved Case was about in the middle.

We were getting a little nervous, as some of the tractors that we thought would sell for a fairly good price went for a song. When they finally got to our tractor, the auctioneer, Bob Frey, said "this is a Case 411, built in 1955; it has new rubber, and the engine was re-built several years ago at 4-County" then he paused and said, "Oh, this tractor belonged to Walter Gisel?! He was one of our good local boys, let's get the bidding going" There were 2 parties that were definiltely interested in the tractor, which was good for us, because they kept bidding each other up higher. We were very pleased with the final outcome, $2300. (Yoder & Frey had told Lowell, before the sale, that it was probably worth $2500-$3000).

We decided Dad would be very pleased; he probably knew that we kids wouldn't take care of the precious Case as it deserved to be cared for; so it's good we could sell it to some one who will love it and take care of it. We know that he often went to Yoder and Frey auctions, so we felt we made a good decision for us and for him.