IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHICKASHA

SNOW!
The week began with snow. It was never very thick or deep, but, at least on Monday, it was consistent and continual. By Tuesday it wasn't snowing, but it was just COLD. I'm talking 19 degrees plus a feisty wind...Brrrr! Analiese still wanted to go walking during these cold days, so I ended up wearing leggings under my skirt (yes, I walk around the park in a dress/skirt, it's after Seminary!). My legs and feet stayed very warm, but my nose and ears were chilled.

Analiese failing to act "chill" with the snow falling.

Lawn in front of the church across from the park

Our lawn.

To top of these low temps, our heater wasn't working. No matter how high we set the thermostat, it just wouldn't turn on! Tuesday morning, the house was 58 degrees inside. So our PM got a guy out to us late that morning to clean off the sensor. And then we had delicious heat!

By Saturday, the weather had gone up again and it was beautiful, somewhere in the mid-sixties. No coat day! Then the weather turned all around and Sunday morning was 29, never getting about 35 the whole day. Bipolar weather!

BOOKS COME ALIVE
Analiese participated in an activity for the local library this Friday. We've been going to meetings for the past month, planning, designing costumes, and figuring lines. It was a scavenger-hunt kind of thing, with people dressed up as different book characters sharing games and giving clues. At the end, guests would enter the local authors room to meet some of writers from Chickasha and surrounding areas. Analiese played the White Rabbit (of course) from Alice in Wonderland alongside another teen who was the Mad Hatter. They played very well off of each other and really had a good time.

Look at Count Olaf on the right. Her makeup and acting was terrific!

FRIENDS
In anticipation of Thanksgiving, I am grateful for friends. In particular, this week, I've had three friends reach out to me. I felt very blessed when I realized that I'd had so many people thinking of me. I think I really needed that.

One friend I had called about some Seminary business. She then asked me how I was doing and...it all came out. We ended up spending nearly an hour on the phone with her being so solicitous and trying to help. She not only promised her prayers, but said she'd check up on me in a couple of weeks to see how I was doing. She will, too.

The second friend is my ex-boss from the Altus library. She had gone to OKC for some training and stopped by to see me. I'd forgotten she was going to do that even though we'd texted about it the week prior. We just sat and talked and shared. She was the best friend I had made in Altus, and I really have missed her!

The third friend is a ward member in Altus, the one we call Angel Cousin. He called me Saturday and we talked for nearly an hour. Come to find out, he's been driving past our house there from time to time to see that it's being kept up! Our renter is moving out the end of this month, so we're needing a new one and he's trying to help us. What a blessing he is!

TIS THE SEASON
The Festival of Lights started Saturday evening. We didn't go; Ken is sick and I didn't want to face the crowds. But the whole city is ready. For this week's photo montage, I give you the hay bale art of Chickasha, Oklahoma. Try not to be too stereotypically amused by this.

The Walmart tree has been up since before Halloween!

Pardon the pole

Artists and sponsors

Analiese doesn't call this sculpture. I say it is because it's 3D.

Front and center on the main drag...Chickashan's are Christians!

PH - What little I remember from being little.

I remember moving around a lot. Dad was in construction and a site superintendent, so we moved as he worked on different sites. I even remember moving on a Saturday and I was supposed to have gone to a birthday party. My parents stopped at the party house so we could give the child a gift and we (me & Niles, I suppose) got party favors. I have little recollection of any of the places we lived in until we moved to Cerritos, California. I remember that place a little.

I know we lived in California first, then went to Texas. At one point, we lived in El Paso, close to the Mexican border. Dad was working on a job practically on the border at the time, several miles away - he had to fly home every other weekend - from where we lived (now my sister Kym was on the scene). My mom recalls taking us to the doctor for a checkup one time; the doctor thought we were anemic. Mom said, no, we were just white (as in, really Anglo-Saxon polar bear white). The doctor apparently saw a lot of Hispanic patients and we looked pretty pale in comparison!

Then, there was this experience my dad recalls:

I had been on the job a few days, when I called the main office in El Paso for something and Gracie, the receptionist, said “Your daughter is doing fine”. After my shock wore off she told me the whole story. The day I had left to drive back to Eagle Pass, Michele was sitting in the wagon watching TV and somehow fell out. This resulted in a broken arm. One of the HBC employees had given me his home number in the case my wife needed help and she had called him. He and his wife took her and Michele to the hospital to set the arm and his wife watched Niles and Kym during the ordeal. I called Linda and found that everything was under control, but she was glad when I got home that weekend since all the kids were sick and she needed my help.

What I remember from this incident is very foggy, but this is what I think (from my child brain) happened: We were watching TV and somehow Niles and I were goofing of (No!). You know how kids like to spin around in circles? I think that's what we were doing. I got dizzy and our little red wagon was somehow (?) in the livingroom which I conveniently tripped over. History will prove I am clumsy. I hit my arm on the end of the wagon and broke it.

I remember going to the hospital. They laid me on a bed/examining table and the doctor kept trying to get my to use my hurt arm to reach for a lollipop he had. I am not stupid; my arm hurt and I kept reaching for the sucker with my other arm. What happened at the end of that power struggle I do not know, but eventually I got casted and sent home. And I guess we all got sick. Poor Mom!

A FEW MORE PICS