Category Archives: News

Oh Happy Day!

My extended family is overjoyed today because of the arrival of a new baby. Our new little niece was born this morning to my Brother and his Wife. It has been 22 years since the last niece was born and 16 years since the last nephew was born so this is monumental! So what’s an Auntie to do? Why go to the mall and shop at the adorable Janie and Jack to find a little something to stick in the mail today for our sweet little niece to wear. Since my brother and his wife are way to busy to check my blog I’m posting a picture of what I bought and am shipping off…

 

If you have never shopped at this store beware! My gift is more on the practical side but they have wardrobes to WOW at this store. So many adorable things…
Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Thursday Thirteen #18 ~ Oldest Operating McDonald’s

Welcome to my Thursday Thirteen. On January 15th I stopped by this McDonald’s to take some photos and gather at least 13 facts about the oldest-operating McDonald’s. I don’t have the facts numbered but I’m sure there are at least 13! Enjoy…

 

 

 

Roger Williams co-owner of the McDonald’s Restaurant at Lakewood and Florence Blvd., stands by the 64-foot neon sign that may be the only one left of its kind in the United States. William and Bud Landon opened the McDonald’s in 1953, and the business still remains under the original franchise agreement with the McDonald brothers.

 

The 1953 McDonald’s restaurant at 10207 Lakewood Blvd. (at Florence Ave.) is the oldest operating McDonald’s.

It was listed on the National Trust for Historic Preservations 1994 list of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

It was one of the first restaurants franchised by Dick and Mac McDonald, prior to the involvement of Ray Kroc in the company, and it still has the original “Golden arches” and a 60-foot animated neon “Speedee” sign.

 

 

For more Thursday Thirteen click here.

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Muddy Saturday Walk ~ Storm Watch So. Cal.

Here’s what our weather was like yesterday and what it’s suppose to look like today. Our muddy walk was on Saturday when we had weather very similar to Sunday.

This
Afternoon
Chance Showers. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 50%
Chance
Showers
Hi 58°FFalling Temperatures		 Tonight

Showers. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 100%
ShowersLo 44°F		 Monday

Chance Showers. Chance for Measurable Precipitation 30%
Chance
Showers
Hi 59°F		 Monday
Night
Partly Cloudy
Partly
Cloudy
Lo 39°F

We picked the rainiest weekend of the year to check out this huge empty area behind our condominium complex that’s going to look like…

 

this in a little less than a year!

I’m hoping to get to see some fun soccer just steps away from my back door. Besides all these soccer pitches they are also putting in 3 baseball diamonds on the far end.

Here are more photos from our muddy Saturday walk.

 

 

 

This was funny, no road here but there’s a stop sign and a street sign, hmmm?

I’m hoping they find a way to save this tree.

 

So is this what your dog’s paws looked like yesterday Kim?

Photobucket is holding all my photos I stored with them from 2007-2015 hostage. They have blacked out all those photos on my blog posts. OH BOTHER! I’m slowly cleaning up my posts.

Sad Day in My Family

Today we got word that our cousin Vera Bogdanoff had died of complications from an aneurysm she had a few months ago. She was progressing well but had complications from an infection two days ago. Alex is my father’s nephew, my cousin. They were Molokan like my dad but left the Molokan church years ago to follow Christ more earnestly as did my parents. Vera was one of my relatives on my dad’s side that I could relate to and enjoy whenever I was around her. She will be missed dearly. They moved recently to Texas just before she had her aneurysm to be close to one of their daughters. My parents were just in Texas over Thanksgiving visiting my brother and his wife and they all were able to go to the convalescent home and visit her. They sang songs in Russian to her and she cried and mouthed some of the words with them. It was a sweet time.

 

This is a photo from 52 years ago on their wedding day. They were married in the Molokan church. It is the Molokan tradition that the groom and his extended family gather on the day of the wedding for a blessing and then go to the brides family home to pick her up (this is where the bride leaves her mother and father and clings to her husband) and go to the church for the wedding. There is always a married couple chosen to be the bride and grooms chaperons/escorts (best man and maid of honor type deal) My cousin Alex is in the middle of this photo flanked by my Uncle Bill and Aunt Nora who were his chaperons. I’m the littlest one on the front row with the coat on surrounded by my siblings and cousins. My dad and mom are next to my Aunt Nora in the back. Molokans still dress like this for church, weddings, and funerals.

My parents will be flying to the Dallas area for the funeral. We know that Vera is with her Savior and rejoicing. We are praying for her 2 daughters and son-in-laws, grandchildren and her husband, my cousin Alex who will miss her dearly.

Photobucket has blacked out all my photos I was storing on their site and they are holding them hostage. I am working on updating my more than 4000 posts.

Washington Floods!

Oh my, oh my. I’ve been working all day with water problems. We do not have it as bad as our friends the Terreson’s. Here’s a picture of the water on their street today coming into their basement! We were there with you in 1996 filling sand bags and putting them at your garage doors. We’re hoping for the best for you dear Terreson’s!

 

I’ve been working on our basement too. After shop-vacuming up over 16 gallons of water I decided to just pull up the carpeting and padding because there was no way I’d be able to dry that carpet and padding without the tell tale mildew smell lingering forever. So here’s a photo of where carpeting used to be. You can still see the wet cement. Dan came home early from work to help me and Katie helped when she came home from school. I will not be driving anywhere for the next day or two as so many roads are flooded and closed. Dear is feeling bad being in California where it’s sunny and warm and not being here to help us…

 

The last time we had flooding this bad we were declared a disastor area. We lost our home because the damage from the flooding. A landslide behind our home compromised our foundation and the fix was going to be so costly that we’d never be able to afford it. (100’s of thousands of dollars) We gave our dream home back to the bank! We do not live on a slope this time around and we are happy about that. We will probably replace our carpeting in the basement with ceramic tile.

This is the slope in the back of the home we gave back to the bank in 1996!

This is from todays storms…

Keep us in your prayers bloggy friends. Counting it all joy….

Photobucket has blacked out all my photos I was storing on their site and they are holding them hostage. I am working on updating my more than 4000 posts.

New Presentation Up till December 26th!

 UPDATE: I encountered technical difficulites with the new header so I had to call Lana G! and she did this for me…Thanks Lana!!

Hello y’all I decided to change my presentation for the month of December. I’ll be going back to my other presentation on December 26th! I love Christmas time…

 

“Bless, O God, the little things

This Christmastide…

All the little wild things

That live outside.

Little cold Robins and Rabbits in the snow…

Give them good faring, A warm place to go.

Bless the little things who in

The forest abide

He, too, was just a little one

At Chirstmastide.

ht: Christmas Issue, Ideals, 1964

108 Car Pile-up on Highway 99 near Fresno, California

Our road trip to the Fresno area got complicated…

Dear and I left home on Saturday before dawn. We stopped for breakfast in Santa Clarita (hi Ryan, Michelle, and Jack!)

We continued north through the Grapevine after breakfast to get to Highway 99 in Central California. This is pretty much what Highway 99 looks like through Central California.  I took this photo at the city of Goshen.

22 miles North of Goshen on Highway 99 in Central California is where this horrible crash occurred. Thankfully we were a couple hours behind it. We came upon signs on the Highway that said it was closed. We pulled to the right and ended up making a u-turn to get off the freeway using an on-ramp at Manning…that was weird. We called Jim and Jeanie and got alternate directions to their house. None of us found out until late in the afternoon what a horrific pile up had occurred.

“Two people are dead after a massive 108-car pileup on Highway 99, just south of Fresno. The crash happened between American and Clovis Avenues. At least 39 others were injured. The crash flooded local hospitals with victims.”

They believe the accident was caused by low visibility because of fog. Thick seasonal fog known as “Tule fog” typically occurs in Central California in the late fall and winter. To read about Tule fog click here.

Clovis Avenue is the street we ended up taking to get to my cousins house.

Praying that God comforts those who lost their loved ones and that the ones who are injured will heal quickly and for everyone involved that they would be comforted and turn their eyes to our creator…

The northbound highway was still shut down when we headed back home to Southern California.

Hunter’s Moon Tonight ~

Tonight’s Full Moon is the Hunter’s Moon!

I hope to get a photo later tonight to add to this post tomorrow! This photo is the Hunter’s Moon at 6:35 P.M. Pacific Time. I’m wondering if the orange glow to it is because of the smoke here in Southern California. I’m still hoping to get a better shot later…

Tonight’s full moon is the Hunter’s Moon. It’s also the closest and therefore biggest full moon of 2007.

Tonight’s moon will be about 50,000 kilometers – or 30,000 miles – closer to the Earth than 2007’s most distant and smallest full moon, last April.

This October full moon is the Hunter’s Moon for the northern hemisphere. That’s the name for the full moon following the Harvest Moon in September. This October full Hunter’s Moon comes at precisely 4:52 a.m. Universal Time Friday. For the continental U.S., that means the full moon comes this evening or around midnight Thursday night, when the moon will be shining sky high.

At the same time – on the opposite side of the world in East Asia and Indonesia – this same full moon will be reaching its peak at noontime Friday.

No matter where you live, all of you will see a large and full-looking moon all night tonight. You’ll see the moon rising in the east around sunset, highest in the sky around local midnight and setting in the west around sunrise.

http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/51820/hunters-moon-closest-full-moon-for-2007

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes ~ California Fires Continue

We happen to live by the coast where all the smoke clouds from the Saugus, Magic, Castaic, Santa Clarita, Wood Ranch, and Moorpark fires are being blown to because of the Santa Ana Wind conditions. The clouds in the photos above are smoke clouds not storm clouds. The smell of smoke is heavy in the air and the ash is all over everything. We do not have any fires in our immediate neighborhoods we are only getting the side effects of the poor air quality because of the smoke. It seems that there has been some improvement as of Wednesday. There are still many fires that are not under control and many homes are threatened. We hope that when the winds die down all the fires will be under control. We’re continuing to pray and to be sorrowful for all the hundreds of thousands of people who had to be evacuated and the thousands who have lost everything…

California Fires!

Somewhat Wordless…

 

Pray for the Firefighters! Pray for comfort for those who have lost their homes in Southern California! The winds are suppose to die down by this afternoon, pray that they do.

2 Corinthians 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

For more WW click here.