I don't think I've visited this one, but it is interesting, so I'll have to start checking out these type threads more often.
Today has been a good day ! Bobby got the new water pump for the GMC and got it installed, so that should be working again. He has been driving our Ranger in the meantime while he was figuring out what was making the noise in the Jimmy and getting the new parts, and I have been staying home. The new kitten is doing great, and i wish I could post a picture of her here, she is so happy now and is becoming an inside/outside cat. We still have no clue where she came from, and she was only about 2 months old when she arrived on our porch, so I do not know why anyone would move away and abandon such a tiny kitten, or get her if they knew they were going to move. No one came looking for a lost kitten, so being abandined seems to be the only answer. My daughter called me from the Netherlands today and we had about a 2 hour chat, which we both love and never seem to run out of things to talk about. She is hoping to come home for Christmas, and she will be staying in her house here, which is where my oldest son and his wife are living while she is working overseas. My 80th birthday is in January, and she said she was going to see if she could stay and be here for my birthday, too, which would be awesome ! I have been doing the low carb and sticking to it pretty well, and it really helps how much energy that I have and also stops a lot of the arthritis aches and pains, so that is nice, too, and is good if I can spend some time with my daughter.
We had a nice Thanksgiving day today. Bobby and I enjoyed our simple meal of turkey, stuffing, and butternut squash, and then this afternoon my son and his wife came over and brought pumpkin pie and then we all sat and visited. My son brought his video camera and he asked me questions about places we had lived when they were growing up and about life when I was growing up. He has it all on video and is going to put it in a format so that he can share it with his family and brother and sister. I am glad that they are getting as much of our family history pieced together as we can get; so I think that this is a good way for us to do it. We have a shared online journal app and I have been writing stories for them as I remember and adding photographs when we have them; but the video should be even better, or at least is a good accompaniment. My daughter is going to be home for Christmas, so if they have more questions thought of by then, we will probably search my memories out some more.
After a week of walmart not having eggnog on their online order page, we went to walmart this morning because Bobby needed something from there; so I went to look, and they have all sorts of eggnog in the store. I am going to grumble when I fill out the little surveys we do after shopping. They only had one checker for the whole store again, even with holiday shopping going on. Today, my new slow cooker arrived, and my project is to clear out some of the kitchen gadgets that have been hiding out in the pantry room and not used enough to be worth keeping. Our neighbor is a Hispanic lady, and she seems to have a whole network of friends, so we are just going to pass along the re-homing box and let her keep or give away as she chooses. It is much simpler than loading everything up and driving down to the thrift store so they can sell it, and we know it goes to someone who needs it. It is warmer again, and we have even been able to open the doors and windows to let fresh air come through during the warmer parts of the day. The kitten comes in and out as she pleases, and the bigger cats watch her and have been peeking inside of the door, too. Only one is totally untouchable, the other two are okay with being petted when they feel like it, but not anything more than that, and are still apt to look and then run when they see me, unless I have a can of cat food in my hands, then they are all around me.
Another respite from the cold, warmer and rainy for the next few days. Next Sunday, my daughter is flying back home form the Netherlands for a vacation and we will spend Christmas together. My oldest son and his wife moved here for a better job and are caretaking my daughter’s house, so we will all be there together for a Christmas dinner. My DIL is a messianic Christian, so she does not celebrate Christmas anymore, so we are just calling it a family dinner, but it is happening on Christmas Day. That will give Robin some time to sleep and rest up before we have the dinner together, and she is always exhausted for a few days because of the time difference. My kids think they have to have potato salad for any meal we have together, so I will be making that next weekend and then cooking a turkey and stuffing for the Christmas dinner. Laura will be making all the other side dishes and the dessert. I am still working on straightening up the pantry/storage area, and I want to do as much as I can while we have the warmer weather to be in the room.
Yvonne sounds like your be really enjoying the holidays with the family, good for you. Funny how we both are trying to get together a journal for our kids and grands at about the same time. or at least continuing with it.
My son started an online share-journal , called Day One Journal. You can have more than one journal with it, so I had the Footprints of Our Past for the family stories, and my gardening journal , so I could remember what I planted where last summer. It is something that can be shared, so my son has our main journal that is the shared one with all my kids. When I write in my story journal, then I share it with the family EAG journal. (EAG is for Ella Avenue Grocery, which is the little neighborhood store that my folks owned then I was growing up.) I can add stories and pictures when I have some to add, and everyone can share and read, and each person can add their own family stories. I definitely recommend something like this for preserving family memories, and explaining the old photos, @Marie Mallery .
I have decided that I am going to have one meal a day of a Meal Replacement Shake. One lady on another forum does that with her Ninja Creami, and she swears by it. She uses Keto Chow, but it is around $6 for a single serving, which is WAY out of my food budget. So, I ordered some Atkins MRS and one from Amazon that was Premier Protein MRS, and I just started using that in the Ninja today. I used one 11 oz. MRS and a half cup of cottage cheese in mine, and then made Bobby’s ice cream in the usual way with cottage cheese, chocolate whey protein, milk, and a banana. Mine was actually very filling, and a lot more than just drinking the shake plain would have been, and it was really creamy tasting, too. Ice cream is just SO good ! Anyway, I also ordered a smaller personal size blender for making the ice cream. It has a 27 oz container, so plenty of room to make the 16 oz smoothie for the Ninja containers. I only use the big blender for making the smoothies mostly, so I can store it away in the pantry and keep the little one on the counter for ice cream making. The big one was fine when I was making the same thing for both Bobby and myself, but now that it will be separate, the little one will be perfect. It is on sale almost half-price, so that helps a lot, too. The blender also comes with a small jar and grinding lid for grinding coffee, flax, or other kinds of small grinding . I am thinking of getting whole bean coffee now, and fresh grinding it with the new grinder. I love the smell of fresh-ground coffee ! ! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D31JJ1P7
Well, the new years started off with stuff to work out, so that is what my morning has been spent doing; but now (thankfully) all is well in Yvonne World again. We got our new medicare advantage home and food benefit card, but until today, we could not use it for anything. The old one expired last night at midnight, so it should have been a simple thing to take the old card out of Walmart.com, (where I use it for online shopping and grocery delivery) and put the new cards (Bobby’s and mine) in to replace the old ones. Not happening ! It kept telling me that i could shop in-store with the card, but not for delivery anymore. In fact, it showed the only place I could shop online with the card was at CVS, which is a pharmacy and not a grocery store. So I spent most of my morning getting the merry-go-round of calling Devoted Health, being transferred to CVS (who puts out the card), and CVS telling me the answers were all right there on the app for the card. The app then told me I could only shop online at CVS, blah, blah, blah. So much for that. After about 2 hours of trying to find out about this, both on the phone and by texting Devoted, I finally got a nice lady who had been dealing with unhappy seniors calling about this since she came to work today. She was able to tell me that it was a glitch in the system, and Devoted was getting it fixed right then, so it should soon be working properly. Even better, she said we can now use Instacart for shopping, so that means that I can order delivery from more stores than just Walmart this year; so I signed up for that, too. Now, I am a Happy Camper ! The cards are working everywhere they are supposed to be working, as far as I can tell, and I already have my first 2025 Walmart order in. (Getting that healthy Puroast coffee on this order, but it will be shipped, so not arriving for a couple of days.)